Child Abuse Victim's Letter to Theresa May: Inquiry Gave Me Hope but Now I Feel Betrayed
Mirror
Dear Home Secretary I am one of the 70 survivors who met the panel for your inquiry into historic child sex abuse. I was sceptical about whether they would be able to help victims like me, but after spending time with them, for the first time since I was abused more than 30 years ago, I started to feel real hope that our voices would be heard. Now it seems certain that you will disband the panel, possibly as soon as this week – and the betrayal is devastating. I was molested from the age of three or four by my biological father. On my sixth birthday I became a “big girl” and was raped by him for the first time. By the end of that year I had been introduced to what I now am aware was a faith-related paedophile ring. On Christmas Eve, still at the age of six, I was subjected to the first of many multiple rapes. My overriding memory of these experiences was of the pain being so intense that I believed, as I was told, that it was the power of God that took over me. That I was a vessel of this power and this was what I had been created for. But it was a secret. If I spoke of it to anyone God would know and I would be cast down to become a vessel of the Devil. Extreme? Maybe. But I carry vestiges of this fear and many others like it to this day. This was the start of many years of abuse. I wasn’t aware that it was abuse until much later and when I was aware of it I still didn’t believe I had the right or the opportunity to escape it. There have been many times I wished I was dead. Every time I was choked to unconsciousness I prayed it would be the time I wouldn’t come back. The only hope I had for nearly 30 years was for death. It took two years of professional involvement to begin to challenge these beliefs enough for me to escape. Last year I did. It was my counsellor who suggested that I engage in the inquiry. It was to be an exercise in empowerment. I fear the police because they featured in some of my earlier abuse, laughed at me as a teenager and put me in danger in my later years. Authority has always turned me away or removed my control. So when two of the panel members approached me after the meeting, I was unsure.
Their honesty about their own experiences, work and passion in this area impressed me during the meeting. In talking to them afterwards, I felt a reassurance of their commitment to the survivors, and a beginning of trust. That in itself was a huge step forward for me. I began to engage via email shortly afterwards. I received very encouraging and supportive replies. The fact that the first two people you chose to chair the inquiry, Baroness Butler-Sloss and Fiona Woolf, were forced to step down because of links to the establishment did not concern me. For the first time, I was able to tell the truth of what happened to me as a child and a teenager, and not be attacked or shut down. While I was aware that there was a small section of survivors who had concerns about the panel, the general feeling by the end of the meeting was of support for it, even from some of those who had originally been opposed. Media reports appeared about a letter with 60-plus signatures from campaigners and a small number of survivors who opposed the panel. But I immediately realised that these were not signatures of those who had attended the meetings and met the panel. I am sure that there are a great many more than 60 survivors who support the panel. In the press coverage, one man said that he had not met any survivor who had any confidence in the process and panel. But he did not ask me or the others like me who had engaged with it. The voices that began to become noisier in the media claim to be the voice of survivors. They are not. They speak with an authority stolen from us. It is this group that is full of confidence in themselves that are being listened to, but where does that leave the opinions of the rest of us. Where are the vocal women? There will never be a panel that all abuse survivors will agree with. It is extremely hard for abuse sufferers to trust, but the panel members have shown their commitment and that is what we need – people who will fight for us, even if it makes them unpopular. The news before Christmas that the Home Office was likely to disband the panel has deeply affected me. I have learnt that the only thing worse than living a life without hope is to be given that hope, only for it to be excised. I have learnt that the pain of removing a scab to let my experiences out and for that to have been for nothing was worse than holding that pain in and covering it over, pretending it wasn’t there.
I have learnt that my abusers were right – that if I spoke out I would be shut down, that trust will always be broken, that there is nothing to fight for and that they are too powerful for someone like me to fight. That I should have kept quiet because the only thing that can come from this for me is the shame of people knowing about me. That if I let things out it contaminates everyone and everything around me. This is the message that I have received from this experience. I have learnt that my voice is not as important as those who can shout louder than me. That there is no way for a normal person like me on their own to get their voice heard by those that can influence the future of other children. That right now other children are being abused in the way I was and nobody is listening to them, just as no one listened to me. So where do I go from here, Home Secretary, when you announce that the panel is to be disbanded? Without hope, what is left? If this panel ends, I will not be engaging with another one. How could I trust again when even this promise could be broken so easily? The first voice of the inquiry would have been silenced. How many would follow?
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