Maggie left the area where she grew up because of the bad memories it holds for her
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Maggie describes growing up with her brother in a house where they were not allowed to play, make any noise or have toys.
From the age of seven to 10 years, she was sexually abused by two men in her local community, but was told not to ‘make a fuss’ when she tried to tell her mother what was happening.
Maggie says she doesn't know why things were the way they were at home, but she feels she had to bring herself up.
As well as their home life being strange, she comments that the village they lived in was ‘beautiful on the outside, dark on the inside’. For a year, she was repeatedly sexually abused by her teacher. He would call her up to his desk and put his hand down her pants.
Maggie describes how day in and day out, she was ‘stood at that desk, afraid to move and just waiting for it to be over’. Once, when she refused to let the abuse happen, the teacher kicked her out of the classroom. She suspects the teacher abused other children in her class.
She was subjected to further sexual abuse outside school. She was not allowed to use the front door at home, and to reach the back door, she had to pass by the house of a neighbour. This man would expose himself to her and she had to push past him every day on her way to and from school.
Maggie asked her mother if she could use the front door so she could avoid him, but was told she couldn’t, as it was next to the ‘best room’.
When she tried to tell her mother and father what her teacher was doing, she was told not to make a fuss. Her brother got the same response when he told their mother about the neighbour exposing himself.
Maggie says ‘From the age 10 I turned into a nightmare. I think it was self-preservation’. She became alternately disruptive, then quiet and withdrawn at school.
She vividly recalls how much she wanted someone to talk to and she doesn’t understand why adults don’t listen to children. She says ‘I know they say teenagers aren’t nice, but sometimes you do need to ask why’. She adds ‘Why do people do this to children? Because they can get away with it’.
Years later, Maggie discovered that the neighbour had been prosecuted for sexual offences. Even then, her mother still told her not to make a fuss.
She has left the place where she grew up and has ‘shut it away’. She still struggles with being quiet and withdrawn and says ‘as the years go by, it gets harder and harder to live with’.
Maggie said that she contacted the Truth Project knowing that as much as she needed to talk about what happened to her, she felt she couldn’t, as it makes her cry and then she is unable to speak. But after sharing her experience, she said ‘I’m feeling a lot calmer. The tears have stopped’.
She feels strongly that adults need to explore the reasons behind bad behaviour in children and teenagers and that families should talk to each other and not keep secrets. She says she makes a conscious effort to talk to her children and grandchildren and understand how they are feeling.