Authors: Trisha Merry
‘I think you’re right. It may be too big a commitment, with all our other children to think about,’ I said. ‘Now that I’ve seen how sexualised they are, I
don’t think we can take the risk of having Sindy and Duane. I don’t think any foster-carer should. I’m afraid they will need a lot of specialist input before that could
happen.’
‘Mmm. I thought you might say that. And I do understand. But what about Lulu?’
‘Well, I don’t suppose she has been programmed yet to all that you’ve told me about has she?’
‘No, we don’t think so. The health visitor didn’t notice any bruises on her, so we hope we’ve been able to step in just in time. But apparently they did include their
previous babies in some of their films . . .’
‘Yes, we’ll have Lulu,’ I agreed. ‘At least we can help her and give her a normal, safe and loving home. But what will Social Services do with all the rest of the
family?’
‘That’s the most difficult thing, I’m afraid. We could try Duane on his own and Sindy on her own in different foster-homes, where there aren’t any other children, but
even that would probably be too challenging, knowing what they have already been through.’
‘What about when they were at school? Didn’t their teachers notice their sexualised behaviours?’
‘They didn’t go to school,’ she said. ‘That was why we didn’t know about them before. Their births weren’t registered and they weren’t in any of the
local authority’s records, so nobody knew they existed. Their parents simply never sent them to school, or took them out shopping or anything. They had never played with any other children,
so that’s why we needed to see what would happen.’
‘It’s a dreadful situation,’ I said. ‘I just can’t understand how this could have been going on for so long, without neighbours, grandparents or anybody
knowing.’ I paused. ‘What has happened to the parents?’
‘They’re out of the picture at the moment, and almost certainly will be for several years. They were arrested and charged with a number of crimes against under-age children.
They’re currently still being interviewed by the police. They hope this couple will lead them to a paedophiles ring as well as to the sellers of their cine-films. We’re pretty sure that
they won’t be allowed bail, given such potentially serious charges.’
‘There is one thing that is still puzzling me,’ I said. ‘Why have you told me all this? Normally, I don’t get to know anything about new foster-children, let alone their
families.’
Susie smiled for a moment. ‘You’re right. We have a strict policy not to tell foster-parents anything more than we have to.’ She hesitated. ‘But we’ve never come
across anything like this before, and we’re trying to work out a way to help these children. It would be good to think that the older ones at least could stay together. But how? We
can’t place all five of them in one foster-home, and who would accept them anyway, with their extreme sexualisation? At the moment, they are all in a police safe house with temporary carers.
But we can’t leave them there for more than a few days. The police need it back, for use in witness protection.’
‘Well, they can’t go to foster-homes and I agree it would be best for them to stay together – and away from other children, until they have learnt different behaviours . . .
What about having them all in one big house, with live-in foster-carers or social workers, with rotas of visiting carers, teachers, therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, relief staff and all
the other specialists they might need?’
‘Well, that’s the sort of thing we were thinking about, but it would need a lot of organising and you’ve suggested some good ideas. Could you come and talk about it with my
boss?’
‘OK. If you want.’
‘You see, that’s why I got permission to tell you.’ She smiled. ‘We need someone with your practical experience. And you’re so wise.’
I laughed. ‘I don’t think Mike would agree with that!’
It was really the job of Social Services to sort out all the arrangements, but they asked me to join their panel to focus on this one family’s needs. So that’s what
I did, after signing a confidentiality agreement. There was a good group of people working together and we planned how best to support and care for these badly abused kids, physically, emotionally
and educationally, while also protecting them and keeping them safe. Because I was appalled at what these children had suffered, almost every day of their lives, and all for money, and I felt
guilty not to be taking them in myself, I felt that at least this was one way I could help them.
It took a lot of my time and energy being part of this team. We had to set it all up; to find a property, recruit and train specialist staff, order furniture, clothing and supplies, draw up
rotas, and everything else. All this must have cost the council a fortune, but they had no alternative. I have often said how let down we have been by some local authorities, but this time I could
only praise them for doing their best, as sensitively and proactively as possible.
Meanwhile, Lulu became the spoilt baby of our family and thrived in her new home. She was sometimes fractious, to the extent that I did wonder whether anything had happened to her. But most of
the time she was a contented laughing child, who loved all the attention she had from our six older ones . . . and from us.
‘Thank goodness they let us keep Lulu,’ said Mike.
‘Yes. I’m sure it’s the best chance for her,’ I agreed. ‘She’s too young to have any memories of what went on, but I can’t help wondering how it will
affect her in the years to come, especially when she starts asking questions.’
‘We’ll have to wait till it happens,’ Mike said, always the pragmatist.
D
aisy and Paul had been with us for eight years now and they were both doing well, in their own ways. For Paul it was being active, being good at
sports and having fun. But he was the untidiest child in the house. He was always in scrapes at school and often at home too. But one endearing thing I do remember about him was the way he always
owned up – and apologised. He didn’t have a devious bone in his body. Whenever I asked the kids who broke something, or who kicked another child, he immediately said, ‘It was me .
. . sorry.’
Daisy was equally honest and straightforward, but she was the opposite of Paul in almost every other respect. She folded all her clothes neatly; even the dirty laundry, and her shoes, slippers
and boots were all lined up with mathematical accuracy in the bottom of her wardrobe.
She always did her homework as soon as she got home from school. She was a child who liked her own company, which all the others understood and they usually steered clear.
I used to teach all the kids to cook, and Daisy was a quick learner, although I wouldn’t say she was an enthusiastic baker. Some children would come into the kitchen and say ‘Can we
make fairy cakes?’ Even Paul enjoyed sloshing a bit of cake-mix about, but not Daisy. She only helped me if I asked her, and then she would do it well, but she wasn’t the domesticated
type. She much preferred to lose herself in a library book. As the expression goes: ‘good books are like good friends’, and they certainly were to Daisy.
For all the eight years she had been with us, Daisy had been desperate to grow her hair. I tried, several times, to get her social worker to contact the mother if possible and obtain her
permission for Daisy to change her hairstyle, now that she was older and painfully aware of how unfashionable it was. She was teased about it a lot at school and I felt I was failing her, not being
able to do something about it.
‘If you can’t contact her mother, couldn’t you give her permission to grow her hair?’ I asked John.
‘You know the rules, Trisha. I can’t do that.’
But John didn’t visit much – perhaps once every six months, so in between, Daisy and I had this agreement that I would conveniently forget to take her to the hairdresser’s for
a while. And, as it began to grow, I noticed her looking in the mirror more. If she could have pulled her hair to make it longer still, she would have, no matter how much it might hurt.
I spent most of the weekday mornings sorting things out for Lulu’s five abused siblings in the house we had set up for them. We had put a comprehensive domiciliary
package in place for them and it seemed to be going well so far, bar the odd hiccups when a teacher was ill, or a carer or therapist got their times muddled.
However, the main problem was that the children’s sexual advances towards each other were so ingrained that we had to put in extra therapists and experienced foster-carers to work on
containing and hopefully addressing these behaviours, that were obviously normal to the kids. It was apparently all they had known – the focus of every day of their lives. And we
couldn’t send men in to help at all at that early stage. As far as these children were concerned, all men were only there for sex, after all those paedophiles had ‘played’ with
them, as they put it. Not to mention their own father. It was no surprise that both parents were convicted and given long prison sentences.
Thank goodness Lulu herself was quite placid and easy-going. I timed her main nap for late mornings, so that I could do any phone-calls and cooking for them. A couple of times a week, Social
Services sent a support worker round to look after Lulu, so that I could spend the whole morning at her siblings’ house, helping the carers and doing some play-therapy with the children. It
was often a traumatic experience and every day I saw them I wondered how we could ever turn things round for them, but we had to keep trying. It would obviously be a very long and tricky task.
Would it ever be possible to ‘re-programme’ them to such an extent that they could eventually live ‘normal’ lives? I had to believe we could.
At home, our children were getting older but not necessarily wiser. We used to give them a bit of pocket-money every week, according to their ages. But one autumn day, Paul
wanted to earn some extra money. I don’t think he knew what he wanted to do for it, but he was saving up to buy something for his bike. We used to have a chart in the house for earning extra
pocket-money. It was 20p in ‘new money’ for washing up or sweeping the kitchen or for sorting and taking out the rubbish, 25p for pulling up fifty weeds, 50p for washing the car or van,
and so on. It would be more now of course.
Paul didn’t want to do anything on the chart that needed doing.
‘So, what do you want to do?’ I asked him.
‘I’m going to sweep the yard,’ he said.
Behind our large Victorian semi, we had a garden that went back a long way, and at the side we had a sizeable, blue-bricked yard, where the kids used to ride their bikes or roller-skate, or
whatever.
‘OK, Paul. So what exactly are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to sweep the yard and get rid of the leaves.’
‘And the path?’
‘Yes, and I’ll sweep that as well.’
‘Right then. You’ll have to get the yard brush out of the shed and you’ll need some old potato sacks from the back of the garage to sweep all the leaves and the rubbish
into.’
‘OK.’ He looked a bit uncertain. ‘How much will you pay?’
‘Well, let’s see how well you do it, but it’s going to be quite hard work, so if you do a brilliant job of it, I could give you two pounds. How does that sound?’
‘Good,’ he said, with a smile. Two pounds went a long way in the 1970s.
I watched him from the kitchen window, as he got the brush and started at the far end of the yard, sweeping away energetically. There were mounds of leaves in some places, and with his rough and
ready sweeping, they were going all over the place. I had to smile. It was typical of Paul. With his ginger hair and fair skin, he was going red in the face from all the effort. I saw him make a
big pile of all the leaves he’d swept up so far.
Then I had to go and do something else, so I didn’t see him doing any of the rest of the work.
After a couple of hours, he came back in to find me, his face covered in specks that had blown off the leaves, and a smear across his forehead, from the dirt.
‘I’ve swept it all up.’
‘That was quick.’
‘It’s bootiful.’ He beamed with pride.
‘Bootiful, eh?’ We laughed, remembering how we all used to say that when we had Baby Boots staying with us.
‘Come and see,’ he said.
I called the others to join us, picked up toddler Lulu and we all trooped outside to inspect his handiwork.
‘Oh, this is lovely,’ I said. ‘Well done.’
‘Fab,’ said Sheena, echoing an old 1960s expression that Mike and I often used.
‘Mega fab,’ chorused Ronnie and AJ.
‘It looks much better,’ agreed Mandy.
Daisy didn’t look so sure, as she inspected her brother’s handiwork. ‘It’s quite good . . . but you’ve missed a bit here,’ she said, pointing at the paving
behind one of the sheds.
‘Oh,’ said Paul. ‘I forgot about that bit.’
‘Never mind,’ I reassured him. ‘You’ve made a grand job of it – a good morning’s work.’ I gave him his two pounds and thought nothing more about it
until a couple of days later, when Ed, who was doing some maintenance work on our house, came to tell me how he was getting on.
‘You ain’t half going to have a lot of damp there, love,’ he said, in the tone builders usually use when they’re about to tell you some extra work is needed that’s
going to cost an arm and a leg.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘You’re going to have a lot of damp,’ he repeated.
‘Sorry, Ed, you’ve lost me. What are you talking about?’
‘Well, look out here.’ He led the way outside the house and pointed at our coal-chute. We had this metal coal-chute contraption that you could open out and the coal would go down
into the cellar, for the servants to collect and lay the fires with . . . some hope! We only had one servant, and that was me. But that’s what they used the coal-chute for in Victorian
times.
‘I was just cleaning up this chute,’ he explained, lifting his cap and scratching his head. ‘And I found all this mess. Look.’
So I looked. What a mess it was. It was jammed with leaves, balls, skipping ropes, even a roller-skate – everything, all down the coal-chute. And because there was no window in the cellar,
this was the only way for the air to get in. But now it was completely blocked. I was horrified.