Fenella describes how bad she felt when her mother and the police did not believe she had been abused
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
When Fenella was sexually abused and raped by her stepfather, her mother did not support her.
The police did not return her calls when she tried to find out whether they were acting on her report.
Fenella was four years old when her parents separated. She and her younger sister were taken by their mum to live in a different area.
She says that her mum made the relationship with her dad difficult, and for that reason, along with the distance, Fenella rarely saw him. And because they moved house a lot, they did not have much support from family or friends.
Fenella adds that her mum was physically and emotionally abusive towards her, and she never felt loved by her. She now thinks her mum may have had postnatal depression.
When Fenella was about five, her mum became involved with a man called Dave. At first, Fenella says, her relationship with him was ‘pretty good’. She felt he was sympathetic when she had problems with her mum and that he generally ‘looked out for me’.
But when she was 12, Dave began sexually abusing her. The family were watching television together and Fenella was sitting on a sofa with Dave, with a blanket over them. Dave started to touch her under the blanket. She says she didn’t know how to react. ‘I just let it happen.’
From then on, the abuse escalated. She remembers that on weekends, when her mum was doing housework, Dave would still be in bed. He would ask her to get in with him and then touch her. She says ‘looking at it from the outside it was all strange … what was happening, and the relationship I had with him. But mum never really questioned anything’.
Dave continued abusing her regularly, and one day he raped her. She says she lost count of the number of times this happened. ‘It became a normal part of life for me, but obviously it wasn’t normal’ she says.
When Fenella was in her teens, and started seeing a boy, the abuse became less frequent. She says that Dave ‘backed away ... tried stuff sometimes, but not as much as before. I think he thought I’d tell somebody’.
Soon after, Fenella realised that Dave had also sexually abused her sister. She says she suspected he was, but her relationship with her sister ‘wasn’t great’, and she didn’t ask her. Fenella now thinks that Dave deliberately put a ‘wedge’ between the sisters so they wouldn’t confide in each other.
Fenella and her sister wanted to tell their mum, but they were scared of her reaction. Instead they wrote a letter to Dave, telling him that they would go to the police if he didn’t stop. He angrily confronted them both, separately. He implied that he was the victim, saying ‘Is this what you think of me … is this how I should be treated?’
After this, Fenella and her sister agreed they should report the abuse to the police, but that they had to tell their mum first. Their mum took them both to the police station where they were interviewed. Dave was subsequently arrested. At this point Fenella was in her mid teens and her sister was in her early teens.
The prosecution did not go ahead. The police said this was because they could not gather physical evidence of the sexual abuse. Fenella kept trying to contact them but she could never get through to the officer in charge and her calls were not returned.
Fenella’s mother changed her attitude and claimed that her daughters had made up the allegations against Dave. After a while, she told the girls she didn’t want them living with her as Dave was moving back into the family home.
Fenella and her sister were both due to take exams, so needed to stay in the area for school. For months they relied on friends to put them up. During this time they did not receive any support from social services.
Fenella had no further contact with her mum and the relationship with her sister has broken down. She managed to get a job and has supported herself ever since. She tried to get police to reopen the case, but without success.
She feels hurt and let down that her mum didn’t believe her and her sister, and then allowed the man who abused them back into their home. She also feels that the justice system doesn’t care about victims and survivors of child sexual abuse.
‘Even if there’s a successful conviction the penalty is minimal. And this affects the victim’s trust in the police and the justice system’ she says.
Fenella feels that the response of her mum and the police to her reports of abuse have affected her more than the actual abuse itself.
She says ‘When you’re a kid you’re always told adults will protect you, that you can tell an adult or tell the police they’ll help you and you’ll be believed. But then they don’t … it’s like a black hole in you, every part of your life is affected’.
Fenella feels strongly that there should be provision for young people who fall between the scope of children’s and adult services. She would also like to see better provision of support and counselling for victims and survivors and their families, and financial support for children and young people who are cast adrift from their family.
From her own experience, she says ‘Sadly, the family, the mums, don’t always take the side of the child’.
Fenella has fulfilled a longstanding career ambition and is now working successfully in a specialist trade. She says ‘Day by day, I found my own solutions in the end. And the last two years have been a turnaround for me, with my mental health’.