What Daddy Did: The Shocking True Story of a Little Girl Betrayed

by Donna Ford

  As the years went by and I worked in children's homes as an adult, I encountered many youngsters who wet their beds, and I gained more insight into the problem. There are so many reasons why a child may suffer from this very common complaint, including lack of control over bladder function, sleep apnoea and stress. What I experienced in the children's home in the 1960s was due to ignorance rather than cruelty – but this can't be said of Helen's attitude and punishment.

  When I first went to stay with her and my Daddy, she would just change the sheets and my pyjamas if I had an 'accident', then get me up to go to the toilet during the night. But I kept wetting the bed and this made Helen angrier and angrier. Any little bit of patience she had in her soon wore off. Eventually, I was the one who had to get up and take the sheets off my bed and trample them in the bath along with my pyjamas. I also had to wash down with disinfectant the red rubber mat that covered my mattress. When my stepmother was finally at the end of her tether – it was a short one – she made me lie on this rubber mat with no sheet, clad only in my pants, and sleep that way night after night. She would come in to check on me – it seemed as if she was willing it to happen – and then hiss in my face: 'Pee-the-bed, pee-the-bed – nasty little pee-the-bed, aren't you?' She liked nicknames and her preferred one for me then was 'pissy pants'.

  By the time my older half-siblings arrived back from the children's home, I was just past my sixth birthday and still wetting the bed. Looking back, it's hardly surprising. I had been treated the Barnardo's way when the problem started, and that approach clearly hadn't been designed to resolve the issue, but now there wasn't even any pretence that I was going to be helped. It had been bad enough to face ridicule at home from Helen, but once I started school, she made me wear my wet, smelly knickers there all day. Children are often cruel to each other, and they will pick on anything different, so I became the focus of their taunts as they said I smelled, they said I smelled of piss, they said I was wearing dirty pants.

  They were right.

  When Helen was really angry with me, she would come into the bedroom first thing in the morning and drag me out of bed by my arms. 'Stand there!' she'd screech at me as I stood where she had put me. 'Stand there and don't you dare move!' She'd throw the thin covers right back so that she could inspect the bottom sheet and mattress. If I had wet them, she would shout and scream at the top of her voice, while hitting me repeatedly with her fists and arms. When this frenzy had passed to some extent, Helen would pull my pants off and rub my face in them, grinding me into the stinking material with utter hatred. Finally, as she prepared to leave the room, she would throw the knickers at me and say that I was to put them on. I'd have to go to school wearing them, with my face stinging and red, and the smell of pee hanging around me for the rest of the day. No-one else at home got treated like that – maybe no-one else wet the bed. I only saw her do anything similar to our dog, Snooky, a black-and-white mongrel collie cross. If Snooky ever had an accident in the house, his face would be rubbed in it and he would be kicked out into the back green with a yelp. My stepmother clearly thought I was as low as the dog.

  When I became a mother, these memories sometimes crept through. I could never imagine why anyone would do the things Helen had done to me. Even the fact that I wasn't related to her by blood didn't explain why she felt such hatred for me. How any adult could do those things to a child was beyond me. If my daughters or son ever wet the bed, I would run them a bath and, while they were in the big, soapy bubbles, I would get their sheets and pyjamas into the wash without a word to them. I'd remind myself to watch what they drank before bedtime and to lift them for the toilet before I went to bed.

  This was certainly not Helen's way. I was a child, little more than a baby, when I was delivered into the care of Helen and my father. Of course, I didn't keep a diary, and I don't have a photographic memory, and so my awareness of when things happened can't be precise. However, I do know that there was a switch, very early on in my life at Easter Road, when Helen changed from being cold and distant to being hateful and violent. This was around the time when she started to berate me constantly for being 'really bad'. And that 'badness' was something Helen always thought could be beaten out of me.

  One day, when I was about six, I had been really bad – as usual. I know that it was before my half-brother and half-sister came back from Barnardo's. I don't know why it had been decided that I was bad that day (I rarely did), but I had been told to spend the whole morning and afternoon in the bathroom, in my underwear, with my hands by my sides. I wasn't allowed to move an inch.

  Not an inch.

  As I write this, I can almost feel what it was like that day when I was hurt so much – not physically, but emotionally. It hurt more than anything Helen ever did to me because I loved my Daddy at this point. I looked up to him, he was my hero – and he was going to fail me.

  'Wait till your father gets home,' Helen hissed in my ear.

  'Wait till your father gets home,' she shouted into my face.

  It was her mantra for hours and I did as I was told. I did wait. I did wait until my father got home. But even though I had no idea whatsoever of what I had done that was so 'bad', there was still a little part of me that thought, 'Well, when my Daddy does get home, he'll know that I'm a good girl, and he'll know that Helen is lying. He'll know this because he's my Daddy.'

  I waited and waited.

  I was almost numb with cold and stiff from the lack of moving around when I finally heard him coming in the front door. I listened to his footsteps walking up the lobby into the living room. I felt relief. My Daddy was home, and I hadn't had all hope kicked out of me yet. I thought that he would tell me to come through, have some tea, get my pyjamas on and go to bed. At first, I heard the muffled voices of him and Helen talking, then I heard him coming to the bathroom door.

  When he came in, I almost shouted out, 'Daddy!' but he grabbed me by the wrist so quickly that I didn't have a chance. 'Why are you being so bad?' he asked me. 'Why are you being so bad, Donna?' He kept on asking me that question as he pulled me by the wrist through to the bedroom. 'Your Mummy is trying her best with you, but you have to be good,' he said. I tried to tell him that I was, I was good, but I was crying so much that I couldn't get the words out. My Daddy sat on the lower bunk bed, pulled me over his knee and then he hit me and hit me over and over again on the bottom. I kept saying, through the sobs, 'I will be good, Daddy, I am trying to be good,' but it was as if he couldn't hear me. Finally, he stopped and said that it had hurt him more than it had hurt me. He told me that I had to be good for my Mummy and that I was to stop giving her trouble, then told me to go to bed. He finished by saying that he didn't want to come home the next day and find out that I had been 'bad' again.

  That became a pattern; it set the trend for many more occasions. Helen had now convinced my Dad that I was bad, and by the number of occasions he beat me, I could only assume he believed her. On many more occasions throughout my childhood I was to discover my father's wrath, always induced by Helen. I know that she was behind it because when she left he stopped beating me. If only she could have taken the memories away with her too.

  Chapter Six

  CHASTISEMENT

  THERE ARE SPECIFIC TIMES I remember when my Dad would repeat this pattern – he would come home from work, talk to Helen then come to 'chastise' me.

  That was the word he used.

  During the very early days of my return home, I would sometimes find the courage to speak up and question why I was being smacked. Why did Helen say I was bad? Why did I get shouted at? Why did I have to go to bed? Why did I have to stand naked in the bathroom for hours? To begin with, I could ask these questions because sometimes my Dad would just give me a talking to on his return home from work. I was trying to make sense of Helen's rules and expectations of me. I was trying to work out what I'd done during the day that made Helen shout and yell to my Dad about how bad I'd been. I didn't realise that there was no real rhyme or reason t
o it. She was just evil.

  When he came home, I'd usually be in my bedroom, having been sent there at some point during the day. On some days I might have been in my bedroom for hours, alone and starving. On other occasions I was sent to my room just minutes before my Dad came in so he wouldn't see me standing in the bath, naked, freezing, facing the wall. Generally, I'd be sitting on my bed, having been crying my eyes out, and my Daddy would come in and stand over me. Over and over again he'd ask me: 'Why? Why? Why?'

  How could I answer him?

  I rarely knew what had brought about Helen's punishment in the first place, so how could I work out why I would deliberately choose to be bad? I didn't want to disappoint my Daddy though, so I always said that I'd be good, even if I didn't really know what I was agreeing to. I wanted to be. Whatever being good would involve, I wanted to be that way. I wanted to be good like my new brother; I wanted to be hugged and played with; I wanted to be brought home a toy car on a Friday night by my Daddy, just like little Gordon was. When I asked him through my tears why I was always getting rows and punishments, why I was always being sent to bed, he said he had to 'chastise' me because it would help me to be good. But the 'chastisement' increased. The smacking got harder and harder as my Dad got angrier and angrier – and, in time, he moved on to using his belt against me as well. I couldn't defend myself. I was tiny and any protests were ignored. Finally, I wasn't even allowed to voice any murmurs of dissent at all.

  I don't ever remember him 'chastising' the children he had with Helen, although I do know that she encouraged him to hit my elder half-siblings too. Of course, I now realise that this violence was a direct reaction to what Helen told him every time: I had been bad all day; I had been horrible to her; I was a vile child; I hated my younger brother; I was the catalyst. It was all me, and his version of chastisement increasingly became a way of him venting his anger and frustration.

  Looking back, I can only imagine how it must have been for this man. He must have hurt after my mother left him, and he must have been doing everything in his power to maintain his relationship with Helen. I was there putting a spoke in the big wheel with my badness, and he believed her – why wouldn't he? He didn't know me. On top of that, practically every day he had Helen in his face straight after work, telling him the stories she had made up about me. How ironic that it was actually Helen who had been up to all sorts, things he had absolutely no idea of – if she'd been having one of her parties, she'd be trying to hide the fact, or coping with being a bit drunk.

  My Dad always worked long hours, leaving really early in the morning before we were even up, and not returning home until after 4pm. When he worked overtime, which was more often than not, he sometimes wouldn't return until about 10 o'clock at night. He hardly seemed to be home.

  The times we saw most of him were during the summer holidays. He would usually take off the 'trades' fortnight', the first two weeks in July when, in those days, most of the factories and businesses in the city would close for two weeks. Everyone knew that during these two weeks you couldn't get a workman for love nor money, and it was the time when most families would leave for their annual trip to the seaside. In our case, we would go to Kinghorn in Fife, where we would stay in a wooden chalet and spend the days exploring the beaches and caves. These times were, on the whole, good but, as always, Helen had to retain control. Even on holiday she took a belt with her to use on me. I was forced to stand for hours in the bedroom with its two sets of bunk beds. The curtains would be closed and I could hear the sound of children whooping and laughing outside.

  I have to ask myself what my Dad was doing on those days. He wasn't at work and he didn't have the excuse of not seeing how Helen operated. From what I can remember, he spent most of his holiday in the clubhouse. I can imagine it must have involved beer, dominoes, horse racing and being away from Helen and her moods. I have one good image of my Dad taking me fishing on one holiday. We caught sticklebacks that were too big for the little metal pail I had. They were catching their tails as they swam, turning round and round in circles, never getting anywhere. My Dad watched them for ages, mesmerised – maybe he saw his own existence within their futile endeavours. Thinking of him that way is nice as it was so normal, but I have far more memories of him coming back from the club smelling of beer, and arguing with Helen as soon as he returned, the sound echoing around the wooden walls. Even there, in that lovely place, there were always arguments. In fact, arguments seemed to be about all they had in common.

  Occasionally, when Frances was still at home, my Dad and Helen would go off to the club together in the evening, leaving us all in bed with strict instructions not to move. Time out together was pretty rare for them – perhaps because Helen much preferred to party without the presence of her husband, as I would find out to my cost.

  So, you see, I was never bad. I was just a child with basic needs that weren't being met. I was hungry. I was cold. I was battered. I was unloved. I tried to state my case but whenever I plucked up the courage to speak, I was accused of being cheeky, insolent, rude. I couldn't make sense of any of it, but even without that understanding, I soon learned how to deal with my daily abuse.

  I learned not to talk.

  I learned not to scream or cry when I was beaten.

  I learned not to question any adult's actions towards me.

  And now I can see that was exactly what Helen wanted.

  I soon learned that, when any form of abuse came at me, I should just take it, with the knowledge that it would soon be over.

  Wouldn't it?

  As an adult, I can see now that Helen was grooming me. She was a good teacher – she taught me how to behave; she taught me that if I yelled or wept or questioned her, the punishment would be more severe. There was one occasion when she was beating me over and over again with the belt in the bathroom and I jumped away and fell. While I was crouching down by the toilet, she hit me with even more fury, belting and belting me over the head, back, shoulders – wherever she could – screaming at me the whole time for being disobedient. I couldn't get up. I had my arms crossed over my face as I was screaming: 'Don't, Mummy! Please don't, Mummy! I'll be good, I'll be good!' As she hit me, she screamed, 'I'm not your Mummy! I'm not your fucking Mummy and I never will be! Don't you dare call me that!' She kept going until she'd spent herself. She walked away and I was just left there, in a heap on the floor, shaking, until I was told to go to bed.

  Chapter Seven

  SUCH A GOOD MAN

  I SPENT MANY YEARS BLOCKING out my past and these terrible times. When I was first asked to give a statement to the police about my stepmother, I was reluctant to go back there – because I was scared. Initially, I could only remember some fragmented things. However, once I started remembering – once I started digging – it was like opening the floodgates. One memory would trigger off another; even here, as I relate one story, another will soon come to me. When I first started remembering it was too painful to look at. It was horrible; it was like going back in there; the pain was excruciating. Now, although the memories still hurt, they are not quite as profound as they once were. I put that down to being able to tell my story, being able to get it all out.

  Just as I've thought of the story of my time in the bathroom, being beaten by Helen, I've remembered another instance of being thrashed in there. The bathroom door was open and I could see Snooky, the dog, sitting in the hall. I never really got on with that dog because he was always treated better than I was. Whereas I got little or no food, he was always fed a full tin of dog meat every day plus biscuits; he even had his own chocolate drops which were kept in the cupboard under the sink beside the pots and pans. I ate some of these from time to time when I was doing the dishes and had to put the saucepans away. Snooky was allowed to lie on the rug in front of the fire, and he was petted and loved. He even got to go out. I envied that dog and the life he led.

  Anyway, on this particular day I was bent over the bath in my underwear. Helen started beating me, t
elling me to say that I was sorry, that I was bad, that I deserved to be punished. I was trying my hardest to remain in the same position as Helen had demanded, but it was so sore that I eventually squirmed around as she hit me. At one particular whack, I let out a scream. Snooky leapt up and ran into the bathroom where he started barking and snapping at me. Helen continued to whack at my little body as the dog sank his teeth into my stomach. I couldn't make sense of it – I was about seven years old, how could I?