Jemma thought that abuse ‘was normal, her fault and was what happened in every family’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Jemma was sexually abused by her father and also by a Sunday school teacher.
When she went to her mother for help, she was told to ‘get used to it’.
Jemma was five years old when her father began sexually abusing her; the abuse included rape. He also beat her. Jemma’s mother said that if Jemma wasn’t ‘so naughty’ her father would not need to punish her.
Her mother ran a Sunday school with a man called Clive. He would take children into a separate room while Jemma’s mother stayed with the others. Clive sexually abused Jemma when he was alone with her, putting his hand under her skirt.
Jemma says that over time the touching became ‘more intense’. He began taking her to his house on the pretext of giving her reading lessons. Instead, he sexually abused her and took photos of her. She remembers crying, and him telling her there was ‘nothing to be afraid of’.
Again, she tried to tell her mother what was happening to her, but her mother said that if Jemma ‘wasn’t so stupid’ she wouldn’t need the extra lessons.
Clive continued sexually abusing Jemma for about two years. He started holding ‘sleepovers’ at his house for the Sunday school children, and on one of these occasions, he raped Jemma.
She describes feeling ‘absolute exhaustion’, trying to fight but being unable to stop what was happening. She adds that she is sure that she was not the only child Clive abused, but she says they didn’t talk about it to each other in Sunday school.
Jemma can remember being taken to see the nurse when she was in primary school because she had discharge from her vagina, and also telling a teacher that her private parts hurt, saying ‘I was punished’, but no one questioned her about this.
Jemma says her father stopped sexually abusing her when she started to go through puberty, and around the same time, Clive moved away.
When she was still a teenager, her father was prosecuted for possessing indecent images of children, but no one spoke to Jemma as part of the investigation.
More recently, she discovered that Clive was still teaching Sunday school and this prompted her to report him to the police. They are investigating Clive but have told Jemma there may not be enough evidence to proceed.
Jemma has experienced flashbacks, nightmares, depression, and thoughts of suicide, and she has had difficulty accessing suitable support. Eventually she was signposted to a Rape Crisis Centre.
Having a specialist ‘take the time’ to explain the impact of trauma on the body has helped Jemma understand why she feels the way she does, and has made her feel ‘more in control again’.
She adds: ‘You don't just stop being scared when you become an adult.’
Jemma feels that if someone had intervened earlier in her life, other children could have been prevented from experiencing abuse. She believes that other people knew about the abuse by Clive but ‘turned a blind eye and didn’t want to raise the alarm’.
She thinks there should be systems to enable people to raise concerns. ‘No one likes to be the one to say there is a problem but everyone should be held accountable’ she says.
Jemma would also like to see more education in schools about abuse and consent, so children know that being abused isn’t ‘normal’, and more specialist sexual violence support services for survivors.
She doesn’t have any contact with her mother, but says she has good support from her fiance and friends, and she feels she is ‘on the path to recovery’.