Trafficked Girl: Abused. Abandoned. Exploited. This Is My Story of Fighting Back.. Jane Smith
me, ‘Don’t you dare tell Ben or Jake, or your dad, that you haven’t been to bed.’
I suppose those sleepless nights were the reason why I often fell asleep during the day when I started nursery school, and later in the reception class at primary school. In fact, I can remember on one occasion waking up in a state of near-panic when my teacher threw her shoe at me, then told me off for sleeping in class.
Mum did sometimes carry me up to bed when I’d fallen asleep. And sometimes she would drop me, then shout at me as I was tumbling down the stairs, ‘That was your fault,’ before stamping down to where I was lying in a crumpled heap, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me up to my bedroom, where she would almost throw me on to my bed. And on those occasions too, I would be determined not to cry, although I came very close to it whenever she said, in a spooky, sneering voice, ‘Watch out for wandering hands in your bed tonight.’ Then I would hear her laughing as she closed the door, shutting out all the light as she stomped back down the stairs.
I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed for any reason without Mum’s permission. So when I woke up from a nightmare, as I often did, I sometimes wet myself. The first time it happened, I cried and screamed for my mum, but no one came. So I lay for the rest of the night on the wet mattress and waited fearfully for the morning. She must have heard me whenever I called out in the night because she always seemed to know when she came into my room the next morning that the mattress would be wet, and after she’d yanked me out of bed, she’d drag me around the room by my hair, slapping me and shouting that I was worthless and stupid and did nothing but cause trouble for everyone. Then she would strip the wet sheet off my bed, take it downstairs and show it to my brothers, who would laugh with her and make fun of me.
We had a washing machine, so it wasn’t a huge deal having to wash a wet sheet, although perhaps it seemed like it to her, because when I finally stopped wetting the bed at the age of seven, she only ever washed my bedding once a year.
Mum never took me anywhere and she’d be angry on the rare occasions that Dad ever did, like the day when he got home after working the night shift and decided to take me with him to the supermarket. I think I was four years old, and I don’t know if I’d asked to go, or why Mum kept insisting on him leaving me at home. But the more she argued with him, the more determined he became, until eventually he shouted, ‘I’m taking her,’ then pushed me ahead of him out of the house before slamming the front door behind him.
Maybe their argument would have ended there if I hadn’t fallen asleep on the bus on the way back from the supermarket, and if Dad hadn’t told Mum it was her fault I was so tired and accused her – with more justification than I think he realised at the time – of not looking after me properly. So then they had a huge fight, while I tried to shut out the sound of their angry, hate-filled voices and not see what they were doing to each other.
I don’t think Mum’s reaction was because she was jealous. I think she just didn’t want me to have any positive experiences at all. And in the end she got her way, as she almost always did.
The only place Mum ever took me – and then only on very rare occasions – was to the supermarket. I certainly didn’t ever go to a cinema, a bowling alley or a park with her, and although my brothers had regular check-ups at the dentist, I never did. Even when I needed a haircut or new school uniform, it was my brother Ben who took me into town and paid for it with money Dad would give him. In fact, I only ever went to a playground once when I was a child.
It was on another occasion when Dad had taken me with him to the supermarket and we were on the way back that he said, ‘Come on, Zoe. Let’s go to the park.’ It was only a five-minute walk from our house, but although he’d been there many times with Jake and Ben when they were young, he’d never taken me. So I was very excited, and because I didn’t want him to change his mind, I didn’t ask him the question I was asking myself, which was, ‘What will Mum say if she finds out?’
When we got to the park, Dad took a white hankie out of his pocket and laid it carefully on the seat of the swing – ‘So that you don’t get your clothes dirty,’ he told me, which made me feel very special, like a princess. Then he pushed me, gently at first, until I got more confident and started shouting, ‘Higher! Higher!’
As all princesses know, however, there’s a wicked witch in every fairy tale and ours was waiting for us when we got home. Dad had only just opened the front door when she started shouting at him, asking what took us so long and demanding to know where we’d been. ‘We went to the fucking park,’ he told her, just before she hit him. Then he hit her and the row quickly escalated into a full-blown physical fight.
Whereas Dad had to be sober for at least a few hours every day when he was working at the factory, Mum had no such constraint and was eventually drinking more or less from the moment she woke up in the morning until the moment she fell asleep at night. And the more they both drank, the more frequent and violent their arguments became. So I spent many hours of my childhood listening to them shouting and hitting each other, and hearing Mum scream, ‘No! Stop it!’ when Dad lay on top of her and did something that made her struggle as she tried to push him off, which made me feel protective towards her, and guilty because I knew I couldn’t do anything to make him stop.
Looking back on it now, I’m glad Dad took me to the park that day, because although it ended in him and Mum having a horrible fight, he didn’t ever take me again. So at least I have that good memory of him pushing me on a swing before his attitude towards me began to change and it stopped being just Mum’s beatings that made me afraid to be in my own home.
Jake and Ben used to bully me a lot when I was a child. But whereas Ben was sometimes nice to me, Jake never was, and he would often beat me and call me names like bitch, slag and slut, which I was too young to understand. I think he probably would have treated me the same way even if he hadn’t been encouraged by the fact that whenever Mum heard him tormenting me, she would laugh and join in, calling me ‘thunder thighs’ or saying I was ugly and fat, or that I had a hideous smile and a pig’s nose. I was just four years old when she bought me a pair of pig slippers – ‘Because they look just like you.’
The fact that Jake was nine and Ben was seven when I was born meant that by the time I was old enough to do anything, they were already leading their own lives and I had very little contact with either of them during my childhood, particularly with Jake. But although Mum was almost always angry with me, she rarely was with my brothers. So I believed her when she said there was something wrong with me and that I was the cause of all the rows and everything else that was stressful in her life. Everyone else did too, particularly when they saw how differently she treated my brothers, who were included as an integral part of the family and given pretty much free rein to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. What other explanation could there be of why a mother would love two of her children and so vehemently hate the other one?
Then, not long before I was due to start school, Mum had another baby.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if my little brother Michael had been a girl – whether Mum would have hated her the way she hated me, or whether a little sister would have been included in the family the way Michael was when he was born. I often wonder if the physical contact I had with him when Mum wasn’t well and I used to have to give him his bottle was what made me able to identify and empathise with other people later, when I grew up, because he was the only human being I ever cuddled and hugged.
Mum had more or less recovered from her illness by the time I started school, so I was glad to have somewhere to escape to. I hadn’t ever played with other children before going to nursery – my older brothers only ever teased or bullied me – but despite having no experience of socialising, I got on well with the other kids and really enjoyed school, for the first few years at least, until what was happening at home made it difficult for me to cope with anything.
Despite being abused and excluded by my family, I accepted everything that happened at home as being normal.