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IICSA published its final Report in October 2022. This website was last updated in January 2023.

Noa

Noa

Noa says social workers should make unscheduled visits to families, and pay attention to children

All names and identifying details have been changed.

Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.

When social workers visited her family, Noa says, they believed everything her abusive stepdad said and did not seem interested in her.

She often asks herself ‘Was I not important enough? Did they not care?’

Noa’s parents separated when she was very young, and her mother moved a new partner, Crispin, into the house.

She now knows that after her dad left, he contacted social services because he was worried that Noa and her brother were being abused by their new stepdad.

From what her older brother has told her, she thinks Crispin began abusing her when she was two years old. For as far back as she can remember, she says, he was abusing her and her brother ‘in every way you can be abused by somebody … he just hated us’.

The abuse continued until Noa left home when she was 16, and included violent beatings and sexual and mental abuse. Noa says that sometimes Crispin made the two children fight each other ‘to decide who would take the next punishment’.

She adds ‘Mum was so besotted with him, she didn’t care’. She only remembers her mother intervening once when she found Crispin holding her under the water in the bath.

Social workers visited the house, but by appointment, and Noa says they believed everything Crispin said. She adds ‘We were under strict instructions on how to behave’. 

Noa says she was disruptive in school. She relates ‘I used to destroy classrooms. They sent me to the therapist but they just said I was upset because of my parents’ divorce’. 

She was 11 years old when she realised she was being sexually abused. A friend told her about abuse she was experiencing and Noa says ‘That’s when I realised it was not normal behaviour’.

Around this time, Noa told a family friend what Crispin was doing. He found out she had done this, and beat her up.

Sometimes Noa tried ringing Childline but she never managed to get through. She explains how risky it was for her to make the calls. ‘I phoned them on the way home from school on a payphone, but I was timed from when I left school to when I got home, so I used to have to run if I wanted to use the phone.’  

Noa remembers that Crispin would make disturbing remarks to her, for example that he would leave her mother and marry her. ‘This scared me to death’ she says.

When Noa was about 13, social services and the police came to the house because someone had reported abuse by Crispin. The police asked Noa, in front of her mum, if it was ok for her mum to stay while they questioned her.

Noa says that Crispin used to threaten her that if she reported the abuse her mum would die and Noa would go into care. So she agreed to her mum staying, and didn’t tell the police anything. 

After Noa left home, she moved in with a partner and had a baby. Her mum and Crispin were demanding to see the baby, so she went to the police and reported the abuse by her stepdad. Sometime later, Noa’s brother also reported being abused. Crispin served two prison sentences.

Noa is still affected by the abuse she experienced throughout her childhood. She suffers with her mental health and feelings of anger and guilt about being abused. She can’t be with men she doesn’t know and is frightened whenever she is left alone. She has physical pain from the beatings.

She has had counselling but says that the funding has always run out before she felt she was ready to finish. 

Noa thinks that social workers should make unannounced visits to families, and listen to children and observe them. She says the social workers believed everything her stepdad said. ‘If they had paid more attention to me, maybe I wouldn’t be going through what I’m going through.’

Noa also feels that the police and social services should not ask children important and sensitive questions in front of their parents. 

She has a happy and close relationship with her partner and her adult son.

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