Abused 2,000 times Ed d imes

I was a little girl, but that didn’t stop my cousin… Shock Factor

Getting home from school, I ran straight upstairs to my room. Once up there, I buried my face in my pillow and sobbed. Aged 9, I was being teased at school for being different… I was small for my age and wasn’t like my classmates. I’d learning difficulties and dyslexia, and struggled to keep up with the work. ‘Loser!’ kids in my class would tease. I wasn’t allowed to play out after school. I was youngminded and easily misled. Naturally, my parents worried about me. I had two older brothers but they were busy living their own lives. So I spent most of my time in my bedroom, lonely.

My cousin John Slater, who was 13 then, was often round at our house, though.

Nicknamed ‘Jock’, he was a laugh, and always kind to me.

He’d play with me in the back garden at home, and always went out of his way to try and cheer me up.

I looked up to him, trusted him completely.

So did my parents. And soon, they started allowing Jock to take me out on his own.

‘Make sure you keep an eye on her,’ Mum would tell him.

‘Don’t worry, she’ll be safe with me,’ Jock would promise.

I loved not being cooped up in my room.

I didn’t care where we went, it just felt good being out of the house at last.

It felt so grown-up to be taken to the park, a field or quiet, wooded areas…

But one day, at a secluded area in our local park, Jock grabbed my hand and put it inside his pants. ‘You’re special,’ he told me. Over the next few months, whenever Jock took me out, he’d find somewhere out of sight, and get me to do other things to him.

He’d pull his trousers and pants down. Then he’d make me touch him, and would force my face into his crotch.

He’d make me perform sex acts on him, holding my head in his lap until he was finished.

I was too young and too naive to understand that what he was doing was wrong.

‘You’re my soulmate,’ Jock

would tell me, and I just thought that’s what all cousins did together.

Then, when I was 11, I was sent to a school for children with special needs.

Again, I suffered bullying, and felt so alone.

Jock continued to take me out as he’d been doing.

But, over the years, he started abusing me at home as well as out of the house.

If he stayed over, he’d sneak into my bedroom at night and touch me.

‘Me and you will be together when we’re older,’ he’d tell me.

‘OK,’ I’d nod, believing it was all quite normal.

I didn’t like the things Jock made me do, but I didn’t know how to stop it.

Even as I got older, I didn’t really understand that what he was doing was wrong.

I still hated it. But, instead of telling my parents what was going on, I buried it.

Then, in my late teens, I told Mum and Dad I didn’t want to go out with Jock any more.

They didn’t really question it. So that was that – the abuse suddenly stopped.

I tried to forget everything that’d happened, but I still had to face Jock whenever there was a family gathering.

But he’d just act like everything was normal.

Then, in my late 20s, I met someone on a blind date.

He was kind and caring. And, in 1997, we tied the knot.

Five years later, in April 2002, I gave birth to my son.

With a family to look after, I continued to tell no-one about Jock’s abuse of me.

An adult now, I understood that was what it was. But I still couldn’t bring myself to tell my husband what Jock had done to me.

It’ll tear the family apart,

I convinced myself.

I muddled on, but Jock’s abuse still plagued me.

I was so confused, and felt dirty and ashamed.

I’d soak myself for hours in scalding-hot baths, scrubbing my skin until it was red-raw.

It sounds silly, but I just wanted to get rid of Jock from under my skin.

Then, in 2010, my husband and I split up – we’d just grown apart from each other.

Shortly afterwards, I was at a family event, and Jock was there again.

He was telling everyone how he’d been ill.

‘I’ve lost my memory,’ he was explaining to relatives.

But later, when nobody was looking, he came over to me and whispered in my ear.

‘I still remember what I did to you, though,’ he sneered. He made my skin crawl. Of course, I remembered, too. No matter how hard I’d tried to forget, the memories just wouldn’t go away. The older I got, the more I understood that what Jock had done to me wasn’t right.

It was sick, twisted, perverted…

I calculated how many times Jock had abused me.

Sometimes it’d happened four or five times a week.

So, by my reckoning, he’d abused me around 2,000 times during my childhood.

Horrendous.

I knew I couldn’t let him get away with it.

I wanted to get rid of Jock from under my skin