‘I had to speak out for the other children going through abuse’
The Prince’s Trust today honours Dylan England, whose bravery came at a cost. reports
Dylan England was just 19 when he decided to pick up his mobile phone and report the sexual abuse he had suffered as a child. “It was one of the moments of my life where I felt this was the only reason I’d been put on this earth,” he recalls. “It was extremely difficult, because it affected friends, family, it affected so many people in my life. I knew a lot of them wouldn’t remain in contact with me after that, because they wouldn’t agree with the decision I had to make.”
England is one of thousands of people who come forward each year in the UK to report allegations of historic sexual abuse. The so-called “Jimmy Savile effect” contributed to an immediate nine per cent spike in recorded sexual offences. Many abuse victims have come to believe that now, for the first time, they will be taken seriously by authorities.
England, 26, will be recognised for his courage this afternoon, named as Homesense Young Achiever of the Year by The Prince’s Trust, a charity founded by the Prince of Wales in 1976 to support young people who have overcome barriers to transform their lives. Many of those helped by the charity have struggled to find work. Some have been forced into poverty, homelessness and drug addiction.
“It’s quite surreal,” England says of the prize, which he will receive from the Prince of Wales at a red carpet ceremony at the London Palladium.
England says he suffered “systematic sexual and emotional abuse” during his childhood in Surrey. But like many victims, he retreated into shame and secrecy. “I would always tell people that I had a happy childhood, because I knew nothing different,” says England, who has waived his right to anonymity.
“And when you realise that you’ve been through things that you shouldn’t have gone through, you automatically want to hide that part of you, because you don’t want people to judge you. [You think]: ‘I shouldn’t even be telling people this, because it shouldn’t have happened’.” Despite suffering from serious mental health problems as a result of his troubled childhood, by the age of 19, England had secured a stable job at a housing association and had found himself a girlfriend. “My life was all right,” he recalls. But he grew concerned that the people who had abused him could now be inflicting the same “cycle of abuse” on to a new generation of victims.
If he reported the abuse, he risked permanently alienating many of the
Luke Mintz
‘You want to hide that part of you, because you don’t want people to judge you’
people he had known in childhood. But he felt he had no option: “I could choose to ignore it and try to live a happy life, but [I knew that] other children were going through what I did. Knowing that […] probably hurt me more than what I went through as a child. It traumatised me. It was something I had to do.”
In 2012, he decided to pick up his phone and report the abuse. Two years later, he was asked to give evidence at a trial, and, over two days at London’s High Court, was forced to relive the experiences he had tried so hard to bury. Many people from his childhood accused him of lying. The trial was successful, but England had “lost everyone”.
The next few years were gruelling. He fell into a deep spiral of mental illness, “bounced” between medical services and forced on to sickness benefit. A number of times, he tried to kill himself.
Eventually, aged 24, he agreed to take part in a 12-week programme arranged by The Prince’s Trust. Alongside 14 other troubled young men and women, he undertook community service, work experience and a week at a residential centre, where he tried archery, climbing and raft-building. The most memorable part of the trip is often when the troubled youngsters are asked to work together to help each other abseil rocks and walk across ropes.
England says his confidence “soared” during the programme, which changed his life “so much for the better”. Now he helps to run the programme at Carshalton College in south London, where he works.
He urges other victims of historic sexual abuse to emerge from the shadows: “Talk to someone. There is always someone willing to listen to you. It might not be a professional… but eventually it will be the right person and you’ll get on that path.”