Cyrah says ‘The people I thought were there to protect me didn’t believe a word I was saying’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
After Cyrah was assaulted and raped by her father, she was placed in the care system.
There, she was sexually abused and exploited by several more men.
Cyrah is not sure how old she was when her father began sexually abusing her, but she remembers that she was eight years old when she realised that what he was doing was wrong. He also regularly beat her and her sister with whips and sticks.
One night when she was 11, Cyrah ran out of the house when her father came upstairs to sexually abuse her. He dragged her back by the neck and beat her so badly that she was covered in bruises.
At school, she showed two teachers her injuries and told them her father had raped her. The teachers informed the police and social services. Cyrah was interviewed at a police station; she says the experience was ‘terrible’. Her mother came along, said Cyrah was lying and hit her in front of the police.
She says she felt as if she was being interrogated by the police, and they kept asking her for ‘proof’ of what she was saying. They finally accepted Cyrah was being physically abused by her father but said she was lying about the sexual abuse. Cyrah was told she was going to be sent to a children’s home.
She describes the home as ‘a brutal place’.
Cyrah says the children had to be very quiet, they were given little food and only allowed to go to the toilet very occasionally.
After a few months, Cyrah was sent back to her parents. Her father started sexually abusing her again and she ran away. She describes how she slept rough with other children. She was 12 years old.
Cyrah was frequently taken home by the police until one officer seemed to understand how bad her life at home must be if she preferred to sleep rough and tried to help by involving social services.
Over the next two years, Cyrah was in a cycle of being placed in children’s homes, then being returned to her parents, running away and sleeping rough. She says she ‘just wanted someone to believe what was happening’ and help her.
When she was in her early teens, Cyrah was sent to a home where she was sexually abused by male members of staff. She says the man in charge, Saul, was a large, charismatic and dominant character who manipulated the children by being friendly at first, before becoming abusive towards them.
Saul told Cyrah she was like an adult, ‘different from the other children’. He took her and some other young people to his house, coaxed her into trying on some clothes and filmed her as she got undressed.
Saul then showed the children some sexualised photographs. When Cyrah said she wanted to leave, Saul became really angry with her.
Cyrah was herself having what she thought was ‘a genuine relationship’ with another male member of staff at this time. She didn’t understand she was being groomed and sexually abused, because this sort of behaviour seemed so normal in the home.
She says it was widely known in the home that the staff worker was sexually abusing her. She often stayed overnight in his bedroom on the site.
Cyrah remembers an occasion when some people from the local authority came to visit the home. They asked questions about sexual abuse but she says it seemed ‘very casual’, not like a proper investigation. After that, two male members of staff left.
Even after Cyrah left care when she was in her mid teens, she was still preyed on by abusers from the care system. She and her friend were approached by a man who had worked at her last children’s home, and asked if they wanted to become prostitutes.
At one point, Cyrah was contacted by another worker from the same home and asked to be involved in some kind of investigation. She and other girls who had disclosed sexual abuse by Saul and other men met with social services. The men resigned from their posts and the girls were simply told that was ‘the end of the matter’. The abusers were not charged.
Throughout her life, Cyrah says she has experienced overwhelming feelings that she is not believed, and she has become withdrawn because of this. However, she still feels guilty about not managing to save others from being abused. ‘I’ve thought over the years … what happened to those children?’ she says.
Cyrah struggles with feelings of being ‘dirty’, and she self-harms to try and cope with this. In her teenage years she abused drugs and alcohol and she has attempted suicide. She feels that for a time, her life ‘spiralled out of control’, but this changed when she had her first child.
She says ‘My children were the ones that put me on my path … I wanted the world to be better for them’.
Cyrah now works in safeguarding and she feels strongly there should be stringent and regular checks on any adults who have contact with children. ‘Checks should not just be one off’, she says. ‘It’s not about nosing … if you choose to be involved with a child, you need to open up your life’.