After sharing her experience, Faith says now ‘it is a chapter I am trying to close’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Faith was sexually abused at primary school by a boy the same age as her. She feels this later made her vulnerable to further abuse by an older male.
Faith says her family life was stable and she had supportive parents. When she was at primary school, her parents had a baby who was born with a health condition that required a lot of attention, care and treatment.
During this time, Faith attended school and a boy who sat next to her in class began touching her genitals inside her knickers. Faith remembers mixed feelings of rage, embarrassment and shame.
Not knowing how to deal with the situation, she got into fights with the boy. She knew that things were difficult for her parents, with a sick baby, and she didn’t feel she could talk to them about it.
Although Faith didn’t understand this at the time, while she didn’t want the abuse to be happening, she thinks it sexualised her far too young and affected her future relationships.
When Faith was 13, she became involved with a 17-year-old. She says ‘he had a presence about him’ and she sometimes felt scared of him. One day he asked her to ‘bunk off’ school and go to his house. He simulated sex with her and then sexually assaulted her. He was much bigger than her and she was physically trapped under him.
When she got back to school, she says, everyone knew what had happened, and for the following year, she had a ‘horrible time’ at school. No one questioned why this older male had been with a 13-year-old girl.
The abuse she experienced in her childhood has left Faith with a very negative view of herself. She feels that if the first incident hadn’t happened to her so young, she might not have been vulnerable to grooming when she was 13.
She looks back at the young boy who assaulted her with sorrow, and wonders if he had ‘something going on’ in his home life that caused him to do what he did.
Faith has suffered with depression, but has had counselling and recently, with the support of a friend, has managed to ‘let go of the blame and the shame and the guilt stuff’.
Faith feels she was let down by people in authority at school. It was widely known what had happened with the older male but she feels she was the one blamed for it. She questions whether there is a belief that black girls are considered to be sexualised at a young age, and adds that the community should be open to discussing this.
She emphasises the importance of good sex education from an early age, and says children need to be provided with ways to tell someone discreetly if there is something worrying them.
Despite the difficulties she faced, Faith did well at school and went to university. She says education ‘was my saving grace’.