Natassja says ‘We were supposed to be put in a place of safety but we were not ever safe’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Abused and neglected at home, Natassja and her siblings were put into care.
In her foster home, Natassja was subjected to more sexual and emotional abuse.
Natassja was the second eldest of five children. Her home life was chaotic. The children were neglected.
Her mother was a drug user who often left the children to go out drinking or to see different men.
Natassja’s step grandfather and uncle often went drinking with her mother. She and her siblings would be in fear of them coming back from the pub, because both men sexually abused the children.
The children shared a double bed, and her older sibling would put Natassja on the edge so that she would get selected for abuse. Her sibling told Natassja this was necessary to protect the younger children.
Natassja says this meant that throughout her childhood she felt she was responsible for her younger siblings, and ‘often got the belt’ for trying to protect them. She now feels angry with her older sibling about this.
There would often be several men in the house and the children would be passed around, touched and made to sit on their laps. The men also emotionally abused the children, making them fight each other or do handstands while they were not wearing underwear.
The abuse by her step grandfather ended when he was sent to prison, and a while later, her uncle died.
Social services became involved with the family. She remembers their social worker saying they were ‘horrible children’. The children were put in care – Natassja and two of her younger siblings went to live with foster carers called Jenny and Pete.
Natassja often wet her bed and Jenny would give her cold showers when she did this.
Some time after the children went to live there, they were taken to the police station, interviewed about the sexual abuse and examined, in a cell, by the police doctor. Natassja isn’t sure what prompted this; Jenny says she told her about the abuse but she doesn’t remember this. No further action was taken by the police.
The children were not given any support and Natassja was terrified and had nightmares afterwards. She says ‘You want to scream but nothing will come out. It was absolute terror. I never want to feel like that again and for any child to feel like that’.
A couple of years later, when Natassja was about 11, she was sexually abused by Adam, another foster child who lived with Jenny and Pete.
Jenny and Pete were respected foster carers and were known as being caring Christians in their community. But this was not Natassja’s experience of them. She says in the home it was ‘Jenny’s way or no way’.
Natassja says her behaviour deteriorated and she was told it was ‘off the charts’. Jenny made her feel that everything that had happened to her was her own fault. She thinks her school had concerns but they never got involved.
Two social workers visited the children at the foster home but whenever they spoke to them, Jenny and Pete were always present. After six years, Jenny and Pete adopted the children.
Natassja comments that everyone thought they were ‘really good’ to take on a child like her.
Natassja believes that professionals should talk to children away from their foster carers. She would like to see more stringent supervision of foster carers and education for foster carers on how to deal with disclosure of sexual abuse.
She has been married for over 20 years to a very supportive husband and enjoys having her family around her.