Why did it take you so long to speak up? It’s the question many people ask when reporting or talking about sexual abuse years after the event. This week, the brilliant writer and actor Dame Meera Syal spoke about the assault she suffered in her twenties (she is now 65) when an older man tried to rape her. It was, she says, an experience that ‘completely changed my life’, and, never having reported it, spoke about it in an interview.
She is not looking for sympathy. At the time, she sought solace among a group of Asian actors, and her career has blossomed ever since; her life healed. But scars inevitably remain, and talking about, or reporting abuse, can take years, decades, and there are many reasons why – I would know.
It took me 45 years to officially report to the police a teacher in my secondary school. I was just three days past my 16thbirthday when it began (and continued for years), and although I had written about it extensively in newspapers and online, it was – and is – something that blighted every relationship I attempted to have thereafter. Unsuccessful. All of them.
Currently in the news is yet another story of a teacher grooming a pupil – this time, a female in an alleged sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy. Thirty-year-old Bronwen James is in court and denies the charges, claiming that another boy put him up to spouting lies. But there are messages. And photographs. Flattery is what keeps you in these situations, but it’s an abuse of power whichever way you look at it, and I can only hope that he suffers less for deciding not to carry the secret as long as I did.
What changed for me (in large part, at least), in 2019, was the story of Clive Hally, a teacher at the same school, who committed suicide on the day he was due to answer police bail regarding his sexual abuse of male pupils.
This was not the only teacher-pupil ‘relationship’ at that school. All of us students knew, for example, that one teacher had relationships with students he was helping to get into Oxbridge. He succeeded with two of them (that I know of). I recall that teacher once saying to me that he ‘blamed’ the girls for being too tantalising and irresistible in their short skirts.
My best friend was preyed upon by another head of department and to the day she died of cancer at just 57, was convinced the stress and decades of trauma were contributory to her illness. When I last saw her in the hospital bed where she died, we each went over it all again, as we did every time we talked.
Thinking back to those days, in 2019 I saw not only red but blazing scarlet fury when I remembered how these ‘relationships’ were an open secret at the school. Teachers knew about their colleagues and while the Bridgend council investigation found some expressed concerns informally, the authorities were not alerted. Could I have told my parents? That was a no-goer, as when I returned from Baptist summer camp and told them about a very uncomfortable experience I had endured with Jimmy Savile, I was sent to my room for being ‘nasty about that nice man off the TV.’
I kept it all in a box, and no amount of therapy, counselling or writing about it over decades helped alleviate the pain. Abuse infantilises you: you are forever trapped in its fearful grasp. Like Dame Meera, it was work that enabled me to keep it in that box. But I remained Forever Sixteen – until the newspaper story about Clive Hally, where South Wales Police had issued a statement with a helpline for victims of abuse. I contacted them, and when two officers (one male, one female) came to visit me, I poured out my story.
I subsequently did a much longer interview at a local police station and it was the toughest three hours I have ever spent. Not because the officers were unsympathetic – they were incredibly supportive – but because, in the matter of fact way I had to describe events, they sounded implausible. How could I have fallen for this? Why did I allow it to happen? In describing very specific sexual acts that I was required to perform and that were performed upon me as a child, I felt relieved at finally realising the severity of what had happened. What had taken me so long?
Yes, don’t think the main question detractors ask is not one I did not ask myself and still do. But abuse knows no time scale. The greatest relief was for my being taken seriously. Being heard. And that’s why it takes victims of abuse so long to come forward, to speak out: fear of not being listened to, of not being heard. That day, I was, and I felt I had finally moved past my 16th birthday.
The teacher was taken in for questioning and admitted the ‘relationship’ (I continue to call it an abuse of power) happened but was consensual. Yes, it was. But can a child consent when a teacher’s hands are up her skirt and into her pants under the desk? Can a child consent when he/she is in an inferior position of power?
He was taken for interview at his local station where, ironically, the legal representative brought in to work with him, turned out to be my very first boyfriend at the time when the abuse began in 1974. Halfway through the interview, he realised it was me the anonymous report was referring to and had to recuse himself. Heck of a way to find out 45 years on why your girlfriend finished with you.
The case might have gone to court, but for various reasons I decided not to go ahead – not least, because the law was very different in 1974, and teacher/pupil ‘relationships’ were not illegal.
But also, I had moved on in many ways. Like Dame Meera’s, my experience was life-changing, but it’s never too late to open that box and let it all out; never too late to speak out about abuse or report it. Time is irrelevant, because what you need more than anything else is to be heard.
And sometimes, it takes decades for people to listen.
In 2021, in the wake of the Clive Hally investigation, the school acknowledged “the bravery of the former pupils who came forward”, offered a full and unreserved apology to all those affected, and said it had resolved to do all it could to prevent this from happening again.
If you would like to support my writing you can do so via Buy Me a Coffee – thank you!
Click below: