IT WAS SORDID

Being abused by so many paedophiles in succession was sordid, utterly sordid. My memories start around age 3 but it had been going on for a long time before then. By the time I was 3 the abuse was part of the fabric of life at my grandparents' place.

I remember how there was a bare old mattress in every my room in my grandparents' house except for my grandmother's bedroom, my grandfather's bedroom, the kitchen, bathroom, dining room and front room where my grandmother held her seances. There was often more than one mattress in several of the rooms. The downstairs living room had 2 mattresses.

I remember several other children, apart from me and my brother, in other rooms on other mattresses. The paedophiles went from child to child, from mattress to mattress and from room to room.

I remember lying on a mattress with the sensation of being bathed in semen because so many men had ejaculated on me. Other times I was lying in semen, blood, urine and vomit. The blood was my blood. The urine was a combination of mine and other people's. The vomit was my own.

There were skanky old towels on the floor close to each mattress. My grandfather would roughly wipe the worst grot off me inbetween paedophiles so it wasn't too gross but I still had to lie in the grot. He would tell me who was coming next - a man, two men, a man and a woman, two women etc. He would also tell me what position to lie in for them. The sexual abuse was oral, anal and vaginal with fingers and objects.

My grandmother would come and waggle her finger in my face and tell me to "behave myself and not to cause any trouble". To me this translated into "do everything that is asked of you, don't make a fuss, don't refuse anything, don't gagg."

I felt like an object, I did not feel human at all. I felt used, trashed and then abandoned when each abuser had made use of me. I felt so alone and isolated. I felt like no one saw me for me, just for what they wanted from me. I felt useful only for sex. It was utterly horrible.