Bullies’ sex attack on schoolboy haunted victim for decades
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 replacement for the replacement.”
Mike has told his story in the hope it will make other people come forward to report what they have been through. He said: “There are so many cases like this from that era. You can see from the James Bulger case that children could be vicious.
“I would absolutely encourage people to come forward with these sort of things. It is absolutely needed for your own self-worth and self-esteem. If you don’t, things won’t change and you need to get better. You need to be able to live your life which has been on hold.
“One of my big regrets is that my mum and dad passed away before I could tell my story.
“I am 51 years old. I don’t feel it though. When I went to counselling the counsellor said that they could still see the 11-year-old boy inside me.”
Mike did come forward and disclose what had happened to the police some 39 years after the incident: “The police investigated the incident over the following year but unfortunately could not prosecute because there was no CCTV or witnesses,” he said. “I do blame myself still for not speaking out sooner, but back in 1980 things were different to what they are now.”
Mike was featured as part of a campaign run by the Gwent police and crime commissioner and Gwent Police to highlight violence against women, domestic abuse, and sexual violence and encourage people experiencing it to seek help.
The police and crime commissioner for Gwent, Jeff Cuthbert, said: “One in four women and one in six men are affected by abuse at some point in their lifetime.
“Abuse takes many forms, whether that’s physical, sexual, financial, discriminatory, institutional, emotional, or neglect. The perpetrator could be a relative, a friend or neighbour, a member of staff, or anyone within the community.”
Each year an estimated 1.9 million people in the UK suffer some form of domestic abuse and more than 100,000 people in the UK are at high and imminent risk of being murdered or seriously injured as a result of domestic abuse.
Live Fear Free is a Welsh Government helpline giving information and advice for people suffering with domestic abuse or sexual violence. The helpline is free and staff are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with information, support, and signposting. The phone number is 0808 8010 800.