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I couldn't let my wife touch me after trauma of childhood abuse
By Janet Tansley
After years of pain and torment, Chris Ryder had finally had enough. As he listened to yet more tales of historic child abuse on the TV news, tears welling in his eyes, he picked up the phone to the police...and told them of his own. “I couldn’t live with the pain any longer,” he says. “I was fed up of hearing about historic sex cases each one bringing me to tears, I had to tell someone and get him off the streets and, hopefully, get help for myself!” Like so many others Chris’s abuse had been inflicted on him by someone he should have been able to trust. John Michael Creagh - “we knew him as Michael Creagh” - was a scoutmaster who had become a friend of the family in Ormskirk. But far from being a friend, Creagh subjected Chris to appalling sexual abuse which caused every aspect of his life to suffer. Waiving his right to anonymity Chris said it began in 1975-6 when he was just 13. He said: “He was a good friend of the family. He would come round on a Sunday night and spend the evening with us. He’d go away on business and bring back gifts. I suppose that was the start of the grooming. “From then he started saying to my parents that he was going into Liverpool and that if I wasn’t doing anything, I could go with him. He took me to the pictures, the film was A Bridge Too Far and I can remember now even where we sat, it’s as if it was yesterday. And he bought me an LP, Abba Arrival... “He would ask if I could help him tidy up the scout hut and I found myself alone with him. “Looking back it was a plan. He was just evil. He was the worst type of person you could imagine because he was cold and calculated.” Chris said Creagh performed sexual acts on him “and then he just walked away”. He said: “The first time it happened I didn’t know what was going on. It was my first sexual experience. I hadn’t got a clue up to that point. And I just froze.” It was an age of far more innocence. Chris enjoyed listening to music, having a laugh with his mates and playing football and tennis.: “If I went out with a girl we’d have a laugh, hold hands and maybe a kiss on the cheek, and that was it. “After the abuse I shut it out completely and made excuses why I didn’t want to go to scouts anymore. I think my mum thought I was being lazy. I couldn’t tell my parents. I just couldn’t. He was a person in authority, who was going to believe me? “My mum and dad wanted to come to court with me but I said no. I didn’t want them to be put through it, I didn’t want my mum to be upset. I thanked them both for their support and my mum said ‘we couldn’t do more because we weren’t there for you when you were 13’. They feel guilty, but I have told them it wasn’t their fault, it was his.” Chris threw himself into sport and ‘closed myself off’, but the effects of the abuse changed him and his life forever. He said: “At certain times I would become very emotional (unfortunately to the rest of the family for no apparent reason) and lash out verbally towards them, ruining plenty of family gatherings, which made me feel even worse because I was pushing away the people who loved me. At times I couldn’t be around family because they didn’t understand why I was hurting so I would take myself away from them. “We had a really nice garden and I would climb to the top of a willow tree and sit there for hours. I just wanted to be on my own. “It was very difficult.” Still at school when the attacks happened Chris recalls being immediately uncomfortable in the presence of male teachers. He didn’t want them any where near him, he says. “I started missing classes,” he admits. “I would go to registration in the morning then hide in the cloakroom if I had a lesson with a male teacher, if anyone saw me I’d say I was looking for a coat I’d lost. The fear of males in power or authority has stayed with me all my life. “I couldn’t study so my school work suffered, I lost total interest in everything and I left school without any qualifications.” Chris’s personal life suffered too. He has been married twice, but neither marriage, like any relationship he has had, lasted long. “I was quite popular with the girls when I was younger,” says Chris. “I didn’t have any problem attracting them. But I remember, for instance, when I was 16 and started going out with a girl who was quite sexually forward. She tried to instigate something and I just froze and told her to go. At a party with her a week after that, I made excuses and left. “I was 18 when I first had sex and the only time I did have sex was if I instigated it, sex was just sex and still is.” He pauses: “My marriages and relationships have been totally ruined by his actions, what he did to me took away my ability to love and be loved. In every relationship I’ve ever had if my partner tried to approach me, to touch me or show me any sort of affection I would shy away, I froze like I did with him. I couldn’t bear to be touched on any part of my body. “I’ve never showed any affection to any partner after sex, I don’t know how to give or receive it.” Chris first got married in 1991 but it ended in 1992, and what made that even more sad was that his wife moved back to America, where she was from, with their son of nine months. “She was my perfect woman,” said Chris, “I loved her to bits. But when I couldn’t let her touch me she thought I didn’t love her or find her attractive, she thought I was having an affair, which I wasn’t. I can remember her crying but I didn’t try to explain. I’m not sure then I even knew. It’s funny how suddenly it seems to be staring you in the face, it seems obvious, but it didn’t then. “But that’s what happens in any relationship. I don’t want to be touched, I can’t let them near me. It’s as though I’m not in control any more and I don’t know what they are going to do. Eventually they say no. Women can only put up with so much.” Chris’s second marriage lasted about two years. His wife did ask Chris if there was something wrong with him and he opened up to her. He was encouraged to go to the doctor’s but says he was offered only tablets, not the emotional support he needed. Since reporting the abuse Chris has had some counselling and hopes to go on to have more. Chris said: “I believe that the way I have to deal with this is to tell myself that if, in a relationship, someone approaches me to instigate affection or sexual contact, that person is a loving person and not someone trying to harm and hurt me. I have to try to conquer that”. “Though I have to find someone first,” he smiles, adding: “I’ve only really begun to even think about this after going to the police.” Chris currently lives on his own: “I’ve spent most of my life on my own which I don’t think is a coincidence. Don’t get me wrong I like my own company but it’s not the same is it? I have never had a proper, loving relationship because I don’t know how to accept it, and I don’t know how to give it. I hope that one day I can.” At least now Chris has the chance to move forward knowing that instead of what Creagh did controlling him, he has taken away that control by standing up against him. “Over the years I have become stronger. Men like him can’t get away with this. “He’s a calculating, dangerous man who has ruined many lives and doesn’t deserve to walk the streets to have the opportunity to ruin any more.”
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