Interview with Marilyn Hawes

The Mental Health Revolution Podcast

“I had planned how to die – I didn’t know how to live.”

In this episode of a Mental Health Revolution in the Workplace, Marilyn Hawes explains the impact of the grooming and sexual abuse of her three sons, and how her ‘greatest calling’ came out of the pain is generated.

We go on to talk about how the after-effects can seep far and wide into adulthood and the workplace, and what employees can do to counteract these effects.

Founder and CEO of Freedom From Abuse Marilyn Hawes is a former music teacher whose three sons were sexually groomed and assaulted by their headteacher, a close family friend.

In 2002 the police knocked on her door at home to say “your three boys are being sexually abused by the headteacher at the school where you are deputy's head”. Having pleaded guilty the judge gave the headteacher a suspended sentence. Marilyn took the case to the court of appeal and he was sent down. Because Marilyn did not want other families to go through the trauma she and her family had suffered she began “Enough Abuse”. In 2013 it became a charity and in September 2017 she was awarded “The Most Inspirational Woman of 2017” for the work she has done in educating schools, parents, and children in “grooming” the preamble to child sexual abuse. In May 2018 Marilyn set up “Freedom From Abuse”. Because of the increasing demand from families and the need to act quickly she decided to move from a charity to a company.

So she can deliver a more comprehensive service more efficiently to both prevent abuse and support the abused to rebuild their lives and THRIVE.

As Marilyn’s own knowledge and expertise grew, she became more involved professionally in the world of child protection and safeguarding and set up the charity Enough Abuse UK in 2004.

Today, when she is not presenting training in schools up and down the country, Marilyn is to be found delivering her pragmatic views about child abuse on the likes of BBC Radio and TV, local radio stations, Sky News, ITN, and LBC.

Marilyn Hawes has been Vice Chairman of Governors for nine years at a C of E aided school.

Read A Mother’s Story – Marilyn’s personal recollection of the traumatic aftermath of her boys’ abuse.

https://freedom-abuse.org/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.