Tommie feels guilt and frustration that as a child, he was not able to say that he was being abused
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Tommie attended a small village primary school. When he was seven years old, his class teacher, Mr Dunn, sexually abused him on multiple occasions throughout the whole school year.
He says that as a child he was ‘as quiet as a mouse’, and he believes this was why Mr Dunn singled him out for sexual abuse.
Several times, Mr Dunn would call him to the front of the class saying that he wanted to look at his work. As Tommie stood by the teacher’s desk, Mr Dunn sexually abused him.
The teacher would find ways to isolate Tommie in order to sexually abuse him, sometimes walking him to secluded areas in the school grounds, or finding pretexts to keep him in after school.
Once, when he had detained Tommie after school, Mr Dunn drove the boy to a quiet lane and sexually abused him before dropping him off close to his home.
After he had abused him, Mr Dunn told Tommie ‘This is between you and me’. Tommie said the teacher did not actually threaten him, but he felt he had to keep silent.
Tommie says that looking back on the abuse, he can see that Mr Dunn ‘took massive risks … it all occurred, potentially in sight of other teachers’. He knows that a number of staff would have often seen him with Mr Dunn, but no one questioned what was happening.
The abuse ended when Tommie moved into the next year and was taught by a new class teacher.
A few years later, Tommie was out playing with a friend when Mr Dunn pulled up in his car. Tommie told his friend to run, and then said to the teacher that he didn’t like what he had done to him, before running off himself. That was the last time Tommie saw Mr Dunn.
As a child, Tommie decided he would never tell anyone about the abuse. ‘It felt as though I was screaming silently … I wanted to run away but I couldn’t’ he says.
As an adult, he says he ‘buried it’ and threw himself into his work. He got married, but the relationship broke down and he says he knew his behaviour was self-destructive. He has suffered flashbacks, depression and anxiety.
One day, nearly 30 years after the abuse, Tommie went to see his GP about another issue. Without intending to, he found himself speaking about the abuse he had suffered at school. His GP arranged for him to receive therapy and he says this was extremely helpful.
For the first time, he says, he understood that what had happened was not his fault. He adds that he wonders what kind of person he might have been if he had not been sexually abused as a child.
Tommie has now told his parents what happened, and says they were ‘devastated’. He feels sad that they feel a sense of failure and guilt, and also feels guilty himself that by not reporting the abuse, he may have left other children vulnerable to the abuser.
Tommie is also disappointed and frustrated that because he didn’t speak out about the abuse, Mr Dunn has never been punished.
He says he knows that when he was being abused, he would not have been able to describe what was happening to him. He feels that schools have a role to play in helping children to disclose abuse. He adds that teachers should be more vigilant and should receive training to identify and act on inappropriate behaviour.