When I was 14, I had already learned to touch type and saw it as an asset. In my teens and early adulthood, I would temp in London and later in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. Before that, when I was still living at home in Knowle, Devon, under the care act, I used to knock on the doors of local businesses looking for work. One man who ran a sawmill offered me a job and asked if I wanted to go to Ilfracombe, a nearby coastal town. I trusted him.
He drove in the general direction of Ilfracombe, but then turned off onto another road. I remember thinking it was strange. He took me to a pine forest: the opening by the gate had been cut down, with trees still standing in the distance. Looking back, I can see all the warning signs, but I was 14 and I wanted to believe I was safe.
In that forest, he asked me to slap him around the face and offered me ten British pounds for each slap. I was frightened, but I did it six times. Then I told him I was scared. He gave me sixty pounds, drove me to Ilfracombe, and told me not to tell anyone because he would deny it. I was terrified, so I stayed silent and carried that secret alone.
Years later, I got my care reports and my counsellor advised me not to read them on my own. When I eventually did, they brought huge clarity about my time in care. I learned that even my mother had “checked him out”. According to the reports, she had told my social worker, Mr Spicer, that she felt this man had “alternative expectations”. Her intuition had picked up what I, as a child, couldn’t fully name at the time.
Much later, a dear friend told me that this incident was the beginning of my Complex PTSD. I don’t see it that way; it wasn’t the start, but it was a significant part of my trauma timeline. It was one of those moments where an adult abused my trust, twisted a situation under the guise of “help” and “work”, and left me to carry the shame and confusion. It sits there in my history as a painful but important piece of understanding how my Complex PTSD developed over time.