A very nice Social Worker has phoned me and spoken with me over the files. I live in Scotland so couldn’t go to the offices.
The file spans from 1963 to 1968. But it has a gap from when I was in a home in Sussex. I was abused in every home I went to except for the Approved school that I was sent to at 14 years old. However, when I absconded from the approved school I was gang raped. I was transferred to a psychiatric hospital where for a long time I was on massive sedation with Largactil or Sodium Amytal and thrown into a isolation cell on a ward for the worst patients in the hospital. I was also considered to be ‘available sexually’ for male patients.
All the homes have statements about my behaviour, that I was a maladjusted child and most of the records hide the abuse. I was born in 1950 and apparently my mother had rejected me at an early age and appears to have gone through the motions I eventually got out of care in 1968 and carved out a life for myself. However, I still have nightmares and other stuff.
The thing that is bad is that most of the abusers would be dead by now. The Approved school was a wonderfully happy place for me and I still have contact with my headmistress. It was run by Nuns called the Good Shepherd Sisters. I have more love for Sister Winifred than I ever had for my mother. I’m 57 now and I don’t think I will ever have closure.
Getting my records was brilliant but very difficult to cope with. I hadn’t imagined things, I didn’t have false memory syndrome. But a lot of things have brought back scary stuff and I can’t get answers as to why. My mother died of Alzheimer’s in 2002 and my father committed suicide in 1981.