Peyton says ‘Not a day goes by where I don’t think of the girl I could have been’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Peyton gives a written account of a young life impacted by a catalogue of neglect and abuse.
She is critical of some individuals in authority who judged her and disbelieved her, and generous in her praise of others who helped and supported her.
Peyton writes ‘I was born into chaos and drama. Unfortunately I feel I never got the chance at a normal life’. She believes that her mum was never guided on how to be a good parent.
She has no recollection of the first time she was sexually abused, but knows from her records that it happened when she was four years old. Her mother had been concerned about her behaviour. She struggled to get support, but after some time Peyton was given a paediatric appointment. An examination showed signs of sexual abuse.
The local police were informed, but due to a lack of evidence the case was dropped. Peyton says ‘I don’t blame anyone for this’ but she finds it very difficult not knowing who the perpetrator was. She describes going to family events and wondering if it was one of her relatives.
In her pre-teen years, Peyton found out the man she thought was her dad was not her biological father. Soon after this discovery, he was convicted of a very serious violent offence. When Peyton was in her early teens, he took his own life.
Peyton writes ‘I had never felt a pain so unbearable before in my life’.
She continues ‘From there my journey into grooming, exploitation and abuse escalated quickly’. Following a family argument, Peyton skipped school and went to see a friend, Laura. She was attracted to Laura because she was confident and pretty, but also, she adds, ‘unknowingly to me damaged, abused and manipulated daily’.
Laura introduced Peyton to some older men who were taxi drivers, and explained to them that Peyton was upset about her dad. They told Peyton her dad could not have cared about her, and said they would keep her safe.
‘Stupidly I believed them’ she says. ‘Me and Laura were the same – vulnerable, lost and damaged with nobody looking out for us. We were looked at as the bad kids, we weren’t worth the effort or protecting.’
When Peyton was in her mid-teens, one of the men, Gaz, dumped her outside a social services office. She was drifting in and out of consciousness on a combination of drugs and alcohol.
Hospital staff saw bruising around her genitals and all over her body, including finger marks around her neck. She was given a full examination, and swabs and photographs were taken.
Peyton describes how ‘the sex, trauma, abuse I had dealt with for over a year’ did not seem as bad as the shame she felt when the doctor showed her great empathy and care.
She had a very different experience with a policewoman who questioned her later. This officer said she believed Peyton had caused the injuries herself because she was mentally unstable’. During a psychological assessment, Peyton lost her temper at being asked the same questions repeatedly.
While she was in hospital, Gaz visited her. He topped up her phone and bought her trainers. The police questioned him but could find no evidence to charge him with any offence.
Peyton was taken to a semi-secure unit, but ran away. She was picked up by two men who said she shouldn’t be out so late, and offered to take her to the house of their sister. She says at first she felt at ease because she was with a woman.
But over the following months, Peyton was abused every day by the men who picked her up, their sister’s husband and other men. Some of them paid to abuse her.
Eventually the police found her. She told them everything that had happened to her but they did not believe her. The abusers were cautioned and Peyton was sent to another residential care home.
For a time, her life became more settled. She stopped taking drugs, had therapy, and went to college and got a job. But after a night out with friends she became very sick and had blurred vision. She ended up in a taxi and was taken to a house where a man sexually assaulted her.
When Peyton got home, she says ‘I got in the bath and scrubbed until I was red and raw’. She bagged her clothes and called the police that night to report the assault. She gave them a statement and her clothes.
The attacker was arrested and charged, but was eventually found not guilty in court. Peyton says that for a long time she blamed herself for this because she had a panic attack while she was being cross-examined and ‘kicked off’.
Peyton gives great praise and credit to the police officers who dealt with her case. She says they ‘gave me a reason to trust the justice system … they made me feel believed ... I will always be eternally thankful’.
After this, Peyton engaged in therapy. She says ‘I worked hard to become a better person not a victim nor a survivor just muddling through’.
For a time she worked with abused women and then offenders recently released from prison. She is proud of this work and achieved low levels of reoffending among her service users.
During this time the police approached her because they were reinvestigating the taxi drivers and other men who had abused her. She helped with their enquiries and again has praise for the officers involved. In the end the case did not proceed, but Peyton emphasises how much it meant to her that she was believed. ‘I wasn’t a bad kid anymore’ she says.
Revisiting past events had a bad effect on her mental health, which affected her work and her relationship. She began abusing alcohol and drugs again, but says she was saved by good support, and the fact that she had a child.
Peyton says ‘The challenges I dealt with as a child sexual abuse victim nobody should ever have to deal with’. While she commends the people who gave her good support, she says there were other staff in health and social care, the police and schools who failed her.
‘I feel powerless, worthless, scared and angry at bodies, agencies and services … who failed me as a child and as a person. The minority saved me and gave me purpose and I will never forget those individuals.
Peyton considers that she is lucky compared to some victims and survivors, but says she suffers daily with the physical, emotional, social and financial toll that her past experiences have had on her.
She feels strongly that the police should be given more funding ‘to deal with the epidemic that is abuse’. She is horrified at the way that some victims and survivors are blamed and shamed for being abused because of stereotypical assumptions made about them.