The report detailed how, in 2000, the household disintegrated. Sharon moved out. First, Barbara blamed me, and then she blamed Kirsten. The arguments were becoming intolerable and no one seemed to be in control. Increasingly, social workers were becoming involved. Later I learned that Barbara and her children were called in for special counselling and that she had voiced concerns about going ahead with the adoption. The experts did not know the full extent of the problems she was experiencing with her own family at the time and had advised her that we were displaying normal boundary-testing behaviour. On two occasions, we were sent on temporary placements to other foster carers to give her respite.
Then, in June 2001, things came to a head. I’ve shut out much of what was happening in those months. At least with Terri and Shane I knew where I stood. If they were drunk, I would be hit and, if I was naughty, I would get a beating. But Barbara was erratic. Sometimes she would be normal, sometimes affectionate. Often she was overwhelmed. Paul didn’t get involved. I think he was probably scared of her.
In the run-up to the event, things in the house had been getting worse and this made Kirsten and me increasingly anxious. We reacted by reverting to the testing behaviours the report highlighted. Barbara now found it impossible to control us. Kirsten was frequently wetting herself and, on occasion, soiled herself and smeared it all over the walls. She would also gnaw on the furniture. Both of us ripped wallpaper from the walls – we were acting like caged animals. Then, one day, Kirsten started rollerblading in the hallway. Barbara told her to stop. She refused and the argument became louder and more aggressive. Barbara then smacked Kirsten and, when she went up to her room, hysterical, David barged in and put a pillow over her face in anger.
Kirsten called social services and asked to be taken away. She fled, and they met her down the road. She was taken away and she never came back; she asked to go into care and live in a children’s home rather than return to the house. In part, she blamed me for the problems that had been brewing for months.
The local authority also decided to take me away, but Barbara lodged a court action to formally adopt me. I didn’t know any of this was going on in the background, all I knew was that I was stuck there, isolated and alone. I found out later when I saw my files. I had begun my childhood with parents and four siblings. Gradually, through the years, my family had all been whittled away until it was just me and a woman I was frightened of. At home, all the fight and defiance left me. I didn’t argue, I was too scared. I did everything in my power to please Barbara, to try to be the good little girl she wanted. When I became compliant and withdrawn this pleased her.
At school it was a different matter. I had been a model pupil before Kirsten left. Teachers described me as popular, confident and pleasant. Almost overnight all that changed. Looking back on it as an adult, I realise that I was exhibiting the behaviours at school that I was forced to repress at home. I became argumentative and disruptive. Whenever I was thrown out of class, I would cry for ages out of frustration. I would get angry and confused; my moods swung wildly. In a court document relating to Barbara’s attempt to adopt me, the headmistress described me as ‘sullen, extremely moody and falling in and out of friendships on a daily basis’. I was spinning out of control but I didn’t know who or what I was supposed to be.
Kirsten and I attended the same school and at first it was difficult because relations between us were strained. She was really angry with me. It was hard – I was so confused, she wouldn’t speak to me. Outside of school I was left on my own with Barbara. I felt I had no one to turn to. In my early childhood, I had turned to my brothers for affection and, when we were split, it was my sister but after she left there was no one. I used to spend a lot of time alone in my room, hugging my duvet.
Gradually, however, Kirsten and I began to repair our relationship with the help of a support worker. Suzy was gorgeous, young and cool, and used to pick Kirsten and me up each week one day after school and take us out. She was assigned to help us maintain contact and work through our problems.
She would take us out places. We went swimming regularly and, through these visits, we learned to play together again. It was just my sister and me. We still had irregular contact with Terri and our brothers but these weekly outings were just for us. Suzy made sure they were as relaxed as possible.
While all this was going on, I was sent to stay with another couple, irregularly. It was usually once a week for a few hours. I was dropped off and picked up. For legal reasons I cannot go into detail, but I had known them for a while and they had looked after both Kirsten and me on many occasions. They were elderly and perfectly nice but, when Kirsten went and it was just me, things began to change.
They lived in a large house with a basement, which had been converted into the old man’s workroom. He made wine there, tinkered with DIY, did some woodwork and generally pottered around. He spent a lot of time down there in the depths of the house and often Kirsten and I had helped him out.
A few weeks after she had gone, he called me down.
‘I’m making jam,’ he said. ‘I could do with a hand.’
There was an old hob down there and I could smell sweet aromas drifting up, so I walked down the wooden staircase to join him. He sat me down next to him and put some empty jars in front of me and a saucepan of warm, stewed fruit.
‘Fill those, please,’ he said, passing me a spoon.
As I started scooping out the gloopy jam I felt his hand rest on my thigh. I was wearing a pair of the tight shorts Barbara liked me in and a T-shirt. As I felt his hand rise higher up my leg, I squirmed.
‘All girls do it,’ he said, ‘there’s no need to worry.’
He violated me and afterwards told me to be quiet about it because Barbara would never believe me if I told her, and she would be angry. That was the last thing I wanted. And although I knew what he was doing was not right, it was not the first time I had been abused. I believed it was what adult men did. When I got home I said nothing about it and so the abuse continued for several months. It always followed the same pattern: I was lured into the basement under a false pretext. After each time I became even more subdued and compliant.
But things were changing. Social services were aware of the chaos that had split up the fractured family I found myself in and were making concerted efforts to remove me from it. They had been speaking to my teachers and were closely observing the situation. Now they had come to the conclusion that the placement with Barbara was not going to work and would ultimately prove detrimental for me. I wish they had realised that before they sent Kirsten and me there in the first place. If only they had, then we might have been able to stay together.
At one stage I recall going to see a psychiatrist with Barbara. I didn’t understand at the time and had been to see child psychologists and counsellors before so it wasn’t a big deal. Many years later, I saw his report and it stated that I would never answer a question without looking at Barbara first for reassurance that I was giving the right answer. I was terrified that I would say something wrong.
The overriding memory I have of life with Barbara is that, although she fed and clothed me and was caring at first, she was unequipped to deal with me or Kirsten and the problems we had. When I think of Barbara I don’t have good memories. I’m sure she thought what she was doing was right and I doubt she had any training to deal with emotionally disturbed kids so I can’t blame her entirely. I’m sure social services thought they were doing a good job in finding us a home, but the placement leaves questions as to why Barbara was not assessed properly and how much information she was given about us.
In the end the council had to go to court to take me back into care. The system worked slowly. Eventually I was taken away: July 2002, just before my tenth birthday. But that didn’t stop Barbara and she appealed against the decision. It took a High Court judge to ultimately dismiss her claim, and the case rumbled on for a long time after I left her. It was like a cloud hanging over my head and an added
obstacle in the way of me finding a new forever family, although by that point I had started to realise that the word ‘forever’ did not necessarily mean forever.
Although I was vaguely aware all this was going on, I had no idea of the legalities. I wrote a letter to the judge saying I wanted to stay but the psychiatric evaluation concluded that I was being coerced. Barbara often reminded me how much she wanted me to be her daughter. She made a fuss of me sometimes and other times she got angry; she blamed me. I pretended I was sad because I didn’t want to upset her but I was excited about going. It was the summer holidays and I knew I had time off school; I was like a prisoner coming to the end of a sentence.
When the technicalities had been dealt with and I was found another placement, I was given a week’s notice. I wanted to be somewhere permanent, rather than having to be moved again. I’d had enough of being shuttled about, but I was told I was going to another temporary foster placement while the search continued for a parent.
When the time came to leave, Barbara wouldn’t say goodbye. She didn’t speak to me that day; she was too upset. Paul did; he wished me luck and I think he was sad to see me go. I gave him a hug. In the ensuing months, Barbara tried to keep in touch but in the end she was told to stop getting in contact as her attention was not helping me to move forward.
She would write me letters and sign them ‘love Mum’. I’d called her ‘Mum’. I called everyone I stayed with ‘Mum’ but I had no idea what the word meant.
Chapter six
THE KID WHO WAITED
A couple of months before I moved out of Barbara’s house, one of the social workers I saw asked me to start compiling my life story. The idea was two-fold: social services would have a mini biography of me to show prospective adopters and I would also have the opportunity to reflect on my life and to come to terms with what had happened. Where do I start? I wondered. Shane’s beatings? Terri’s drink and drugs? Sexual abuse? Psychological cruelty? The loss of my brothers and sister? Inappropriate placements? I didn’t get very far with it and the care system knew more about my life than I did anyway – I had blocked much of the difficult stuff out. In the end, the story was written for me and I later learned from my files that certain aspects were glossed over. I had reported the sexual abuse to counsellors I had been sent to and to social workers on different occasions but the allegations had never been taken seriously and were not included in the details about me that were sent to adoptive candidates.
After Barbara, I was sent to a lady called Karen in a nearby town. She was married to a man named John. She was supposed to be a specialist in difficult placements. It was well acknowledged that I needed dedicated care given my history, and Karen was deemed the best person available to provide it. And she probably would have been, if it wasn’t for the fact that her marriage to John was on the rocks.
She was a decent person and the home she lived in was beautiful. It was in a cosy rural location and was warm, welcoming and picturesque. In the event, however, I didn’t spend very long there. Instead, I ended up being bounced between two homes, staying most of the time with her husband in the house he moved into after their marriage broke down. As far as I know, social services knew none of this was going on. John was a very kind man and had the best intentions. He genuinely cared but he was completely unequipped to cope with a foster placement. He tried to look after me to the best of his ability in a difficult situation. There was no abuse and plenty of patience. His house wasn’t ideal, it was small and it didn’t have many toys or comforts in it, but I had been in far worse. He didn’t prompt me to have showers and look after myself, which I needed at that age. I wasn’t good at personal hygiene; I hadn’t been taught. He didn’t do things like check my hair for nits and, while I was with him, the scabies returned. He didn’t know how to structure my time. He was a plumber and he took me out at night when he went on jobs. Sometimes it would be after 10pm. I loved it because he got me up and told me we were going out on missions. We would stop at Morrisons if it was open and get a chicken and mushroom pasty to eat on the way. It was fun but I should have been in bed, not sitting in a van.
Their marriage broke down a few weeks after I arrived but John had already got his own place by then so I assume their relationship had been troubled for a while. To their credit, if they did row, they kept it hidden from me.
Karen was a decent enough person but she was obviously going through some form of midlife crisis. A top-heavy woman, she wore clothes that clung to her and showed off her boobs.
The move to Karen’s also meant a move to another school. By that stage in my life, I had already been to five different ones. I started one when I was still with Terri and Shane, I went to one when I was with Graham and Pauline, then another at Barbara’s, during which time I had been sent on two respite placements. Throughout each of these I was required to attend a school for a few weeks near the places I was staying in order to maintain a level of attendance.
The school I started while I was at Karen’s was the best I had been to. I began at the beginning of a term, which helped. It was always difficult trying to catch up when I was parachuted into a new school in the middle of a term. I had no problems making friends but it was hard to maintain friendships when I never knew how long I would be staying and, although academically I could read and write well, my maths was weak. But the staff at the new school had been made aware of my situation and they welcomed me and tried to make it as easy for me as possible. It was the only school where I made real friends. I always approached other kids and asked to play. I got on well with the teachers and the headmaster kept an eye out for me. On the first day, my form teacher assigned a friend to show me around. Her name was Charlie and we stayed friends after that. She was a lovely, feisty little thing with dimples and she was popular, so I made other friends through her.
My social circle grew when I was enrolled in a local social club for kids, and I used to love going there and hanging out with my friends. I had never had a social circle before. My brothers and sister had been the only other kids I played with regularly and we formed a protective pack when we were together. Unfortunately, however, being a child in care meant that there were some things that I had to be excluded from. I wasn’t allowed to go on trips because I was classed as vulnerable and this caused problems one Sunday when the social club arranged a day out.
There was a bus booked to take the children to a local attraction and I desperately wanted to go. I asked Karen and she told me that I wasn’t allowed to. I couldn’t understand why and so I argued with her. She tried to explain and made the excuse that she couldn’t afford the fee to save me from the reality that I was different from the other kids. I didn’t believe her and, when the day came for the trip, I left home on my own and went to get on the bus myself. The club was in a hall a few minutes from Karen’s house and, when I got there, the children were already lined up and filing onto the vehicle. I joined the queue.
As I went to climb up the stairs one of the organisers stopped me.
‘Lauren, you’re not allowed to go,’ she said gently.
‘It’s OK, Karen will pay when she picks me up,’ I lied.
But I was led off the bus while someone phoned Karen to come and pick me up. I started crying and, when she arrived, I threw a huge tantrum, screaming, thrashing about and refusing to go with her. One of the other organisers took pity on me.
‘Let her go,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind paying.’
Karen turned to her and within earshot of everybody else said, ‘You don’t understand. She can’t go, she’s a kid in care.’
Up until that moment, I hadn’t told anyone at the club about my circumstances. I didn’t make a habit of it. I wasn’t ashamed; I just didn’t want to be singled out. I wanted to be like all the other kids but, because of my circumstances, I needed permission from the council to go anywhere and, if I was going away or staying with another adult, they needed to be vetted. Mortified, I felt my cheeks redden. The bus stayed while Ka
ren explained the situation to the organisers. I sat in the car, crying. Occasionally one of the adults in the confab would look over at me with pity. When Karen got in the car she apologised and tried to explain to me that it was for my own safety.
But I wasn’t listening. I watched as the bus pulled away and saw my friends laughing and joking with each other. When we got home I told her that I didn’t want to be with her anymore and ran into my room and hatched a plan. I was fed up and I wanted to run away from everything. It was December; cold and damp. I put on a couple of sweaters and the warmest trousers I could find and, when it grew dark, I crept downstairs, where I grabbed a packet of Jammie Dodgers from the cupboard and a torch. I got my coat, hat, gloves and scarf and sneaked out of the house.
I didn’t know where I was going and wandered in the dark for about 15 minutes until I came to the park where I often played. There was a climbing frame in the middle of the play equipment, which had a covered shelter in the middle of it. I crawled inside and sat there, waiting to be found. The rain started after a while. It pattered gently off the wooden roof and dripped through the gaps. I pulled my hood up over my hat.
Girl for Sale Page 6