Читать книгу Cry Myself to Sleep: He had to escape. They would never hurt him again. - Joe Peters - Страница 6

Even once I was attending school like a normal child, my lack of a voice and my fear of the violence that I knew Mum, Amani and my brothers were capable of meant that I was still not able to escape the horrors of my home. While I was actually at school I was bullied and teased by the other children for being mute and backward and different, but nothing they could do to me was ever as bad as the torture I had already grown used to at home.

I still had to spend much of my life in the cellar when I was back in the house and as well as abusing me themselves, Amani and Mum decided that they could earn some money from me.

Amani had a contact, a man I only ever knew as Uncle Douglas, a seedy, overweight, evil-smelling old man who ran an organized paedophile ring from his home. At first when he was brought to the house I thought he was going to be nice to me, because he gave me sweets and wanted to take my picture, but when he tried to get my clothes off I fought back, biting like the little wild animal I had become, and he called Amani in to help him. The two of them raped and beat me together with all their adult strength, so that I would know it was never going to be worth fighting against them again, and so that I would understand that they expected me to be totally obedient, no matter what they demanded of me.

To begin with Mum sent me off with Uncle Douglas on my own to be ‘groomed’, which meant being repeatedly raped and abused in a hotel room deep in the countryside. He would drive me there, locked in the car, telling me of all the things that were going to happen to me and what the punishment would be if I tried to escape. He locked me into the boot of the car while he organized the room, only letting me out once the coast was clear for him to take me into the secluded, cabin-style room. Once I was safely in the room, he was free to beat and rape me and force me to perform any sexual act or humiliation that occurred to him. He took his time over everything, savouring the moment, even leaving me in the room, naked and chained to the radiator, while he went to the bar for a drink. There was nothing I could do because I had only the strength of a small child and I had no voice with which to call out for help.

Then Mum told me I was going to be a ‘porn star’. Confident that he had broken my spirit and that I understood what I had to do, Douglas took me to his home. Children like me would be imprisoned there at weekends and during the school holidays, raped and defiled by a variety of men, every filthy act filmed and put on video. We were not allowed to speak to one another, or even allowed to make eye contact; we were treated just as slaves must have been 200 years ago.

The men who came to Douglas’s house were monsters of cruelty, but they often looked like normal members of the public. There was no way of distinguishing them from the decent, kind people you find on every street. It was impossible for me to know who to trust and who to fear because everyone, particularly men, held the potential to be my tormentor. None of the other children I met in that house during those years had been abducted or kidnapped: they had all been introduced or sold to Douglas by someone from their own families.

Over the coming years I would meet so many young people on the streets and in the psychiatric wards of different cities who all had the same stories to tell of violence and rape, cruelty and betrayal at the hands of the people who should have been the ones protecting them from danger. No child starts out in life wanting to live rough on the streets or to develop an addiction to drink or drugs. It is always because of what has been done to them by others in the early years.

At school kind, well-meaning teachers and specialists worked at coaxing my voice back. Gently and slowly it returned, but the damage had already been done. I had lost three years of my life, which left me hopelessly behind the other children of my age in everything, and by then I was too brainwashed and terrified to ever give anyone even a hint of the sort of agony my life was at home. It was as if I inhabited two different worlds, one of which was a hell that would have been unimaginable to most of the other children who sat around me in classrooms.

When I was finally able to make myself understood, I made my first friend. Pete was a kind, clever and popular boy who took the time to listen to me and understand what I was trying to say. He liked me for who I really was and even took me home to his posh house to meet his parents. But in the end he was moved on to a better school than a seemingly backward child like me was ever going to be able to attend. He promised we would stay in touch, but I knew somehow that our friendship wouldn’t last, and that I was going to be on my own again. Like Dad, he had been my protector and then he was gone from my life.