How I overcame my dad abusing me and loaning me out for sex at a ‘paedophile brothel’
FOR years, Janet did not tell anyone about the vile sexual abuse she suffered during childhood.
She felt alone in her own personal nightmare and tried to bury the memories of despicable sexual assaults carried out by her father, who also loaned her out to other adults at a "brothel for paedophiles".
As a young girl, she did poorly at school following the terrible experiences. In her twenties, with horrible flashbacks crowding her brain, she drank to excess and had frightening mood swings in which she would be angry one minute and then slump into grief and depression the next.
She once took an overdose of pills, not to kill herself but as a cry for help.
“Sexual abuse is isolating and the only way I could survive it, partly, was to just sort of disappear," says Janet. "To try to ignore it and pretend it wasn’t happening, and that disbelief was one of the barriers that stopped me getting help for quite some time,".
But Janet did finally get help and she is one of the brave survivors courageously sharing her story as part of our It Still Matters series.
Now aged 62, Janet paints a vivid and ultimately hopeful portrait of how she was able to transform her broken life.
'I felt uncomfortable but thought it was normal'
Janet, who lives in Warwickshire, recalls that the sexual abuse started when she was four or five.
“It started when I was small, with my father – touches, cuddles, tickles that started off feeling okay but gradually as he got to …” She breaks off, unwilling to describe the assaults in detail but says the most serious assaults started when she was about eight and the majority of them happened when she was aged 10 to 13.
“It’s tricky because whatever your childhood is, that’s your childhood. So, it’s sort of normal,” she says quietly. “Even though I felt uncomfortable, had painful experiences and felt scared, I wasn’t certain that wasn’t just what happened in a family.
“I didn’t have many friends at school and that was partly because I didn’t want other children coming into my house and experiencing what was happening to me.
"I wasn’t keen on going to other people’s houses in case what was happening to me was happening in their house. I had enough to deal with in my own house, thank you!
“I felt deep down that it was wrong, but I didn’t see what I could do about it. I was too young to leave home and there weren’t any organisations like Childline or that are there to help you. I was pretty much on my own, really.”
Another pleasant surprise came when police believed her.
“I didn’t think I would be believed because there were still things that I couldn’t believe myself, in some ways,” she explains. “The police made it clear from the outset that they believed me and took me seriously.”
In 2015, she went back to the police after she read a piece in the paper about prominent Labour politician, Greville Janner, who was alleged to have committed 22 counts of historic child sexual abuse and died that year.
For Janet, horrible and traumatic memories came flooding back.
She believed it was her duty to speak up and says it felt “healing” when police believed her. “They said ‘Janet, we know it all happened’ and that was another chip at the ice block of disbelief in myself. It was really important.”
On this occasion, she had not one but two IVSA counsellors to help her through the legal system.
Sadly, her evidence did not lead to convictions for the people she named, partly because decades had passed, but she remains proud that she spoke up.
Janet says she wanted to share her story to show that recovery from child sex abuse is possible. Her last therapist told her about a concept called ‘post-traumatic growth.’