Riona says ‘Most of my life I have been miserable, depressed and extremely scared, especially of men’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
In her early years, Riona lived with her mother and brother and her maternal grandparents. Her father had left home when she was a baby.
Her grandmother was a strict Catholic who made Riona say her prayers and go to mass every day. There were several other relatives staying in the house at different times. Two of the relatives were priests.
One day, when she was very young, Riona was sitting on the knee of one of her male relatives. He began doing something to himself – she now knows he was masturbating. He then took her hand and used it to continue this action and indicated she had to be quiet. Afterwards he wiped her hand clean.
Riona says there were other incidents involving this relative but ‘I try not to go there if I can help it’.
When she was nine years old, Riona’s father suddenly got in touch with her mother. He was employed by the Catholic church in a big city and they persuaded him he should be reunited with his family.
Riona’s mother took the children and moved in with him. Riona and her mother shared one bed – her mother worked night shifts – and her brother slept in their father’s room.
They had not been there long when Riona’s brother told her that their father had orally raped him the night before. He didn’t describe it that way because at the time they had no idea what that meant, but she says they both knew ‘it was disgusting’.
Soon after this, their father started sexually abusing Riona. Over the next few years it happened ‘wherever and whenever he wanted’. The abuse included oral sex and rape. ‘It was extremely painful’ she says.
Her father was extremely violent with a terrible temper. Riona once tried to lock him out of her room and ‘he went mad’. She describes trying to ‘scrub everything away’ in the bath.
A teacher at school asked Riona why she had scratches all over her face, and mocked her when she said she didn’t know. For a time she stopped speaking at school, and the headteacher wrote to her parents about this. Her father threatened her and said she had to speak to the other children or ‘I’ll bloody well kill you’. But she still couldn’t.
From comments her mother made and her reactions to things that happened, Riona feels certain she knew about the abuse.
Riona’s father became so violent that her mother called the police twice. The police said there wasn’t enough evidence to do anything.
Riona describes finding her father dead one morning as ‘the best present I ever had’.
The sexual and violent abuse Riona suffered had a serious effect on her as a child and still affects her 50 years later. She finds it hard to form close relationships. She has been on antidepressants for more than forty years and has been sectioned. She has attempted suicide.
Riona feels anger towards the police who turned a blind eye to her father’s violence, the teachers who didn’t ask more questions about her injuries or why she refused to speak, and the family members who did nothing to protect her.
She feels strongly that those who abuse children cannot be forgiven; children should be protected and valued, and their rights must always come first. She says there should always be someone in schools for children to talk to. Also, ‘If a child doesn’t seem OK, don’t wait for them to ask for help. It could well be beyond them’ she says.
Riona adds that anyone working with children should have rigorous training to give them understanding of the effects of abuse and how to deal with it. There should also be regular, rigorous scrutiny of anyone working with children.
She is married to a man she cares for. They have both had difficult experiences and give each other understanding and support.