After Everett was sexually abused, he was tricked into ‘confessing’ to the police about homosexual activity
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Everett was sexually abused by a stranger in the 1960s.
He was horrified to discover recently that he has a criminal record for ‘homosexual activity’.
Everett had a ‘complicated’ early life. His mother left home when he was very young and his father couldn’t manage to work and look after him. So Everett was sent to live with relatives, who adopted him.
He says ‘I thought they were my mum and dad’.
He continues ‘One day this man turned up and they said “It’s your dad”’.
After that, Everett’s biological dad began visiting regularly. His adoptive parents told Everett that his dad had remarried and wanted Everett to go and live with him. Everett says ‘It was the biggest mistake I ever made, but as a young kid, you want to keep people happy. I thought they wanted me to say yes, so I said yes’.
He moved in with his father and stepmother. His stepmother started severely physically abusing him when his father wasn’t there. Everett says ‘I’d go to school and tell the teachers, but she would blag her way out of it’.
He describes how she even called in social services and told them false stories about how he kept getting into trouble and that was why he had bruises. He adds ‘The social workers never asked me what was going on’.
Everett continues ‘She would scream at me to get out. So I decided to go back to my adoptive parents’. At the age of 10, he walked more than 20 miles to their house but they were not there. He slept outside then made friends with another boy who took him back to his house.
The next day his father and stepmother arrived and ‘gave me a good hiding’.
During the time he lived with his father and stepmother, Everett attended a youth club. When he was about 11, the dad of one of the other boys gave him a lift in his car, and started touching and squeezing his leg.
Everett says ‘I had no idea what he was doing and thought he was being friendly, but he did it again so I stopped going’. He told his dad what had happened, but he told Everett not to be ‘silly’.
Everett’s stepmother continued physically and verbally abusing him. Again, he walked to his adoptive parents. This time, a social worker asked him why he was doing this. He told them what his stepmother was doing to him, but she denied it.
By the time he was 14, she stopped beating him. ‘I was too big for her to knock me around’ he says.
At this age, he decided to try and find his mother. He explains ‘I knew my real mum lived in [a city], and daft as it sounds I thought if I went I could find her and we’d live happily ever after’.
He took a train. He describes sitting on his own in the dark with no money. A man approached him, and asked him if he had run away from home.
Everett says ‘He offered to take me in the car to try and find my mum; I thought that was kind’.
The man drove Everett some distance, bought him some food and parked on a quiet road. He began touching Everett’s leg. Everett says ‘It was dark and I was scared – I should have run off’.
He tried to stop the man but he persisted and touched Everett’s private parts, and told him to do the same to him. Everett was frightened he might be murdered, so he says ‘I looked the other way and did it’.
Afterwards, the man gave Everett some money and took him back to the city, where he slept in a bed and breakfast.
The next day Everett was stopped by the police. They took him to a room and questioned him about where he had stayed and how he got the money. He says ‘I told them the story. I had no idea what was going on, but I thought if I tell the truth it will be ok’.
Everett was then taken somewhere that he now knows was a remand home. After two nights a car came for him and he remembers being walked up some steps.
He says ‘I didn’t realise at the time but I was in the dock’. He saw his dad and his adoptive dad in the court. He continues ‘Someone read something out, it sounded like what I had told the police. I thought “Oh my god”. I was looking down and crying, and my adoptive dad was crying’.
He was then taken to a children’s home, and to foster parents.
A couple of years ago, Everett applied to see his social services records. Before he was shown them, he was offered counselling, but he declined, thinking he wouldn’t need it.
He was shocked to read all the lies his stepmother had told about him, which he says ‘were more and more outlandish’.
He was even more horrified to read the court report and discover that at the age of 14, having been sexually abused by an adult, he had been convicted of homosexual activity.
‘I couldn’t believe how this could have happened. I had a criminal record all my life and didn’t know’ he says. ‘How the hell could I be charged with that at 14, when some man got me in his car scared for my life, how is that right?’
He spoke informally to a lawyer who said that he could sue, but warned him the story might get into the press. He is considering getting another opinion.
Everett says that his discovery ‘knocked me for six’ but he finds it helpful to talk about it.
‘It’s always better to talk about things, each time I speak about it, it’s a relief. But you can’t talk to just anyone about it, because of the shame I suppose.’