Survivors' Story

I don’t know if I qualify as a survivor.

When I was little, I lived with an aunt and uncle, my mother’s brother.
I don’t remember much about this.

When I was about five, they decided to make it permanent and tried to adopt me, my mother objected and one day I was put in the back of a van, with a mattress in it and my mother (who I did not know), her then husband (not my father), drove off, when we got to the bottom of the road, my mother turned round and told me to shut up, she later told me that, she did not want me, but she did not want my aunt and uncle to have me either, I was hers. That was the way things went.

Later one of my older sisters joined us from another relative, and my mother had another baby. And my mother divorced.

When I was about 7 my mother convinced the doctor I was hyperactive and some how got him to prescribe sleeping pills for me, the side effects of these gave me hallucinations, that terrified me, but even by then I was more terrified of my mother then the scary things I saw. Eventually I stopped making it to school, I would set off on my own (not unusual in 1976) and just not get there, I could not follow simple instructions, I was out of it, somehow social services got involved.

About the same time, the teachers noticed the bruises all over my body and sympathetically asked me to explain how I got them, when I finally told them their attitudes changed to how could I say such things about my own mother. When people asked about the bruises my mother told them I got them playing football (which I did not as I was not allowed out to play with anyone).

I ended up in foster care, and came down off the drugs, but the foster care was only temporary.

After I got back things were not as bad as before, for a while my memory is sketchy around then. Then things broke down between my mother and her boyfriend (who was nice to me), and he left.

After that it was all down hill, me and my sister (who was also treated badly), had enforced on us all the responsibility of running the house (aged around 8 my sister around 11), my mother did nothing but give orders and dealt out punishments, or just hit us because she felt like it she spent the money running up catalogue credit which then had to be paid back, so we never had money for the things we needed, like food, she said they feed you at school so eat there. And my mother took on the role of a hypochondriac.

By the time I left juniors, I was going to school with holes in my clothes, eating ravenously at school, and had bruises over me regularly, the school ignored this.

I was not allowed friends, I got home from school changed in to my work clothes and was set to work, until bed time. Once I was too tired and said I done the washing up when I had not, so I could go to bed, while I was asleep my mother dragged me out of bed and threw me down the stairs, kicking and punching me. My mother said I was lazy, and while we worked she sat and watched TV, until it was something she wanted to do, then suddenly she was well enough.

When we had company she put on the act of caring, we even got fed at meal times, that’s when I realised she knew what she was doing. Before relatives turned up to visit, we were told that they were here to see her, not us, and we were to stay out of the way. Before we visited people, we were told to sit down and shut up when we got there, we tried to do as we were told but there was always something we did wrong, or that she said we did, and we were punished, the rules changed all the time and were whatever she said they were.

She made sure I was isolated.

Eventually my older sister left to live with her father, I don’t "know" who my father is, I asked my mother who would not tell me till I was 18, when I did ask her then she gave me a name, when I asked her why she would not tell me before, I was told that she did not want to give me somewhere to run to."If she did not know what she was doing was wrong, then why would she think that? She knew".

After my sister left, all her work load was placed on me, my mother and little brother watched TV, and I worked and went to school.

Things carried on like this till about 13 1/2, I said "no" to my mother and she made a swing at me with a garden spade, straight for my head, if I had not moved she would have killed me, I ran, (at some point I must have stopped running, and blanked out, it was light when I ran and night when I next knew, the rest is gone) this was in front of the rest of the streets children, I know they saw, I know they told their parents, nothing was said or done, by anyone, after that is when I started to lose it.

I ran away over night a few times after that when she got violent, after one of these times I went to
social services, they weren’t interested and just passed off everything I said to them, gave me my bus fare home, and told me if it happened again to go to the police. Of course it happened again, and I did as I was advised, the police listened to me for a while, I was in a total state and prob wasn’t making coherent sense, then they took me back to her, and asked her to explain, she put on her frail hypochondriac act, and told them I was the one who was the problem, the police woman at the end then told me I should behave myself, and if I bothered them again she "would kick my head in", and that’s a quote. After they went I was ordered to my bedroom, and my mother bolted the door on my room.

My mother took this as a free pass, and things got real worse over the next few months, eventually I ended back at social services, I told them what the police said, they said they did not believe me, they weren’t interested until I started to leave, when they asked me where I was going, I said I did not know, after that I ended up in voluntary care, they interviewed my mother, who lied to them, when I said I could prove to my social worker that she had lied, at least about one thing, he told me, "I can’t do that". I had been referred to the educational psychologist, after an incident at school, where I broke down in class and ran off in tears. The first appointment had been cancelled by them while I was living at home, and the second appointment was cancelled by my social worker, when I was in care I found out later.

After a few children homes for about six months, I ended up in foster care again at 14, my foster parents tried to force me to talk, when I did tell them some of the things that had been done to me, I was told by my foster mother, "Mothers don’t do things like that to there children", and that has been the problem all along, nobody believed me because it was my mother, therefore I was an evil lying child. I think that’s when I stopped "talking" to any one and turned inward. I stuck it out in that foster home, I got fed, clothed, was not hit, and was allowed to do my school homework, but it wasn’t a home for me.

At 17 I had left the care system, and was living in a bed sit, got a girl friend, and things went wrong, I had tried to put my past behind me, to forget, not realising the effect it had had on me, but my then girl friend worked with an old neighbour of mine, a girl about my age, they got talking, and the neighbour realised who I was, my then girlfriend came home one day and told me about this, then told me that my old neighbour had asked, "what was all the screaming they had heard, through the walls?"

I broke.

Soon after my girl friend and I split, I wasn’t sleeping anymore, and my behaviour became erratic, I had depression and the rest, we were 18 and she could not cope. We had the same GP, who told her that I was the one who had to ask for help.

I did not ask for help until one night I found myself in an ally, crying, not knowing how long I had been there, or how I got there, (and I was sober).

I went to my GP, and was immediately referred to a psychologist, I had two years in total, on and off, twice a week, 1 hour a time, session with him, the first job he had was to teach me to talk about me, I did not get it, I think I still don’t "understand" it, but I went, I had art therapy to help me express myself, and day services group to try and teach me to socialise. All the success was limited, there was too much damage done, too early in my life and for too long.

I tried to make a go of my life for about 10 years after that (I was about 28), before it all became too much for me to cope with, and I was put on sick, and went back into therapy, I eventually got a diagnosis of a "Serious Personality Disorder", and have lived on benefits ever since. I was complicit in not getting a diagnosis, so I did not have to declare it or lie about it, when going for jobs etc.

So here I am at 40, I have been single since I was 21, I live in a bedsit, with no help from the CMHT, I have watched the people I knew when I was younger move on, get married, get jobs, and lost touch, after that cycle happening a few times, I don’t bother anymore.

I have had no contact with any of my family or relatives for 20 years, it’s not like I know them or them me, and my mother lied to most of them that all the trouble was my fault, which some of them throw back at me.

I have left out some of the nastier things that were done to me, I don’t like to think of them, and really don’t want to write them down (note - I was never sexually abused, that I know of, but there are blanks in my memory).

I did not say this had a happy ending.

As I said at the beginning - "I don’t know if I qualify as a survivor.” my body survived, the rest of me is a shell.

I think the point of writing this is, the people (adults) around me knew what was being done to me, they had witnessed it, it did not all happen behind closed doors, and they did nothing. When I spoke out, I was dismissed, and the people who should have helped me, "chose" not to.

Children are everybody’s responsibility.

Anonymous.