Hilda says ‘Abuse affects your identity and sense of self’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
After being adopted as a baby in the early 1960s, Hilda was sexually abused for more than 10 years by her adoptive father.
She now understands that she confused the abuse by her adoptive father for ‘love’, and this made her vulnerable to abuse by other men.
Hilda says ‘It took me many, many years to understand that I had been abused. Because it was all that I knew’.
Hilda doesn’t remember exactly how old she was when her adoptive father began sexually abusing her, but because of the type of bed she remembers she was sleeping in, she knows she was under the age of five.
She says ‘I remember Daddy touching me in a way I now recognise as sexual’ and she describes focusing her gaze on a sticker on the end of her bed whilst the abuse was happening.
The abuse developed into a ‘game’ which involved her adoptive father moving her around on his erect penis. Hilda says that sometimes her adoptive father took her into his bed. Sometimes he hurt her when he was abusing her, but Hilda says ‘I couldn’t say anything because it was my job to make Daddy happy … if I kept him happy, then he wouldn’t be so cross with Mummy or my [sibling]’.
Hilda adds she felt that most of the ‘love’ she was given came from her adoptive father – she doesn’t remember her mum showing her any affection. ‘She wasn’t abusive, she was absent.’
As she got older, the abuse by her adoptive father escalated. She remembers the pain of him trying to rape her and him telling her it was her fault if it hurt.
When Hilda reached puberty, her adoptive father stopped sexually abusing her, and at the same time, he became more angry. She now thinks he stopped because he was afraid she might get pregnant.
She continues ‘Perhaps that’s why he was so angry and controlling when I got a boyfriend’.
He was also furious with Hilda if she didn’t get top marks for all her school work. Hilda says that she learned to be very compliant and focus on hard work and achievements.
She comments ‘Now, I can’t stop doing that. I have to battle with “workaholism”. If I don’t succeed at something, I keep trying and trying, thinking it must be me that is doing something wrong’.
When Hilda was a teenager, she got a boyfriend and felt she loved him. He was a few years older than Hilda and having been bullied at school, she hoped that being with him would make her one of the ‘cool’ girls. But this man was abusive to her.
‘I didn’t know it at the time’ she says, ‘but Dad had groomed me perfectly for my abusive boyfriend’. Hilda describes how she enjoyed feeling loved, and wanted hugs and intimacy. She says ‘When he wanted to do things like Daddy did, I didn't enjoy that, but I had learnt to be compliant’. She had not had any sex education and didn’t realise the implications of what he was making her do.
At some stage, Hilda’s boyfriend’s brother demanded to join with the sexual abuse of Hilda. Hilda says he was ‘older and bigger and angry … my boyfriend was scared of him’.
She continues ‘He was a sadist. He directed my boyfriend to do things with me that were terrifying and agonising. I can’t repeat them all’.
The abuse included the two men pouring alcohol down Hilda’s throat, raping her anally, orally and vaginally, and hurting and humiliating her in other ways. They began allowing other men to rape her for money. These men did not all use condoms and once the brothers took her for an illegal abortion.
Hilda says ‘I couldn’t tell anyone what was happening. I had no words. I didn't even understand it all myself’.
She remembers that she was always wetting herself at school when she was little, and when she was being abused by the brothers, she developed an eating disorder. She self-harmed and was prescribed medication, which she tried to overdose on.
Hilda found refuge in joining a youth group. She says ‘I met peers who were kind and safe and didn’t expect me to have sex with them’. However, she suffered more sexual abuse by a youth leader.
When she was in her late 30s, she disclosed the abuse she had suffered. She began having flashbacks and would wake screaming and crying. She started self-harming again, became depressed and suicidal, and had to take time off work.
Hilda began having therapy and decided to report the abuse to the police. She says they responded well; they took two days to take her statement, and tried to find some of the surviving perpetrators.
She describes the lasting effects of her experiences. ‘Even though I have spent many years in therapy ... it still affects me every day, in so many ways.’ For many years, she felt it was her fault, and that she wasn’t good enough.
It has been particularly difficult for Hilda to deal with what she describes as ‘opposing realities’. The abuse by her dad seemed to mean that ‘he chose me and he loved me ... so abuse became associated as a good thing, a reward, a sign of love’.
She continues ‘That meant when others abused me I took it as a sign of love and something I had to accept to please them. I learnt to be compliant’.
Hilda still suffers with feelings of self-loathing and says that she judges herself very harshly. She often feels suicidal, and she self-harms and drinks and eats ‘to take away the pain’.
She prefers being alone to being with people.
Hilda would like to see more support for survivors, and services that are ‘truly trauma-informed’. ‘It’s exhausting, trying to recover from abuse and trauma’ she says.
She says she is fortunate to have an ‘amazing’ therapist, who she feels is on her side and empowers her.
Hilda understands how the sexual abuse she endured has distorted her perception of herself. She says ‘I realise that sometimes I end up trying to have value by being a victim … like I only have worth for what is wrong with me … really I want to have worth for being good and positive and strong, for being a survivor not a victim’.