Despite her achievements, Tara knows she is still severely affected by her childhood experiences
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
While in private foster care, arranged by her parents, Tara endured sexual and emotional abuse, and racism.
She grew up to excel and achieve highly in a professional career, but says ‘It’s always at the back of my mind’.
Tara’s parents left West Africa and moved to the UK in the 1960s. When she was a small child her parents advertised for foster carers to take her, under a private arrangement. She says ‘This was apparently the norm for families like mine at the time, because my father was studying’.
She doesn’t remember much about the first foster parents, but after a few years she moved to another home. Here, the foster mother was kind and caring, but the male foster carer would come into Tara’s room at night and sexually abuse her.
Tara’s parents visited her sometimes, and one day they took her to another foster placement. On the way there in the car, she told them what had happened to her at the last home. ‘I remember them looking at each other, but they didn’t say anything’ she says.
Her new foster parents had children of their own, and fostered others, along with Tara. Tara’s parents found the couple via the same advertising route, and they told the foster parents that Tara had been abused in the previous home. Within a couple of days, the new foster father, Wynn, started abusing her.
Tara stayed with Wynn and his wife for seven years, and throughout that time he abused her repeatedly. The abuse included him forcing her to perform oral sex on him, and rape. Her parents visited, but not frequently.
This time, Tara didn’t tell her parents about the abuse. After a few years they divorced and her father remarried. When Tara was 11, she was taken to live with him and his new wife. She describes this as ‘a horrendous time’. The wife beat Tara so badly she was knocked out. One day she ran away but the police took her back and her father beat her just as violently.
The following week at school, someone must have noticed her condition because social services and the police became involved. Tara was weighed, she showed the welts and bruises on her body and she was given an internal examination.
The doctor asked if her father had abused her and she said no. The police interviewed her father, who told them Tara had been fostered previously. It was decided she should be returned to Wynn and his family. This time the fostering arrangement was supposed to be supervised by a social worker, but within days, Wynn began raping her again.
Tara was also subjected to physical and emotional abuse by the rest of the family, who were white and living in an area that was not at all multicultural. ‘I don’t know why they fostered me … they clearly didn’t want me there’ Tara comments.
Tara adds that she was sometimes bullied at the local school as the only black child, but loved reading and some of her lessons. She hated the holidays more because she had to stay in the foster home.
Her social worker would visit her and the foster parents would present a picture of perfect family life. Tara says the social worker always spoke to her on her own, and once said ‘I know you’ve got something you want to tell me’.
She recalls, with obvious distress, ‘I was on the brink of telling him, then I heard the front door slamming, and I couldn’t go on’.
The abuse continued, virtually every day. She remembers the bed squeaking when Wynn abused her. Sometimes Wynn’s wife would slam doors loudly downstairs when this was happening and Tara is sure she was aware of what he was doing.
Wynn sometimes sexually abused her in his car and at the local swimming pool. ‘I hated going swimming’ she says. She is sure that there were times when other people saw what he was doing.
After some time, Wynn’s eldest son started sexually abusing Tara. ‘I don’t know why, but I told Wynn’ she says. There was an argument and Wynn told his son ‘You shouldn't be doing that’. His son replied ‘Well you do it’.
Tara remembers thinking ‘How am I going to get out of this?’
Things changed for Tara when she passed her A levels and began training in a healthcare profession. It was a residential course and she immediately began to excel at it and make friends. ‘I just seemed to come alive’ she says.
Tara traced her mother, having not seen her for years. She asked why she had been fostered and told her what had happened to her. Her mother said ‘But whenever we came to see you, you looked happy’.
Tara’s mother reported the abuse by Wynn to the police. Tara says ‘Two amazing police women met with me’. They contacted the police force in Wynn’s local area and a male officer came to visit her.
Some time later, the officer told Tara that Wynn had denied abusing her. The case did not proceed, but the officer emphasised to her that the police believed what she had told them.
Tara had some counselling but thinks it wasn't the right time for her to talk about her childhood.
She would like there to be rigorous checks, vigilance and safeguarding around foster placements, particularly private and interracial arrangements. Along with being abused, she completely lost her cultural identity by being adopted by white families, and was unable to relate to black people until she moved to a racially diverse area. ‘I had to relearn that’ she says.
Tara also emphasises the importance of training for professionals to spot and act on signs of abuse in children.
Tara is very accomplished and has achieved highly in her professional career, but cannot shake the feeling that she is always being judged and that her voice is not heard. ‘I know that goes back to my childhood’ she says. ‘It’s always at the back of my mind … it severely impacted who I am’.