‘I was saying no, just saying it so many times’: Woman who was a victim of grooming and SA reveals why it took her 30 years to tell the truth

A Birmingham woman has come forward after three decades, revealing she was sexually assaulted as a teenager. 

What kept her from speaking all those years wasn’t a fear that she wouldn’t be believed. She knew exactly what had happened the instant it ended. What she couldn’t see was how to explain everything that led to the moment.

“I could say, ‘I’ve just been raped,’ but how would I explain why I was there or how I got into that situation in the first place?” She told the BBC, speaking anonymously about what she’d kept to herself for more than three decades.

It started when she was 15 years old and encountered one Keith Allen, a teacher covering lessons at her school in the early 1990s. The woman, who is now in her 40s and living in Sussex, described Allen as “friendly” and “jokey” the first time they met. 

She was too young back then to recognize his behavior was the rehearsed opening moves of a grooming campaign. “When you are in it, you do not realise what is happening, it is very slow,” she added. One warning sign that only made sense to her later was the fact that he would pour her a glass of wine mid-morning to start the day.

Allen had her come to his house for one-to-one clarinet tuition, and there the abuse deepened over time. It started from random touching and ended up in rape. “I was saying no, just saying it so many times, but I couldn’t physically do anything to stop him,” she told the BBC.

One day, at his house, she had an allergic reaction, and she was essentially incapacitated. She was on the bathroom floor, really sick, when Allen forcefully took her to the bedroom and sexually assaulted her.

The silence lasted until 2022

Grief counseling finally convinced the Birmingham woman to release what she had buried. She decided to report Allen to the police, a decision that she said didn’t come easy. The push came from motherhood. “I am a mum now and my children are the age that I was then — and that cannot happen to them.”

A jury convicted Allen of rape and Birmingham Crown Court jailed the now 82-year-old for eight and a half years in 2026. A West Midlands Police detective praised the woman’s courage in bringing the case forward.

The woman’s identity has been withheld to protect her privacy as a survivor of sexual assault, a standard practice in this kind of reporting — the details of the case, including Allen’s conviction and sentence, are a matter of public record.

At sentencing, Allen’s lawyers, per the outlet, argued he had committed the offense at a hard point in his life, when he was struggling with anxiety. The judge remained unpersuaded per the BBC’s report, arguing that Allen had exploited a position of trust and abused a child in his care.

The woman further explained the importance of having people around who believe and support you.