Marista says ‘I want not to feel disgusting … not to have this feeling inside me’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Marista attended a private girls’ school which she describes as focused on high academic achievers with a punitive regime.
Between the ages of 11 and 15, she was sexually abused by two teachers and other pupils suffered similar experiences. But, she says, the prevailing feeling was that ‘they had to put up with it’.
Marista relates that she was targeted by one female teacher, who chose girls from her class to go with her to a storeroom, on the pretext of collecting lesson supplies. The room contained a table but had no windows.
She remembers being in there, and being told to sit on the table. The teacher pushed her skirt up and touched her in a way she did not want to be touched.
She describes ‘a sinking feeling’ associated with the teacher and still feels sensations of horror of the storeroom, and being picked to go there. She says her enduring memory is of being subjected to things she didn’t want to happen and having no control.
Marista says the abuse made her feel sick, and she still feels that way talking about it. But, she adds, she had a friend who ‘had it worse, because she was physically sick’.
Another female teacher used to pull the girls’ pants down and slap them. Marista says ‘it felt horrible’ and that the pupils knew something was wrong about it.
Marista believes that other teachers knew what was happening, but they did nothing. Because of this sense that there was collusion among staff, she felt unable to speak out about the abuse. She says the girls did not talk to each other about what was happening, and she believes that as children they all felt they had no choice but to put up with it.
She recalls that a lot of girls in the school ‘went off the rails’ at that time and some became promiscuous. She says she went from being a good student to someone who disengaged. She started hanging out with people outside school smoking and taking drugs.
She did not feel she could talk to her mother. When Marista once tried to tell her about a boyfriend who had made lewd suggestions, the response was ‘You are attractive, you just have to put up with it.’
She also felt that as her father was paying for her to attend the school she was obliged to stay there.
Marista describes the lasting effects of the abuse she experienced at school. She has entered into abusive relationships and uses illicit drugs. She says ‘I felt and still feel disgusting … not worth anything and I still struggle with that now’.
Marista feels that the school had a duty of care and they failed to protect her and other children. She believes that private schools should be subject to independent inspections and there should be someone for pupils to talk to.