Decades after he was abused, Jorge says ‘I have managed to become the person I want and need to be’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
When he was growing up, Jorge dreamed of flying in the RAF. When he met a pilot, it seemed ‘like a dream come true’.
But, he says, ‘things changed quickly’.
When Jorge met the pilot, Mr A, at a village event, he says he ‘was swept away by who and what he was’.
About a year before, Jorge discovered he was adopted. He was ‘in a low place’ and feeling lonely.
But soon after, the pilot started to groom Jorge. It began with him getting the boy to touch his genitals and escalated from there.
Jorge explains how Mr A would tell him to get off the school bus to meet him on his way home. The man forced Jorge to perform oral sex on him and masturbate him. He also raped the boy.
Jorge says that Mr A used the ‘standard frighteners’ to stop him telling anyone about the abuse. The pilot said that no one would believe him and he would be sent to a children’s home. Mr A always gave Jorge money after he abused him, and he wonders if this made the abuser ‘feel better’ about what he was doing.
On one occasion, Jorge decided not to obey Mr A and meet him. Instead he went straight home. His room overlooked the road and he was petrified to see Mr A arriving at his house and striking up a conversation with his father, who was working in the front garden.
After this, Jorge never defied Mr A’s instructions again.
The abuse continued for four years. Sometimes, when Mr A went away with his squadron, Jorge would feel he was beginning to resume ‘a normal life’. But Mr A always came back.
Once, the pilot made Jorge get into the boot of his car so he could take him inside the RAF base. Jorge remembers how frightened he was. Mr A took him to his house and raped him.
Afterwards, he put Jorge back in the boot of the car and dropped him a few miles from his home with some money. Mr A told him he would not see him again, because his wife had just had a baby.
Jorge says ‘So that was that; only it wasn’t’. He describes how his school work had gone from ‘good to absolute crap’. He was absent more than he attended and really didn’t care. His relationship with his parents collapsed. He committed a petty crime and got a criminal record.
He was kicked out of the family home in his mid teens, and moved in with a relative. He says ‘life became one long struggle’, and he didn’t understand at the time why he was so angry, and always in ‘self-destruct mode’.
He kept the experience in the back of his mind for decades, until one day he was watching a programme about rape with his wife. He overreacted to a comment she made, and realised he had done so.
After this, he says, ‘gradually things came back’, in the form of flashbacks. He began to experience panic attacks and a lot of anger and stress. He attempted suicide.
Jorge reported the abuse to the police a few years later, and feels he was ‘thoroughly believed’. He said the police couldn’t have done more for him and is very grateful to the force which handled the investigation.
However, he feels he was let down by the RAF because they claimed they didn’t have the records for the period when Jorge was abused. He believes if they really wanted to, they could identify Mr A. He thinks that like a lot of other institutions, ‘they don’t want to go to such an area and reveal the truth.’
Jorge believes that he wouldn’t have been Mr A’s only victim.
He has volunteered at a group which helps children abused in childhood and now has a professional qualification in that field, of which he is proud.