Soon after I started at the school, Black instigated a 7 a.m. prayer meeting. It was way too early. I didn’t want to go but I had to, so I dozed throughout. Luckily these sessions were stopped after a few months, I imagine partly because of the ridiculous hour and partly because Black didn’t like small or private gatherings as he wasn’t in control of them.
Right from the start the thing I dreaded most about Tadford was being summoned into Black’s private office. It was called ‘the private haven’ and I feared it because he repeatedly made me feel useless, unworthy and full of despair. My first visit came shortly after the Lancashire hotpot episode. His manner was almost immediately intrusive and within minutes he asked me if I had had sex and if I was pregnant. I was shocked by such crude and personal questions and didn’t want to answer him, but he kept asking me, and in the end I didn’t have the maturity or confidence to tell him it was a private matter and found myself confessing instead. I told him that I had had sex, but that I always used protection and wasn’t pregnant. He then asked me lots of questions about my social life, about what I did and where I went. By the end of it all I felt thoroughly dirty, exposed and humiliated, that what I had done was terribly wrong and that there was no hope for me at all. This one dressing-down also had a long-term effect. It made me feel sex was wrong even if it had been sanctioned by a wedding and I don’t think Peter and I ever experienced true physical intimacy. Despite my huge embarrassment, somewhere at the back of my brain I noted that Black seemed to almost relish the process of breaking me down and extracting my confession.
He then insisted I write to my parents telling them when I had lost my virginity and that I had lied to them about going to a party. I did what I was told without thinking too much about how my unnecessary letter would upset them. That hit me when my father replied. He wrote:
I feel very hurt that you should find it necessary to lie and deceive me … You should know by now that you only get away with a lie for so long then it catches up on you. As I said I feel terribly hurt. I don’t know what else will be revealed, however because we love you so much we forgive you for everything that has happened in the past.
There is one thing for certain you could not come back and carry on as you were, it is with this in mind that I must insist that you stay at Tadford as far as we are concerned from now on the past should be forgotten. If you feel you would like to make amends for what has happened the best way you can do it is by really working hard and build a good future for yourself so that in the future you too will have the choice of going to university the same as Kerry if you want to …
The letter was a crushing blow. Dad was such a gentle man and the harsh, unbending tone was so unlike him that I immediately wrote him another letter of apology. At the end of October I received his reply:
Your first letter took a lot of courage to write and tells me that I now have a daughter who has matured and is now going the right way in life, with regards to its contents of course we forgive you because we love you so much.
Our love is even stronger now because you have been so honest with us. As regards to anything else we may find out, these too will be forgiven.
If you remember some time back I had a talk with you and I said there was a battle going on inside you with two people, one was the Devil himself and the other was that loving person with that lovely personality.
The battle is now over and I thank God for my lovely loving daughter has won. You can now look forward to a future full of happiness and love, as for ourselves our prayers have been answered in full. I agree with you that it is a lousy world for teenagers to grow up in.
God bless you my darling and here are lots of sloppy kisses.
Mum and Dad xxxxxxxxxxx
I felt very mixed emotions when I received this letter. I was pleased Dad seemed to have forgiven me, but it made me realize that my life at Tadford was a done deal and that there would be no reprieve. It was a long time before it dawned on me that my parents had absolutely no need to hear explicit details about my sex life. Children don’t tell their parents what they get up to. It is totally inappropriate and unnecessary, and the pressure on me to confess all was, I came to believe, more about driving a wedge between us than setting any sort of record straight.
Shortly after my problems with the hotpot I had another run-in with the teachers. I was supposed to go swimming in the town swimming baths, but my period, which had previously stopped for about a year – I’m not sure why – started again. I was in a lot of pain and absolutely didn’t want to swim. I felt too embarrassed to explain the real reason and instead just kept refusing to go. Siobhan Scott, who was with me in the corridor of the new school building, got very cross and eventually Heather Black was asked to come over. Even though she was quite a tall woman of substantial build, it seemed to me she did everything her much smaller husband told her to do.
She was furious at my refusal and started to try to drag me to Black’s office, but I broke away and ran out of the school, my only thought being that I had to get away. It was totally impulsive. I had no specific place to go to or any sort of plan. Tears streamed down my face and even though I didn’t have any money on me, I stopped at the nearest bus stop hoping a bus might come that I could jump on to and escape. A woman was waiting for the bus and must have wondered what on earth was going on. Heather caught me before a bus arrived and marched me straight to the house where she and her husband lived. We went into Black’s study, where a number of important Church members, including Charlotte Snelling and Olivia Porter, were waiting.
The room was dark and had a distinct smell of leather. There were two red leather sofas, a big brown leather chair and lots of books lining the walls. I was told to sit on one of the sofas and Siobhan sat next to me. I was then bombarded with accusations of how rebellious and terrible I was, and each person told me in turn that I had to do what I was told. The telling-off lasted about two hours, most of which I spent in tears. I finally confessed that I had my period and that was why I couldn’t swim. They all looked at me incredulously and started laughing. Black asked if that was all and hadn’t I ever heard of a Tampax? I thought it was an awful thing to say to a young teenage girl who had just arrived in a completely new place. I didn’t know how to reply or why a group of adults would want to gang up on a young person. So I just sat speechless, feeling a mind-numbing embarrassment that stayed with me for weeks. As did my hatred of Black and how wretched he made me feel.
When they finally let me go, I went straight to Siobhan’s house, phoned my parents and pleaded with them once again to take me away. I was too inhibited to tell them about the Tampax incident and only spoke in general terms, saying yet again how much I hated the place. Not surprisingly they said I should stay and they would see me soon. I felt crushed and hurt. I had to do everything in my power to escape its grip. Quickly, before it was too late. I had never felt so alone, so unloved and so full of emotional pain. But no matter how loudly I shouted for help, no one, not even my parents, listened. Mum and Dad seemed united in taking the same hard line. There was no give and take. I couldn’t negotiate with them an inch. The bald reality was that I was imprisoned in a place I loathed. Was this what I deserved? Was I so awful? Yet even in the depths of my pain I managed to separate the knowledge that my parents wanted me from the fact that they couldn’t cope with a feisty teenager.
When I put the phone down I thought, ‘I just can’t feel any worse’, and as the days went by I simply couldn’t settle. I felt desperate and scared. I had to escape, so a few days later I tried to run away again. I had no particular plan.