Kellie says victims and survivors with low self-esteem need support to report child sexual abuse
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Kellie was sexually abused by her foster father throughout her teenage years.
She says it is only because she is a successful professional she feels she has ‘a fighting chance’ to deal with the justice system and the abuser.
Kellie describes a comfortable family life until everything was turned upside down. Her father died suddenly and her mum ‘fell off the rails’, drinking heavily.
She was in the early years of secondary school and says she was really struggling to cope with what had happened. She started to self-harm and was befriended by a teacher, Mr Jones.
Kellie says ‘He was really nice and was the only person who asked me how I was’. Mr Jones started meeting Kellie at lunchtime and buying her snacks. She continues ‘For me it was someone to talk to, but he started telling me he loved me’. He began sending her letters, suggesting that they would soon be able to ‘have sex’.
She remembers how pressurised this made her feel. ‘I was in a mess’ she says.
Social services were also involved with the family and Kellie says her social worker at that time was ‘fantastic’.
She was fostered by a couple when she was in her early teens. She describes her foster father, George, as ‘big, domineering and quite scary’. He had been in the police force.
One day, when Kellie was very upset, she showed her foster father letters that Mr Jones had sent her. The result was that she was moved to a different school. She felt she had lost everything she’d known – her family and friends.
This made her even more upset, and when she was alone in the house with George, he came into her room on the pretext of comforting her. Instead, he started touching her sexually. She says ‘I think I was just really surprised and not sure what was happening … the next thing knew I was taken to his bedroom and raped’.
George continued sexually abusing and raping Kellie for the following six years. She describes the conflict she felt. ‘I felt really isolated. I wanted to be loved and cared for. He said “I know this is wrong but I can’t help it”.’
One day she went into a Samaritans centre, wanting to tell someone what was happening to her. But she wasn’t able to speak to the staff and she walked out again.
Kellie describes feeling ‘exhausted’ dealing with the stress of life in the foster home. She would try to check what shifts George was working and be out of the house as much as possible when he was there. She developed an eating disorder ‘to have some sort of control’. She felt isolated with no friends at her new school; this was made worse by the fact she didn’t want to take anyone home.
Her previous social worker moved on, and no one else from social services ever spoke to her without George and his wife there. In any case, Kellie says, ‘Because of who he was, I thought no one would believe me, and where would I go? I didn’t want to be in a kids’ home’.
She managed to do well in her exams when in her mid teens but she says she failed her A levels ‘disastrously’. However, she managed to get a training place for her chosen career.
She was very accomplished and successful in her career, and obtained a very high level of professional and academic qualifications.
But she says, ‘I never felt good enough, whatever I did’.
She says that it was only recently that ‘It has really hit me what happened’. She had a breakdown at work and her employers arranged for her to have counselling, which she says is really helpful.
Kellie says that if there had been pastoral support available for her at school, it would have made a big difference to her. She emphasises how important it is to support children and pay attention to their circumstances.
She feels concerned about supporting other victims and survivors who may not have enough self-esteem to come forward and talk about abuse they have suffered. She says it took her so long and so much effort to feel ‘credible enough … I had to be this qualified person to feel I would be listened to and taken seriously or that anyone would care’.