Mum looked horrified. I’m not surprised – I was horrified at myself. I told her that I only ever wanted him to tell her the truth and we both stared at the old, sick man in the bed.
He said only one word.
‘Tracy.’
That was it.
No apology, no explanation, no begging for forgiveness.
I walked out of the room.
Mum followed me later and said now was not the time to confront him; I should let him die in peace.
‘What about my peace?’ I wept. ‘When he dies, how will I ever find peace?’
How could anyone answer that?
On the Sunday morning we were told Dad would not live out the day. I had been back to the hospital on the previous two days but hadn’t gone in to see him. I’d sat outside the room – I guess I was fulfilling my duties as a daughter without having to look at him. When I was told this was the end, I had to make a decision.
I couldn’t leave it. Not for him and not for me. I had to see him again.
I went into the room at midday. I was on my own as I had been for all of my life really.
I would do this, I would stand firm.
I would say goodbye to him in my own way. I would let him know what a bastard he was and that dying was too good for him.
I stormed in, full of righteousness, only to see a shell. He was a sad, frightened, pathetic old man facing death without an ounce of love to guide him through. His eyes were glassy and his skin was like wax. An odd smell came from him and he seemed to be shrinking by the second.
How could this be the human being who had terrorised me for most of my life?
He was nothing.
I thought back over the past. I thought about how he had seemed different in every posting. I thought of how he had led a double life, a hero on one side, a paedophile on the other. I thought of the name-calling, the insults, the beatings. I thought of the medical and physical problems I still had because of what he had done. I thought of the abuse and the rape. I thought of the friends he had sent me to.
I thought of how my mum had never saved me.
I thought of how someone had – of how there had been a hero, of how CO Stewart had seen it all and rescued me in his own way.
I saw that I had been given a chance. My marriage was a mess, and I knew I had to do something about that (and I would), and my parents would never be what I needed or wanted them to be, but I had what I always had – I had myself and I had hope. If I nursed this bitterness, it would grow. It would consume and ruin me. I had so much of my life ahead of me and I had survived everything so far – why not give myself a chance?
Time was passing and Dad was ready to step away from this life. I would never be able to understand why he did what he did to me but I couldn’t be dragged down any more.
‘Dad?’ I whispered. ‘It’s over, isn’t it? It’s all over.’
There was no reaction or response.
I had to do this for me, not for him.
‘Dad,’ I tried again. ‘It’s OK, it’s done – I’ll be fine.’
I don’t know if he heard or understood me. I hope so. I hope it stayed with him.
I sat there and just watched him. At 3pm, the doctors said he was going to last only minutes. I touched his hand and it felt right.
‘Goodbye, Dad,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’
Mum was there by now and I left the room so they could say their goodbyes.
I don’t know if dying was peaceful for him.
I hope so.
Gary was too late. When he arrived, he called the hospital to say he was on his way, but Dad had already gone – I would never see or hear from my brother again – he didn’t hang around for the funeral. I split up with Dan five months after my dad’s death. My mum made a miraculous recovery and was never ill from her condition again – and she remarried. Everyone was moving on and I knew without doubt that I had to as well. Too many people for too many years had taken too much from me.
It was time for the rest of my life to start – it was time for me to fly.
Sometimes I think we are almost immune to child abuse. It has always happened, it has always been there as a dark side of human history, but the telling of abuse survivors’ stories is much more public than ever before. This can only be a good thing. When I was little, no one really spoke about it. Now that many brave people have come forward to tell of the horrors inflicted on them, I think some people feel it has gone too far. There are too many stories for them, too many books, too many court cases. The reality is that there are millions of untold tales and that will always be the case. While you read this, children are being abused in every way you wouldn’t even want to imagine – is it wrong for them to have a voice when they are older? Some people complain that books such as these are distasteful. I think raping children is distasteful. I think children who have been silenced for years so that adults can wreck their innocence with their perversions do not need to be told to keep quiet a moment longer. Their rights were taken from them in their childhood; we should all hang our heads in shame if that is compounded by silencing them as adults too.
What concerns me is that the number of cases of child abuse is now almost overwhelming. The way some deal with this information is to deny it (as happened with many organisations for many years), suggest it’s all made up, or become desensitised to it. If you are in any of those categories, please strip back what I have told you to the bare bones of the story. A grown man raped me. That man was my father. I was a tiny girl of five years old when it began. He touched me indecently, he violated me. He made me touch him, he forced himself on me. He had sex with a child. He chose to do all of this, I did not. He threatened, blackmailed and neglected me. How can anyone possibly say any of that is acceptable, or should remain invisible?
Despite how I have occasionally referred to my father in these pages, paedophiles are not monsters, even if what they do is monstrous. It’s too easy to describe them that way – I’ve done it myself, in this book. But actually, they’re just men, they’re just people, but they’re people who damage and ruin the lives of others for their own needs and desires. But they are ‘ordinary’. They are fathers and teachers; they are police officers and soldiers. They are wealthy and they are poor. They have normal lives – apart from the fact that they want to abuse children. They don’t have ‘evil’ stamped on their foreheads, they don’t carry placards proclaiming what they are. They hide and are hidden. They are among us and they are very, very clever. If my father was active now, he would find it all too easy to locate others of the same persuasion. The internet presents the images and opportunities which men like him and his friends sought so desperately. That he escaped detection for so long is horrific, and I have no idea how many other children were affected by his depravity or that of his friends. Even if no one wanted to think the unthinkable, I find it hard to comprehend that so many other things were not picked up on – teachers, social workers, neighbours all missed so much.
But, of course, it is my mother who must take the blame for having her eyes shut tighter than anyone else. My father chose to do what he did – no one forced him and no one else is to blame for that – but there are others who could have stopped it and did not. It horrifies me that these situations still occur, and that children are still living through nightmares.
It has taken a great deal for me to write this book. I tried on a number of occasions, thought about it for many years, but the time now feels right.
There are so many things I would like people reading this book to think about and I hope you’ll forgive me if I take a little time to address that here.
I know some will have picked the book up because they have been through similar things in their childhood. If that is the case, I hope some of what I have said has been of help; while everyone’s experience is different, there are also so many similarities in how paedophiles work, and you may very well recognise that in my story. If any of this has acted as a trigger for you, please do seek help and counselling if you feel it is appropriate for you. There are many excellent groups and individuals out there, and it is never too late to try and reclaim some of your past. I myself can offer no special counselling skills, but sometimes all people want is to get things out – if anyone wants to contact me, please do so through the publishers or through the email address at the end of the book.
If you have not been personally touched by child abuse then I hope my story will have opened your eyes to just how easy it is for one person to maintain a shocking hold over a child. Perhaps this will make you more aware, more responsive to any child you suspect may be in need. I hope so.
The horror never really ends, because the abusers take so much more than those instances where the abuse has actually occurred. They take our innocence and they take our memories. Many brave individuals now say they are survivors of abuse, but I’m not sure I feel that way about myself. Yes, I have survived, but it still hurts, I still have flashbacks, and I feel that I’ve struggled through more than anything else.
When my dad died, I didn’t feel as if that was an end to it, because I was still left with so many unanswered questions. The main one he would never – perhaps
could
never – effectively answer was so simple:
why?
The medical explanations I had for his condition only went so far, and I have never known whether his schizophrenia caused him to abuse or whether some remorse within him had actually brought about the illness. Maybe he felt guilty. I hope so – he should have done. When he died, he was just an old man, so ill and so incapable of giving me anything I really needed. I wanted closure and I wanted him to say he was sorry; he didn’t give me either of those, so, in effect, he was still calling the shots.
I’m now a grown woman, a mother and a grandmother. I have a good life in the sun, and a partner who loves me dearly. It all helps, as does writing this book, but no one can ever give me back what was taken from me when I was a child. To be able to have a voice now is so precious, and I hope I have helped someone somewhere to realise they were not to blame; they are not the sum total of what was done to them.
Thank you for reading my story – I hope it has helped.
This book may be my story, but it has taken a lot of people to bring it to this stage. I’d like to thank many individuals, some of whom are nameless, all of whom have been vital to my life at some point.
My father was never a hero, no matter how many lies he told himself, but there are good men out there. The commanding officer who intervened by removing me from my abusers will always be in my thoughts. By giving me a route to freedom, he did more than he could ever have imagined. It is unlikely he will ever read this book, but I hope anyone who has ever done a good deed for a needy child will see, through his example, that the repercussions can be enormous and we should all do what we can, when we can, to the best of our ability.
I’ve wanted to tell my story for so long, but it was only through Linda Watson-Brown that I finally laid my ghosts to rest. Her expertise and work on this book, from start to finish, has been absolutely brilliant. When revisiting the past, memories can be horrendous – but Linda, through her understanding, patience and compassion, made this journey possible. I do need to retain anonymity for the purposes of this book, but if you contact Linda she will pass on all messages to me.
I’d like to thank my agent Clare Hulton for all her hard work and making it all possible; once she and Linda were involved, I couldn’t quite believe how quickly everything happened.
I have had to use a pseudonym for this book in order to protect the identities of some. I have also had to remove some details, and blur other aspects of my story for the same reason. My mother’s illness was finally named, but I can’t say what it was as the rareness of the condition could lead to identification. The publishers are fully aware of all these points and I’d like to thank them for their understanding and support throughout. Kerri Sharp has been particularly helpful, with both professional and personal matters relating to the book, and I couldn’t have wished for a better team at Simon and Schuster. I’d like to thank them, not just for what they’ve done for me, but also for the fact that, in publishing stories like this, they are raising awareness and helping others who have been through the same. Sadly, there are far too many of us.
I hope there are people reading this who get strength from my tale and who realise they are not alone, no matter what horrors they have lived through or what nightmares they still remember.
You were never in the wrong, you were never the ‘bad’ one – but you are the person who is still standing and, for that, you should be immensely proud.
If you would like to contact Tracy, please feel free to do so in confidence through Linda Watson-Brown at
www.lindawatsonbrown.co.uk