Maeve worried that reporting the abuse by her stepfather would be a ‘burden’ on the family
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
When Maeve was about three years old, her parents divorced. Her mother married the man she had been having an affair with and they had a child together.
This man sexually abused Maeve from when she was a young child to her teenage years.
Maeve says that she was an ‘outgoing’ child; she loved performing in concerts, did well at most things and was well-behaved.
Her mum and stepfather had a volatile relationship and by the time Maeve was 13 years old, they had stopped sleeping together. Instead, her stepfather moved into Maeve’s room.
Maeve woke one night to find her stepfather was touching her inappropriately. She lay still and pretended to be asleep, but he persisted until she rolled away from him. She says ‘It felt that overnight that my entire life changed’.
At this point, she says, ‘loads of other memories came back’ and she realised she had been abused by her stepfather since she was about six years old, but had not understood this before.
Maeve recalled him bathing her when something happened – he was ‘invading’ her and this was very painful for her. She realised that on other occasions when she was made to sit on his lap, he had had an erection.
Her stepfather continued abusing her, getting her to sleep in the same bed as him and stroke his back. She remembers him showing her pornography. When she needed her first bra, he said he should hold her breasts to check if she did. Her mum was in the room when he did this.
Maeve says as a young teenager, she didn’t know what to do. Her young stepbrother had a developmental disability, and she ‘didn’t want to add an additional layer of burden’ on her parents. She adds that she desperately ‘didn’t want my brother to grow up without a family’.
At school, Maeve says, she stopped being outgoing and became reserved and timid. She remembers feeling she didn’t want to upset anybody. She started underperforming at school and hanging around with a group of girls who smoked and misbehaved, but no one noticed or questioned this.
She did speak to some of her friends about the abuse, but a couple of them seemed to have had similar experiences so she felt that what she was going through was common, and she ‘should just get on with it and deal with it’.
Maeve started a relationship with someone at school. She describes herself as a hypersexualised young person, who by the age of 15 ‘had pretty much tried everything’, including sex toys and watching porn online. She says it all ‘just seemed normal’ for her.
She began drinking alcohol, smoking cannabis and self-harming. She continued having unstable relationships throughout school and university. She says ‘I was on a mission to make sure that my brain wasn’t thinking’.
She saw a doctor and told him she was self-harming and feeling very low. He suggested antidepressants and counselling, but she did not find this helpful.
After a conversation with her stepbrother, Maeve realised that it was likely he too had been abused by her stepfather, and she decided to go to the police. They carried out an investigation but later said it would be her word against her stepfather’s and they would not be pursuing the case.
Maeve felt the police handled her case very badly, and gave her no support. After this, her mental health declined further.
Maeve thinks there should be better training for police and medical staff dealing with cases of child sexual abuse.
She has a successful career, and is now happily married and feels very safe in her relationship, although she still finds intimacy difficult.