'My experience makes me fear for my daughter'

‘In my spirited, wilful six-year-old daughter, Amelia, I see the girl I could have been as a child. It’s life-affirming to be able to raise a daughter with all the things I wished I could have experienced had I felt more confident when I was younger – healthy boundaries, time, attention, safety and adequate means to nurture her interests and hobbies – but with every year she moves closer to womanhood, a knot of anxiety tightens in my chest.

The decade in which my body evolved from girl to woman was defined by sexual violence. I was 14 when I was subjected to my first unwanted sexual experience by my friend’s boyfriend. Having recently left home, the incident left me feeling confused, ashamed and alone. At 17, a year after I gave birth to my first child, I was sexually assaulted by a photographer who told me I had model potential and that he’d take test shots; then again at 19, when working as a receptionist.

At no point did I think what happened warranted reporting to the police, or that anyone would care or take me seriously. I knew that, in society’s view, I wasn’t a vulnerable, traumatised young woman in need of support, but simply a Black council-estate teen mum. Throughout my twenties, I pushed down the horrors of what had happened to me, grafting to give myself and my growing family a good life. My strategy was working – I’d built a career, a home, a life I could be proud of – but when I reached my thirties, I dropped into the depths of a depression so dark that my existence felt pointless. I experienced suicidal thoughts.

I started uncovering my past in 2018, using eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy after it was recommended by a colleague. As well as drawing a line between the sexual violence I’d experienced in my teens and my plummeting mental health, my therapist showed me that I was minimising my trauma. That I’d tell myself, “it wasn’t that bad” or “others have had it worse”; “at least it wasn’t violent”;

“at least I didn’t end up dead in a ditch”.

After a year of sessions, my trauma no longer governs my life, but I regularly feel anxiety about Amelia’s future. Not only because she’s a girl, but because she’s mixed race. My years working in admin and operations at the Crown Prosecution Service taught me how rarely assaults of Black women make the news – a racial disparity highlighted in R Kelly’s court case and in the Surviving R Kelly documentary, in which the mothers of victims alleged no one cared about the singer’s crimes because the girls were Black.

Knowing that society might not deem my daughter as vulnerable, or as deserving of justice as someone without a Black parent feeds into my protective instinct. I’m actively laying the groundwork of an open and communicative mother-daughter relationship now so that, unlike me as a child, she’ll feel able to discuss sex and relationship matters. I encourage Amelia to challenge her father and me, so she learns to assert herself. I tell her she’s funny, clever and beautiful to bolster her self-esteem – a lack of which I know contributed towards me being a target for my abusers.

And that’s not me victim-blaming my younger self. Of course, I didn’t deserve to be assaulted for what I wore, being drunk or alone with a man – no woman does. Even if I resent that the burden of responsibility falls on girls and women to protect themselves from harm enacted by boys and men, I know I’ll still encourage Amelia to protect herself. I’m a feminist, but I’m also a realist. As a parent to someone whose experiences are hampered by two strands of prejudice, I simply can’t afford not to be.’

Are ethnic minority victims being ignored?

METRO