The persistent impact of sexual violence across generations

In the past I have written some difficult and even very personal articles for it Yorkshire bylines. This one is different. It’s a story that’s been 21 years in the making and one that I started and then decided on many occasions not to continue. So I’ll start by giving some trigger warnings that this article addresses issues of death and sexual assault.

After the loss of a parent

My father died of a heart attack when he was only 55, as we sat as a family on Headingley cricket ground one Sunday. We went to the Yorkshire game most Sundays both at home and away. We knew he had heart problems, but it was still a huge shock when it happened. I guess if it has to happen, having that fatal attack while doing something you love is the way most people would choose. However, I was left with a long list of things I wanted to say to him, but wouldn’t get the chance to.

When my mother died about fourteen years later, things were very different. Knowing she was suffering from ovarian cancer and dementia, I had resigned, allowing me to care for her for the last seven months of her life. As anyone who has cared for their family in such circumstances knows, it is not always easy. However, it does give you a privileged position; it allowed me to be there for her during that very difficult time when we talked about anything and everything. When she finally died peacefully one evening, I believed nothing was left unsaid.

Memories of serious sexual abuse

Early in her dementia it became apparent that there was a recurring memory that was both extremely painful and disturbing to her. An incident of which I was previously completely unaware. It eventually came up in our conversations, and I discovered that she had been severely sexually abused as a young child (I was never able to determine exactly what had happened) by a man who lived nearby. The aftermath of the attack stayed with her for the rest of her life and suddenly many things fell into place.

From our conversations and some research of my own, I determined that the attack occurred around the mid-1930s. The perpetrator was a young man with learning difficulties who lived with his mother at the end of a ginnel that ran along the side of the back garden of my grandparents’ council house. Despite the dementia, my mother had vivid memories of sitting on a police officer’s knee and having to tell people what had happened. Something that must have been terrible for a young girl. She thought this was in a court of law, although I’m not sure. The result of all this was that the young man was found guilty and, as my mother put it, ‘sent away’.

This was undoubtedly at a time before there was counseling or any real mental health care for victims, especially children. I guess it was just expected that my mother would “get over it.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, the boy in question died while in prison. Apparently his mother stopped my mother every day on the way to school and yelled at her, “You killed my son.” I can’t imagine the damage this has done.

Aftereffects and impact of sexual violence

Fast forward to the 1960s. I have early memories of my mother always shaking. She had married my father in 1958, the most loving and caring man you could find. I remember him trying to explain to me once after I played a game, as I occasionally did, that sometimes things weren’t going well with my mother. He told me that she had had a breakdown due to something that happened to her many years ago and that I should try to be good to her. This is probably my first experience with the consequences of the attack.

My mother was always, as they used to say, ‘a bag of nerves’, but it wasn’t until the end that I really found out why. As I got older, my mother fared much better and we had a brilliant and happy family life.

It wasn’t until dementia set in that those long-suppressed memories returned on a large scale. They clearly scared and worried her, and she started talking about them. By then I knew very few people who were still alive and could remember the events. Her sister was much younger and I don’t think you talked about that at the time. Gradually more information came out as she became more and more concerned, looking for confirmation that it “wouldn’t happen again.”

My mother died peacefully one evening in the bed we set up in the sitting room, after being placed on a syringe float. Her noisy breathing just stopped, and I remember just smiling that her pain, both physical and mental, was over. It wasn’t until two days later that the sadness really started to hit.

Why did I write this? The answer is simple. I think so many people, probably men, think that the effects of sexual assault eventually go away and once they do, they’re gone for good. In my mother’s case this was certainly not the case. It stayed with her until her dying day.

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