Woman urges sex abuse victims to come forward

Woman urges sex abuse victims to come forward

31 July 2019

JENNIFER — not her real name — doesn’t look like a victim, but she is. At 44, she is the happily married mother of two daughters who works as a highly skilled health professional.

She no longer lives in her home town of Downpatrick, moving onwards, like many others, for work and to raise her family elsewhere.

But for 36 years she has been hiding a secret about something that was done to her by a man who was “a pillar of the community” who worked in a bank in Downpatrick.

The man — James Gerald McEvoy of Downpatrick Street, Rathfriland — caused her to engage in acts of gross indecency with him in his home. When she was just aged eight years old. When her parents and other adults implicitly trusted him and would not have said a bad word about him.

The 62 year-old has since been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment after being found guilty on June 27 of 15 charges of gross indecency indecent assault carried out on her and 20 years later on another girl aged 11 from Warrenpoint where he was living at the time. McEvoy is to remain on the Sexual Offenders Registration for an “indefinite period” and is banned from working with children.

It was a chance meeting with her abuser in October 2016 which chilled Jennifer’s blood, stopping her in her tracks.

It was only then that she decided to do something about it, after keeping what had happened to her secret from her husband, her parents and siblings for years.

“I was on a return flight from a work course in England and I recognised James McEvoy in the departure lounge. It was a huge shock after all of these years because his family moved away quite some time ago,” Jennifer recalled.

“When I was reclaiming my bag, I saw him again and I stood back away from him and was really quite stunned and shaken. That was the trigger for me really and I decided I had to report this. I think I never would have done so only for the fact that I saw him. 

“It was also because I was around eight at the time and my eldest daughter was about to turn eight and that really hit home then.”

Then one night as she tucked her children into bed, she sat down to make a call to the Rowan Sexual Assault Referral Centre based in Antrim Area Hospital.

“I phoned the Rowan and went through the process of making a complaint. I never spoke about it to my husband before I made the call but of course I subsequently had to, which was very difficult,” said Jennifer.

“It was very hard to make the call. My husband was away at work at the time and I got my daughters to bed and I thought, ‘Right it’s now or never’.

“I just thought that I lived with the guilt for years when I could have been potentially protecting others. As it obviously turned out, he did repeat his behaviour. I think that there was about a 20-year gap between when he did to me and the other girl but the cases were mirror images of each other.”

Jennifer never told her immediate family what had happened — in fact, she only told her mother last year when the police investigation was well underway.

“I didn’t want to put her through all the worry and I’d always tried to forget it,” she said. “I did tell two other friends and that was part of the evidence gathered by the PSNI and the PPS (Public Prosecution Service).

“At the time I told my best friend at school who now lives in London. I contacted her as per the request from the detective to ask her if she was prepared to be interviewed by police. 

“She was and she was interviewed later by the Metropolitan Police and made it very clear that she and her sister had no idea at the time of what to do and felt bad that they didn’t tell their own mother. I told another best friend years later.”

After she made her complaint, the investigation was led by Detective Constable Michael Meehan.

“My expectations were quite low if I’m honest,” said Jennifer. “At the beginning I had made it very clear to Detective Meehan, who was absolutely fantastic, that I didn’t care if it got to court or not. I just wanted him to know that I know what he did was wrong and for him to get the knock on the door from the police.

“When the detective later interviewed my husband, I remember him telling me that the detective promised him I would have my day in court.

“Looking back at the length of time from when it happened, I don’t know if I believed it would proceed, but I’m just delighted it did.

“There’s a real sense that I did the right thing as a citizen, while I do have regrets that I didn’t do it years ago, but as a child I wasn’t adequately equipped with the skills.”

Part of the reason for finally making her complaint was Jennifer’s over-riding feeling of guilt for not speaking up earlier as an articulate and experienced adult.

“It stopped when I made sure not to be around him. I just got myself out of the equation and then he moved away,” explained Jennifer. “I just got over my guilt. I needed to realise that I was the victim and I just wanted other people to be protected.”

Jennifer acknowledges that what happened impacted on her life in ways that she is only now understanding.

“As part of the process I had to be seen by a clinical psychologist for a report for the judge. When he made me look back from my birth to present day, I could see that it really did impact on my life in respect of my teenage years as I was very wary of men until I became an adult and felt that I could cope with anything.”

Jennifer had a very vivid recall of the encounters with McEvoy which helped build a strong case.

“I could describe the house, the room and the fact that it was summertime,” she adds. “I didn’t tell anyone I was going to do the police interview. It was just something I had to do on my own. There was so much information I had to give, even remembering what I got from Santa   that year. It was all evidence gathering but I could see how that in itself would put some people off from going to court.”

Spurred on by her strong initial testimony in the police interview, known in the justice system as Achieving Best Evidence (ABE), Detective Meehan did some extensive research and turned up trumps.

“Michael just dug down. He rang me one day and said, ‘You won’t believe this. There was a previous allegation, a young 11 year-old from Warrenpoint had made a complaint. But it wasn’t proceeded with, not because the police did not believe her story, rather that her mother did not think that her daughter could have gone through the trial’.

“It was heartening and encouraging to me to learn that there had been another complaint as I just felt justified then.”

The two women, Jennifer and Angela — not her real name and now aged 31 — have naturally bonded over their shared experience.

They needed the support of each other and their close family members and friends as they found the four-day trial challenging.

Jennifer was the first to give evidence on the first day at Downpatrick Crown Court on May 7.

She had felt brave enough to face McEvoy in open court, but took the advice of her senior counsel and chose to give evidence by video link.

“I went upstairs in the courthouse and I had to sit and watch the whole courtroom and my ABE video interview,” she said.

“The cross examination was absolutely horrendous. I appreciate that it is the job of the defence counsel, but he made me doubt myself and made me feel that I was a liar and that the details I had given were incorrect basically. 

“I was also questioned as a health professional where he insinuated that I should know all about child protection and asked why did it take me so long to come forward. 

“I told him that I did feel bad about not coming forward which all added to my sense of guilt. I started to break down at that stage and said that I felt very guilty as I hadn’t protected other people. But while it was horrendous, I’m was so glad that I stuck at it and saw it through.”

The whole process has taken its toll on Jennifer over the last two and a half years.

“It had a huge impact on my work. I needed to take a few weeks off and I’ve had counselling. While I have returned to work, I have since changed my job due to the pressure really,” she said.

However, she would urge other victims of historic sex abuse to make complaints to the police as ultimately she feels vindicated and that justice has been served.

Jennifer said: “I would encourage anybody to go for it. To my mind, I’d waited this long [to make a complaint] so for the process to take so long to get it into court was bearable. The police do fantastic work, and I had great support from them, but they have to get every bit of evidence gathered so that it’s a watertight case.”

She knows that she could not have taken her complaint to its fruition had it not been for the support from her husband and family and friends, and from professionals who work in the background to support the police and the justice system in cases like hers.

Jennifer urged other victims: “Make a complaint, follow it through and stick with it. Get support, even if you think you don’t need it, you will. See a GP, get counselling, whatever help you can. It’s really important.”

If you wish to make a complaint of a sexual offence, you can ring the Rowan Sexual Assault Referral Centre 24 hours a day on 0800 389 4424 or the police on 999 or 101.