This week’s news has focused on a new amendment to existing law, meaning paedophiles convicted of serious sexual offences could lose parental rights over their children. Emily wishes this had been in place earlier, when she was a child. Emily doesn’t want the children of today to suffer in the same way she did. This is her story:
This part of my story is from the 80s and 90s but still happens to this day and I want to share what happened to me and the impact it had on my life.
My father was sent to prison when I was 5, convicted of sexually abusing my best friend. I had also been abused but I didn’t speak about it, not straight away anyway, as I knew I wasn’t meant to, he had told me that it was our secret and well, he was my dad so I kept quiet. From this point on, my life was full of visits from social workers, having to be taken out of school to see therapists who would interpret my drawings, and the questions, the constant questions about what had or hadn’t happened.
At this point I wasn’t seeing my dad, he had served his (very short) sentence and been released from prison. I had told the social worker that I didn’t want to see him, that I never wanted to see him again and began to disclose indirectly about the things he had done to me. However, I was told that even though at that time I wasn’t allowed to see him, I would still have to write to him every month and receive letters in return. This was never something that I wanted to do, I was glad he wasn’t in my life any longer and being forced to write to my abuser and receive his letter in return made me feel that he was still in control of me, that he had power over me even from afar.
Over a period of about 5 years I was not allowed to see him, I had social workers and a guardian ad litem who met with me over this time but every single time the conversation would be guided around to ask me if I wanted to see my dad. It was made clear to me that the aim was to get to the point where he would be in my life again, whether I wanted this or not. I repeatedly said that I didn’t want to see him, it’s recorded in my notes from the time that I was clear about this and it’s very apparent how frequently this was brought up. I gave up answering in the end as I felt that my words didn’t matter, the inevitable was going to happen anyway.
At about age 11, the courts decided that my dad should be granted access to me. I can’t even find the words to describe the horror that I felt, and that first access visit was like walking back into a nightmare. Walking towards him my heart was pounding, I hadn’t seen him for several years and now there he was, a court mandated house of horrors.
Soon the contact with social workers dropped off, I was no longer a ward of court and the visits with my dad were less restricted. My school knew about his convictions and told him that he wasn’t allowed on school property to protect the other students, that if he wanted to pick me up from school then he would have to park farther away… This was my life, everyone knew what he was, he was on the sex offenders register so other children were protected but I fell into some other category, a non-child, a nothing, someone who deserved to be abused. I didn’t speak to anyone about the abuse that resumed from age 11, in my head I thought that they all knew and didn’t care, that I didn’t matter.
The impact of this all nearly destroyed my life. I self-harmed from age 12, was alcohol dependent by 17 (after many years of being given alcohol by my father) and tried to end my life on many occasions. I ended up in the local psychiatric hospital when I was 17 and had many very difficult years as I thought I was worth nothing and that whatever I said would not be heard. Although I am now settled and happy with my life, the impact has meant that the effects of the abuse and the lack of protection by the system has affected me in ways that do cause me to struggle at times.
I am not the only one who has had to go through with this system in similar circumstances, I wasn’t protected by all the systems that were put in place to do that one thing. We need to look after the children who are caught up in situations out of their control, to really see them, to listen to them and put them first not last.