Jeremy Indika shares his story. Image credit: Jeremy Indika
Jeremy was a successful aerospace design engineer who enjoyed life, believing he could do anything he set his mind to. At 25 years old, the memories of childhood abuse he’d been suppressing surfaced again. Jeremy shares his story with Emma Lawson and says we can all play our part in breaking the silence surrounding child sexual abuse.
Content warning: This article mentions childhood sexual abuse, which some people may find upsetting. Please take care when reading.
'[I was eight years old when] the abuse began. He managed to groom me very successfully. He made me believe that what I was doing for him was special, and the more I did it, the more special I would become.' Jeremy was a lively, energetic and confident boy.
By all appearances, this remained the case for much of his childhood, teens and early twenties. Even when the abuse ended when he was ten years old, Jeremy says, 'I don’t remember realising that things had changed. I just continued with my life. I didn’t feel hurt. I didn’t feel in any danger.'
In terms of the grooming, Jeremy says, 'he was very clever in manipulating me to think that what was going on was normal… into understanding that this was mine and his secret, and it was our secret to keep.' Jeremy succeeded at school and had a strong group of friends. Far from being the shy and retiring type, he was candid in class, and others thought of him as chatty, honest and bold.
'I was involved in all sports, captaining many teams. There was no way of telling what I had been experiencing. It was like I had buried it deep somewhere.' Jeremy finished college and was awarded an advanced modern apprenticeship with an aerospace company, where he learnt how to design aircraft structure and quickly climbed the corporate ladder.
What did the impact of abuse look like for you in the years after it happened?
My life continued in many ways. I cleverly boxed the abuse up and just put it to the back of my mind, had a great set of friends, and academically I was doing well at school. We were being naughty at school, but I was also doing well in class, so there was nothing massively out of the ordinary for anybody to pick up on anything. I got my apprenticeship in engineering. I was a very ambitious young man.
There’s that common perception that if you're a child and you've been abused, you’re going to be introverted, not leave your room, not able to have friends, not be able to concentrate at school. Of course, that happens.
But I didn’t fit that description. I was chasing Formula One during my engineering career. That was the big goal. I started in aerospace engineering, moved to automotive and then the supercar industry. I was nearly at Formula One, one step away working for McLaren, and then at the age of 25 all the memories came back. I tried to deal with them myself for two years.
When did you decide to speak out for the first time? How did you find your voice?
It was the fear of what was going to happen if I don't do something different that pushed me to tell somebody. When I was 27 years old, I spoke out to a close friend. I felt relieved and continued to speak out. I've had this incredible set of friends throughout my life that I believe now were really my rock. When I was 32 years old, I took my story public. Dealing with [the memories] by speaking out wasn't easy, of course. I left my job to go full time in breaking the silence around abuse. But I became more confident in telling my story.
Once I'd spoken out for the first time and spent the next five years speaking to more and more people, I started doing the research online to see what was going on out there. Then I decided I should try and do something about this. I feel so fortunate.
I feel like I am one of the lucky ones. I had good friends and a career that kept me focused by giving me structure and purpose. I didn't get captured by drugs and the alcohol that people can get hooked on. But the significance of my engineering career just started to fade away.
I started to question, what's the point in all of it? Not worthless; I just felt like it was almost wasting my time and I had something bigger to do. I had some savings from my former job and I wanted to use them to raise awareness so we can protect children.
What pushed me to speak out for the first time wasn't confidence. It was the fact that I'd been sitting with these memories from 25 to 27 for two years, thinking that I could just ignore them and that they'll go away and that just wasn't happening – they were just growing in magnitude and I was losing.
What are your thoughts on the terms ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’ when talking about people who have suffered abuse?
Personally, I’m now coming away from the term ‘survivor’. I don’t feel extremely comfortable with that term anymore. I used to use it a lot. I just feel like that means I'm broken in some way – that it put some form of label on me that I can't shake off. So now I’m saying that I’m someone who went through sexual abuse in my childhood and speaking out about it.
How are you communicating your story and message?
I want to get this subject on everyone’s table because this is everyone’s concern, so I use a variety of creative ways to do this. I use film, photography, illustration to capture people’s attention and make the content interesting and engaging for people to follow. I write captivating stories, use great visuals and clever writing. I want to turn an uncomfortable topic into one that people want to know more about. I believe all of this is possible.
Are there any myths around child sexual abuse that you think need to be debunked, and how can the conversation be reframed in the media and culture to better protect children and young people?
The only things I was seeing around this topic were extreme media reports, which we still see – the Jimmy Savilles of this world. Nobody's talking about the uncle or the father, or the older teenager. It makes it even harder to say something. I wasn't following anybody on social media that talked about abuse. I feel like these topics weren’t talked about in my school.
For me, there was embarrassment that [my abuser] was a man. No guy in his mid-20s wants to start chatting to his family or friends about this. Also, I feel like it’s a misconception to think that all sexual abuse carried out on a child is violent. The grooming process can appear very loving and caring, but obviously it's manipulation and trickery.
Much of my public speaking about prevention has been with the children, teaching them, educating them on simple things and I feel like maybe that's been a little incorrect of me – that we should not place the responsibility on children to not be abused.
Educating children is important, but adults have a responsibility to stop this from happening and need to work with or help the people that have got these tendencies in their head.
How are we going to encourage them to not commit the crime? Another myth is that abuse isn’t preventable – that we can’t get potential abusers to change their mind about committing the crime.
How can adults in positions of trust prepare and look out for the children in their care? What would your advice be to faith and community groups who form part of the larger community around children?
I would love to see a more open environment, letting children know that even if they think they're doing something wrong, they're not going to get in trouble for it. That it's worse to not say something and that as adults we would rather that they told us if they feel like they're in trouble, made a mistake or done something wrong.
Make space to listen. I was recently asked about signs that a child is being sexually abused. I feel like the signs could go either way. You could have an introverted child that goes wild. You can have a wild child that goes introverted. It's that drastic change in behaviour. Also, let's teach children about private areas and what to do if anybody goes near them. Let's really hit this head on and open the discussion because the younger generations coming through the system are relying on us to do that.
You can find out more about Jeremy’s work at jeremyindika.com
If you've been affected by any of the issues raised, call our safeguarding helpline on 0303 003 1111 (option 2).
