Nita says ‘For many years I thought it was a stupid thing I did and I should just get over it’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
The sexual abuse that Nita experienced as a nine year old began with attention from her older brother’s friend, which she enjoyed at first.
She quickly became trapped into engaging in sex acts that she ‘couldn’t bear’, but was too embarrassed to speak out about.
Nita explains that when she heard a radio programme about the Truth Project, an interview with a survivor resonated with her, and prompted her to share her experience.
She describes herself as having been a ‘tomboy’ when she was young, who was always out playing with her older brothers and their friends.
During one school holiday, one of the friends, Ben, started paying a lot of attention to Nita. When they all went to the local swimming pool, he would dive under her in the water, first tickling her and then petting her.
Nita is completely frank about the way this made her feel as a nine year old girl. She recalls that it made her feel nice, being treated like a girl rather than a boy. She says she enjoyed the attention that Ben gave her – as she didn’t see a lot of her parents and does not remember them giving her much affection.
The touching escalated to showing private parts and Ben describing to Nita that they could have sex when she was 12. She says this made her feel ‘incredibly grown up’ and says ‘I almost looked forward to his visits’. She adds that at that stage ‘I wasn’t being hurt, I just felt good about myself’.
During the holidays of the following year, Nita and her family went to stay in a relative’s home and Ben was invited as well. He began to demand more of Nita. He would get her to touch his penis, masturbate him and he touched her intimately. Then the sex acts went a stage further in a way that Nita says ‘would imprint for the rest of my life … he wanted me to give him oral sex’.
To this day, Nita says, she can’t get images and smells out of her head and at times memories are triggered that ‘send me ballistic’. At the time, she felt too embarrassed to say anything.
She is surprised that her parents didn’t seem to notice anything during the two week holiday, and she adds that Ben and her brother used to ‘parade around naked’.
Later in the school holidays, Nita was finding the oral sex so unbearable that she told one of her brothers about it. He gave Ben ‘a beating’, and after this Ben never came back to the house, nor did her parents ever find out what had happened.
Nita says that she is not sure how she would have felt if someone had come and arrested Ben – but all she wanted was for it to stop.
Recently Nita has been able to discuss some aspects of what happened to her with one of her brothers. He brought up the memory in conversation and expressed his guilt about the situation.
Nita is still affected by a physical reaction caused by the abuse that she says ‘just doesn’t go away’.
She has a successful career and is involved with the safeguarding of children. She says her ‘radar’ goes off very quickly when she thinks a child may have been abused.
Nita would like to see better training and education about child sexual abuse for teachers and other professionals working with children. She would also like there to be better provision of specialist therapy and counselling for victims and survivors.
She concludes that she does not see herself as a survivor. ‘It was something that happened to me … it has had an impact ... it has not defined me’. She says that she is at a point now where she wants to go for support and intends to do so.