Morton says ‘I was sexually abused at home and in care homes. What can you do but run away?’
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Morton was happy and safe living with grandparents until he was wrenched away to live with his mother and stepfather.
Over the following 10 years, he suffered repeated sexual abuse in the family home and in several institutions.
Morton and his sibling lived with their grandparents until they were about four or five years old, because their mother was a single parent. He loved his grandparents and remembers he was happy in those early years.
But when his mother moved in with a partner, Morton says ‘We were dragged away. I didn’t want to go’.
Morton’s stepfather had two sons who were older than Morton. He says the family lived in squalor, describing it as ‘absolutely disgusting’, with dog faeces in the house.
The older boys started beating Morton almost immediately after he moved in. This was followed up with emotional abuse and sadistic behaviour, such as suffocating him with pillows. ‘They really scared me’ he says.
The boys then began sexually abusing Morton. They started coming into the bathroom and touching him, then taking him from his bed into theirs, where they would ‘do what they wanted’.
Morton says the boys also sexually abused his sibling, as did his stepfather.
From the age of six, Morton started running away from home. He tried to poison himself and he self-harmed. He was taken back and he remembers social workers came to the family home, but no one questioned why he was running away.
As Morton grew older, he was placed in a number of children’s homes. He knows from his files that he was sent to almost 20 different institutions. He experienced physical and sexual abuse by staff and other boys, and says he can only remember one home where he wasn’t abused in some way.
However, he says, he preferred being in these places to his family home.
When he was in his mid-teens, Morton was sent to an institution where he had tuition in life skills for independent living. ‘I quite excelled at it’ he says. ‘I took it on board cooking, cleaning and washing.’
But he was still self-harming, and was asked to leave. This caused him great distress and he inflicted more damage on himself so that he required hospital treatment, but the staff were unsympathetic to him.
After he left, Morton was allocated a female social worker. He saw her as a friend, and she showed him affection, ‘which made me feel good’. She found him a bedsit near where she lived and began visiting him there.
For about a year, the social worker sexually abused Morton. He says this went on ‘until she got bored and moved on. I didn’t see her again. I thought she was a friend’.
Some years later, there was a court case involving one of the people who had sexually abused Morton in care, and he received some compensation.
The repeated sexual and physical abuse that Morton experienced had a significant effect on him in several different ways. When he was in care he developed a stammer. He could not read or write until he was 14.
He continued self-harming, but has had counselling which has enabled him to manage this. He says ‘It has made a difference … I have not self-harmed for nearly 20 years and I’m proud of that’.
Morton has difficulty with trust and relationships. He says ‘I don’t socialise, I keep to myself, and I don’t trust any bloke as far as I can throw them’.
He emphasises how important it is for vulnerable children to have someone trustworthy and independent to talk to. ‘The point I want to get across is there was nobody, nobody I could go to. You couldn’t tell a member of staff about another one’ he says.
Morton adds that if a child is self-harming, there is obviously something badly wrong and responsible people should find out what it is. He says when he was self-harming ‘In my head, I was saying “Ask me what’s going on”’.
He says he manages his negative thoughts by doing hobbies he enjoys. Although his marriage broke down, he says ‘my kids are doing fine and I’m proud of them’.