What's Love Got to Do with It?

by Jenny Molloy

  After that, fostering stalled for us, so we were taken to live in a children’s home run by nuns. The building was a Victorian school with gothic tendencies, which was scary enough, but when I was greeted by an Irish nun who also happened to be albino, I almost wet myself. The albino nun was nothing compared to my roommate, Violet, who sat on the edge of the bed, murmuring a ritual phrase I was never able to hear, as she rocked herself to sleep at night. Christ only knows what she’d been through. I know all she deserved was love and sympathy but, being an anxious five-year-old, I did all I could to avoid interacting with this spooky child. I spent my first few weeks mostly petrified. I begged to be put in a room with Jack but he was down the hall, in the boys’ dormitory, and the nuns couldn’t bring themselves to make an exception.

  The nuns were kind. They gave us lots of hugs and did their best to comfort me. I was thrown into a state of anxiety when one smiling sister told me: ‘Your Mum’s coming to visit, Amanda. Won’t that be nice?’

  No it would not. I had given up on Mum; I knew she was full of shit. She only involved us when she needed something like a new council flat and so she made a show of trying to get her life back on track to ensure she got it.

  Her visits were full of fake affection and, when the nuns left us alone, she turned on the bitchiness and, alongside digs at my lack of delight to see her, she went on about how awful I looked. She was one to talk. Her hair was a multitude of uneven brown and blonde stripes, her lips bright red, eyelashes long, thick and black, and eyeshadow a shade even a graffiti artist would have put back on the shelf.

  The nuns could see that my mum’s visits left me deeply disturbed and, while they did their best to make me feel better, there was only so much they could do.

  I felt so alone; so alone, in fact, that I had a nervous breakdown. My mum had left me feeling so lost and confused, I prayed to God in the church we went to every Sunday and at night from my window, from where I could see the church, that she would undergo a miraculous change, like the caterpillar into a butterfly, and that my life would make sense. God failed to answer my prayers, so I stopped believing in him, which broke my heart because I trusted the lovely stories I’d been told about this wonderful being who watched over us all and cared for us all so much.

  I was loud, boisterous and temperamental. I didn’t make friends. I only wanted to play with my brother. Thanks to Mum I had a huge and rude vocabulary and every other word started with ‘f or ‘s’. I had little interest in study and was behind with reading, writing and maths. If there was one word that summed me up at the time it was angry. I was five years old and furious with the world, but it was impossible for me to put that into words, or to get to grips with my feelings. I didn’t understand that my anger came from sadness.

  Bill and Celia became our foster parents when I was six years old. The nuns had been struggling to find Jack and me a place and had suggested splitting us up and, true to form, I said: ‘No fucking way!’

  So they looked further afield and, after we had interest from Bill and Celia, things moved quickly. We were allowed a day together to see how we’d get on and they took us on a visit to London Zoo which, naturally, blew both our minds. From king-size pythons to tigers, and from penguins to monkeys – well, if wonders like this were waiting for us in the real world, then I would gladly accept Bill and Celia as my mum and dad.

  It had taken me a few weeks to get used to the albino nun, but I’d since come to love her; she was the most patient and kind lady of them all when it came to taking care of me. As she put me to bed after our zoo visit, I begged her to let Bill and Celia take us. I don’t know how much influence she had but that’s just what happened.

  My faith in God was restored, just a little.

  Bill and Celia took us home, to a lovely warm house in Colchester, where we had our own rooms. ‘Dad’ told us he was a soldier and that meant he had to go away for long stretches at a time but that he would always come back and ‘Mum’ would look after us in the meantime.

  Bill was quite chubby for a soldier, aged about forty and I think he only got us because Celia made him. They couldn’t have children of their own and, while Bill might have been content to go through life childless, Celia demanded children.

  I also learned that Bill seemed to have a calming effect on Celia, that there were two sides to her personality.

  They had been warned about our behavioural problems and had been forgiving, kissing us good night and good morning, always with a smile but, the day after Bill left, Celia turned into the Wicked Witch of the West. She even looked like her, with her long pointy nose and crazy, thin-lipped, evil mouth. She had tight-curled, black hair and huge, round glasses the size of jam-jar lids that made her eyes look enormous.

  Celia still demanded good morning and good night kisses from us each day but now without a smile, without a trace of warmth. She was cold, distant, punishing and cruel – vicious. We were terrified by her temper. Even Jack, normally afraid of nothing, jumped out of his skin when Celia suddenly screamed at him because the dog was ill and she wanted to know what he’d done to him to make him sick. When he protested his innocence, Celia turned to me. We hadn’t done anything but that didn’t stop Celia from tying us up on the landing, fastening us to door handles with elastic bands while spouting religious nonsense about how we were going to go to hell unless we buckled down and became good little children.

  Relief came after about three months, when Bill returned from the army and Celia’s parents joined us for Christmas. They were lovely and, in a rare few days of utter joy, they came armed, along with Bill, with a whole child’s bedroom-worth of presents. My favourite gift was the roller skates and I made the most of this happy time, while Celia played along with her parents and Bill. Only Jack and I knew about the nutter behind this facade.

  Bill was given a new posting in the New Year and we moved to an army camp in Cumbria. We lived on a base that was all prefab houses, blasted concrete roads with not a tree anywhere in sight. The sky was always grey and even when the sun did shine, the dull, brown, scrubby landscape swallowed the light whole. It was miles from any village, let alone town, and social services stopped coming because it was so far off the beaten track. We stayed here for an unbelievably bleak two-and-a-half years, during which time Bill was hardly ever at home. He was constantly on exercises or training for something or other. I think he just wanted to get away from us all.

  Even when our birth Mum wanted to come see us, pushed by some unknown motive, she found the distance too great. It was like being trapped on a very boring desert island with a crazy woman who had violent tendencies. We were always on edge as we never knew what she would do from one moment to the next. Even our school was in this camp and the teacher couldn’t cope with our erratic behaviour. Celia, not surprisingly, had no friends. It was just us and her. I had no idea why she wanted kids. I felt so helpless when she hit Jack, there was nothing I could do to stop her – we still had to kiss her first thing in the morning and last thing at night and it was terrifying, she always looked so fierce and sometimes when we turned our faces up, ready to kiss her, she slapped us.

  Early on, a couple of months after this nightmare began, we travelled to court where we were to be officially adopted. As part of the procedure the social worker asked me if I really wanted to stay with Bill and Celia. I said I did because I didn’t know what else to do. The social worker assumed everything was perfect, that this was a happy ending to her case. I didn’t think I could say no, and the same went for Jack.

  Five years after the adoption hearing, when I was ten years old, Bill told us he wanted to leave the army and move to the coast somewhere south. To that end, we moved from Cumbria to a camp in West Sussex where Jack and I slept on camp beds. Most of the furniture in our old house had belonged to the army and so we were living in a temporary house while Bill looked for somewhere along the Sussex coast.

  The first week we were there, I struggled to get to sleep most evenings. After a few rest
less nights, I woke up with my nightie around my neck and a pain down below. When I opened my eyes I was looking into Bill’s face. He made a ‘Shhh’ motion and continued to abuse me. From that day on, Bill abused me once every single week.

  I was in hell. I had this woman on my case all day and then at night this man, who I once had seen as my saviour, the man who was able to pacify Celia the Wicked Witch, was now an abuser.

  We moved to an amazing house in a town right by the sea. There was a big garden and sand dunes rolled down towards the beach. The school was great and I was allowed to go horse riding. The whole town was middle-class and conservative with a small ‘c’.

  For the first time in my life I fell in love with school and the kids that went there. So this was what it was like to live in the normal world! But the nice surroundings couldn’t guard me from the life I’d lived up until then. When I was thirteen, I started to become interested in dressing in a more adult style, and using make-up – as well as becoming interested in boys.

  I started to climb out of my window in the evening, which accomplished two things: it stopped the abuse and I was able to hang out with older boys. I grew more confident as my hormones kicked in and, one night, I was ready when Bill came in. I demanded he stop abusing me. That if he didn’t I was going to tell my boyfriends and they were going to beat him up and then I would go to the police and tell them exactly what he’d done to me once a week for the past four years.

  Bill took this calmly, then came up with a compromise – he’d make me watch porn and touch myself. He would leave the room while I did this and then come back in and check my pulse.

  ‘And when you want to start having sex,’ he told me, ‘just let me know.’

  I had to get out of there. I worked three jobs: a paper round, a bakery assistant and a waitress. Apart from being able to save money, this meant I could spend as much time as possible out of the house.

  I started seeing a boy, Tommy, who was a bit older than me, after he asked me to slow dance at a disco. We went out for a year and a half, only ever kissing. I really fell for him and experienced love for the first time – I had no idea such powerful emotions existed.

  Life at home hadn’t changed. Jack was doing OK. He was almost sixteen and too big for Celia to abuse now and wouldn’t take any nonsense. Jack was just as messed up as me, mentally and emotionally, however. I really wanted to leave. I had to cycle five miles to one of my jobs and one night, as I was about to leave work at midnight and begin my hour-long pedal home, I thought, ‘I can’t take living in that house any more.’ So I stole some money from the restaurant where I worked, got a taxi to the train station and caught the last train to Brighton.

  The police picked me up. They didn’t take me seriously at all, chuckling as they said: ‘You’ve been a naughty girl, haven’t you?’

  ‘I’m not going back home,’ I told them. And I said that my step-dad was abusing me. They didn’t believe me.

  ‘You’re going to have to go home,’ one officer replied.

  I lost it. I screamed, ‘No I’m not!’ over and over until they let me talk some more and then agreed to put me in a place of safety – which turned out to be a caravan in Worthing.

  The next day I made an official statement, detailing the abuse. They still didn’t believe me. As far as they were concerned, I’d stolen money, so therefore I was a troublemaker. They tried to talk me out of it but I’d made up my mind. Whatever it took, whatever anyone said, I wasn’t going to live with Bill and Celia any more.

  So they interviewed Bill.

  The officers’ faces had changed when they came back in to talk to me.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  Bill had said, on tape, that he’d squeezed my breasts a few times, but only because I’d asked him to, because I wanted him to. He’d also said I’d asked him to do a lot more and accused me of being a seductress.

  This was the typical response of a paedophile unused to police interviews – a glimpse into how their twisted minds work.

  ‘I’m sorry we didn’t believe you,’ the officer said. ‘You won’t be going back there.’

  While I waited for the court case I was put into temporary foster care with an old couple who lived in the middle of nowhere. They had a teenage son with learning difficulties who was a chronic masturbator. I had to listen to him go at it every night as my room was next door and the walls were paper-thin.

  ‘Even a children’s home would be better than this,’ I told my social worker, and so that’s where I ended up, in a house in Lewes, just in time for my fifteenth birthday.

  Jack said he’d decided to stay with Bill and Celia. Bill had never abused him and now he was able to handle Celia, he wanted to finish school and then decide what he was going to do.

  In the run-up to the court case I was asked to go to a meeting with Bill and Celia. I think they were hoping they could talk me into dropping the charges. As soon as Bill started speaking I stopped him, stating: ‘This is bullshit,’ and walked out of the room.

  I developed full-blown symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – an extreme type of anxiety disorder that sometimes develops in people after they’ve suffered or witnessed traumatic events. I was in a constant state of hyper-awareness – ‘danger mode’ – and couldn’t switch off. I yelled at people for the stupidest thing, exploded every time I spoke to someone official. To the inexperienced staff at the care home, I was a real pain in the backside, a crazy person. What they didn’t realise was that this was a result of the accumulation of years of damage.

  I really started to abuse alcohol, drinking until I passed out, waking without any memory of what had taken place the night before.

  Sam was the only worker who had some sense of how to talk to me. He held me one night, when I was about to try and hang myself, and was firm but fair with me during my rages, talking to me, showing me reason, until I calmed down. But Sam wasn’t a trained therapist and so the PTSD continued to wreak havoc with my life until I was sixteen and I finally went to court to face that bastard Bill and his bitch of a wife. My barrister came to see me a week before the trial was due to start.

  ‘Your step-father is willing to admit to a lesser charge,’ he said. ‘Consensual sex with a girl over thirteen.’ This was a typical defence ploy. If I admitted that I’d led Bill on, the court would sympathise and, as I was over thirteen, the sentencing for sexual abuse is much lighter. Apparently, according to the courts, it’s much worse to rape a twelve-year-old than it is to rape a thirteen-year-old. There was no way I was ever going to agree to something like that.

  ‘No, that’s a lie,’ I told the barrister. ‘I want to go to court and tell everyone the truth.’

  I had to stand up in front of everyone and tell them what Bill had done. I’m sure he was counting on me not being able to, or falling apart under cross-examination, which I thought was never going to end. The case was reported in the papers, where he was named and shamed. I held firm and spoke clearly, although it was hard to speak about some aspects, as I had to use the ‘polite’ names for everything.

  The jury believed me and Bill was found guilty on four counts. The verdict was unanimous. He was given a nine-month suspended sentence. I couldn’t believe it. For what he’d done? That was all? Barely a slap on the wrist.

  Sam helped me so much to get through this, along with my English teacher, Paul, who was really posh but lovely. They were both in their twenties and showed belief in me, that I would be able to do something positive with my life, even when I was at my absolute lowest. These two men were my first positive experiences outside of the nuns’ home and they gave me hope; something in me clicked on to the idea that not everyone was bad.

  For me, social workers were the enemy and not to be trusted under any circumstances. They were desperate to get rid of you as fast as they possibly could so they could get on to their next hopeless case. I was due to move out of the children’s home as I approached eighteen and one social worker had the bright idea of
trying to persuade me to see my mum. The last time I’d seen her was when I was seven; they just didn’t seem to get it. My mum didn’t give a toss about me. Why would I want to see her now? How on earth was she supposed to make me feel better about anything?

  Instead, I applied for a place in supported lodgings run by a young Christian couple, Dai and Marie. They meant well but they’d bitten off far more than they could chew with me. I was out at all hours and by now had discovered other drugs besides alcohol and cigarettes. I was making Angel Delight in the kitchen one night when Marie came downstairs in her nightie.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Marie demanded.

  Angel Delight is supposed to be the simplest thing you could ever make but there was powder and milk all over the kitchen and I seemed to have used about five pots to try and mix it. I was very stoned.

  ‘Don’t you know what time it is?’

  I stared at the kitchen clock. ‘Four o’clock,’ I replied.

  ‘In the bloody morning!’

  Oh, they tried, they really tried. But I drank all their wine and sold the TV they bought for me to have in my room. And after I agreed to one last chance, I stole Marie’s engagement ring, pawned it and used the money to buy weed and alcohol. Marie had already called the housing officer so she could start looking for other potential places for me. I was high and told the housing officer what I’d done when we were alone. She got me to show her where I’d sold the ring and she bought it back for Marie.

  After that I was moved to a B&B. The people were nice, once again; they were a gay couple, Malcolm and Terry, but I didn’t give a damn. I was either high, taking speed and ecstasy, or trying to get high. Again I sold the TV they’d put in my room. They replaced it, which surprised me. They also cooked me a meal every evening. I did grow to like them and was trying to at least respect their home, until I arrived one Sunday night to find no meal waiting. Terry was stretched out on the sofa with a crazy headache that he said was giving him visions. The doctor had scheduled a brain scan for the following day but the tumour that was pressing on Terry’s brain killed him that night. It was a narrow, four-storey house and I looked down from my room on the top floor as the body bag was carried out on the ambulance stretcher. Just when I had hopes of settling down, a place and people I could respect, this had happened.