Around 1996. I was a very vulnerable 16 year old as I was suffering severe neglect and abuse at home. I was brought to the venture scouts by a friend at the time. The assistant venture scout leader, in his twenties, was flirtatious with certain girls.
He offered everyone lifts back after the weekly sessions, in his land rover. After I joined he switched his attention from one other girl he was abusing. to me.
Although I lived only a 5 minute walk away from the scout hut, he would drop everyone else off first and stop at a secluded parking spot in the countryside and sexually abuse me. He lived with his girlfriend and when she was away he would take me to his house and do it there.
The main leader knew about this and would make comments to me asking how it felt to be “the other woman”. The abuser would gossip about me to him and the other assistant leader – a female school teacher – in the pub where we all went drinking after our weekly meetings, despite the fact most of us were underage.
He’d tell them I was bad in bed etc. Of course I was- I was a virgin when I met him.
The main leader eventually told the abuser that he was getting fed up with his promiscuous behaviour with the female venture scouts and that he had better make sure I was the last one, or he would have to tell his girlfriend. He never did. Of course he never threatened to report him to the scout association.
When we would go on venture scout trips I would stay in his tent with him whilst the other girls stayed in their tents so it was obvious to all what was happening.
The abuse went on for about 2 years-compounded by the fact that I was suffering greatly at home and when I got (very regularly) kicked out by my parents I would stay with the abuser (who had his own house and by now had broken up with his girlfriend). Whenever I tried to break up with him he would threaten to kill me and follow me around in his car, tears streaming down his face.
He committed suicide in his 30s. I don’t know if there was a trigger. I hadn’t seen him in years by that time.
