Mum had always blamed her drinking on me, and now Dad did too, saying that I was the reason she was the way she was. And although I felt resentful about the fact that everyone blamed me for their problems, I had been told so often, for as long as I could remember, that everything bad was my fault there was a part of me that believed it was true and I felt guilty because of it.
Looking back on it all now, it looks like a huge mess.
I had meetings with my social worker from time to time, but nothing was ever done about anything I told her. So I continued to get texts and phone calls from Pete, sometimes during the day, but more often in the early evening. And because I was afraid of him, and of Natalie, I would leave the house and go to wherever he told me to meet him.
My parents didn’t pay me any attention at all, except when they needed a scapegoat or a target for their spiteful jokes, so they didn’t ever ask me where I was going, or care if I was in or out. I found out later that when I was living at Denver House a member of staff used to phone my parents whenever I went missing, until Mum told them one day to stop bothering her every time it happened, ‘Because she’s not our problem any more. She’s yours.’
I was still trying to do my best at school, but I found it increasingly difficult to focus. And when I wasn’t at school or being trafficked by Pete and his friends, I stayed in my room. I did occasionally go out with friends from school though, and it was on one of those nights out, after I’d been living at home for about six months, that I lost the mobile phone Pete had given me.
My first reaction when I couldn’t find it was total panic and I started frantically searching for it, checking and rechecking every pocket in my jacket while repeating over and over in my head, ‘It must be here. It must be.’ But it wasn’t. So then I sat on the floor in my bedroom, crying and trying not to imagine what Pete – or Natalie – would do the next time he phoned me and I didn’t pick up. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder what they could do, because I always met them some distance from my house and they didn’t know where I lived. So if they couldn’t contact me by phone …
My heart was racing as I considered the possibilities: (1) that I might bump into Pete or Natalie in town somewhere; and (2) that Natalie might come looking for me at my school. The first seemed unlikely, as Pete had a Birmingham accent and obviously knew his way around the city far better than he did around the town where I lived, which had always made me think he actually lived in Birmingham rather than locally; and, in any case, I very rarely went into town. As for the second possibility, I knew Natalie wasn’t from the area either and she didn’t know where I went to school.
Neither argument was foolproof, however, and I spent the next few days anxiously looking over my shoulder all the time when I was out, until eventually I began to think that maybe it really was all over. After almost two years of living in constant fear, being bullied and abused, all it took to put an end to it was to get rid of the phone. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? More to the point, why hadn’t my key worker or my social worker or any of the other people who used to attend all those pointless meetings about my ‘care plan’ thought of it? When I told them Pete had given me a mobile phone, why didn’t they take it, then move me away from Denver House to somewhere I might have been safe?
When I’d shown the social worker and the woman from the NSPCC the bruises on my legs more than 18 months ago and told them they’d been caused by my mum beating me, I did it because I was desperate to get away from home and because I thought I’d be put in a foster home. Instead, I was put in Denver House – ‘Just for six weeks,’ they’d said, ‘while we do an assessment.’ But I’d ended up staying there for a year, because, as I found out later, they had assessed Mum and Dad too and decided they were not ‘fit parents’.
They had to put me somewhere, I suppose, once they realised what was happening at home, and I can understand that emergency accommodation might have been difficult to find. What I still don’t understand, however, is why they allowed me to stay in Denver House for all those months, when, apparently, it was already ‘known to be targeted for prostitution’. I was shocked when I discovered they already knew that. They shouldn’t have put anyone in that place, but especially not a vulnerable teenage girl. And I was angry too, because all the time that I was suffering horrific sexual abuse, thinking it must be my fault and unable to understand why no one did anything to help me when I told them what was happening, they knew I was telling the truth and that I wasn’t doing it because I wanted to, which is what they told my parents.
I kept begging my social worker and the staff at the unit to do something to make it stop. But they just let me struggle on, trying to cope with having things done to me that should never be done to anyone of any age, things that were going to affect me for the rest of my life, and that could have resulted in me being killed, or killing myself. Then I lost the phone and it stopped. It makes me incredibly sad to think that it could all have been so easily prevented.
It’s a terrible, destructive, life-changing experience to be sexually abused. For me – and I’m sure for many other children in similar situations – it’s also incredibly damaging to know that your own parents don’t like or care about you. And during those months after I left Denver House and went back to live at home, my mum made it even more clear to me than she’d done before that I was not loved by anyone in my family and no one wanted me around.
It was only quite recently that I began to understand why I’ve done some of the things I’ve done and why it can be so difficult for people to change patterns of behaviour that have become established over a period of years, especially, perhaps, during childhood. For me, one of those patterns of behaviour – which is certainly the most destructive – has been drinking. I know my teachers were worried about me and that they often reported their concerns to social services, but no one seemed to take them seriously.
One Friday afternoon, after I’d been living at home for almost 18 months, I waited until all the other kids had left the classroom at the end of the last lesson and told my teacher I couldn’t face another weekend of abuse at home.
‘I’m so sorry, Zoe,’ she said. ‘I’d like to be able to offer you more than sympathy, but I’m afraid there isn’t much we can do.’
I suppose I hadn’t really expected her to say anything very different. But I’d finally reached the point of no return, and instead of walking out of the classroom and going home, I pulled a small kitchen knife out of my school bag and told my teacher, ‘I can’t spend another weekend at home. I’m going to kill myself.’
Although I’d been drinking since first thing in the morning, it wasn’t just the alcohol talking. I really couldn’t take any more of my father’s horrible comments, my mum’s violence and nasty remarks, and my parents’ constant, vicious arguments and fights. So it was a desperate cry for help, and although I didn’t want to kill myself, I couldn’t see any other way out.
My teacher took a step backwards when I pulled the knife out of my bag, then raised her hand in an instinctively protective gesture as she said, ‘It’s all right, Zoe. Just wait here while I go and find out what we can do to help you. Don’t do anything, will you? Promise me. I’ll only be two minutes.’ And I probably had only been sitting there crying for a couple of minutes when she came back with another teacher and told me, ‘We’ve called the police and they’re on their way. We had to do it, Zoe. We’re very concerned about you.’
By the time the police arrived, I was sitting with the two teachers in an office near the school’s reception area, a bit calmer than I had been, but still holding the knife, which I handed to a police officer when he asked me to. No one tried to restrain me or handcuff me on that occasion though. In fact, it was the first time a police officer had ever been nice to me and treated me sympathetically.
I didn’t say much to the child protection officer who interviewed me at the police station, just that it wasn’t safe for me to go home. Then I was taken by
a couple of different policemen to a hospital I didn’t know, where I was met by a social worker I’d never seen before, who said they were going to do a mental health assessment so that a decision could be made about where to place me.
The social worker waited outside the room while the psychiatrist asked me questions, which included things like, ‘Do you ever hear voices?’ and ‘Do you know what day it is today?’
‘No, I don’t ever hear voices,’ I said. Then I told him the day and the date, before adding, ‘I’m not crazy. I’m just desperately unhappy living at home.’ And eventually, after he’d asked me some more questions and I’d shown him the bruises that almost covered my upper arms and the backs of my legs, he said I didn’t need to be an inpatient in the hospital and that the solution to my depression would be for me to be removed from the situation that was causing it. Then it was my turn to wait outside while he spoke to the social worker, who eventually drove me to a foster home.
Chapter 13
I didn’t ever see that social worker again, but the impression she made on me as she drove me to the foster home has stayed with me – for reasons that weren’t entirely good! After telling me she only worked at weekends and only ever on the emergency team, ‘Because the pay’s much better and we don’t always get called out,’ she said her manager had hoped I’d be sectioned because she’d been having trouble trying to find a bed for me. ‘So this foster home is only a temporary, emergency measure,’ she said. Then she sang an old Isley Brothers’ song called ‘Harvest for the World’, and continued to sing for the rest of the journey. Maybe she thought she was cheering me up, but it did make me wonder for a moment if I had lost the plot, because she seemed to be in a world of her own, and completely oblivious to my distress.
It was late when I arrived at the foster home that night, and after I’d met my foster carer Sandra and her husband Bill, I went straight to bed. So I didn’t see any of the other kids who were living there until the next morning. It was Saturday, and after Sandra had sorted out the other children, she took me home to pick up my uniform, school bag and a couple of other items of clothing, which was more or less everything I possessed.
My parents still didn’t have a phone in the house, so I think someone from social services must have gone round the previous evening to tell them I wasn’t coming back. Dad wasn’t there when we arrived, and Mum didn’t really say anything much, perhaps because she felt a bit intimidated by Sandra, who was a big, no-nonsense sort of woman who could be quite scary when she was angry and who gave the very distinct impression that she would be perfectly capable of looking after herself in almost any situation.
However badly children are treated by their parents, there seems to be a part of them that always longs to be loved by their mum and dad. And although that was true of me for many years, by the time I went home to pick up my things with Sandra that day, I just wanted to get away from them. I’d gone home the night everything kicked off at Denver House because I had nowhere else to go and I’d told myself, ‘Maybe things will be different this time.’ But I hadn’t expected to stay there for more than a few days, and I didn’t want to be there that day with Sandra either. So I just grabbed my stuff and got out as quickly as I could.
Sandra and Bill lived in a large house that was actually two semi-detached houses knocked together, with most of the rooms divided with plasterboard, which made it seem more like a children’s home than the family home I used to imagine living in one day with foster parents who were just like my friend Carly’s mum and dad. But at least it wasn’t my family home, or Denver House.
There were already 12 kids living in the foster home, although I didn’t see many of them on that first day. Some of them were being fostered long term, some just stayed for a few days or weeks before others came to take their place, and one younger and two older ones had actually been adopted by Sandra and Bill. Twelve kids is a lot to have living in any one household. Twelve kids with issues can make even a large house feel crowded and chaotic, and there seemed to be children everywhere. I was one of the lucky ones, however, because I had a small room to myself, which was on the second floor and actually half of what had originally been a not very large bedroom.
It was only Sandra who was the foster carer. Bill – a skinny, bald, very quiet man who looked even smaller than he actually was beside his much bigger wife – had a full-time job and was hardly ever at home and when he was, he didn’t really engage with any of the children, not even the ones they’d adopted. Which meant that Sandra had almost sole responsibility for the care of 12 kids with emotional and/or behavioural problems. So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that she didn’t have the time – or, apparently, the inclination – to offer any of us emotional support and make it seem less like a hostel and more like a home.
Even though I was 15½ when I was fostered, and much less naive than I’d been when I went to live at Denver House, it was still a bit daunting to go, literally overnight, from sitting alone in my bedroom at home to living in a house full of noisy kids again. But I knew I couldn’t cope with being at home any more and that I was just going to have to resign myself to whatever happened next.
I didn’t have much contact with the other kids in the house and when I did have a brief chat with an older boy after I’d been there for a few days and mentioned that I thought Sandra was okay, he laughed and said, ‘That’s because you’re still in the two-week honeymoon period. You wait. You’ll meet the real Sandra soon.’ And he was right. After I’d been there for almost exactly two weeks, Sandra told me, ‘There are rules in this house. One of them is that after 8 o’clock in the evening, you do not come downstairs or bother me or Bill for any reason.’
I was used to spending time in my room at home, so I knew I wouldn’t have any problem doing it again now. It was just that the way she said it made me feel sad and alone again, and finally shattered the dream I’d always had of living with foster parents who cared about me, maybe even liked me.
Over the next few days, it became increasingly apparent that Sandra saw her only job as being to provide food and accommodation for as many kids as social services were prepared to let her cram into the house. Apart from making a roast dinner on Sundays, she didn’t do any cooking for us older kids. ‘You make your own meals and do your own washing up,’ she told me the day the ‘honeymoon period’ ended. ‘This isn’t a hotel, so don’t expect people to do it for you.’ She opened the door of the fridge as she spoke, pointed to the own-brand food from a cheap local supermarket on the lower shelves and said, ‘That’s yours.’ Then she indicated some items in ‘Tesco finest’ packaging on the top shelf and added, ‘And that is for Bill and me only. It is not to be touched by anyone else.’
I never did do any cooking for myself though. I didn’t know how to – Mum had always brought a plate of oven-cooked food up to my room when I was at home, and a chef made all our meals at Denver House – and I didn’t have enough confidence to ask Sandra to teach me. I wouldn’t have wanted to eat in the kitchen anyway, because I still had huge problems with food. In fact, just the thought of having to sit down with a knife and fork and eat in front of other people made me feel sick with anxiety. So I would go to the corner shop to buy sandwiches and crisps, then eat them alone in my room, just like I used to do when I lived with my parents.
Something else I was anxious about when I lived in the foster home was the fact that Denver House was just a five-minute walk away and I had to pass it on my way to catch the bus to and from school every day. I always walked on the other side of the road with my head down and my fists clenched, but just knowing it was there made me feel as though I hadn’t really got away from it at all, not least because it was obvious that what had happened to me was still happening to other girls who lived there, who I sometimes saw getting into cars that pulled up right outside the building.
I didn’t recognise any of the men I saw hanging around there. Apart from Pete and a couple of his friends who used to pick me up regularly, I w
ouldn’t have been able to identify any of the other men who abused me, because I always tried not to look at their faces. I doubt whether any of them would have recognised me either, although there was one taxi driver who followed me down the road one day when I was walking back from school and told me to get into his taxi, so maybe he’d seen me before. Fortunately though, I was close to a side road and when he kept insisting and wouldn’t leave me alone, I was able to run down an alleyway where he couldn’t follow me in his car.
On another day when I was on the way back from school and not far from Denver House, I saw Frances. I was standing talking to a girl called Paula, who I’d just bumped into, after having last seen her when we were both about seven years old and she left the primary school we went to. We’d recognised each other immediately as we were passing, and she was just telling me that she’d recently gone to live at Denver House when Frances appeared and asked me to go round the corner with her because there was something she wanted to talk to me about.
It felt a bit awkward, leaving Paula standing there, but I went, and as soon as we were out of earshot, Frances explained that the reason she’d suggested it was ‘because Paula would get jealous’. I didn’t know what she meant and was just about to ask her, ‘Jealous of what?’ when a gust of wind caught the hem of the top she was wearing and folded it up, exposing her stomach and the lower part of her chest. I thought she’d be as embarrassed as I was, so I looked away, but instead of covering herself up, she just laughed and said, ‘Ooh, look Zoe, the wind is blowing my skirt up.’
‘It’s not your skirt. It’s your top,’ I told her, the awkwardness of the moment making me terse. And after she’d pulled it down again, she asked me for the address and phone number of the foster home where I was living.
Trafficked Girl Page 13