I stayed at Riverside for three years: happy years, by and large, and a much-needed respite from the misery of my childhood. I was 13 when they sent me there, and the years seemed to fly by. Somehow, without noticing it, I was about to turn 16. I had been in care for almost five years. Other than occasional visits from my brother and Mum I’d not really had to deal with my family. But although packing me off to the peace and tranquillity of the Lakes had probably saved my life, it suddenly dawned on me that this wasn’t going to last much longer.
At that time the care system generally spat kids back out once they turned 16. It had rescued them from violence, neglect or sexual abuse and then, pretty much without warning, it turned its back on them. I’ve seen reports since then which show that most of the young girls (and many of the boys) working the streets in cities across Britain have been in care. Typically, they have turned to prostitution as a means of survival once the care system has finished with them. And at 16 they’re easy prey for the pimps and pushers who ensnare them with drugs and live off the money they make by renting their bodies.
I suppose I was lucky in that I had somewhere to go once I had to leave Riverside: Mum had fixed for me to live with her again. I’d also begun to think about what I would do with my life once I left Care. My mind had drifted back to the times when I looked after my step-mum’s two kids and I realised that I actually enjoyed working with bairns. What’s more, I was good at it. Maybe, I thought to myself, I can go to college and get a qualification that will allow me to earn a living doing something worthwhile and which I like doing. But then my world fell apart. Again.
On my sixteenth birthday Dad sent a message to me: ‘You little bastard – I’ll kill you.’
And you know what? Those six little words meant the world to me: not because of what he actually said, but because of what the words meant. And because of how and where my lovely Dad came up with them.
I’d been sitting in a little room at Middlesbrough Crown Court for four days. My Dad was on trial: someone had finally got round to doing something about his repeated sexual abuse of me from the age of three. I’d spoken to the police and to lawyers off and on throughout my years in Care, but Dad had denied everything. To hear his side of the story he’d never laid a finger on me – even though I’d been a really difficult child – and he’d even taken me into his home when Mum couldn’t cope with me any more. And of course he hadn’t abused me; he wasn’t one of those bastard paedophiles.
And so nothing was done. When it’s the word of a respectable local businessman against that of a young girl so troubled that she had been kicked out by her mum and eventually taken into Care, guess who comes out on top?
But while I was at Riverside something happened to make the police and lawyers take me more seriously. They never told me what it was – the legal rules which govern evidence to be given in court meant that if they had done, whatever I said afterwards might not be admissible in court. I did pick up whispers and rumours about another girl he was suspected of abusing: maybe the simple fact of there being another potential victim prodded the legal system into taking account. Whatever the cause, Dad was arrested and charged with sexually abusing me throughout my childhood.
And what do you think went through my mind?
I think – and this is an educated guess – that your answer to that question depends on whether or not you yourself have been abused. Those of you lucky enough never to have endured the pain of sexual assaults by your own father will probably think that I was happy – pleased that at last that Dad was being made to account for what he’d done, and also that (if convicted) other children might be protected from him.
But those of you who have been in the same dark, desperate place as me; those of you who have known the complex mixture of emotions – betrayal and loyalty, loathing and yearning – will know that it’s rarely as straightforward as that. Of course I was glad that Dad was going to be tried. I’d lain awake enough nights, dreaming of the day when I got to face him in court and tell him – not to mention the people looking on, the people who should have protected me in the first place – how much he had hurt me. I knew, in those adolescent fantasies, that I would stand there strong and tall, an angry woman demanding justice – not just for herself but for all the other abused children who had suffered at the hands of their parents.
Yeah, right.
Because however pleased I was, however much I felt believed and, yes, relieved, he was still my dad. He was a bastard – frankly he was a complete and utter swine – but he was still my dad. And that meant he was my bastard, my swine. And I was going to bring him down. Weird as it sounds, I felt guilty.
On 26 January 1992 the case came to court – Middlesbrough court, the same court that, as I later discovered, had heard the first cases in the Cleveland child abuse crisis back in the 1980s and then turned its back on the children. It felt very strange to know that after such a long time, the 12 men and women sitting in the jury box would decide whether Dad was a brutal abuser or I was a shameless liar.
It also felt strange to have so many people suddenly paying me attention: however good Riverside had been for me, it was still a care home and I was only one of a number of young people living there. Now I found that I was being represented by a barrister and a solicitor, and a specialist gynaecologist had been retained to give evidence about the damage to my insides caused by the sexual abuse as well as by the knife that Dad liked to push inside me. On top of that, I had a child protection officer looking out for my interests and Mum, my brother and my sister were all there to support me. Even my step-mum was there, ready to speak out about what she had heard that night on the stairs.
The case lasted four days. To prevent me having to face Dad across the courtroom I gave evidence via a video link, from a little room off to the side. Of course this completely shattered my fantasies of standing in the witness box and pointing an accusing finger at the man who had ruined my childhood, but I’m glad I did it that way. Dad denied everything – of course he did – and it would have been terrible to answer all the questions his barrister wanted to ask me with my abuser sitting just a few feet away, his eyes glaring at me. Even so, it was a real ordeal. Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s easy to give evidence about being abused: it’s an incredibly painful, gut-wrenching experience.
Because of the video link I never saw the inside of the court until the last day. It was smaller and less formal than I’d thought it would be. I’d imagined something much more imposing and Victorian. I sat at the back and managed to get a good look at the jury as the verdict was read out by the judge. I was astonished to see that quite a few of them were crying openly – it had never occurred to me that a stranger could care about me enough to cry like that. And then they found my dad guilty.
The judge was Sir Angus Stroyan. He’d been a top QC before being promoted to the Bench and would later go on to be the top judge for the whole of Newcastle. He looked at Dad and told him that this was one of the worst cases he’d ever heard, and he sentenced him to eight years in prison.
Some people might think that doesn’t sound very much – one year inside for every year that he’d abused me and made my life hell. But compared to what most men get for molesting their kids it was a big sentence. Often – too often – courts impose less than four years in jail: four years is a magic number because anything less and the man doesn’t get considered for the sex offender programmes inside prison. Those programmes are the best way of getting through to paedophiles: they strip away the layers of self-deceit and self-justification with which these men surround themselves and force them to confront the reality of what sexual abuse did to their victim.
And what of Dad’s victim? What was I feeling, as they led him away – flanked by two prisoner officers – to face years of degradation and danger inside the prison system? (Even I