Читать книгу Violated: A Shocking and Harrowing Survival Story From the Notorious Rotherham Abuse Scandal - Sarah Wilson, Sarah Wilson - Страница 6

I suppose it’s fair to say I’ve never had an easy life.

I was born in Rotherham, a big industrial town just a few miles from Sheffield, in September 1991, blissfully unaware that my parents’ relationship was already starting to unravel. My mum, Maggie, and my dad, Mark, had got together in the late eighties. They’d met when Mum’s sister, my auntie Annette, started going out with Dad’s cousin. Dad had come to Rotherham to visit them and he got talking to Mum when she popped round one night. Mum had just come out of an unhappy marriage and was bringing up my older brothers, Mark and Robert, on her own when Dad asked her out for a drink. Mum was petite, with sandy curly hair, and he had obviously taken a shine to her. He said all the right things when she needed a shoulder to cry on, and soon they were an item.

But Mum and Dad were very different people. Mum had lived in Rotherham all her life and was from a traditional, hardworking Yorkshire family, the second of seven siblings. Granddad worked in the local steelworks, while Nan had a job at the KP Nuts factory. Mum followed her there after she left school, although she could never get a permanent contract because there was never enough work.

Dad, on the other hand, was a bit of a tearaway. He was short, with dark hair and tattoos all over his arms and legs. He’d been born in Rotherham too, but his family had moved to Horncastle, a little market town in Lincolnshire, when he was a small child. He’d been expelled from school when he was really young and sent to what they used to call a borstal – a sort of mini-prison for kids that the schools couldn’t control. He never really told us why and we never asked. Growing up, there were lots of things about Dad’s life that seemed to be a big secret. Sure, he could sweet-talk Mum and say all the right things, but the truth was that he hardly ever had a proper job and Mum never really knew what he was getting up to when he went out in his van for hours on end.

Mum says I was a delicate little thing, with a small covering of fair hair, and she fell in love with me straight away. Two days after I was born, she was allowed to take me home to our red terraced house on a street called Psalters Lane, which was a sort of unofficial border between two of the big council estates in Rotherham: Kimberworth and Ferham. Even now, I can remember our house as clear as day, especially the living room. It was decorated with two different types of green-and-white wallpaper separated by a border, as was the fashion back then, but it wasn’t exactly a happy place.

Mum tried her best to make ends meet, working lots of jobs in shops and pubs when there were no hours to be had at the factory. It was real struggle, but it wasn’t like Dad was the only person we knew who was out of work. Rotherham had once been a booming, vibrant town, but by the time I came along a sense of foreboding was spreading across South Yorkshire. The old industries, like coal mining and steel, were in decline, but there were no new ones to replace them, and soon Rotherham would become one of the most deprived parts of Western Europe.

By the early nineties, lots of immigrants had settled in Rotherham, which got some people’s backs up. They were nearly all Asian, mostly Pakistani. They were much stricter with their families than us locals, perhaps because they were such devout Muslims. Most of them would go mad if they caught their kids smoking or drinking. Loads of the kids weren’t allowed boyfriends or girlfriends because their families wanted them to have arranged marriages with other people from their community. That’s not to say the Muslim kids didn’t try to bend the rules; they just had to be a bit more secretive about what they were up to than their friends.

Lots of the Asian families who came to Rotherham were given houses in Kimberworth and Ferham, and gradually they began to open corner shops and takeaways on the otherwise abandoned streets. Some people resented them and ranted that it wasn’t fair on local businesses and they’d come over here to steal our jobs. My family didn’t really think that, though. To be honest, it seemed a bit racist. Most of these people just wanted a better life for their families, and who could blame them for that?

Still, depression and desperation were everywhere in the town, and our house was no different. Mum was frazzled trying to look after Mark, who was eight, and Robert, who was three, as well as tending to a new baby, and Dad wasn’t much help. To make matters worse, I kept developing nasty chest infections and I was always projectile vomiting everywhere. Mum knew something wasn’t quite right and she was never far from the doctors’ surgery. I was given lots of antibiotics but nothing helped, and no one really knew what was wrong with me.

Then, in February 1992, our local surgery got a new GP. She was the first female doctor we’d ever had. Believe it or not, that was a big deal. She clearly knew her stuff, though, because within minutes of examining me she’d looked up some textbooks and called the hospital for a second opinion. She didn’t tell Mum, but she feared I had heart problems. Soon, I was taken to Rotherham District General Hospital, where I’d been born just five months before.

Mum and Dad didn’t know why I had to have lots of tests, and at one point social services were called in. One of the doctors thought my parents just weren’t feeding me because I was so skinny and my legs were a weird shape. Mum was horrified. Of course she’d been feeding me – I just couldn’t keep anything down!

Eventually, doctors found two holes and a leaking valve in my heart. Mum was beside herself when they told her I’d have to have heart surgery. She came with me in the ambulance to Leeds Killingbeck Hospital, where I ended up staying for a month. Not only was Mum worried sick about me, she had the boys to think of. Leeds was at least a 45-minute drive away from Rotherham, and that was only when you didn’t hit traffic. Thankfully, family mucked in to help, but Granddad was really ill at this point. He was in hospital with heart problems too, so Mum was really having a terrible time. She stayed at the hospital with me while Dad went back to Rotherham to fetch me some of my toys. Just when things seemed like they couldn’t get any worse, our car was broken into in the hospital car park and lots of my toys were stolen. Mum was gutted, as she’d really scrimped and saved to buy me them.

I had my operation in the middle of March, and thankfully it all went fine. Mum and Dad were both there when I was taken from theatre to intensive care, but Dad disappeared shortly afterwards. He told Mum he was popping back to Rotherham to sort some fresh clothes and get some money, but he didn’t reappear. No one had a mobile phone back then, so Mum couldn’t even ring him to check up on him. We didn’t see him for days, and Mum was absolutely raging, but eventually he turned up again and charmed her out of her bad mood, without really explaining what he’d been up to. That was just how it was with Dad.

A week after my surgery, I was transferred back to the hospital in Rotherham. This suited Mum, as Granddad was being treated there too. She’d often wheel him down the corridor to see me, and by all accounts I was the apple of his eye. But as I started to get stronger, Granddad got weaker. Not only did he have heart problems, but he also had diabetes and asthma. Barely a month after my operation, he passed away. He was only fifty-seven and Mum was heartbroken, but to this day we believe he wanted to give all of the life he had left in him to me.

A few weeks after Granddad’s funeral, Dad was arrested. Mum discovered he’d broken into an insurance brokers’ and stolen a safe. He’d only been caught because some police officers stopped him when they noticed one of the lights on the back of the van wasn’t working. He was sent to jail for six months. Mum was at breaking point. But still he somehow managed to worm his way back into our lives when he got out. Mark and Robert never had much contact with their dad, and Mum didn’t want the same thing to happen to me, so she let him move back in. A few months later, my sister Laura was conceived.

If Dad had been flaky and unreliable before, he was even worse when he got out of jail. I don’t know what happened to him in there, and I probably never will, but Mum knew he’d changed the second he walked through the door, back into our council house with its green-and-white walls.

My earliest memory of him is a little sketchy, but it has stayed with me my whole life. I mustn’t have been two yet, as Mum was heavily pregnant with Laura, but I can vaguely remember her tumbling down the stairs with her huge baby bump, tears streaking her face, and Dad standing on the landing above with a face like thunder. I think I was sitting in my pushchair at the time, watching it all happen in slow motion in front of me, frightened and confused. I’m not sure if that was the first time Dad hit Mum, but it certainly wasn’t the last, and I vividly remember the other occasions as I got older and more aware of what was happening.

Laura was born in August 1993 and we were close from the start, playing little games and doing all of the things that sisters like to do. Of course, we had our squabbles, too. One of my aunties had a video camera and there is some really funny footage from when we were little of me going in a massive huff when I catch Laura riding my bike!

Laura and I never spoke about what was going on with Mum and Dad – we were too young – but we were both scared by all the fights and the shouting. I wanted to protect her, but I didn’t know how. We’d hear them rowing loads, at all different times of the day and night. When we were really little, we loved watching the cartoon Pingu, which was all about the life of a little penguin. I remember sitting in front of the television, hearing crashing sounds coming from upstairs. We’d just keep watching the TV, so it could drown out the noise and we could pretend that everything was okay.

At night, we’d huddle together in our room and play with our dolls, trying to block out the shouting and screaming downstairs, but sometimes, when we heard Mum begging Dad to calm down as he threw things around the room, it was all too much.

One time, I heard Mum cry out in pain and I just knew that Dad had hit her. I was so frightened I crept downstairs – my knuckles white with fear as I clutched my favourite Barbie doll – and called 999. I only knew that was how to get hold of the police because I’d seen it on TV. I didn’t really think about what I was doing, and I could barely speak when the operator answered. I just whispered that my daddy had hit my mummy and told them what I thought was our address before hanging up and darting back up to my room, terrified that Dad would catch me and know what I’d done. I know the coppers turned up, but I can’t remember what happened when they arrived. All I can recall is that horrible, sick feeling I would get in the pit of my stomach when I heard Dad raise his voice. I wasn’t sure if he knew it was me who’d called them, or what he might do if he did find out. I was terrified he’d do something to really hurt Mum, or maybe start on one of us as a punishment. I worried about what I would be able to do to stop him. What could I do? A five-year-old child against a fully grown man?

Mum chucked Dad out a few times, but he always came back. I think she was scared to say no when he wanted to give their relationship another try. Who wouldn’t be? Who would want to be left on their own with four kids? Still, every time Dad left I prayed we’d finally seen the back of him. Living with him was like being in a war zone, and Mum was on eggshells all the time. We never knew when Dad was going to explode in a fit of fury. The smallest thing would set him off and he’d tear round the house like a tornado.

For some kids in my position, school might have seemed like a refuge from everything that was going on at home, but not for me. From the moment I walked through the doors of Ferham Primary School for the first time, I knew I wouldn’t fit in. My home life had made me feel vulnerable and lost, and the bullies picked up on that, which made me an easy target. The school was a real mix of Asian and white kids, and almost everyone taunted me in their own way. There were a few ringleaders, though, mainly girls who pulled my hair and called me names – normal kid stuff, you’d think, but it just never seemed to stop. The three really mean girls were Jenny, Anna and Carolyn. They picked on me for all sorts of things, for anything they could think of – from the gap in my teeth to the fact that Mum couldn’t afford to buy me the latest trainers. As they played their little games in the playground, giggling with the other girls in my class, I’d stand at the side and watch, trying to swallow the lump in my throat and wondering why they didn’t want me to join in with them.

They made me feel bad and ugly. Like most five-year-olds, I hadn’t really thought about how I looked before I started school, but Jenny, Carolyn and Anna noticed everything. They constantly told me I looked horrible and that my clothes were stupid.

‘Look at Sarah’s jumper,’ Carolyn sniggered one afternoon. ‘Where did you buy that, Wilko?’

I might have been among the poorer kids in the class, but back in the nineties no one in Ferham really had much money and none of us was in a position to turn our noses up at anything. But this hardly mattered to these girls.

‘Wilko for Wilson!’ Anna giggled. ‘No wonder you look so shit. Your mum can’t afford to shop anywhere else.’

I’d sometimes see the other girls in my class playing in the street after school or in town with their parents in pretty tops or girlie little dresses. I stuck out like a sore thumb in my black, shapeless shellsuits, hand-me-downs from my big brothers. The more the bullies taunted me, the less I thought about what I wore or how I looked because I simply couldn’t win. Even when Mum had enough money to treat Laura and me to some new clothes, I always begged her to buy me another pair of trackie bottoms. At least that way no one could accuse me of trying to look pretty.

I never felt like I fitted in there, and so I didn’t listen much in class. I was far from stupid but I was never top of the class or the teacher’s pet. That would have just given the bullies another reason to single me out, and all I wanted was to fade into the background. I desperately hoped that I could be invisible, that the other kids would just not notice me and wouldn’t give me grief.

It was a shame the way that school worked out, because ever since I was really young I’d wanted to do something with my life. I had dreams of what I could do when I was older. While lots of children would flinch at the sight of blood, I’d never been squeamish and I was always first on the scene when one of my brothers or sister got a cut or a bruise. When I was really little, before I started school, I told everyone that I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up, but after the first few years of primary school I stopped dreaming about stuff like that. Just getting through each day was an effort. Things got even worse later, when I lost my baby teeth and my big teeth started to come in.

‘Sarah, what’s wrong with your face?’ Jenny said one morning, as we copied down some sums from the blackboard.

I turned scarlet and looked at the ground, saying nothing.

‘Look at the gap in your teeth,’ Carolyn said. ‘I’m glad my teeth don’t look like yours.’

It wasn’t just about my appearance, though. Any time a classmate spoke to me, or invited me to join in one of their games, the girls would tell them they’d catch some horrible disease if they came anywhere near me.

‘Don’t play with Sarah,’ Jenny would say. ‘She’s got the lurgy!’

‘You’ll catch her germs,’ Anna would add, hand on her hip. ‘Play with us instead.’

Each time this happened, my new friend would scuttle off, leaving me standing alone in the playground. Some would give me an apologetic backwards glance, and I got the sense that they didn’t really want to play with the class bullies, but they were too scared to say no or to stick up for me because that would have made them a target too. Others didn’t give me a second thought as they ran off, delighted at having been asked to spend their lunch hour with the most popular girls in the class.

I never confided in Mum about what was going on at school because I didn’t want any more hassle and I knew she’d just get really angry at the bullies. If I’d told her any of the names they called me, she’d have been down at the headteacher’s office like a shot, and I didn’t want anyone to think I was telling on them – that would have just meant more trouble, and that was all I needed! Sometimes, when I felt really miserable and lonely, I ached to tell her, but there was always something going on with Dad and the time never seemed right. Still, a mum’s instinct is a powerful thing and she always had an inkling I was being picked on. Although I know she begged my teachers to keep an eye on me, the girls who bullied me never seemed to get in any kind of trouble.

Then, when I was six, there was finally a glimmer of hope. Mum sat us down and explained that Dad wouldn’t be coming home. Don’t ask me why, but I knew this time was different to all the rest. She’d been at the end of her tether for a while and I think she had finally realised she couldn’t go on like this – for our sake as much as her own. She had summoned up the courage to go to the police about Dad at last. She never told us what had happened, but from that day things were different. Dad wasn’t sent back to jail, but Mum was granted an injunction, which meant he was banned from contacting us for a bit.

Mum really wanted a fresh start, and our house in Psalters Lane held too many bad memories. It took her a little while to get a new house, but a few months later we moved a few miles away, to another part of Rotherham called East Dene. Gradually, I started to come out of my shell. My new school was a bit better and I liked most of the teachers. I made a little group of friends and I even started to pay more attention in class.

We also had some nice neighbours, who had a pond in their garden with lots of frogs. They also had a son my age, called John. I took a bit of a shine to him and we used to tell people we were boyfriend and girlfriend, although we were always falling out! Those were good, fun times.

Things even started to pick up with Dad. He’d tried to get custody of us shortly after he and Mum split up, but of course he didn’t get very far. Mum was having none of it, plus he had a criminal record. But he had a new girlfriend called Ellen who seemed really nice, and Mum eventually let us see him on weekends and school holidays. We had some nice times at Rother Valley Country Park, just down the road, and we even tried canoeing and rafting. Don’t get me wrong, I always got the impression that Ellen was far more interested in us than Dad was, but it was nice that we could all be civil at least.

Then, just before my ninth birthday, Mum announced that we were moving back to Psalters Lane. She had lots of friends in Ferham and Kimberworth and I think she missed being so close to them. Another family had moved into our old house, with all its bad memories, but Mum had found us a new place on one of the little side streets, just off the main road. It was semi-detached, with a bit of a garden and three bedrooms. I’d share with Laura and Mark would share with Robert, just across the hall.

I wasn’t sure how to feel as we packed our things and the removal van set off back towards Ferham. Of course, I didn’t really want to go back to my old school and face the girls who’d made my life a misery, but as the familiar red brick houses of Psalters Lane slid into view, I tried to convince myself I’d find a way of coping.

Sadly, when we got back to Psalters Lane my old school bullies became the least of my problems.