Roberta feels empowered by saying ‘It’s not a dirty secret on my part. I did nothing wrong’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Roberta believed that the man who had sexually abused her for seven years was her biological father.
When she discovered this was not the case, she disclosed what he had done.
Roberta now knows that when she was born, her mother was a single teenager. About a year later, her mum met a new partner, Roy, who became her stepfather. He was in the armed forces and the family relocated abroad.
Roy sexually abused Roberta for about seven years. When she was about 10 years old, her mother and Roy got divorced, and she and her mother came back to the UK.
It was shortly after this that she learned that Roy was not her biological father, and this prompted her to confide in her grandmother that she had been sexually abused.
Roberta’s grandmother believed her, and so did her mother. They reported the allegations to the police and an investigation followed. Roberta remembers recording her evidence in a room with toys and a camera.
She also recalls how bewildered and lost she felt as she was told that she could not discuss her case with her mother. She was aware of the effect that her disclosures were having on her mum, and this added to her distress.
When the case came to court, Roberta gave evidence from a different room via a video link, but she was frightened that Roy was in the room next to her. Years later, she is still traumatised by the memory of the defence barrister accusing her of lying.
Roy was convicted and sentenced to prison, but released on a technicality some months later. The details of why this happened were never explained to Roberta.
She did not receive any support during the case or afterwards, and she feels very let down by this. She says ‘When you don’t have the support at 12 years old it has knock-on effects’.
She says that her school did provide a peer mentor and the police did visit her house, but neither of these provided any effective support.
Roberta is grateful to her close circle of friends who have given her support, but she is disappointed that she was not given access to counselling or therapy that she feels should be available for people who have experienced abuse as children. She says ‘I was a good child but still this bad thing happened to me’.
She would also like to see improved transparency in relation to court processes, and support for victims and survivors and their families during and after court proceedings.
Roberta adds that she feels that she has been lucky in having the motivation to ’get through things’ but she acknowledges that things could have been very different. She says ‘That makes me angry – flaws in the system and people fall between the cracks’.