Dawney describes people who have been sexually abused as ‘a walking wounded community’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Dawney suffered violent abuse from her birth family and her foster family, and was also sexually abused in both settings.
She would like to see a specific department within social services to support people who have been abused.
Dawney grew up in the 1970s in a violent, dysfunctional family and lived in ‘slumlike conditions’. Her mother was a prostitute who physically abused Dawney and allowed her partners to do the same.
Dawney remembers being dropped off at an office by her mum when she was nine years old and being told she was going to live with foster parents. She now knows it was social services where she was taken.
She was sent to live with a couple and their biological children. ‘For the first six months I was really happy’ she says.
But then Dawney’s foster mother began physically abusing her. Dawney recalls ‘She used to seriously, properly beat me. But because I’d been beaten by my own mother and men she had relationships with, to me, beating was nothing’.
The foster mother also emotionally abused Dawney. She separated her from the other children and the family pet, which Dawney adored. ‘There was a lot of cruelty’ Dawney says.
One day Dawney was playing outside and fell and hurt herself. She was crying hysterically and her foster father came outside. On the pretext of checking her injury, he touched her between her legs ‘in a way that was weird’ Dawney says.
After that incident, he began sexually abusing Dawney in the evenings when his wife was at work. He touched her genitals and made her look at pictures of women in their underwear, and talk about female bodies. He also took her out in his car and made her give him oral sex.
Dawney’s foster dad abused her for about two or three years. It stopped after one occasion when he tried to get on top of her, and his wife arrived home. Dawney says that from his reaction, ‘That’s when I realised it was wrong’.
Her foster mother did not see what he was doing, but she continued viciously beating Dawney every day. Dawney recalls ‘I honestly thought my foster mother was going to kill me’.
By this time, the children had turned against Dawney too. After a disagreement with one of them, Dawney’s foster mum banged Dawney’s head hard into the wall. ‘I was hysterical … so scared’ she remembers.
She ran to the house of a family she knew, who called social services. She relates ‘I remember speaking to a social worker, who told me to go home or I would go to the “naughty girls home”. I said “I don’t care”’.
For the next few years she lived in a children’s home, and for a time, with a relative. Here, a male visitor sexually abused her on one occasion.
Dawney describes her behaviour at school as ‘off the rails ... I would fight and threaten everyone. I had no boundaries, if you looked at me I’d punch you’.
After Dawney left school she went to college. She describes how at first she behaved the same way, until one of the lecturers pointed out that it was her choice to be there.
She managed to get her own place and stayed on at college. One day she went to visit the social worker who had been most involved with her case, and told her about the abuse from the foster parents. The social worker said she had felt ‘something was wrong’, and Dawney felt very angry and betrayed by this. She adds ‘I think she felt bad about it’.
When Dawney was in her early 20s, she decided to report the foster parents to the police. They were not prosecuted but she thinks they were banned from fostering.
She considers that the physical and sexual abuse she suffered has had a significant impact on her life. She has no confidence and suffers with depression and nightmares. She has difficulty with relationships, has self-harmed, and attempted suicide several times.
She said she moves around a lot. ‘I am rootless.’
After a two-year wait, she had psychotherapy, but did not find it helpful.
Dawney emphasises the need for professionals to look for the reason behind children's ‘bad’ behaviour. She would like to see better support for children and adults who have been abused, and a specific department within social services set up to do this.
She believes that efforts should be made to instil confidence and self-esteem into girls so they are assertive enough to say no to abusers.
Dawney says she is now in a ‘good place’ with a job and a stable relationship.
She adds ‘People need to come and give their story. Sexual abuse is on a massive scale’.