Dot says the staff in her children’s home had the authority but not the skills to care for children
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Dot endured years of sustained sexual abuse by numerous male residents in her children’s home.
She was punished for being the victim of abuse, and called ‘dirty’.
Dot spent 10 years in a children’s home in the 1960s. Throughout this time, she was sexually abused.
She and her siblings were put into care because their father was violent and wanted to take the children to his home country.
Dot was six years old the first time she was sexually abused. A man pinned her down in the grounds of the children’s home and anally assaulted her. She remembers the terrible pain this caused her.
After this, many of the male residents in the home regularly grabbed her and sexually abused her. Even her older brother joined in, and she added that when new boys moved into the home, they would sexually abuse her too. ‘I felt there was no escape’ she says.
Dot used to worry that her little sister would also be sexually abused in the home. One day, she realised her sister had left because she had been fostered. No one told Dot this was happening and she was very distressed.
On one occasion, the head of the home saw Dot being sexually abused; he dragged her to his office and physically punished her. He then rounded up all the children and made her point out which ones had abused her, and humiliated her in front of them by calling her a ‘dirty little girl’ who should not have ‘allowed’ them to abuse her.
Dot was fostered for a while, but the foster parents physically and psychologically abused her. She was returned to the children’s home where the sexual abuse by the male residents continued.
Once, when she was trying to escape the abusers, she got caught on some barbed wire. She had to go to hospital for stitches, but no one asked her what had happened.
She has no memory of seeing a social worker or inspector during her time in residential or foster care.
Decades later, Dot looks back at her time in the children’s home and questions ‘How were these kids allowed to be unsupervised?’ She has requested information about her past from the local authority responsible for her time in care, but has been told that it is not possible to provide it.
She recently told her long-term partner about her experiences in the children’s home and says they are very supportive.
Dot concludes by saying that she hopes things are different now for children in care.