Flora was a young child when she was sexually abused; she feels guilty that she didn’t report it at the time
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The man who sexually abused Flora terrified her by threatening that her family would be hurt if she told anyone.
She was only nine years old when he abused her, but she worries that her silence may have meant he abused other children.
Flora grew up in the 1950s and 60s. She says her parents were strict but kind and loving.
Flora’s father combined his car commute to work with giving her a lift to and from her junior school. This meant she arrived early and had to wait after school for him to pick her up.
During these times, the only other person on site was Mr A, the school caretaker. He befriended Flora over a period of time, giving her sweets and games equipment to play with. ‘I realised later he was grooming me, but I didn’t know that then’ she says. ‘He used to say to me “Don’t tell anyone else, it’s our secret.”’
She comments ‘I was the sort of child who wanted to please people’.
One day, Mr A took Flora into a shed in the school grounds. There was no light in there and she heard him lock the door behind them. She was frightened of the dark and recalls with obvious distress ‘I was terrified out of my wits, absolutely petrified’.
Mr A took Flora’s hand and put it inside his trousers on his penis. She was nine years old and had had no sex education. ‘We were so naive then and didn’t know anything about anything’ she says. She had no idea what she was touching but she told Mr A she was scared. He told her to be quiet.
After this, Mr A continued sexually abusing Flora every school day. She knew she didn’t like what he was doing, and tried to resist, but he would pull her hand onto his genitals. He began touching her inside her clothes. He kept reminding her it was a secret and started making threats that if she told anyone, her family would be hurt.
Because of this, Flora did not tell anyone about the abuse. She says ‘I don’t think anything would have made me talk, because I was so scared by his threats. I thought “Who would look after me if something happened to them?”’.
Flora continues ‘I got to the stage I didn’t want to go to school. I tried everything … all sorts of tactics’. She asked her parents if she could go by bus so that she wouldn’t have to be there on her own. But her dad said no, because he saw no reason to spend money on fares when he could give her lifts in his car.
She began feigning illnesses, or making herself late so she couldn’t leave with her dad. But this made her parents cross with her and she also got into trouble at school. She was so desperate to avoid the caretaker she started cutting herself with a razor blade in the morning, so she had to stay at home so her mum could tend to the bleeding.
At school, Flora was known as being helpful and had often been sent to tell the caretaker about maintenance problems in the classroom. She began refusing to do this, and this got her into more trouble with her teachers. ‘I felt I couldn’t win’ she says.
Even when Flora moved to secondary school, she could not escape the abuse, because her new school was attached to her junior school, and Mr A was the caretaker at both sites.
He continued to abuse Flora during her first year at secondary school, and he began coercing her into going to his home.
Here the abuse escalated to groping, kissing and Mr A making her masturbate him. She was terrified of the threats he had made against her family and felt powerless to stop him abusing her. ‘I had no idea what he was doing, but I hated it’ she says.
The abuse ended when Flora was about 12, but she can’t remember why. She thinks that perhaps as she got older, she was able to avoid the caretaker.
Flora describes how she has been affected by the sexual abuse she suffered. For a long time, she could not cope with intimate relationships. She developed an eating disorder which had a significant impact on her physical health.
She has also been tormented with feelings of extreme guilt that she didn’t speak out about Mr A, and he may have abused other children. ‘How many other people did he do it to … was it just me … could I have stopped it?’ she asks.
She has had counselling but she says ‘The guilt is there’.
Flora says that children need to have someone at school they can trust and talk to.
She married a man who was very kind and understanding. They fostered children, and Flora says ‘I wanted to protect them all’. As a widow, she wants to go on helping others and she keeps herself busy with charity work.