by Caryn Walker
I also bumped into her quite often and I thought she was growing in strength. We were both older and she had cut away from Mum, which did her a power of good. She had a clear plan for how she was going to get clean of drugs and I thought it was a good one, a decent approach. I think it might have worked – I really do, if only she’d had the opportunity to put it in place. We talked a lot about our past in those chats, often standing in the street for hours on end. She would say to me, ‘Do you feel embarrassed if your friends see you talking to me?’ and that broke my heart. I was never embarrassed by her, never. These were the chats when she told me about coming home when she was nine years old, alone, back when social services thought that was acceptable. Mum would open the door and say, ‘The other kids don’t want you here’ and close the door in her face. Mum would tell us Jenny was having far too much fun doing other things in the children’s home to want to come back to us, and that she only came when it was her birthday or Christmas to see what she could get, then she would leave through her own choice. I believed this back then, and Jenny believed that we didn’t want her.
She told me she just wanted Mum to love her and she also told me about Dad going to her flat and abusing her. I had known it was true when she first said it – of course I had – but she had been called a liar when she told our mother. She cried most when she spoke about, all through her childhood, the desperate wish to come home but knowing we ‘hated’ her, also knowing that was impossible. It was all so cruel and twisted.
This is the part I never wanted to write, Jenny. I find this harder than all of the rest put together. We managed two years together, two years of confiding in each other, loving each other, laughing together, then … then you died. In August 2006, my big sister left the world that had been so cruel to her, for ever. Your spirit was incredible and, despite what you went through, you never had a bad word to say about anyone. You had such loyalty and, despite it all, you loved your family. But heroin doesn’t care about any of that. It comes in, offers some respite, offers a bit of relief from all the troubles and then drags you down further and further, until there is nothing left. There was nothing left of you, nothing left for you, Jenny. I wasn’t enough – I couldn’t keep you here. After all you had been through, it was time for you to go. My big sister. My darling Jenny.
It was Mum who told me. A cold, hard phone call.
‘I’ve got bad news. Your sister’s dead.’
It was the early hours of 6 August 2006. A brain aneurysm, at home, without me beside her. The last part breaks my heart more than anything. Jenny had always suffered from terrible headaches but she’d never been diagnosed with anything. That night, that awful night, she started to fit and her partner called an ambulance. She died at the hospital. She never recovered, she just left us. She’d been due to go to the Wirral Show with Donna that day, the show she always took her to, the show that was their annual outing.
I wasn’t even allowed to go to the hospital when I got the news from Mum as Jenny’s body was rushed straight to the coroner for toxicology tests.
I was in a sort of limbo after that and all of the memories shudder about in my mind, as if they don’t want to settle. They flit from one thing to another – the trip to Mum’s house to meet up with my brothers, to see if we could be some sort of family. There was a houseful of people. I probably couldn’t even say who was there really; I was in shock. ‘Christ,’ Mum said, as soon as Elroy and I walked in, ‘they’re going to have eaten all my fucking bread soon, the amount of toast they’re making. And I’ll have no cigs left.’
There were no tears. Not from her.
Donna was naturally distraught that day and I suffered what I now know was an anxiety attack. I was spinning, light-headed and couldn’t breathe properly; this lasted for hours and hours. I couldn’t believe Jenny had gone. She had a plan! It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right. I kept saying those words to myself, ‘She had a plan, she had a plan.’
***
The next time I saw Jenny was at the funeral home over a week later. She hadn’t been dressed and was in a gown. Her own clothes had been laid on top of her with her jewellery laid on top of those. This was horrific; I didn’t expect her to look the way she did.
‘Why isn’t her hair brushed?’ I asked the woman in charge. ‘Why doesn’t she have her own clothes on?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she told me, ‘I’ll see to it for your next visit.’
She was true to her word and, the following day, Jenny had her hair styled and some make-up on, and was dressed in her own clothes and wearing her jewellery. She had her perfume and her phone in the coffin with her (the things she adored) and I put in a letter I had written to her; I read it to her, then put it into an envelope. I don’t want to share that. I want some things to be just between us.
The funeral was horrendous, but not for the reasons you might expect. Mum was on one side, with what I was sure was a smirk on her face, and us on the other, with Jenny’s friends at the back. Mum didn’t shed a tear, just twiddled her hair as if she was bored. Elroy said she looked cold as ice.
The minister had asked for stories about Jenny he could tell in his eulogy and it was clear, when he spoke, that he had been forced to try to repair some of the damage done by what Mum had said.
‘Jenny put a radio in the bath once,’ he said, trying to smile, ‘and I know that her mum felt she liked her own way, but I think we need to remember her spirit. Let us recall the real sense of Jenny. Both she and Karen, her little sister, once had dresses the same. Karen’s had long sleeves and Jenny’s didn’t – so Jenny chopped Karen’s sleeves off.’ I could imagine Mum telling him that she did it out of spite, but the minister did what he could with the story. He took a deep breath and smiled at me from the pulpit. ‘I’d imagine that Jenny just wanted to look exactly the same as her little sister,’ he suggested, kindly.
In 2006, just after Jenny had died, Mum found out about my bulimia and she told anyone who would listen. I was so ashamed, and I still am ashamed that I sometimes do it. She had a pattern that she always stuck to when there was anything she could get sympathy for – she’d go around pubs and say to people, ‘Buy me a vodka and I’ll tell you something you just won’t believe.’ It was all about her, always. In one pub, she repeatedly told people she was dying of cancer. It got her a lot of drinks, but I guess she must have had to find a new haunt when her ‘terminal’ cancer never actually finished her off. I got calls about that from regulars, people who knew our family. They’d ring me up and say how awful it was that Mum was dying, and that I as her daughter needed to step up to the plate in her final months. It took me back to what Dad used to say to me – ‘If you tell anyone, your mum will die, she won’t be able to take it.’ It was all my fault again (and Mum was telling me at this point that she was dying); it was all laid at my door.
Life just went on for a while but I couldn’t stop thinking about Jenny and turning it all over in my mind. I kept coming back to the fact that I didn’t really know her whole story; I only had bits of it from other people. I’m not sure what I expected to get back when I applied for my files in 2009, but I did want to know Jenny’s story as much as my own. I knew there would be parts of the documents that would be blanked out – they say this is to protect the privacy of others – but two things really hit me. The first was the completely haphazard way it had all been thrown together, some pages duplicated, some missing, some fuzzy where they had been taken out of the photocopier too soon. They were all in a random order, and it felt so uncaring somehow – I know I shouldn’t let my imagination run away with me, but it was almost as if the person doing it just couldn’t be bothered. The second thing that had a huge effect was the first page of my file. On it, on that single page, was a summary. This was it in its entirety – this is what they thought mattered:
14 January 1970 – Mr and Mrs Yeo married
16 August 1971 – Karen and Jenny placed with foster-carers while Mrs Yeo was hospitalised
20 Augus
t 1971 – due to hospitalisation of the foster-mother, Karen and Jennifer transferred to separate foster-parents
3 September 1971 – all 3 children returned to their parents’ care
5 June 1977 – social worker brought Jenny for a visit and took all the children to New Brighton and Vale Park
4 January 1978 – social worker took the children to see the pantomime, Mother Goose
30 August 1978 – outing with social worker, picnic at the sand hills
29 September 1978 – social worker took children and Jenny for a picnic in Bidston Woods
6 April 1979 – social worker took Karen and her mother to bring Jennifer home from Frodsham
29 October 1979 social worker talked to children about stealing
I can’t believe a life, so many lives, can be summarised in so few words, Jenny, but I also know that we were just a case file. Am I angry that we were never ‘saved’, am I bitter? I have been. That’s the truth; I have been. However, I’ve had to move past that – do I wish someone had said ‘sorry’, even just once? Yes, I do – but I want it to come from our parents, our mum, my dad. They did the real damage, they wrecked our two little lives. As a mother, I still find it utterly incomprehensible that anyone could choose to do any of that to a child – and that they could just go on with their own lives. So, this is why I need to make your story known, Jenny, this is why I need to shout out loud for all of us who have been through similar things and who can still have a voice. We’re going nowhere. We’re here, we’re still standing and we will be heard.
CHAPTER 8
HER NAME WAS JENNY
2010–2011
I’d felt confused about my shame and my guilty feelings for so long that they seemed almost natural. I often felt depressed and low, and I found it hard to unpack things – I didn’t know if I was naturally that way and it made the memories of the abuse worse, or if the memories of the abuse brought the depression. I’d certainly felt every emotion since going to the police about what happened to me as a child. I had felt afraid, angry, sad, confused and so very, very dejected, but, through seeing a support worker, I’d started to accept that what happened to me needed to be punished. Someone did need to say ‘sorry’.
In the past, whenever I thought about reporting my childhood abuse, the one thing that bothered me was whether my silence was putting others in danger – was Dad still doing it? Were there children out there who I could help by speaking out? When I finally did report it, it was because of this – I could maybe stop him if he was still doing it, or I could support others who had been victims too. It was only once I started seeing the support worker, Vicky, that I acknowledged myself in all of this. She made me see that what he did needed to be recognised, and that he should be held accountable and punished – for what he did to me. That was a revelation – my self-esteem had been at rock bottom for years and I had never really thought I deserved anything but bad stuff, but now someone was telling me I actually mattered.
I thought I would do this alone at first; I believed it was my problem and there was no need to involve anyone else. Even Elroy didn’t know I was going to the police station, on that first day. I had driven there three times already, but on each occasion I drove away again without going in. I honestly thought I would never find the courage to do it; if you had asked me only a couple of months ago if I would ever report my dad for what he did to me, I would have said, I’m not strong enough. This is, I guess, the power of grooming. He did such a good job on me that I always felt completely worthless and unimportant. He was probably confident that I would never tell. I have never valued myself, and how it affected my life never seemed important.
However, I soon realised the police needed to talk to my mother and my brothers. I was unhappy about this at first, as I didn’t want anyone else to be hurt, but now I know that wasn’t my fault; it wasn’t my guilt to bear as to whether they would, or may, feel hurt. It was his fault. I couldn’t protect anyone from this, and it wasn’t my job to do so.
So, I gave the statement – all twelve pages of it – and I went home, and I waited. It was surreal. I had done this huge thing, and I knew the world was about to blow up, but there was a quietness to the waiting that made it all seem otherworldly. I spoke to Jenny in my mind a lot during those times, and I so wished she had been there to walk this path beside me.
Then the quietness ended, and the world changed. Dad was arrested on 10 November 2010. He gave a ‘no comment’ interview, which the police said they saw as an indication of guilt, and was bailed until January. During this time the statements went to the Crown Prosecution Service, who took just forty-eight hours to decide to charge him. He was to face twenty-four counts under ten charges, including five of indecent assault on a child under fourteen, and five counts of rape of a child under sixteen. The fact they had decided so quickly, and that they had chosen those counts, gave me a little hope. I had heard so much about the CPS rejecting ‘historical’ cases and I knew they would only go ahead if they thought a prosecution had a chance of being successful.
Throughout all of this, I had been having the most horrendous tummy pains. I had suffered for years, but they had certainly got worse during the period of deciding to tell the police and then waiting for Dad to be arrested. Two weeks after they arrested him, I underwent an operation to find out what was going on. Part of me wondered whether the years of abuse, or the years of eating disorders, had caused some harm, but it was discovered that I had blocked Fallopian tubes. My dreams of having another baby were shattered instantly. I had only just reached a point in my life where I could have faced having more children, and now the chance had been cruelly snatched away from me. I had honestly thought up to that point that another baby was an option and I could live with my demons, be the sort of mum I had always wanted to be and be free of my own mother’s control. I could live with my feelings of distrust of other people around my child, but now this? I was told that my only chance would be IVF, which I would have to self-fund due to my age and already having a child. I felt so sad, so heartbroken, and I felt that he had taken something else away from me.
‘He just can’t stop wrecking my life, can he?’ I cried to Elroy. ‘I know he’s done this – I know what he did to me as a child means that I’m broken now.’
As always, Elroy was my rock. He held me and comforted me as he said, ‘It’s fine, it’s fine – we’ll save, we’ll get the money together for IVF, we can do this.’
I hoped so, I really did.
On top of everything else, my grandma was very poorly and fading fast. She didn’t know what was going on, that I had accused Dad of this terrible thing. Before every visit, I had to call and make sure no one was with her, make sure he wasn’t with her, and that system worked well until I turned up a few days into the New Year to see him there. It was a split second between me turning the corner into the doorway of her room, seeing him and turning away. Thankfully he didn’t notice me, but I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I walked out quickly, shaking, and sat in my car down the road, and after about ten minutes I saw him walking towards the train station. He lit a cigarette and looked like he didn’t have a care in the world.
Despite Grandma being ill, the festive period had been lovely, but we were all waiting for 11 January as we knew he would be charged on that day. The worry of that never left me. I constantly wondered if he would admit his guilt and put an easier end to this for me. If not, I would face a trial; I would face being questioned. I would be put through as much as he would – was there any chance he would spare me that? All I could hope was that he would finally act as a father, that he would finally try to protect me from something. In my heart, I knew everything I had said was the truth and if I stood by that, how could I not stay strong? Sometimes, though, that was easy to say but inside I felt distraught.
The date came and I waited all day to hear what had happened. I was living on my nerves the whole time, hoping the phone would ring, dreading that the phone would ring. F
inally, at 8.30pm, it did. I knew. I just knew this was it.
It was Kerry, one of the support team, and from the tone of her voice, it was clear this wasn’t over.
‘He isn’t taking it well,’ she told me. ‘He’s drunk and he says he’s going to kill himself. One minute he’s saying to your brother that lies are being told about him and he can’t deal with no one believing him, then he’s saying he can’t live with the guilt of what he has done and he can’t go to prison and live that life.’
‘Do the police know this?’ I asked.
‘No – they can’t get hold of him,’ she said. ‘This is all coming from him knowing that you have made the accusation. I don’t know what we do now.’
All I could think was to call the police; they had been so good to me that I could only hope they would be able to sort this out. When I informed them of what Kerry had told me, they said Dad hadn’t answered his bail and a warrant was out for his arrest. They sent a squad car to his home address and gained entry, but he wasn’t there. At the same time as the police officers were at his house, another squad car picked him up in Leeds town centre, roaring drunk with an injury to his head. He was taken to hospital overnight to be checked – and the next afternoon he was taken to Birkenhead Custody suite to be charged.