Henrietta writes ‘My childhood was full of adult responsibilities – sexual, household and caring’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Henrietta chose to share her experience in writing.
She gives a vivid account of a childhood of extreme neglect, chaos and abuse in the 1960s and 70s.
Henrietta’s biological family lived in very poor, run-down housing. She remembers being left alone in the house with her siblings. ‘We did not have the skills to wash or take care of ourselves … whilst hungry I do remember eating pet food.’ She adds ‘My mother described me once as a miserable child always crying. I never felt like she wanted any of us. We just happened’.
Her father was in and out of prison ‘usually for violence’ and she describes him beating and badly injuring the children for minor misdemeanours.
The children were placed in care after Henrietta's father savagely beat her mother and she fled the house.
Henrietta was sent to live with a foster family who mistreated and abused her. ‘The mother gave me daily cold baths and salty bread to eat as a staple diet’ she writes.
Henrietta once burned her arm and the foster parents put her to bed with a wooden pole threaded through her sleeves so she could not pick at the injury. She says ‘I never cried even when they beat me’.
The foster father sexually abused Henrietta, forcing her to perform oral sex on him.
Henrietta was moved to a children’s home and then returned to live with her biological parents where the violence and neglect continued. The owner of a nearby food takeaway regularly gave her chips to eat.
At this time, Henrietta told her parents that her foster father had sexually abused her. After this disclosure, her father began to abuse her himself. It began with him rubbing his penis between her legs and escalated to violent rape.
Once he injured her so badly that her mother took her to hospital. Henrietta remembers the bus journey, and her mother putting a towel between her legs to stem the blood flow. She comments that this is the only memory she has of her mother holding her.
Henrietta had surgery to repair the damage. After she went home, her father continued raping her anally and vaginally.
When her mother was sent to prison, Henrietta was sent to a children’s home for a time. Here, she was sexually abused by two older boys.
She returned home, and her father continued raping her. Henrietta relates that on one occasion her mother saw him doing this. ‘She said “What’s going on?” and walked away. I knew in that very moment I was nothing to her’ writes Henrietta.
When she was 12 years old, Henrietta had a baby. She names her social worker who was aware of the pregnancy, but adds ‘My parents concocted a story’.
After Henrietta became pregnant again, she told her father she was going to report him. He brutally assaulted her. She left the house and wandered around the streets for a few hours. ‘Then I walked into a police station and said “I need to tell you something”.’
Henrietta’s father was charged and sentenced to prison. Her mother told her daughter that she had ‘ruined her marriage’ and Henrietta was ostracised by the rest of the family. Soon after this, Henrietta put her child up for adoption. ‘I often wonder about her’ she says.
Henrietta describes her sadness about the fact that she missed out on an education because she was made to stay at home, cooking and cleaning. ‘A proper Cinderella’ she comments. As a young adult, she wrote to her local education authority asking if she could go to college, but her request was refused.
Henrietta has blamed herself for being abused, speculating that if she had not told her biological father that her foster father had sexually abused her, he might not have done the same to her. She considers that social services failed her, but then adds ‘I failed myself for not having the courage to tell someone sooner’.