Tonia wants to see a change in the way that victims and survivors of child sexual abuse are treated
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Tonia’s mum was a single parent. She was targeted by a child abuser who began dating her to gain access to her young daughters.
It later emerged that he had a previous conviction for sexual offences.
Tonia lived with her mum, sister and brother. Her father left the family home when she was young.
A man called Peter befriended her mother and then claimed that he had become homeless. He reassured Tonia’s mother that he did not want to take advantage of her good nature, and if he lodged with her, it would be as a friend.
Soon after he moved in, he began raping Tonia. This continued for several years until she was seven. She remembers one occasion, a few days after her birthday, when Peter told her mother he would take her out for the day as a birthday treat. He raped her on that day.
Several years later, Tonia’s older sister told her mother that Peter had been raping her. Tonia had not known this, and it emerged that her sister had kept quiet in the mistaken belief that she was protecting her younger sister – Peter had threatened her that he would abuse Tonia if she told anyone.
There was a police investigation and a court case, and Peter was convicted. It was only after this that Tonia’s mother realised he had a previous conviction for child sexual abuse.
Tonia says that the effects of those early years of sexual abuse are longstanding. She suffered with insomnia and learned not to cry as a child. She was bullied at school because she could not make friends easily. In desperation she began to hit back, and as a result she was labelled as a problem. She feels she was let down by the school, and they should have explored what was happening to her.
She says she did try to tell people what was wrong, but the more she was not heard, the worse she reacted. She was referred to children’s mental health services for anger management training.
Her experience in court has left her afraid of the criminal justice system. She says ‘children are told that they like making up stories’. She finds it generally hard to trust people.
She suffers PTSD and feels burdened with feelings of guilt for her sister. When Tonia finally told her sister about what had actually happened years later, she knew her sister's belief that she had protected Tonia was shattered. She had counselling, and says she would probably be dead without it.
Tonia has a number of clear suggestions for changes that she believes could help protect children. She says that police forces across the country should all have access to the same information and communicate effectively to keep track of released sex offenders.
She is concerned it is too easy for an offender to change their identity and ‘disappear’ to the authorities.
She adds that the police should be required to inform any family with children where a known sex offender is known to have contact with the family.
She feels there is a stark contrast in the reaction to female victims as opposed to male victims. She thinks there can be a tendency to regard females as ‘enjoying it, asking for it, saying it for the money, or attention seeking’. She also says that if a victim has had counselling, this should not be used against them in court and she would like to see longer sentences given to sexual abusers.
Tonia says that she has thought a great deal about what has happened, how she was treated and the language that is used about child sexual abuse. She says ‘I wasn’t a survivor when I was raped – I was a victim’. She adds that the word survivor is ‘OK, but it is not a badge of strength … the problem is the term can be used as a battering ram against people who are not ready to use it’.