Suzie’s story
Her father would drift in and out of her life, coming and going whenever he pleased.
Suzie* didn’t get on well with her mother. She lived in a cramped house with her mother and brother. Arguments eventually pushed her out of her home and she moved in with her grandmother. But after three years, her grandmother could no longer care for Suzie, and her mother did not want her back. When her father proposed taking Suzie with him on holiday to Morocco for six weeks, the decision was made for her.
Suzie packed her bags and tried to look forward to building a relationship with her father. However, the reality of the situation was worse than Suzie could ever have imagined.
‘Somehow, some way my dad had arranged for me to be with people. He agreed with his brother and step-brother that they could do stuff to me – I was sexually abused by them’
Suzie was only eleven years old. When she returned to London, she didn’t know who to turn to. She was scared and couldn’t feel safe anywhere. The one person who was supposed to protect her had abused that trust and Suzie felt alone and scared. She tried to talk to her best friend for support, but tragically her best friend died a short time later. And trying to deal with this and also losing the only person she could talk her situation through with, Suzie again found herself alone.
Unknown to Suzie, someone else had overheard her telling her best friend about what had happened in Morocco. ‘Another kid on the estate heard me and then told my mum about what I had said. We went to court over it but in the end the case was dropped – it was too hard to get evidence. After that nobody ever spoke about it again.’
Her grandmother had died and so she moved in with her grandfather. Suzie was on a downward spiral with no support and no means to help herself. Suzie found her own way to try to deal with things. She took money from her grandfather to pay for a growing addiction to cannabis which she had been smoking since returning from Morocco. She went to school less and less. She began to self harm. When she couldn’t get money from her grandfather she would go out to the streets to get it.
By the age of 14, Suzie had been forced out of her grandfather’s home and was selling drugs on the streets. She would ring emergency accommodation services, each time giving a different name so that she could go back.
“I had to give them a fake name each time because once you had said that you were homeless due to an emergency the first time, it could not be an emergency the second time but still they couldn’t house me”.
Suzie continued to sleep anywhere that she could, “I slept in bus shelters. If the weather was warm I would go out and about during the day and back again to the shelter at night. I would keep going to the council asking for help but they kept saying that I was not homeless because I could go and live with my dad but they hadn’t bothered to check that there was an injunction against him and he could not come near me”.
For almost two years Suzie continued in this pattern, sleeping at friend’s houses, roaming the streets at night and sleeping in bus shelters.
On her 17th birthday, Suzie was placed in temporary accommodation and three months later she was referred to Centrepoint. Since arriving at Centrepoint Suzie has begun taking steps to deal with her past. She talks through her problems and is planning on going back to full time education and one day hopes to run a nursery caring for children. She finally has somewhere safe that she can call home:
“Centrepoint does not just offer young people someone to talk to. I didn’t believe what they could do for me until it happened. I belong here more than I have belonged anywhere else, not with my granddad or even before my Nan died. I feel like an important part of Centrepoint and I hope that I will be missed when I move on.”
*Suzie's name has been changed to protect her identity
