Mairi is determined to give her children a better life than she had
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Mairi grew up in chaos.
Her mother neglected her and left her with men who abused her.
Mairi’s siblings were taken to live with relatives but she was left with her mother, who was dependent on drugs and alcohol, and worked as a sex worker.
She was often left alone unsupervised or with ‘whoever was willing to look after me’.
One of these was a friend of her mother’s, called Martin. When she was about five or six years old, she was in Martin’s house and he showed her pornographic videos, and touched her body. After, he shut her in a dark room and left her; she says it ‘felt like forever’.
Mairi told her mother what had happened but her mother still left her with Martin, and he continued abusing her.
She remembers being sexually and physically abused by two other acquaintances of her mother’s. She was made to bathe one of these men and touch his penis. The adults ‘justified’ this by saying he was disabled.
When she was six, Mairi was taken into care. Mairi told social services she had been abused, but her mother insisted she was lying and regained custody of her two years later.
Again, Mairi was frequently left on her own or with various people. She says some of the neighbours would look out for her and make sure she ate.
She started stealing because she was often hungry and her mother put her back in care, saying she could not look after Mairi because she was a ‘problem child’. Again, Mairi told social services about the abuse.
Mairi was also raped by her brother. He told her it was ‘what brothers do’ and that he had to show her ‘how to do things’.
Over the next few years, Mairi was sent to different foster homes, but she was beaten by one foster father, and at another foster placement they found her too difficult to manage. They wrote to social services saying she was ‘beyond help and had no emotions’. In another placement, the foster father tried to kiss her.
She says she had one good experience of foster care and began to attend school, but just before she was due to start secondary school, she was returned to her mother.
By this time her mother had married a man called Malcolm. Mairi describes lots of drinking and violence between her mother and stepfather. Then Malcolm began ‘massaging’ Mairi, encouraged by her mother, who used to say ‘It’s all right he won’t hurt you’. Mairi says the touching became more ‘hands on and exploratory’.
Mairi started secondary school and began to make friends with pupils who were three or four years older than her. She describes herself as being older than her years and sexually aware.
When she was 11, she began to date a much older boy at the school called Declan. She says social services, her foster carers and Declan’s parents were all aware of the relationship. Declan raped her and she told a teacher at school what had happened. The teacher called the police and social services. Mairi was interviewed but was left in the same school as Declan.
Other pupils called her names, such as ‘whore’, and as a result she withdrew her statement and began to truant.
Mairi left school soon after and never went back. She says she got involved with ‘a bad crowd’ and began drinking and taking drugs. When she was 14, she met a man called Howard, who was in his late 20s. Her foster carers were aware of the relationship as he would pick her up from home.
Howard was very controlling, and beat Mairi. She would often return home with bruises. She describes how scared she was of Howard. He would bring young Eastern European girls to his flat and they were ‘shipped off’ the next day.
One day, Howard brutally sexually assaulted her. She returned home and her foster mother noticed how much of a mess she was in and called the police. She was taken to a rape support clinic and gave a police statement but he was not prosecuted.
Mairi then stayed at different friends’ houses, ‘sofa-surfing’. She had her first child at 17 and describes this ‘as the best thing that happened to me’. She moved into supportive lodgings and was determined ‘to be a different mother’.
She still had a difficult relationship with social services, who she felt believed she would be ‘just like her mum’.
Mairi suffers with mental health issues, and has used drugs and self-harmed in the past.
She has obtained her records and seen all the reports she made about being abused. She is dismayed and feels very let down at the lack of support she had from children’s services and the number of times they failed to act to protect her.
However, Mairi has since had relationships with supportive professionals. She says if it wasn’t for her children ‘I could have taken a very different path in life’.