Sandra says ‘My parents should not have been parents’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Sandra describes a traumatic childhood; both her parents were abusive and her father was mentally unstable, violent and an alcoholic.
When Sandra went into care, it felt to her this was the first time she had been looked after properly.
Sandra’s father began sexually abusing her when she was five, and she became aware that he regularly raped her sibling.
She says ‘I was so terrified I did not want to be anywhere near him’.
When Sandra was primary school age, she and her sibling were placed in care. Sandra remembers being scared about a children’s home. She says ‘The only thing I could picture was an Oliver Twist version’.
However, she adds ‘Thank god it was nothing like that. When I first went into care I would class that I was being looked after properly. We had everything at that home. We even had holidays’.
But when Sandra was 13, Arthur, a senior member of staff at the care home, started sexually abusing her. The abuse began with him asking her sexualised questions, on the pretext that he was giving her therapy. It escalated to rape and continued over a few years, and Sandra thought she was in a ‘relationship’ with Arthur. She comments ‘This misunderstanding was so powerful, that I had a feeling of guilt regarding his wife’.
For some reason, the children’s home was closed down and Arthur arranged with the local authority that he and his wife would foster Sandra. She says ‘I did not want to go … I was so confused. I loved them but it just did not feel right going to live in their home. I had no choice’.
Arthur continued sexually abusing Sandra in his home and one day his wife caught him leaving Sandra’s bedroom. He made an excuse but Sandra remembers feeling very bad the next day as Arthur’s wife was very quiet.
Sandra reported the sexual abuse by Arthur to one of her teachers. They passed it on to senior staff at the school, but Sandra relates ‘It was decided by everyone that I was fantasising’.
Social services were called and they decided to send Sandra back to live with her family. Terrified, she took an overdose which resulted in her being hospitalised and having her stomach pumped.
She says ‘I just wanted to die’.
In her 30s, Sandra contacted a solicitor to seek some sort of justice for her experiences. She has been told there are no records of her childhood and this has left her feeling angry, disbelieved and hurt.
Sandra is severely traumatised by her childhood experiences. She suffers with poor mental health, and has often contemplated suicide. She has difficulty sleeping and suffers with night terrors.
She has been in a number of violent relationships. She says ‘I trust no one … when did I ever have the chance to trust? Meant to start at home with parents’.
Sandra has had some therapy but feels it has been too little too late and there is a lot more that needs to be covered. She describes feeling exhausted and trapped in her past. ‘It has left me feeling vulnerable every day of my life’ she says.