BULLIES’ SEX ATTACK ON SCHOOLBOY KEPT SECRET FOR 37 YEARS
Dad tells how he finally confronted horrors of past
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SUPERMARKET worker has described how he was lured into a secluded spot behind a school before being sexually assaulted by three bullies who lay in wait.
Mike Harrison was just 11 years old when he was knocked to the ground and attacked by boys who then rained down kicks and punches on him.
The ordeal ultimately left him selfharming and living with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I was 11 years old when bullying started,” said Mike, now 51. “I was lured to a dark place behind the local high school where three boys were waiting for me.”
He says they pushed him to the ground and sexually assaulted him.
“Then I was kicked and punched, as they said I was gay.”
A traumatised and bewildered schoolboy, Mike went home. However he was told off for being muddy when he arrived and couldn’t bring himself to explain what had happened. It was a secret he would keep for 37 years.
“I just didn’t understand what had happened,” said Mike, from Risca. “How do you tell your parents that has just happened?
“It was 1980 and it was a different world we lived in compared to today. You were brought up to be seen and not heard. You were told not to tell tales. Even though something devastating had happened, the second I walked through the door I was told off and as soon as that happened I just went upstairs and that was it.
“Once you miss that first opportunity, it’s really hard to bring it up again. My dad passed away before it came out. I kept it inside for 37 years. I never told anyone.”
Understandably the weight of what he had endured stayed with Mike and he became introverted.
“I used to have an old motorbike,” he explained. “It lived in the shed and I used to just go and sit in the shed with it for a lot of my teenage years. That was my go-to thing. I still remember the smell of it, which sounds daft – it was that rubbery smell of a motorbike.
“That shed was a safe place for me. The motorbike didn’t judge me and I didn’t have to tell it anything because it was an inanimate thing. In a way it was like my best friend at the time.
“I have constantly had motorbikes in my life ever since. There is a sense of freedom with them.
“I had a Superbike 600 SuperSport but it was too complicated for my son to understand when he was six or seven. He wanted to look at the engine so I went on to eBay and I found a TS100. That is the exact model of what I had when I was 11.
“The original model was actually stolen but I’ve got the exact model now and it was 40 yesterday. It is in the garage safe as houses now.”
It was the birth of his son that began Mike’s journey to recover from his ordeal. He had been self-harming and doing serious damage to his body.
He said: “Having kids of my own helped me speak up about it. I was self-harming. That was my coping mechanism for the stress and trauma of it. I’ve since been diagnosed with PTSD.
“When I had my son I had someone else to care for and that nipped the self-harming in the bud.
“I knew I had to do something when Prince Harry came out with the mental health awareness week and I thought: ‘If I don’t say this now I never will’. I needed this for myself and for my son, to get it out. I needed to get better.”
When you speak to Mike now you are greeted with an utterly charming and warm man. He is friendly and if he wasn’t so open about what he experienced you would have no idea what he went through.
“When you carry it for so long it becomes part of you and that is a horrible thing,” he said.
“My life was on hold for many years. I travelled all over the country to try and get away from it. I was trying to relocate. I went all over the place trying to get away and it just doesn’t work but at the time it felt like a good idea.
“You can’t push these emotions away forever. The only way to sort it is to face it and deal with it.
“The problem is that so many people are harbouring these problems. They need to get them out sooner rather than later.”
The subsequent self-harming ended up ruining Mike’s first career.
“I work at Tesco in Risca but I used to be a diesel fitter working on JCBs. I had to stop because I had to have a hip replacement because of the selfharm.
“I used to be on steroids because of another health condition and I overdosed on them and it destroyed the bone in my hip after it killed the blood vessels there.
“And now, 13 years later, I need a