Sheina says ‘I now know I was not to blame and I wish I had been believed’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Sheina was a young teenager, and her father had recently died, when she was raped by a health professional.
Her mother blamed her, and it took decades for Sheina to realise she should feel proud of how she has overcome her early experiences.
Sheina grew up in the 1960s and 70s. She says she did not have ‘the happiest of childhoods’. Her mother had mental health issues and was sometimes physically and verbally abusive, and when Sheina was 12, her father died suddenly. She says ‘he was a lovely, gentle man’. Very soon after, Sheina suffered another loss when one of her grandparents passed away.
A couple of years later, she was taken for an eye test at a local optician, who said she needed to wear glasses.
During the test, the optician took Sheina’s hand and put it on his penis. He then laid her on the floor, put on a condom and raped her. She has vivid memories of the tie he was wearing, and him telling her she was ‘special’.
When Sheina went to collect her new glasses they were not ready, and the optician raped her again. Afterwards he drove her home – she remembers what his car was like.
Before going again to collect her glasses, Sheina told an older male family friend what had happened, and he went along with her. The optician did not assault Sheina again, and soon after he moved to a different practice.
Sheina says she doesn’t think the family friend told anyone, but she wrote down what happened in her diary. Her mother then found her diary but did not believe Sheina had been raped, and called her ‘a nymphomaniac’.
Sheina also told her best friend, but says that this girl was being sexually abused by a relative, and they had a confused conversation about whether their experiences meant they were ‘special’.
During the rest of her teenage years, Sheina says, she slept with different men, ‘craving love and affection and using sex as a way of finding this’. She became pregnant and after a termination was admitted to a psychiatric ward. She says it felt as if ‘No one cared’ and she thinks her mum may have given the clinical staff her version of Sheina’s past.
Sheina reproaches herself for not speaking out about the rape, saying ‘I should have reported it, but felt in some ways he showed me “love” when I was so sad due to my recent losses’. She worries she was not the rapist’s only victim.
She adds ‘He was in a position of trust and took advantage of my vulnerability’. She thinks her father could have helped if he had been alive. She says that all her mother did was make her feel that she was to blame for being abused by ‘a respected professional’.
As the decades passed, Sheina often thought about reporting the abuse, but she says ‘I did not think I would be believed, or could relate details so long ago’. She comments that the rapist is probably dead by now.
Sheina says she has used alcohol ‘to blank out feelings’ and suffers from low self-esteem. She still gets flashbacks of the rapes. ‘I feel I lost my innocence, my youth … the first time should be special but it was dirty’ she says.
She says it is essential for children who are suffering abuse to know how, and who to go to, to get support, and to be believed. Training for professionals and safeguarding in all settings where adults work with children are equally important.
Sheina adds that young people should be educated from a young age to value themselves, and there should be good provision of support for children who have been abused.
Later in life, Sheina studied for a degree and now works in child protection. Although she struggles with low self-esteem at times, she says ‘I am proud of the way I have used my experiences to help others and now understand I am not to blame’.
Sheina adds that she finds solace in her family and nature.