Last updated at 14:26, Thursday, 02 April 2009

A woman in West Cumbria tells her story of abuse, pain - and love

SHOCKING stories about the experiences of children in care appear in our newspapers almost daily. A young woman living in our area grew up in the system, an experience which has left her emotionally scarred and still living with its terrible consequences. “I know I’m damaged, but it’s not my fault. It has taken me a long time to realise that the blame does not lie with me. However, I feel I’m still being punished.’’ This is Mary’s story, as told to our reporter (all names have been changed).

My real Mam and Dad had me up until I was three weeks old. I later learned that I was removed from them because my Dad had picked me up out of the pram and dropped me on my head. Apparently my Mam had tried drowning and suffocating me.

Both my parents had mental problems: my Mam was schizophrenic and my Dad was dangerous. I was taken from my parents and placed with a foster couple.

My foster parents got me as a very young baby. I didn’t know they were not my real Mam and Dad until I was about 13. They had two children of their own and another adopted lad, who I called my brother. I remained with them until I was eight, after which I yo-yoed in and out of care homes and back with my foster mother. This was between the ages of eight and 15, and I was put into care homes at her request.

She had got divorced from my foster dad when I was four or five. I remember them arguing and my mother packing her bags and calling a taxi. She told me she was leaving, going on holiday and did I want to go with her or stay with Dad. I didn’t know what to do, I loved them both.

I went with her and remember driving away with my brother standing on the step. My Mam would go out drinking and come home with a different chap every night. I think my head got proper messed up from about the age of four.

I don’t really know why she kept putting me back into care. I think she found me difficult, I was trying to get attention from her, I wanted cuddles and a bedtime story. She would put me into care.

She was my mother and I couldn’t understand it. Despite how she was with me, I loved her and felt it was my fault when she died.

I was 13 when I found out she was not my birth mother. We were doing a project at school about being fostered and adopted and when I said about it at home, my Mam told me I had been left an orphan when my parents had died in a plane crash. Other times she said it was a car crash. I didn’t know what to think, in my head it was all going round and round.

My brother didn’t like vegetables, but I loved them so we would swap food from our plates which seemed to make my Mam’s new husband angry and he would hit us. He had three belts that he would use on us. We would also be locked in the cellars and our Mam didn’t stop it.

At PE I would not get changed and when the teacher asked me why, I showed her the marks on my back. I was taken to the headmaster’s office and social workers came out to the house and my Mam told them I was naughty. Nothing was done about it. I used to go to school crying.

Sometimes my mam would leave her tablets on the side. We weren’t allowed sweets and I ate them. I was very sick and was sent home from school. It was only when I started turning blue that Mam took me to the hospital. I think I was about 11.

One day when I came home from school my Mam said that a neighbour was going to babysit us. I was in bed in my room watching cartoons when he came up. I was nine at the time. He started touching me under the covers and said if I told anyone he would petrol-bomb the house and would kill everyone in it. This went on for a while and then one time he raped me. I ran out screaming and crying and the police came. I was examined at the hospital and they arrested him. I heard my Mam had dropped the charges because he said he was going to kill her. It turned out he had been in prison for raping his two daughters.

Mam was out on the drink every night and after one of my times in care the social worker said it was not in my best interests to go back to my mother’s. I was 14 and stayed in a care home permanently after that. My Mam died when I was 16.

It was good in the home, I was happy there. There were about 10 of us and I learned how to budget with money, how to cook, it was really nice. I was there till I was 16.

A member of staff wanted to adopt me. She was lovely, she changed my life round, she was a born-again Christian and I used to go to church with her. But they wouldn’t let her have me.

My Mam died of a brain tumour in her 50s. Her daughter came to tell me and said I had made her die, which had a really bad effect on me. I felt responsible. I ended up cutting myself, taking overdoses, taking to the drink. I just kept thinking I need to die; I never got the chance to say goodbye. Despite everything, she was my Mam, and I loved her.

I was upset, angry with her. I had just wanted to be loved and I felt guilty and thought if I had done more to help her she would still be alive. I wanted to die, to go to where she was and say I was sorry. I ended up on life support machines in intensive care. I tried to throw myself in front of cars because I was so scared of being in the world on my own. I had nobody and I just wanted to be in a family.

I got kicked out of care when I was 16. They told me to go to the homeless section, but I didn’t know where that was. I was out on the streets for seven weeks with only the clothes I stood up in. I was out in the cold all over Christmas staring through windows looking at families celebrating, it was awful. I had nothing to eat and was absolutely starving.

Some prostitutes who had seen me walking the streets started talking to me. They got me a customer and I got £30. I got in a car with a man and he took me to his house. I felt dirty and disgusting but I was starving. I only did it the once. When I got the money I dare not spend it cos I didn’t know how long it would have to last me. I would buy a portion of chips and make them last all day.

To protect myself on the street, I bought a penknife off a market stall. One day I noticed a man following me and when I walked faster he did too, I started jogging, then so did he, so I ran and he ran after me. He chased me and got me cornered, so I pulled out the knife and told him to back off. It turned out he was plain clothes CID and he arrested me. I got community service. I gave a friend’s address, she had said I could give her address but I couldn’t live there because she had children.

While on a street bench I got chatting to an old woman who said she had noticed me and she asked about my circumstances. She took me to the local paper – a reporter did stuff about life on the streets and then took me to social services. Social services said they had been in contact with my natural parents and that they were going to meet me in West Cumbria . That was in 1998. I was shocked – I thought they were dead.

I had very mixed emotions, when I got off the train, I don’t know what I felt. I was on medication at the time for depression. My parents had a picture of me from when I was 15. I had no feelings for them, they were strangers. I went to their house and I slept on the sofa.

My mother told me as a baby I was always crying. She said: I didn’t love you then and I don’t love you now.

My Mam left, she is now in social services care. My Dad had my disability book and wouldn’t let me have it so I had no money and nowhere to go. While I was there, and while I was under my medication my Dad raped me. I left Cumbria and went into a hostel for the homeless. I had anorexia and couldn’t eat. I went to hospital where they told me I was pregnant. I wanted to get rid of it, knowing the circumstances in which it had been conceived. I was in a terrible mental state. Then I thought, it wasn’t the child’s fault and decided to have the baby.

I went into hospital to have it and said I wanted it to go into temporary foster care until I could get sorted out and find some accommodation. The baby was a girl and I spent a week with her in hospital but I didn’t feel that I loved her.

She went up for adoption.

My dad still had my benefit books so I went back in with him. He wouldn’t give me the books and he kicked me out. I got the police involved cos he was forging my signature and collecting the money. He went to court, but each time he was up he would throw a fit. He was just putting it on. In the end up the judge said he was too ill. He had about £1,500 from me.

I had been doing some voluntary work in 1999 and met another volunteer John. He was absolutely brilliant, a very caring man. We moved in together and had four children, which have all been taken from us.

We got married in 2006, but the day was a bit of a shambles one way or another and we are planning to renew our vows.

I thought I could never love anyone the way I loved my Mam, despite how she was with me; I had barriers up. But I love John.

If you have had a child taken off you then you have got to tell social services if you get pregnant again. Because of my upbringing they didn’t think I could cope with bringing up a child of my own. But that is not my fault: I would never hurt a child, they are the most precious thing. Each baby was taken from me right after birth, when they were a few days old.

I took a big overdose of sleepers and anti-depressants and was transferred to Carlisle and put on a life support machine. My heart was broken, I didn’t want to be revived. I have also had 12 miscarriages, and an ectopic pregnancy and have buried three. It’s so sad: John would make a brilliant dad.

One of the factors was my being friends with Beverley, a former friend of mine who unknown to me had in the past abused her children and had them taken from her. She never talked about it, there were no photos of them in her house. I didn’t know anything about all this, but my association with her went against me.

I can’t change my past, I can’t go back. I want to go forward. I want to set up a helpline and a drop-in centre for children who are affected by bad treatment or have been brought up in the system. I could teach them and help them how to cope with it, not to self-harm or turn to drink and drugs. It’s not the answer.

Only now do I feel that I’m not to blame. I have had to grow up faster than most people. It makes you stronger. I feel I can cope with anything in life now and I can help others who are struggling.

First published at 13:00, Saturday, 03 June 18151815
Published by http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk