MY STORY
Living with the experiences of institutional child sexual abuse
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As a child growing up in the early 80s, life was pretty carefree. I remembered playing around the neighbourhood and riding on my pushbike with friends every afternoon.
One afternoon while my friend and I were out on our pushbikes, he suggested to me that we go over to his teacher’s house. He said that a lot of other kids go over to play and that there were many of our school mates there. I decided to go along. When we got there, there were kids playing around in the lounge room and hanging out.
I remembered that the teacher gave us something to drink and after that, I started feeling strange. Looking back now, I believe that it must’ve been alcohol.
I remembered that the teacher brought me into another room after the drinks and it was there that he sexually abused me.
I remembered that he said to me that it was a secret that is kept between us, and that no one can know about it. Then, he left the room.
I remembered not knowing what had happened and feeling strange. I walked out of the room minutes later and saw that he was just chatting with some other kids, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I felt like everything was a blur, and was confused that the teacher was acting as if nothing had happened, like everything was normal.
I did not understand what had happened.
I freaked out and told my friend that we needed to leave. On the way home, I realised that my friend was talking to me the whole time. I looked up at him when I realised, but I did not remember or paid attention to anything he had said. I was still in shock, my brain was a blur and I felt so strange, processing what had just happened.
My whole life had changed from that moment.
Two weeks later, for some reason, I decided to tell one of my teachers. She did not believe me. She had told me that something like that couldn’t have happened and that teachers don’t do things like that. I remembered also telling my mum and she had told me the same thing.
I was confused. I was wondering if it had actually happened to me or did I make it up? But I knew it happened. How does a kid just make these events up in his head? But why didn't the adults in my life believe me?
I became a very destructive kid. I stopped going to school and often got into trouble with the police. The first time I got in trouble was when I was 8, for stealing.
I felt disconnected and hatred towards everybody around me. This happened throughout my whole life. Growing up, I always had people around that I would call friends, and I had relationships with girls, but I always remembered thinking that none of them meant anything to me.
I was disconnected, destructive, ashamed and embarrassed
Drugs became my coping mechanism. I struggled with drugs for 45 years. It made me not have to feel, not have to think. On drugs, I didn’t need to remember.
It gave me a reason to live, but took so much away from my life.
For the next 15 years, I was in and out of jail. I kept turning to drugs to numb the pain, but it kept putting me back in jail. I was going nowhere in life and It was destroying everything around me. I came to the realisation that I had to stop. Every time I pushed down the pain, it came back bigger. I had to change.
I thought that it was time to stop drugs, and with some help, I managed to quit. This made the pain really real, and for the first time, I could think again. My brain was cleared, but I needed to deal with the pain of my abuse, I needed to find another way to manage the pain of living with the abuse.
It took me a long time to open up.
I had to stop the drugs, and when I managed that, I had to stop my violence and anger, and when I started dealing with that I began to open up.
I was lucky and felt that the help I needed found me at the right time. Through jail and through the system, they offered me services to help me. I kept at it and kept going and every day and every week, things started clicking. I started feeling relieved and excited.
I felt the shame lifting and started to not feel alone when I found out that other people were living through the same pain.
Since I got help, I started to find myself.
I’m still going though this and I still find it difficult to work through what my life turned out to be because of my abuse, but I am in a much better place then I was before I started seeking support.
I can say that I am proud of myself for going through this journey.
END.
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