‘Christmas can be horrific for some kids – one girl had to eat dinner with her abuser’

Christmas. It’s all about families – grandparents, uncles, aunts and armies of cousins piling in through the front door, laden with wrapped presents.

It’s a happy day filled with love and a real celebration of togetherness.

But that’s not true for everyone. For some children, the prospect of spending Christmas with relatives is filled with dread – because it means coming face to face with their abusers.

Last year, Tiffany – not her real name – knew that one of the people coming through the door was the man who had sexually abused her. Feeling sick to her stomach, she couldn’t face sitting through lunch trying to avoid his eye.

Her parents knew nothing of what had happened to Tiffany. Frightened and confused, she hadn’t yet found a way 
to tell them. But she had to tell someone. And so, on Christmas morning, she rang Childline.

‘I remember the call vividly,’ says Rebekah Hipkiss, 60, who was on call last Christmas Day with the charity, as she will be again this year. ‘Listening to her sobbing was heartbreaking.

‘This 13-year-old girl woke up on Christmas morning, not excited to open her presents, but terrified because the relative who’d been abusing her was about to walk back into her home – her safe place.

‘She was on the phone to me for about 20 minutes. I listened until she had spilled everything out and felt calmer.’

Rebekah doesn’t know what happened to Tiffany. But she is confident that, simply by listening, she made her feel better. She also hopes she helped her get one step closer to taking control.

Tiffany is far from alone. Last winter, nearly 3,000 children contacted the NSPCC’s Childline about abuse.

But calls can also be about a number of other concerns. On average, a child contacts Childline every 45 seconds and last year the charity delivered over 160,000 counselling sessions with children and young people.

‘In most cases, unless a young person is in immediate danger or is too young to have capacity, we don’t step in to give advice or solve problems,’ says Rebekah, who has 15 years’ experience of working with Childline, first as a volunteer and now on staff.

‘We are a listening service – our job is to hear young people and validate their emotions.

‘We empower young people to make their own decisions by helping them see their options. It can be a slow process – one step at a time.

‘Our job is to empathise, find out how they feel about their problem and then support them through whatever decisions they make.’

However, while Rebekah, who oversees other volunteers in her role as a Practitioner, doesn’t know what happened to Tiffany, she does know what happened to some of the young people who have called Childline.

When she walks into its London office on Christmas morning, the phone and internet chat lines will be alive with thank you messages.

‘I will be there for the first shift, which starts at 7am,’ she says. ‘Normally it starts with young people wanting to say thank you. There will be children whose lives we have literally saved.

‘They had taken an overdose and were too frightened to tell anyone what they had done. So they rang Childline. We stayed on the line with them and got them help.’

Sadly, however, as the morning progresses, the calls will change.

‘We get a lot of calls from children in care. Christmas is a particularly lonely time.Their parents may have said they will pick them up and they don’t show up. They are left waiting and hoping.

‘We have calls from young people who are struggling with food issues. They may be trying to restrict what they eat, so being encouraged to pile their plate high with mince pies is tough.

‘By the end of the day, the arguments have started. Many young people are trying to cope with blended families and tensions can run high.

‘Or they are worried how much their families are spending when they know that money is tight.

‘Then there are children like Tiffany. They’ve been abused by a relative who is coming for Christmas.’

Although the Childline office will stay manned all day – as it is throughout the year – Rebekah, who is separated, will be home to enjoy a late lunch with her children Joseph, 30 and Isobel, 29.

‘They are very used to Childline
being a huge part of my life,’ she says. ‘They’ve always enjoyed teasing, “You can’t shout at me because you work for Childline”.’

Rebekah worked for the British Film Institute before her children were born and joined Childline after volunteering at a refuge.

‘I was impressed by the rigorous training over three months and that there are always staff on hand to refer anything to,’ she says. ‘Even so, it felt overwhelming at first.

‘Although you have to learn not to take the stories home with you, some still stay with me.

‘There was the ten-year-old girl who had lost her mum to cancer. Her dad
had remarried.

‘He was moving back into the family home with his wife and new baby and said the girl couldn’t keep her mum’s beloved dog, which she’d promised to look after. It broke my heart.

‘Much more recently, I was talking to a boy who was really concerned that he had sent pictures online to what he thought was a 17-year-old girl.

‘In fact, it was a scammer who was threatening to send them to family and friends if the boy didn’t pay up. He wanted to be a pilot and was worried it would affect his whole future.

‘Then there was the girl who had been abused and groomed and thought she was pregnant. She was just 14.

‘We hear from a lot of children who are being bullied. In the past the bullying would stop at the school gates. Now, with social media, it carries on into their bedrooms. There is no escape for them.

‘There are the young people coping with death or illness – their mum has been diagnosed with cancer or their grandma has died and they are upset but don’t want to share with Dad because they know he is struggling with his own grief.

‘Listening seems such a small thing but I firmly believe we change lives – even though we rarely get to see the difference we’ve made.’

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