a go on the school piano and found I was quite musical, too. There was a nice class teacher there who cast me as an angel in the school Nativity play . That Christmas I was very excited as we rehearsed the songs and lines at school. However, when the time came, nobody came to watch me; I had kept the whole thing secret from Eunice because it was against Jehovah’s Witness rules. I was a bit of a star at school, but I kept quiet about it at home, knowing that Eunice would never have approved. It hurt, none the less, that nobody ever saw me shine.
When I was almost eight and a half Robert became pretty ill. As a consequence, Eunice had to stay with him in hospital and I went to stay with an old friend of hers, ‘Auntie Vera’, who lived next door to her parents, giving me a brief reminder of what ‘normal’ life was like. Eunice’s mother, Katie, and father, John, only lived a stone’s throw away from our house in George Dowty, and they saw Eunice quite regularly. Actually, it was a mystery to me as to why Eunice was so awful when, in fact, her mum always seemed quite nice.
Anyway, Auntie Vera treated me like a normal child for a whole week. We went to the mini-market and did our shopping and she bought me a secondhand My Little Pony – something I’d always wanted and had gone on at my parents about to no avail. But this nice lady took me out, she gave me food, she tucked me up at night, she washed my clothes and she was kind. There were no beatings. It was an utter revelation to me to be reminded of how life could be without daily, ritualistic punishment – a total respite from the horrors and pressure of living with Eunice.
This window on to normal life highlighted just how much, in the two years since I’d first set foot in 24 George Dowty Drive, things had gone downhill. For a start, Eunice was far from the generous person she had seemed to me when we first met. The knitting wool, the lovely Sunday lunch – they were all part of the seduction plan. In actual fact, she turned out to be extremely mean, a real Scrooge. When, for instance, I needed plimsolls for PE at school, she refused to buy them, which meant I often couldn’t do PE, although I was desperate to join in. But she wouldn’t spend money on me.
In hindsight, I think that while Eunice was undoubtedly mean and penny-pinching, another major reason for preventing me from doing PE was because I would have to take my clothes off, and then the pupils and teachers would see my bruises. Similarly, the swimming I had once adored was stopped, which again, I now realize, was not only because of the cost but also because someone might spot the obvious signs of my maltreatment. School trips were also forbidden because they cost money and I clearly wasn’t worth it. And she would have worried about me being beyond her control – who knows, I might have spilled the beans and someone might have believed me.
I remember once when, for some reason, I was supposed to go home at lunch time to eat but Eunice was out when I got there. When I went back to school and told my teacher there was no one home, she gave me a school dinner and a receipt to take back to Eunice for £1.50. Eunice went ballistic and clouted me hard around the head saying, ‘Why didn’t you eat the apples from the garden?’ So the next time I came home for lunch and nobody was there, I knew better than to take the offer of a school meal and pleaded with my teacher, ‘Please don’t give me a school dinner, because I’ll be in a lot of trouble.’ I remember one of the teachers giving me one of his own mustard and ham sandwiches, which I ate in the staff room.
Around this time, too, what had been a nice, neat school uniform was beginning to look quite shabby. I must have looked different from other children, always wearing charity shop hand-me-downs and being unnaturally obedient. Indeed, I found out, during the court case, that several of the teachers had been worried about me and one had
When I was almost eight and a half Robert became pretty ill. As a consequence, Eunice had to stay with him in hospital and I went to stay with an old friend of hers, ‘Auntie Vera’, who lived next door to her parents, giving me a brief reminder of what ‘normal’ life was like. Eunice’s mother, Katie, and father, John, only lived a stone’s throw away from our house in George Dowty, and they saw Eunice quite regularly. Actually, it was a mystery to me as to why Eunice was so awful when, in fact, her mum always seemed quite nice.
Anyway, Auntie Vera treated me like a normal child for a whole week. We went to the mini-market and did our shopping and she bought me a secondhand My Little Pony – something I’d always wanted and had gone on at my parents about to no avail. But this nice lady took me out, she gave me food, she tucked me up at night, she washed my clothes and she was kind. There were no beatings. It was an utter revelation to me to be reminded of how life could be without daily, ritualistic punishment – a total respite from the horrors and pressure of living with Eunice.
This window on to normal life highlighted just how much, in the two years since I’d first set foot in 24 George Dowty Drive, things had gone downhill. For a start, Eunice was far from the generous person she had seemed to me when we first met. The knitting wool, the lovely Sunday lunch – they were all part of the seduction plan. In actual fact, she turned out to be extremely mean, a real Scrooge. When, for instance, I needed plimsolls for PE at school, she refused to buy them, which meant I often couldn’t do PE, although I was desperate to join in. But she wouldn’t spend money on me.
In hindsight, I think that while Eunice was undoubtedly mean and penny-pinching, another major reason for preventing me from doing PE was because I would have to take my clothes off, and then the pupils and teachers would see my bruises. Similarly, the swimming I had once adored was stopped, which again, I now realize, was not only because of the cost but also because someone might spot the obvious signs of my maltreatment. School trips were also forbidden because they cost money and I clearly wasn’t worth it. And she would have worried about me being beyond her control – who knows, I might have spilled the beans and someone might have believed me.
I remember once when, for some reason, I was supposed to go home at lunch time to eat but Eunice was out when I got there. When I went back to school and told my teacher there was no one home, she gave me a school dinner and a receipt to take back to Eunice for £1.50. Eunice went ballistic and clouted me hard around the head saying, ‘Why didn’t you eat the apples from the garden?’ So the next time I came home for lunch and nobody was there, I knew better than to take the offer of a school meal and pleaded with my teacher, ‘Please don’t give me a school dinner, because I’ll be in a lot of trouble.’ I remember one of the teachers giving me one of his own mustard and ham sandwiches, which I ate in the staff room.
Around this time, too, what had been a nice, neat school uniform was beginning to look quite shabby. I must have looked different from other children, always wearing charity shop hand-me-downs and being unnaturally obedient. Indeed, I found out, during the court case, that several of the teachers had been worried about me and one had
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