Safeguarding training made Raoul realise how he had been affected by sexual abuse as a child
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
After being sexually abused in a young offenders’ institution, Raoul got into more trouble.
He has now turned his life around and coaches young people.
When Raoul was in his early teens he got into trouble. A juvenile court sent him to an assessment centre.
Raoul says he didn’t know what to expect. When he arrived and saw a big group of older boys together, he felt he was ‘up against it’.
During the day, the boys had to attend classes. They were not separated by age and although he was quiet, he had some confrontations with older boys. They applied peer pressure to make the younger ones misbehave, and to try and avoid being bullied, Raoul would get money from his parents when they visited so he could buy cigarettes.
One night in the dormitory, Raoul joined in smoking with the older boys and got caught by the night watchman.
The man told him he was in serious trouble and would be taken to the headmaster of the institution. He took Raoul into the corridor, grabbed the boy’s hand and placed it onto his penis.
Raoul could feel the night watchman had an erection. He says ‘I was frightened to death’. The night watchman grabbed his arms then tried to force Raoul’s head towards his penis. Raoul struggled and broke free. He ran back into the dormitory and cried himself to sleep. No one asked him what was wrong.
The night watchman tried to sexually abuse Raoul in the same way on two more occasions. He threatened to report Raoul if he didn’t comply, but Raoul told him to do that, as he was not going to touch the man.
The following morning, Raoul was called to see the headmaster and caned for smoking.
When Raoul left the institution, he went back to school but got into more trouble. ‘I didn’t trust anyone … I went totally off the rails’ he says.
He wouldn't let anyone near him, and was caned nearly every day, but no one ever asked him if anything was wrong. In fact, he adds, some of the teachers told him to not bother going in. A social worker became involved with him for a while but they never asked him what was wrong either.
Eventually Raoul was expelled from school. He began running away from home and sleeping rough. For a time, a relative took him in. One day, when his relative was at work, the relative’s girlfriend got into bed with Raoul and masturbated him.
Raoul was in his mid-teens when he was sent to prison for the first time. After this, he was ‘in and out of prison’ until he was in his 30s. In prison he says ‘drugs and alcohol became part of my life ... they made it worse really’.
After he became a father, Raoul began to turn his life around. He began sports coaching because he wanted ‘in some kind of way, to pay something back’. When he did the required safeguarding training it made him think about his experience of sexual abuse as a child. ‘I was involved with kids coming from backgrounds I could relate to’ he says.
Raoul would like to see more specialist support for offenders when they leave institutions.
He says that he knows he relates well to many of the boys he coaches, and that sports coaching has given him confidence to speak in front of other people for the first time, and also to share his experience.
‘I still don't know how to deal with it ... I have never had a mechanism to deal with it’, Raoul says. He hopes that ‘getting it off my chest’ will help him deal with his trauma and he plans to seek support.