A medical professional brutally sexually assaulted Gilly when she was a vulnerable pregnant teenager
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Gilly got pregnant when she was a teenager in the 1960s.
During the secretive process to have the baby adopted, she was sexually abused by a doctor.
Gilly enjoyed a happy childhood until she was sent to a high-achieving secondary school. Her parents were pleased as they were ambitious for her, but Gilly did not enjoy it and she went from being an ’above-average student’ to failing her grades.
In her early teens, she was very interested in boys and keen to have a boyfriend. She met a boy who was a bit older and within a few weeks she became pregnant.
Gilly relates ‘My parents were horrified’ and says they made immediate plans to move house to help keep her pregnancy a secret. A social worker was involved, who arranged for Gilly to give birth in a mother-and-baby home, and her baby would be adopted.
Gilly was required to have a medical examination by a doctor, whose report would be sent to the mother-and-baby home before she was admitted.
She went to a local hospital with a relative, but went in to see the doctor alone. She describes him as a white man, who appeared old to her.
The doctor asked her several intrusive questions about sex, including the number of times she had had sex and in what positions. Gilly says ‘I was so ashamed, I was unable to answer’.
The doctor then told her to get on the couch and ‘examined’ her vagina using his fingers. He inserted a metal instrument into her vagina, and then into her anus, which was very painful for her. He left it there for several minutes while he left the room.
The doctor then told Gilly to bring her relative into the room. He told the relative ‘These examinations are necessary, but not very pleasant’, adding that Gilly would be ‘sore for a few days’.
Gilly says that she was in pain for days, and that she now realises she was in shock after the abuse.
When Gilly was at the mother-and-baby home, she commented to another girl about how awful the admission medical had been, and the girl replied ‘What do you mean? It was only a blood test’.
Gilly blocked out these events for decades, until following a training course at work ‘it hit me like a train’.
She has had some counselling and says she now realises she was probably not this doctor’s first or last victim and that he targeted her as a vulnerable pregnant teenager.
Gilly says it is difficult to calculate the impact of the abuse, because it is bound up with her pregnancy and the adoption of her baby. However, she thinks that to some extent, she probably felt she ‘deserved’ the abuse because she had got pregnant and upset her family.
She adds that she suffers with low self-esteem which has caused her to get involved with abusive and controlling partners.
Gilly believes that safeguarding ‘is a huge responsibility for everyone, not just the professionals’. She would like to see more focus on the dangers of online grooming.
She has children and grandchildren and lots of friends, and is involved with her community. ‘I guess distraction works for me’ she says.