Fiona feels hurt and anguish at her family’s reaction to the sexual abuse she suffered
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Fiona describes the household she grew up in as ‘strict and frightening’. She was from a religious family of priests and nuns. Her father turned to religion when she was about six years old and Fiona describes him as a ‘religious fruitloop’. She recalls that her mother would shout and beat her and her siblings.
Decades later, she realised she had been sexually abused by a visiting uncle, but her family did not support her.
As young children, Fiona and her siblings were made to make confessions for reasons they did not understand and for things they did not do. She says ‘It was guilt, shame and blame, from a young age ... we were very afraid as we didn’t know what we had done.’
Throughout her adult life, Fiona had experienced severe stomach and bowel problems which at times prevented her from working. She wanted to explore the underlying reasons for her continuing illness. In addition, she often had dreams of a young girl being made to perform sexual acts.
She was in her 40s when she identified the girl as herself and realised that her uncle, a member of a religious order, had sexually abused her in the family home when she was very young.
Her mother recalled he had shared Fiona’s bed when he came to stay with the family.
Based on flashbacks and pain she has experienced, Fiona believes she was anally raped.
When Fiona first spoke to her mother about her realisation, she says there was ‘a brief period of disbelief’ then she was supportive, saying: ‘I absolutely know that he did [abuse you].’ Fiona says when she heard this, she hung up the phone as she thought she was going to be sick.
Fiona’s mother wanted to confront the perpetrator and requested that Fiona give a written account of her experiences. But when Fiona did this, her mother seemed to change her mind, saying that before they could take any action against her uncle, Fiona should apologise for confronting her father about an unrelated issue.
Fiona was angry and disbelieving at her parents’ refusal to support her. When the police contacted them later, she says ‘They supported my uncle, which really stinks.’ She adds ‘A normal reaction would be … what happened to my child … how can I help and be supportive? My parents didn’t do that. It’s hard. You’d like to think all parents would do that, but I wonder if my parents feel anything.’
Fiona also feels let down by the police. Having moved away from where the abuse took place, there was some miscommunication about where she should report it.
She describes the first two police officers she dealt with as ‘professionals’ who treated her with respect and communicated well and often with her. However, she describes a ‘catalogue of failure’ that followed when the case was transferred to a new officer for reasons that were never explained to her.
After this, Fiona feels that she was treated as an ‘inconvenience’ by this officer who said ‘These are not your memories, they’re your thoughts aren’t they?’
The police officer told her he was in communication with the religious order, a safeguarding alert had been raised and the perpetrator had been removed from working with the public. Because of the location of the order, she was told that the British police have no jurisdiction, so the officer emailed the perpetrator, via the order’s safeguarding lead, ‘to test the water’.
The perpetrator denied the abuse, but the police officer told Fiona that the order had made a ‘conciliatory offer’ to her. The police officer did not explain what this meant but offered to arrange a meeting or to pass her contact details over. The possibility of this happening made her feel ‘nervous and vulnerable’. The police investigation was then dropped.
Fiona feels strongly that the officer was trying to get the case off his desk as quickly as possible and did not properly investigate the details she gave him. She says the perpetrator is due to retire soon and plans to live abroad.
She adds: ‘I feel a serious pain. How and why did he do this? You can’t make sense of this.’
Fiona would like to see more openness about sexual abuse and a more consistent provision of a ‘person centred, high quality, believing response’ from the police.