For many years, Kaye minimised the sexual abuse she endured, but she is now proud to be a survivor
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
A music teacher sexually abused Kaye nearly every week for three years.
His barrister cross-examined her so harshly in court the judge had to remind him Kaye was only 11 years old.
Kaye was seven years old when her mother arranged for a music teacher, Mr A, to give Kaye lessons each week in the family home.
It was impossible to see through the window into the room where the lessons were, because it was too high up. Halfway through the lesson, Kaye’s mum would bring Mr A a cup of tea, and after she had left the room, he would sexually abuse Kaye.
As a child, Kaye would not have had the words for exactly what he did, but can now explain that he undid his trousers and made her touch him. She continues ‘He showed me dog-eared photographs that I could not understand, did not know what I was looking at, but I expressed an interest, as he clearly liked them’.
Mr A also made crude suggestions about putting phallic-shaped objects into her vagina. He told her she must not tell anyone what he was doing during the lessons.
Kaye remembers that the music teacher invited her to his house for tea on several occasions, but this didn’t happen – she is not sure why.
As time went on, Kaye became increasingly aware that what Mr A was doing was not right. She says ‘I struggled and worried for months about how to tell my mum’ before managing to blurt out that Mr A ‘is very rude’.
Kaye remembers her mum turning Mr A away that day when he arrived for the lesson, telling him that Kaye was ill. She then contacted the police who took a statement from Kaye.
Because the abuser pleaded not guilty, Kaye had to give evidence in court.
She remembers standing in the witness box and describing what had happened during her music lessons. She struggled to describe the indecent photographs Mr A had shown her.
A barrister then asked Kaye questions. ‘And he reduced me to tears, as he was questioning me when I was just telling the truth. The judge intervened to remind him that I was only 11 years old.’
Kaye’s father later told her that the atmosphere in the courtroom changed after Kaye’s evidence. Mr A altered his plea to guilty. He was given a fine. Kaye discovered some years later that he carried on working where he had access to children.
It was the 1960s, and Kaye says ‘There was nothing like counselling in those days’. Her mother simply told her not to talk to anyone about it. ‘And I didn’t for many years, and not with her or my dad either’, says Kaye.
When Kaye was 13, she was taken to the park by a 15 year old who was known as the local ‘bad boy’.
She describes ‘zoning out and zoning in again as he rolled off me. I do not remember the part in the middle’. However, she does remember how she felt, physically and emotionally, as she walked back home, and she now knows that she was raped.
Kaye comments ‘I think now that I had learnt from my [music] teacher experience to “switch off” during unwanted sexual episodes. And that is what I did during this episode, even though at the time I did not know that what had happened was rape’.
For many years, Kaye says she minimised the abuse she suffered, telling herself that the teacher had never actually touched her, and because it had gone to court, she had received justice. She has only recently realised that she was significantly affected by her childhood experiences.
She got married to a man who emotionally abused her for hours on end. She says the bouts of abuse would only end when he decided he wanted to have sex.
Her husband told her that her ‘problems’ were due to her earlier sexual experiences, and said she should go for counselling. She agreed, and says that the counselling helped her to recognise the problems in her marriage for what they were.
However, when her counsellor suggested she seek specialist support for sexual abuse and rape, it was several more years before she accepted that these things had happened to her and did this.
She says the counselling was ‘fantastic’ and she managed to leave her abusive husband.
She still says ‘My experience as a child was very minor compared to that of so many others, others who did not have a mother to tell, or whose mother may not have wanted to believe them’.
However, she concludes ‘I am a survivor of child sexual abuse, rape and domestic abuse … I will not let the bad experiences of my life define me. But they are a part of what I am ... I am proud of myself for surviving’.