Child sexual abuse: 'I sometimes wonder how I managed to survive'
Tom Maddick/SWNS
"In my eyes it was just an older male who was paying attention to me and I think I thrived off that," says Jemma. The pair fixed up meetings, after school and late at night, using a mobile phone he had secretly given Jemma. But it all ended when Jemma's mum discovered what had been happening and the police were called.She uses primary colours to draw people in and then likes"seeing the looks on their faces when they realise what it's about"
"All my designs are bright and colourful because I wanted everyone to discuss child sexual abuse openly and it not to be a sore subject that everyone avoids," she says.One of Jemma's pieces - a cushion covered with things her abuser used to say to her and phrases related to her experience "And I went with my friend to the library to look up the reproductive system. There was a sort of horror as it dawned on me that this is the thing that makes a baby. So when my periods stopped, I put it together with what I read."The tale of her abuse is horrific. She says she felt"utterly powerless" and, looking back, thinks that she disassociated from her body when the abuse happened.
And, having been a bright student in school with a talent for writing, she was drawn to the written word. "I think in truth, how the poetry started was 'this book is taking forever, I want to do something that I can finish'," she jokes.Why write?"It's the C word: cathartic. It's this outpouring. Especially as having had to suppress so much under these circumstances, it's liberating.
The one-man play is written and performed by theatre director Patrick Sandford. It tells his story of being sexually abused, aged nine, by a teacher in the 1960s. "It was, I think, in many ways, as catastrophic psychologically as the actual abuse. It made me feel worthless. What had I done wrong? I felt hideous and ugly."
He underwent therapy and later he started to write the play Groomed as a"therapeutic, cathartic exercise"."Creating fiction was easier and safer than real life," says Patrick on how the world of theatre helped him
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