Lisa-Marie’s violent father sexually abused her for two years, until he began having an affair
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Lisa-Marie grew up with her mother, two siblings and her father, who was violent to the whole family.
When her father started to sexually abuse her she decided not to tell anyone,to protect her mother and siblings, and to not make the situation they were in any worse.
The sexual abuse began when Lisa was about 12 or 13 years old, and she says her parents’ relationship was already strained due to her father’s violence. She felt that there was no way that she could tell anyone about the abuse as they were all scared of her father.
Instead, she says, she tried to continue a normal life and focused on her studies, doing well at school. When she was in her mid teens she got drunk with a friend and ‘blurted out’ what had happened to her. The next day she denied what she had said.
Her parents subsequently divorced when her mother discovered that her father was having an affair. He had stopped abusing Lisa-Marie a year or two earlier, probably around the same time that he started his affair. She continued to see her father at weekends, trying to continue a ‘normal relationship’, despite what he had done to her.
About 10 years later, Lisa-Marie received a letter from social services saying that they had been made aware of her experiences. She doesn’t know how they found out.
Lisa-Marie was interviewed and asked if she thought anyone else might be vulnerable now. She suggested that her father’s step-daughter could be, but she says social services made enquiries and were not concerned about her.
Becoming a mother made Lisa-Marie worry that her child would be at risk from their grandfather. She decided to act, writing a letter to her father’s wife detailing the abuse, as she was still concerned that the step-daughter might be in danger. She sent a copy to her father and asked to meet him to discuss what he had done when she was younger.
He agreed to meet, then changed his mind, so Lisa-Marie went to the police with a copy of the letter. The police took a statement and brought her father in for questioning but he denied everything. They tried to find copies of the earlier report from social services, but it was lost, meaning it was her word against her father’s. Lisa-Marie describes the language used by the police as ‘unsympathetic and clinical’ and at times seemed to imply that she was to blame for the abuse by encouraging her father to act the way he did.
Lisa-Marie says one of the police officers told her he believed her and that assurance meant a lot to her. However, it was decided there was not enough evidence to prosecute her father.
Looking back, Lisa-Marie questions if there were missed opportunities for professionals to have asked her if anything was wrong. She remembers visiting her GP who made comments about her relationship with her father and she wonders whether he suspected something. The family was also close to her headmaster at school.
She adds that although the abuse has impacted on much of her life, she feels it has also made her stronger. She has her own family now and is determined that her child will have the childhood that she was denied.
She describes having ‘amazing friends’ and says she considers herself to be ‘one of the lucky ones’.
Lisa-Marie would like there to be somewhere for potential abusers to contact before they act on their feelings. She says that it should be confidential so they will use it, but believes that it might stop abusers acting before they cause so much damage.