‘Even my family didn’t believe me’: Lifting the taboo on child sexual abuse
Monday, 1 April 2024
At an age where they should be playing with Barbie dolls and teddy bears, children are being sexually abused. Katie Ham reports on why it’s time to lift the taboo on child sexual abuse in Aotearoa. This is part one of a two-part series.
Warning: This story contains details of child sexual abuse and mentions self-harm, suicide and alcoholism
“The child thought she wouldn’t be believed!!!!”, Mattie* read scribbled in the margins of the Oranga Tamariki notes compiled in the wake of her sexual abuse as a child.
Mattie was just nine-years-old when she first disclosed the abuse she’d suffered at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend, who was then in his 70s.
‘Even my family didn’t believe me’
“Even my family didn’t believe me - but the police did,” Mattie told Stuff, 25 years after she first met Detective Inspector Scott Beard.
It was Beard who had handwritten the note in Mattie’s records, down to the four pointed exclamation marks.
The two reunited in 2021 as part of Mattie’s quest to piece together the timeline of her abuse.
“There’s a fair amount I don’t recall and I assume that’s because my brain’s blocked it out because of the trauma.
“But one of the things that stuck out to me was Scott, and reading this note brought that back,” she said.
It was 1999 when Mattie was talking to a neighbour and - without realising it - disclosed the sexual abuse she’d been enduring.
“I was living with my mother and her much older boyfriend, who was in his 70s.
“I was talking to my neighbour who was 15 or 16 when I said something that raised enough of an alarm bell for her to tell her parents. They then called the police.”
Mattie was sent to live with her birth father for a while, before ending up in a foster home and then settling with an extended family member.
“She made it very clear that she didn’t think I’d been sexually abused. Her way of processing it was to say that I’d just seen him in the shower or something like that”.
Her family’s refusal to accept the abuse she’d suffered at the hands of a man they’d introduced into her life further muddled Mattie’s nine-year-old mind, which was already struggling to fully understand and articulate what had happened to her.
‘I’m just one of the many’
Mattie’s abuse was heard before the courts, but her abuser was found not guilty due to a lack of evidence.
“It’s taken me a long time to understand that actually that wasn’t my fault. I was a child, and that’s not on me, I’m not responsible for that.
“I didn’t ask for this behaviour to occur. I didn’t seek it out and actually I didn’t even understand it at the time. I was a kid and the adults that were in my life at that time absolutely failed to protect me.”
This failure was twofold, Mattie says - first it was allowing the abuse to happen, and later it was not providing support to deal with what had happened.
During her teenage years, Mattie fell into a spiral of depression, struggling with self-harm and suicidal thoughts. She has also struggled with alcoholism in her adulthood, but is currently two years sober.
“I ended up working through it on my own. I remember feeling very, very alone.”
Mattie is now in her 30s, living in Auckland and happily married - “I’ve finally found myself a loving family”. She has no contact with her birth family.
‘The statistics speak for themselves’
“Nobody ever wants to think that someone they care about is capable of doing something so monstrous - but they are.
“The statistics tell us as much. They speak for themselves,” Mattie said.
More than half of the sexual abuse reported to police in New Zealand is committed against people under 18-years-old, according to data collected by the Ministry of Justice.
Crucially, 81% of perpetrators of sexual crimes against children under 12 are family members or someone else already known to the child.
Mattie’s one message to the public about child sexual abuse? When approached by a child who says they’ve been abused, “at the very least hear them out”.
“I hope that if child sexual abuse is talked about more, people will be more open to the idea that when someone comes to them and discloses something that maybe it’s not something they’ve made up, but that it’s actually occurred.”
“It’s a huge problem and it happens a lot more than you’d think. I’m just one of the many.”
‘It can happen to all walks of life’
Having reunited with Mattie during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2021, Detective Inspector Scott Beard recalls how he learnt a key lesson from Mattie’s case - how important it is for a child to be believed, both by the police and other adults in their life.
“When a child tells you something, you have to believe them - at least at first - because they need to have confidence they can keep talking to you,” Beard told Stuff.
While the investigation may take a different direction, Beard says it’s paramount a child feels like they have someone they can trust.
Perhaps best known as the face of countless high-profile homicide investigations, Beard was once a detective in Kaikohe, where child sexual abuse is rampant.
In his nearly 44-year policing career, Beard has seen a raft of child sexual abuse survivors and offenders from all walks of life.
While children are often taught of the dangers of ‘stranger danger’ and the ‘man in the white van’, often child sexual abusers are closer to home than the average person would like to admit.
“I’ve dealt with a range of offenders, from gang members to school teachers, sports coaches, people within the church.
“We need to get the message out there that it could be a father, a stepfather, an uncle, a grandfather, a brother.”
Child sexual abuse is also not confined to one corner of Aotearoa, says Beard.
“We have child protection teams in New Zealand Police from the top of the island to the bottom of the island - and there’s a reason for that.”
‘We can’t sweep it under the carpet because it’s never going to go away’
Beard’s hope is that once the conversation around child sexual abuse is normalised, adults in children’s lives will be better able to pick up on a child’s change in behaviour or hear them when they’re trying to say something’s wrong.
“Listen to them, believe them and do something, say something, report it to Oranga Tamariki or the police because you could be saving a child’s life.
“But whatever you do, don’t let it go because sometimes that can have the worse effect.”
While working on a recent research project with Auckland District Health Board, Beard was doing quality assurance on police files when he noticed a disturbing trend.
“What I saw is that for a lot of victims of child sexual abuse, they either became alcoholics, drug dependent, criminals, live in violent relationships, suffer from mental health issues, and the worst thing is that a number of them committed suicide.”
Thankfully, Mattie was removed from the home she was suffering abuse in, but this isn’t the case for all children who are abused.
“These children are our future, we need to invest in them. We can't sweep it under the carpet because it's never going to go away.”
* Not her real name. Survivors of sexual abuse in New Zealand are given automatic lifetime name suppression unless formally waived, as are any victims of a crime under 18. Stuff has given Mattie a pseudonym to protect her identity.
Sexual violence: where to get help
Rape Crisis 0800 88 33 00, click link for local helplines.
Victim Support 0800 842 846.
Safetalk text 4334, phone 0800 044 334 webchat safetotalk.nz or email support@safetotalk.nz.
The Harbour Online support and information for people affected by sexual abuse.
Women’s Refuge 0800 733 843
Male Survivors Aotearoa Helplines across NZ, click to find out more (males only).
If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 111.
If you or someone you know is in a dangerous situation, click the Shielded icon at the bottom of this website to contact Women's Refuge in a safe and anonymous way without it being traced in your browser history. If you're in our app, visit the mobile website here to access Shielded.