Tortured: Abused and neglected by Britain’s most sadistic mum. This is my story of survival.

by Victoria Spry

  For once in my life, I performed to Mother’s satisfaction. A letter was issued from Great Portland Street on 15 July: ‘Victoria has a complex clutch of disorders which include a possible autistic spectrum disorder and/or a possible developmental dyspraxia as well as her attention deficit disorder.’ The letter went to my local doctor, who had long said he didn’t think I was on the spectrum, and who had not referred me to the specialist unit in London, despite Mummy’s many requests. Instead, she had ‘self-referred’ us – and not just me, but all my siblings. Successful to the last, she got each and every one of us diagnosed with something: Asperger’s, ADHD, autism. Each of us received a prescription for various drugs and, from what I understand, Mummy received a boost to her benefits for looking after five disabled children. That would help to pay for the farmhouse renovations, and Adam’s growing toy collection.

  It was mine and Alloma’s job to make sure the boys took their pills. We sometimes had to pinch their noses to get them to take them, which I felt awful about. But Mummy was right about one thing: the pills did calm down the boys; they became docile, and Adam wouldn’t throw his cars at your head quite so much.

  We noticed that one of the pills had the opposite effect on us: they made us stay awake, very alert. For a child who was always being beaten for being lazy if I fell asleep, they were a godsend.

  And I was still as tired as ever. I was frequently sick with throat infections and tonsillitis, no doubt caused by those awful sticks, but whether I was poorly or not, it was my job to look after Adam all day, and I would be completely exhausted by the time I had tucked him into Mummy’s bed and then came downstairs to start the rest of my chores. We all had chores: Alloma was in charge of the cooking and looking after the animals; Christopher did the chickens and lots of outside work, slaving away on a farm that was swiftly sliding into rack and ruin. I was on Adam duty most of the day, and then I’d have to sort his toys out – not just tidy them away but spend hours separating out tiny bits of Lego and Kinder Surprise egg toys, and alphabetising his books. So, bedtime didn’t happen for us demon kids; we’d stay awake all night.

  I’d have to help my siblings with their chores, too. I can remember one mammoth task when the chicken feed, which we kept outside in the outbuildings, got everywhere because the chickens had pecked a hole in the sacks. Mummy made Alloma and me sit on the floor out in the barn all night, and divide the pellets from the corn. We couldn’t just sweep it up, we had to separate it. And if we didn’t get it done in time, by the time the sun came up, we would get another beating.

  It was quite useful having a pill that kept you awake at times like those. I ended up taking them every night. They made me feel horrible – skittish and overly nervous, with a pounding heart and restless legs that would twitch, all along my calves – but when I weighed up the alternative, I thought the horrible feelings were more than worth it.

  Alloma, though cowed by my mother’s torture, somehow retained a feistiness about her, the fiery nature she’d always had. Perhaps she’d managed to keep it because she’d gone to school for longer, or had had more time in her loving parents’ care as a child, but she seemed to know, more than the rest of us, that what Mummy was doing was wrong. For my part, I thought she was doing it with the best of intentions, and that we were the ones who were stopping her best intentions, her ideal of the perfect family, from happening. Alloma would rarely give in like I did, succumbing to my fate. She would still speak up, and speak out, even though it meant a beating. And one day, she didn’t just speak out – she broke out. She ran away. She was so very, very brave.

  Her crime had been to contradict Adam. He’d been watching Budgie the Little Helicopter all day at the farmhouse, and Alloma had suggested we watch the film Free Willy for a change. My mum was listening in, and when Adam kicked off and yelled that Alloma was making him watch something he didn’t want to – ‘She’s making me do it and I don’t want to!’ – Mummy had shouted at Alloma to get in the living room and wait to be beaten. And, for once, Alloma didn’t do as she was told. She ran straight out of the farmhouse into the night. It was freezing cold outside but she didn’t stop to get a jumper or anything, she just ran away in whatever she had on, which wasn’t much.

  When Mummy found out she’d gone, she took us all back to George Dowty. Despite the hoarding, it looked more habitable than the half-renovated farmhouse. She and Judith went out looking for Alloma. When they couldn’t find her, they came back to the house and, in a strangely subdued voice, Mummy gave us all a speech on the topic of ‘What do you say if anyone asks how I discipline you?’

  Once – and only once – she was assured that we were all on message about ‘protect Mum’ mode, she phoned the police, played the part of the concerned mother, and the authorities went looking for the missing little girl.

  I was worried. So worried. Worried the cat was out of the bag for my mum – was she going to be OK? And worried for Alloma, concerned she was going to get run over, or killed. It was freezing cold and I was in a panic that she would become ill and die. My mind played the same message over and over: She’s got no money, she’s got nowhere to go; what’s going to happen to her? And, worst of all: She is going to be in so much trouble when she gets back …

  I never had a flicker of hope in my heart that she would make it, that she would get away. Too many times in my life I had seen my mother charm doctors, and social workers, and teachers, and wrap them round her little finger: a whole host of professionals, all across the board, in so many different areas. The police would find Alloma eventually, I thought, and they’d bring her back, and Mummy would wrap her in her arms and thank the policemen, and they’d dip their caps and turn right round and walk straight out of our lives. And even though I was concerned for Mummy that Alloma might tell, I also knew what Mummy always told us: ‘Who would believe you if you told? You’re naughty foster kids, from broken homes. I’m an upstanding, religious woman. No one will ever believe you.’

  As usual, Mummy was right: Alloma caught hypothermia that night, but she was returned to the fold, safe and sound. And I’m sure, I’m absolutely certain, that the ice in her soul as she crossed back over the threshold was far more chilling than the numbing cold in her fingers and toes.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  That wasn’t the last time Alloma tried to run away. What did I tell you? She was feisty. Each time she returned, brought back by the police, the beatings continued, for all of us, and the sticks down the throat. Those sticks, those sticks …

  Those sticks were what prompted me to say something, at long last, to the only person in the world I trusted.

  I loved my nan with all my heart. I was a very sensitive little girl, so cowed and quiet. I rarely spoke, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have a brain inside my head, that I wasn’t watchful, taking everything in, making assessments of the world around me. I had to be very, very careful what I said and did, at all times, so I got into the habit of never saying anything. Something for which Mother beat me, too: ‘You don’t speak! You don’t say anything!’ she would roar, as she pummelled me around the head.

  I was a deep thinker, instead. I would watch, and observe, and consider, and decide. And I could see clearly, very clearly, that Nan saw good in me, and that she loved me. I could see she was a simple soul, innocent and kind and thoughtful. So I considered it, and I decided: I trusted her.

  Things at the farm were very, very bad. Imagine being beaten as we were, on a daily basis, walloped with hard sticks on our feet, more wood choking us and cutting up our throats as it pressed against our tongues, silencing our screams. The invisible chair, the strangulation, Mother’s fingers pinching our windpipes closed as she yelled in our faces, ‘You’re the scum of the earth!’

  But it was those sticks that really got me because, with them, it wasn’t just the moment of the beating that was agony. For weeks afterwards, the simple act of swallowing was its own special kind of torture. Our throats were literally shredded. I couldn’t eat or swal
low; I got throat infections over and over. And this was a time when it was happening a lot. It was relentless. We had a routine at last, and it involved almost constant abuse. It was very scary, and it never let up. I was in a very, very bad place.

  One afternoon, we were round at Nanny’s. Alloma and I were there; I’m not sure where the others were. Nanny was bustling about the place as usual, making sure we were both OK, rustling up a plate of jam sandwiches for us that we devoured hungrily as soon as she slid them across the table to us, with a wink and a message: ‘Don’t tell your mum.’

  I watched her carefully as I ate my sandwich. She smiled at me, and her eyes twinkled as they always did when she smiled in my direction. From a very young age, I knew Nan was on my side. I felt very safe when I was in her presence and that day, with my mum not around and my deep-thinking brain having weighed it all up, over so many years, I probably felt the most secure I ever had.

  I think she asked us something. It would have been some innocent concern, nothing serious, but with things so bad at the farm, and me feeling so safe on that particular afternoon, the world turned on its axis, and I opened my mouth to speak. I remember feeling that I was about to take a leap into the unknown. I was very scared, but I loved Nan and I trusted her.

  And so I told her about the sticks. Alloma, confident soul that she was, chipped in, too. As we told her, we didn’t cry. We had become so used to it that it was just what happened – there was no drama or emotion to it; not for us, not anymore.

  Nan was upset, though. I don’t remember her hugging us, but she looked us in the eye and she said, ‘Are you telling the truth?’

  We both nodded, multiple nods, yes, yes, yes, and we told her we were.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’ll sort it out.’

  My little eyes drank it all in, and I began to fret. Even as she said those words, I didn’t believe her. My mind started to play back all the years of my mum manipulating my nan, of Nan leaping to my defence but my mum beating me for it, and I suddenly thought, What have I done?

  The sky didn’t fall down at first. My mum and my nan didn’t happen to speak to each other for a few days. But then, a couple of days later, Mum walked up George Dowty Drive and went to see her mother. I saw her coming back to the house through an upstairs window, in such a temper as I’d never, ever seen her before.

  Bang!

  The front door flew open, nearly coming off its hinges; its handle left a big dent in the wall. And I knew, oh I knew: Nan had said something.

  ‘Victoria! Harriet!’

  I ran down the stairs at her shout. She lined us both up in the hallway.

  ‘What have you said to Nan?’

  I don’t know why, but we both said: ‘Nothing.’ We were so petrified of her, I guess we didn’t want to confess openly to having betrayed her, even though it was clear that Nan had told her what we’d said.

  She fixed me with a glare. ‘You’re a liar. You are a sly, horrible child, and you have evil eyes. And do you know what you have done? You have probably made my mother and me fall out for life. That’s my mother! To do that to a mother and daughter is the cruellest thing you can do in the world. And I am going to punish you.’

  And she did. Oh, she did. The full repertoire was thrown at us: washing-up liquid down our throats; night after night of running up and down the stairs until our little bodies were exhausted. We were drowned in the bathtub, just enough not to kill us outright. I’d gradually learned, as I grew older, to lie still when she drowned me, because she’d think you were dying and she’d bring you back up for air. And I’d learned how to keep still so she would bring me back up again. By this time, though, I think she’d cottoned on to what I was doing, so she’d plunge my head into the water again and again and again, holding me beneath the surface for longer and longer periods at a time. We were put on starvation for three whole months, too. We were beaten with crowbars; we were choked with the sticks. We were not to be trusted.

  We were banned from seeing Nan.

  When we did eventually see her again, probably months later, she never said anything at all to me about it, as though our conversation over the jam sandwiches had never happened. It was odd. Mum, of course, had told her we were lying. She had told her time and time again that I was a very, very naughty child, and years of bad propaganda worked against me. Even though Nan had a soft spot for me, and never saw that naughty child herself, she couldn’t help but believe her own daughter.

  I remember my mum telling me, laughing at me, really, saying, ‘When I was a little girl, I could get right round my mother.’ She used to say how Nan would try to smack her on the bottom for doing something naughty – usually something manipulative – and little Eunice would run round and round the sofa, chased by Nan like something out of a Benny Hill sketch. They’d go round and round and round until they both landed in a heap on the sofa, giggling their heads off. And my mum told me: ‘I always got away with it.’

  And so I tucked my new knowledge of what telling someone led to away in my heart. I didn’t blame Nan for doing nothing; my mother could be very persuasive. In my nan’s mind, she had checked it out, and my mum had reassured her. And if experts could be dazzled by Mum, I reasoned, then my simple nan didn’t stand a chance. I think I sensed, too, that what we had told her was so horrifying to her that, really, she didn’t want to believe we were telling the truth.

  Yet she had been my only hope. I didn’t trust anyone else; I didn’t know anyone else. From that moment on, I never spoke out again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The best lounge at the farmhouse had been transformed into a Disney princess’s kingdom. Mother and Judith had built an entire castle by hand, filled it with presents and strung it with twinkling fairy lights. It looked beautiful; it looked perfect.

  It was all more make-believe than Disney itself.

  I stood at the sidelines, watching quietly as the other children played: children of Jehovah’s Witnesses who had been invited round to this party held in Charlotte’s honour. I was dressed in a princess outfit; we were all dressed up: Charlotte, Alloma and me in colourful, shiny princess gowns; Christopher and Adam clothed as little princes. The theme of the party was in fact Beauty and the Beast, my favourite, but I took no pleasure in any of it – I knew it was all for show. A princess dress wasn’t suddenly going to make me happy, not when I was almost certainly going to be beaten as soon as the guests had gone. I looked at the floor, as I’d been instructed beforehand.

  Mummy clapped her hands. ‘Presents, children!’ she cried. And we all had to enter the castle, which was swimming with presents, and pick out a gift; there were presents for us all. With not a hint of joy I unwrapped mine. I knew from experience that she was just showing off to the Witnesses – look at me, what a generous and giving mother I am – and that as soon as the heavy farmhouse door shut tight, the gifts would be confiscated, apparently for us to ‘earn back’ by being on our best behaviour, but inevitably we would never, ever be good enough.

  Charlotte had no such worries, though. She sat like the princess she was in the middle of the sea of presents, her long, dark hair flowing prettily down her plump back, giggling with her new friend, Wanda. She was now thirteen years old, but she was dressed as if she was three.

  Wanda was a new figure in our lives. She and her mother, Scarlet, were just coming into the Truth, and they were struggling with the idea of not having Christmases and birthdays. This whole extravaganza had been staged to show them that joining the Church didn’t mean you couldn’t have magical celebrations. And I think now, looking back, that my mother possibly had another motive, too.

  She had become very pally with Scarlet of late. Scarlet was a single mother, and Mummy seemed to gravitate towards people who were vulnerable, and in her eyes incapable. She had another friend whose granddaughter had had a teenage pregnancy – she’d had a little girl at a very young age – and Mummy was always saying how she was trying to get that child off her to give her a bette
r life. As Mother darted about the living room now, gently touching Wanda’s ginger curls as she giggled together with Charlotte, she looked the perfect parent, caring and considerate: perhaps just the person to turn to if you were struggling to look after your little girl.

  The centrepiece of this elaborate ruse was the cake that towered upon the trestle table that had been laid out in the best lounge. Mummy had made it all herself. It was an ostentatious castle cake, with all these tiers and turrets – it must have taken her hours to make. But it was all done to impress the guests with how wonderful she was, how she was so skilled in all these different things. A rich fruit cake, it was covered in marzipan and bright white icing, and positively shone in the glow of the fairy lights. To us kids on starvation, it seemed like a mirage, too good to be true.

  As always happened, the good times didn’t last. Very shortly after the party – it might even have been the next day – a chicken nugget went missing from the freezer. Food was always going missing because one or other of us demon kids was always on starvation. Mother counted each and every slice of bread, every nugget and fish finger in the freezer, every single can of beans. She knew instantly whenever we had stolen food, but we did it anyway out of a desperate need to survive.

  I think it was probably my brother Christopher who took the nugget on this occasion, but I don’t know for sure. For as soon as the crime was discovered, just as I had done with the chocolates a few years before, we all denied taking it. As if that would help; as if that would spare us.

  The moment the missing nugget was noted, Alloma, Christopher and I were summoned to the farmhouse kitchen to be interrogated. We all lined up and Mother walked up and down, asking each of us: ‘Who’s taken the nugget?’

  ‘Not me, Mother,’ we all said, sweetly.