Stepping out of the Circle


Chapter 1  28/10/2017 


In the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

Until she learned to tell her story like this, in 2017, 36 years later. It was hard for people to understand, but when the story started to be told like this, it was better understood, indeed people were shocked, horrified.

She was an illegal home birth, not registered with a number as most births assisted by a midwife are.
And that was the start of being outside of society. At Birth. In the UK, all children start life with an NHS midwife number, and begin life on the production line which has to be joined at birth in order to run smoothly. So ahead of her was a lifetime of being an outsider, and being an illegal home birth with no midwife, no number, was the symbolic start of it.

The bit that seems to shock the Samaritans and others is the fact that she had three lots of moderate head injuries (injuries hard enough to cause brief unconsciousness) by the time she was four years old, but she received no medical examination, assessment or treatment, and to this day has remained without assessment for brain or skull injuries).

It has taken so long to know how to tell the story from the beginning, but now at last she has been able to grasp that these things so far are enough to help people to start to understand.

The head injuries were not deliberate abuse, the third may have been deliberate, but probably without malice. The first two were accidents, a fall from a high chair and a fall in the yard, hitting her head, they were not abuse, were very much witnessed and verified by family members, but the abuse was that no medical help or assessment was sought. And although she is without access to medical treatment now in 2017 and the NHS didn't look after her in the years she tried to get their help, so she doesn't know how much of her condition is brain damage.

Her parents were against medical help and authorities, they may have been afraid of getting into trouble over innocent injuries and having the children removed. When she was unconscious, her mother said she was dead and left her there, the same as her mum did to her dad, years later when he collapsed.
The third injury was her brother hitting her on the head with a hammer, whether it was deliberate or accidental is unknown, but he was only a child, albeit one who grew to be psychopathic.
This third injury she remembers herself, her dad actually bandaged her head this time, and there was blood on the bandage, but no medical help or assessment, and by now the family's problems had begun to increase as more children had been born and the family had moved to a ramshackle house on a dangerous housing estate and the violence was escalating.

She never wants to think of her parents in a bad way, in a judgemental way, although the few who hear her story say that she should be angry, but it wasn't like that, her parents were autistic and mentally ill, they were abused and neglected themselves, so it is a repeating pattern rather than them being deliberately abusive.

But when her dad got his skull broken in gang violence when she was 12 years old, he did get medical help, he did have a home visit from the doctor. Did get a diagnosis of a fractured skull.
The doctor saw her curled up under the shelves as he bandaged her dad's head. 

'What is wrong with her?' he asked.

'She's had a nervous collapse from the violence' said her dad.

The doctor hesitated, but he didn't do anything more, he just left when he had finished the bandage.

She had witnesses her dad's skull being broken, indeed she had been the closest witness, and the scene of her dad running towards her with blood pouring from his head, shouting at her to get in the house, would haunt her for life, and in dreams for years after, he didn't make it to the house, he was killed.

But that last bit is the fast forward association with head injuries.

One of the problems for her was and is, that the things that were wrong in her childhood were not just within the family, but outside, on the violent gang-ridden housing estates and ghettos and the in the homeless hostels and squats that were the family's accommodation during her childhood. There wasn't safety and there wasn't anyone stable, dependable or a good role model, there was no safety, and when someone grows up without safety, they become permanently hyper-vigilant and nervous.

Which as a lot of you know, is something that the NHS, 'mental health' services, social and other authorities twist into crushing labels that make life even more difficult. Worse, they throw dangerous drugs into the mix, often making things worse, rather than looking at the cause of the condition.

When she finally left home and met the NHS and other authorities, unfortunately it wasn't because they understood that she had survived a lot or because they wanted to hear her story, no, it was because she was taken over by abusers as a vulnerable adult, and, already profoundly damaged, she was now being harmed more, but elective mute and with no story but that which the abusers gave to the NHS and authorities, she was never going to be heard, assessed properly or helped, and in 2017. after a lifetime of abuse and NHS and authorities mis-recordings, she still hasn't been heard and has been left suffering.

A recent breakthrough for her was that a private physiotherapist assessed the terrible pain in her neck as severe whiplash - origin uncertain - but untreatable due to being left untreated at the time, whichever time that was. The skull and brain damage cannot be assessed privately due to cost and due to it being more specialist. The NHS had tried to tell her that the pain, so bad that it left her incapacitated and vomiting, was psychosomatic, all in her head.

The NHS negligence and poor attitude hasn't just left physical damage and neglect, it has added further trauma to her already overwhelming PTSD (which they failed to diagnose, she had to  pay for private assessment for it, while she was sleeping rough!). 

It is always surprising with the circle that you can start from the beginning and the story jumps from one thing to another, but the base line will continue in chronological order and return to it despite the jumps.

Illegal home birth, the eighth child in what was to become a family of 15 siblings, her mother, who despised her, told her that she was the first unwanted one.
She had three lots of head injuries by the age of four, all moderate and all without medical help or assessment, and she had headaches from an early age. Her dad used to give her paracetamol and milk, he did a lot of the care as her mother was always ill. 
She was born a year after her sister, and bullied every day of her life by her sister, who didn't have learning difficulties and she did. Her twin brothers, who were cruel and violent from an early age, were born a year after her.


There is a saying that the way someone is, is established in the first 7 years of their life, and there is little to disprove it. If you have no stability and no stable caregiver when you are young, it will affect you for life. Foundation, background, is essential, and if you are without stability when you are young it will affect your stability and coping skills later on.

She would have developed reactive attachment disorder when her mother was in her hospital for a long time without anyone explaining anything to her, if not before then. Her mother nearly died with the birth of yet another child, the second one down from the twins, born at home as they all were, and her mother and father did agree to medical help that time.

That was how things were in the family before she was 7, and the gang violence on the estate was constant, the children didn't go to school, so she didn't learn to relate to people nor was anyone able to spot her deterioration, because no-one saw the children and realized all was not well.
There was nowhere safe, nowhere to turn.
Aged 7, she and her family were homeless on the streets.

Stepping back into the Circle.

End.

 

 

 







Chapter 2  29/10/2017 


She doesn't feel like doing this today. Tired and traumatized and shaken. She can't occupy herself with anything else though, so she will try.

The Circle exercise doesn't have to be about chronological horrors of childhood, it can just be a way of releasing any traumas, even temporarily, by telling them in the third person and from outside the circle. And in the exercise on the 'Being the Difference' course, the qualities that come out of the struggles are also realised.

Inside the Circle

Stepping outside the Circle.

She doesn't want to do this exercise today, she is too stressed and traumatized. The weight of the damage, years and years of damage and no justice, no resolution, no hope, gets overwhelming.
Living condemned is a terrible way to live, especially when the condemnation is repeated regularly, reinforced.

She went to church today, but it hurts, church doesn't always help, because it was church that heaped the condemnation on top of the shaky foundation.
The condemnation and trauma are in the way today, in the way of her telling the story, if no-one hears you, and they just go on condemning you, what is the point of telling your story?
She shouldn't be having to fight for her life, let alone justice.

She remembers her childhood again. The council estates and the violence, her fear when they went out for walks, of gangs with motorbikes. There were gangs with motorbikes, and they were nasty.

When she was still young, her older sisters left home, they were aged 16 and 15, desperate to get away, they went to London, young, innocent and without any funds, and they learned adulthood the hard way, working in a restaurant and without a good understanding of how the world worked outside the closed cult family, the closed cult family who didn't go to school or see doctors or have holidays.
The closed cult family who never had vaccines, had all the illnesses instead.
The illnesses that left her with unsightly bars on her teeth for life, where illness stopped the normal growth.

The Passover Story, Shavuot, Succoth, Purim, all come to mind, and her dad telling the Bible stories, it is usually the Passover Story, and Passover that she remembers best, her dad's voice telling the well-known story, while the estate roils outside. The Passover meal, everyone dressed in their best, the table dressed in the finest, the lamb and bitter herbs and grape juice.
And of course Purim, where she got one of her names, she was born at Purim, but that name and that heritage and life is gone now. The memories, the Hebrew language that they spoke, wrote and read, and most of all her Father's voice telling the story, remain. He was the great Father, infallible and always right, or so it seemed.

There was never a day without stress, children born, fights with neighbours, gang violence, and within the family there was constant bullying and abuse and noise. The level of instability would affect any child for life, and she had un-diagnosed Asperger Syndrome as well as attachment disorder, but there was no effective outside intervention, even when her mum was in hospital for so long after the birth of one of the babies. Reactive attachment disorder is a serious psychological condition which needs early and very solid intervention, and obviously that never happened, so she was left with a the life sentence of it.

She survived, but didn't survive, you know how it is with unstable childhoods, the child may live and grow up, but the experience and impact never goes away.

Being hit didn't help. Her older siblings regularly hit and pinched and hurt her in many ways, and broke her toys, played tricks on her, but this was how the family was, a large family shut in a normal sized house, no outlets such as school, friends or outside activities, it is hardly surprising that bullying and cruelty born of boredom and frustration occurred, it was a way of life, and again, it would have lifelong impact. She undoubtedly bullied as well as being bullied.

But the worst violence was from her father. He couldn't cope with all the children either, and he vented by beating them for the slightest things.

She was an easy target for her dad's anger, she was quiet, solitary even in the crowd, and she had learning difficulties, something that her father didn't believe in. Her sister a year older than her and her younger sister were very clever and gifted, and she was held up against them as 'stupid' and 'idiot' and beaten round the head and face for not being able to learn as well as they did. Her dad was trying to teach her from secondary school books by the time she was 7.

As well as being hit and slapped, her dad used canes, belts and wooden spoons to beat her and her siblings. And the fear of this violence affected her into adulthood, as she flinched and ducked if anyone moved near her, causing anger and confusion once she had escaped from her family in her late teens.

She wasn't rebellious, stubborn or lively, she was quiet, and by the time she was 7, she was already somewhat despairing, life was never easy or happy.  Even when they had a rare day out, things got stressful, on one day out, she got separated from her family and lost, and on another day out, her younger sister somehow fell in the river and nearly drowned. Most days out involved her mother screaming and shrieking as she couldn't cope.

On the estate, as well as the gangs, there were people who her parents called 'kerb-crawlers', some of these were local politicians, according to her parents, people who they named. But the authorities didn't want to act. It was many years later that some of this became more relevant to the family and then even later on, a national news story, but at the time it was just part of the strange world that the family lived in.

She was sexually abused, by her brother, not by her dad as some people tried to claim, her dad, despite his temper and physical abuse, had no interest in sexual abuse, he and her mum had a very occupying physical relationship, hence ending up with 15 surviving children in the end. That was both their preoccupation with sex and their refusal to use birth control as it was against their strong and strange religious beliefs.

She was told by her mum that God had only granted them 7 children, and that she was the 8th, the first unwanted extra, and that the children after the first 7 had been sent to them by God because other people had refused to have these children by using Birth Control. 
That is another description of how the extreme religious beliefs affected the family. And all her childhood and even into adult life, her mother told her this kind of thing, and it affected her psychologically. 
One of the worst damaging visions that her mum shared was that the world was due to end in 2008, and that there would be no point in her growing up to go to university or get married or have children as it would all be wiped out.

The reason the age 7 is significant to the circle is that when she was 7 years old, they left the council estate and became homeless.

Stepping back into the Circle.
End.

Chapter 3  30/10/2017


Tired and bothered by the nagging pain in her side, it is hard to think about going into the circle, but she is doing it for the sake of the people who helped her recently, and the people at church, who don't want her to be sad and struggling. She has had a bad day, and isn't coping well.

In the circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

It is hard for her to step out of the circle today. She is traumatized and tired, she doesn't want to endure remembering a past that the people who malign and condemn her couldn't care less about, but she still wants to be heard in death, if no authority, agency or body will act to deal with her abusers while she struggles pitifully in living death.

The memories she recounts are not giving a good description of surroundings, no dramatic landscape backdrops, no, she is autistic, she doesn't really think in backgrounds and vivid descriptions of people or places, and this used to annoy her creative writing tutors. 
Elsewhere in her writing there are dramatic scenery pieces, flashbacks made the work alive with landscape, but not in this work. This is about life and circumstances. 

They put a firework through the letterbox one time, there was a bang and the hall was full of smoke, things like this were life, but she didn't understand why. 
They used to taunt the family, the estate gangs with so many of their own problems, used to attack the family, because they were 'different'. They used to accuse her dad of abusing the girls, they claimed that was why there were so many children, but it wasn't true.

There wasn't any positive aspect of life, with the gangs on the outside, and the family climbing over each other inside. She was called stupid and idiot every day. She was depressed already, as a young child. There was no privacy, she shared a room with up to five of her siblings, and there was no peace, no quiet, sometimes she would hide in the bathroom and pretend that she had a friend who didn't call her stupid or idiot, but she didn't get peace in the bathroom for long, and her siblings knew about her pretend friend, and laughed at her.

Looking back she doesn't laugh or feel shame, she sees from the point of view of outside the circle, that her capacity for survival and solutions was remarkable, and that for someone on the autism spectrum to find the ability to imagine, is pretty remarkable. 

On Sundays, to add to the separateness from the rest of the world, the family had religious worship rituals, she had to wear an uncomfortable headscarf that hurt her neck, and she hated it, and she had to read the long complex words of the Bible out loud. During the week the religious rituals and beliefs were extensively drummed into her and her siblings, extreme, often terrifying beliefs, to do with spirits and death. Often just before bed time.
All of this did lifelong  psychological harm that she can actually feel and identify. And to add to it, her dad would read age-inappropriate stories to the children, such as Lord of the Rings, Pilgrims Progress, Watership Down and other books that parallel the spiritual world.

But when she was 7 years old, things changed, and in some ways, the change was for the better.

They were moving house, this seemed a worrying thing, she was 7 years old and they had been at the house for four years, most of her conscious memory, although she had some vague memories of the house that she was born in. 

She remembers the chaos of that move, the Encyclopaedia Britannicas were moved from their shelves and it felt strange, she hid under the shelves and worried.

They were moving so that her Dad could return to University, which seems strange to remember, were they really not moving to escape the violent estate? Or was it an excuse?

As was normal, the stress of the move set her mum off shrieking and hysterical.  The youngest child was now a toddler, but unbeknown to her or her siblings, their mum was pregnant again, with what would be the 13th child to survive, she doesn't know how many miscarriages her mum had, but at least two or three.

The move was a long journey for a young child, she didn't really know or understand where they were going or what it would be like, and everyone was too busy and stressed to explain anything. The neighbours were pleased to see them go.
She packed her things in boxes as she was told, including her pocket money, which she never saw again.

The move took most of the day, she liked being on the road, she liked the picnic they had, even if her mum was having hysterics. She never forgot the place they stopped for a picnic, and often in years later, would travel through there, alone or with her brother, and stop there for symbolic refreshments.

They arrived at the town where the new house was, only to be turned away and told that the house had been let to someone else.
She never knew but always wondered how something so terrible and life-changing could actually happen.

They were homeless. She was street homeless aged 7.

They were in crisis, her parents had no idea what to do, where to go, where to turn, they had relied on Housing Association or Council Housing for many years, having very little money of their own, the large family of children, and mental and emotional problems. Suddenly they and the children were on the streets. Her parents were proud people and didn't really want any intervention, and there was no possibility of returning to the estate and house that they had left.

Her parents took them all to a Wimpy Burger outlet, they needed a meal. This was her first experience of fast food, and she didn't enjoy it, they ended up walking the streets of the town with their meal, and she was trying to get rid of the burger as they walked rather than eat it, it was likely that it was the gherkins that she didn't like, but there was no-one to help her to understand that, her parents told her off for trying to throw the burger away.


Stepping back into the Circle.

End.



 



Chapter 4   30/10/2017


In the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

Homeless on the streets, aged 7.

She was worried, her whole family was worried. It didn't stop her siblings from bullying her as they sat at the student's union, where her dad explained to the staff there that he was a student and that the family had come to the city so he could study, but they had been left homeless when their house had been let to someone else.

The outcome of the discussion with the students union was unclear at that point, and she didn't really know or understand what the adults were doing, but the family ended up in a bed and breakfast for the night.

The bed and breakfast was as bewildering as the streets. There were strange people there, and her parents were stressed and most of all worried about the children mixing with anyone, she and her siblings weren't used to being in a place with non-family people. Overnight it remained stressful as the children had to share a bed, and one child fell over trying to find a toilet, and when he found a toilet, there was a stranger in there and the door wasn't locked.

In the morning she was astonished to have a typical bed and breakfast meal, toast and marmalade, they weren't used to meals prepared so neatly and nicely, and certainly marmalade on toast wasn't their usual fare.

After breakfast her parents got angry and stressed about the children mixing with other children at the bed and breakfast, even though there was no apparent reason to worry. And when her mum started talking about exodus, she wondered why they were having Bible study now. 
But exodus meant wandering the streets again, going back to the Student's Union again, and the council. 

The bed and breakfast is still there, and still with the same name, 30 years later, but when she goes past it, she doubts that it is under the same ownership.

She doesn't know anything of what the adults are doing, but the family go to a new place, it has vast green lawns, pine trees and blocks of buildings. The family are taken to one of the buildings. 
The place is a university residential campus, and the family will stay on the campus temporarily.

She is astonished to have her own room, all of the children have individual single bedrooms, and this is something beyond her imagining. She is tired, and goes to bed. In the morning she doesn't know where any of her family are, they have been scattered around rooms in this vast student block, and she is scared and worried. 
Her mum finds her, her mum who doesn't usually care about her. Her mum seems to care today, tells her that they will go and get her younger sister and have breakfast. 
They have breakfast in one of the kitchens, and she has orange juice at breakfast for the first time in her life, after sleeping alone in a quiet single room for the first time. It feels good.

In her family, nudity was taboo, and she didn't know there were other people in the building, so when she went to the toilet and a naked stranger jumped out of the shower, she wet herself and ran away, horrified. She was already slightly incontinent due to her brother's abuse occurring in the bathroom and toilet at the old house, and her siblings bullying her when she went to the toilet, and now she was terrified to go to the bathroom, and had an incontinence problem until she left home.

She had never seen a coke machine before, so when her dad was on the phone, desperately trying to sort things out, she tried to understand a coke machine, she hadn't had coca cola before and she wanted a can so much, but she had no money, her sister a year older than her had money, and showed off by getting coke.

They moved again that day, but only to another student block, a smaller one, with no other people in residence, especially not nude ones.

Most of the family's possessions were in storage, and it was a strange time for her, in a single room again, and with most of her things simply not there. She didn't know when she would see her things again.

It is obvious to her now, that the university did not expect the family to be there for long, just temporarily while they arranged a new house, and this is how things started to go really wrong. The family, with no references, no work, no money, had extreme trouble finding a house.

It was summer, which was why the university halls were not full, there were summer school students, onsite workers, overseas students learning English before the start of term, and various holidaymakers renting student rooms.
The children still weren't used to mixing with other people, and yet they mainly mixed with overwhelming enthusiasm with these people, as it wasn't possible to be insular as they had been on the council estate.

Unfortunately, with such a mix of people there, they weren't all safe, and several were predators, she was lucky in a way not to be abused, but her older sister, as a young teenager, suffered several assaults, and became very depressed. Her parents seemed unable to handle the situation, and there was no police involvement.

The staff became unhappy and concerned as the summer went by and the family didn't leave. They needed the accommodation for the incoming students in the autumn.

The news broke that her mum was pregnant with the 13th child, and her dad was trying hard to work and earn money for a new house, he was doing telephone canvassing work, which he wasn't suited for, being a man who preferred not to speak to strangers or anyone other than his family.

The stress and tension in the family was severe, and her dad was hitting her and her siblings all the time, making them do very hard lessons and punishing them constantly - in his world there were no holidays from lessons, no days off, even at the weekend, and even when they were homeless, and she attributes her constant hyper-vigilance and inability to relax and rest properly partly to this background.

Things escalated with the university and accommodation situation, and it got nasty. Of course she didn't know all the details, she was 7 years old.
But then the press and media got involved, very nasty, smearing and slurring the family, putting pictures up in the papers, of the whole family, and calling them terrible things. Her parents had allowed photos to be taken because they thought that the press and media would help them, rescue them from a terrible situation, but instead there was just hatred and contempt. 

And worse, the press and media harm triggered hate mail and hate phone-calls, which she remembers, how can strangers vilify a family on the grounds of what the press print? Why would anyone vilify children? Her parents, fragile and distressed and with such problems already, were driven closely to breaking point.
And then of course strangers and social services kept turning up, and were turned away.

It was now into the university term, and the terrible situation led to the family fleeing the university campus to a homeless hostel. And 'Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire' is the most appropriate description of this move, to a trouble hostel, while the family were still headlining local news.


Stepping into the Circle.

End.

















 


Chapter 5   30/10/2017


In the Circle. 

Stepping out of the Circle.

The family escaped the press and media and angry staff in taxis to the hostel.

The television at the hostel was on, and headline news was the family, and it was all media smears.
This wasn't an ideal start, among people with drink, drug and alcohol problems as well.

The hostel was a rough place, and due to the nature of hostels, the family weren't all put together in one place. Her older brothers were the other end of the hostel, which was a number of old houses knocked together. So her brothers were a walk through lounges and corridors containing addicts, alcoholics and people with profound problems. It wasn't safe. Back then, smoking indoors was normal too, and it was choking with smoke.
She was in a room with four of her siblings, after being in a room alone for a few months, and it was hard to get used to again. 

Within a few days, a man who was apparently a paedophile, tried to take her aside, but her brother didn't allow that, her older brother, not the one who abused her but the next one down, had become her close friend and protector, and he is undoubtedly one of the reasons she was able to just about survive such a troubled childhood.
Her older sister wasn't so lucky, and suffered more assaults and was often propositioned by men. Being a teenager in such circumstances must have been awful.

The siblings got ill with earaches and throat infections, possibly from mixing with people at the hostel after being insular for so long, and she had terrible earaches, her sister was ill with a blocked nose all the time, she hated having to look after her sister because she was slimy, but of course her parents were preoccupied with the homelessness, the continued press and media harm, and the violence and dangers in the hostel, and of course the imminent arrival of the new baby.

The baby was born in the hostel in December, six months or so after the family left the council estate. The noise of the birth of course caused concern and alarm to the hostel residents, and the children, as it had with each birth. And the staff, several grim alcoholic men, because in those days hostels didn't have special staff, they had grim alcoholic men, were obviously deeply upset about the matter, and social services were called, and arrived, with the police.

She didn't know that home births without midwife supervision were illegal. Indeed she has never known if her parents fully understood that, but they didn't trust hospitals, they went on about the hospitals that the first few children were born in using oxygen and nearly killing the babies.

And now, the children cowered in a downstairs lounge while the police and midwives and social services tried to get access to her parents and the baby.

Access was blankly refused, and the baby was born in the hostel. Eventually the authorities went away, leaving the children still terrified, they knew from their parents that if the social services got them, they would be treated terribly in children's homes and handed over to paedophiles.

The baby was fine, and when she looks back she smiles to think of the Christmas story, the baby born in a stable, that first Christmas, long ago.
At Christmas the family made an effort to be cheerful and enjoy what they could get, and she and her brother made an effort to find gifts and make decorations to make it special.

But after Christmas, the problems and violence in the hostel increased, and her sister was assaulted, her brother stepped in to defend her, and was throttled, thankfully he survived. 
When the police came, her mum was crying and hysterical, she was scared.

The police officer had a three-bedroomed house that he wasn't using. The reason for this is unknown. He offered it to the family to get them to safety. Even though it was much too small, would have been small for a family half their size, but any port in a storm, they accepted the offer to rent the police officer's house.

Stepping back into the Circle.

End.





Chapter 6   30/10/2017


In the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

They moved house again, her mum said that the house was her 'Birthday Present', but she didn't want a present like that, a tiny terraced house in a maze of terraced houses in the city, where fleas and cockroaches and problems abounded.

Her parents made the shock decision to send the children to school. She was 8 years old and had been taught that school and schoolchildren were bad, so this was a shocking and bewildering betrayal.

But her father was going to be commuting back to his workplace, and her mum was ill and unbelievably, pregnant again. Unfortunately she miscarried.

The house was tiny, her mum had the baby and toddler to look after, and her dad was away each day, so the children went to school. Unfortunately her dad didn't think school was adequate education, so he continued his harsh regime of education when he got home from work, on top of the school education.

The children were misfits at school, didn't have proper uniform or the normal things and accessories that other children had, and they were teased, bullied, isolated, and usually known as 'dirty gyppos' by the other children. She was the least lucky, as the quietest, and the one with learning difficulties, and the one who had to change schools after one term due to her age.

She and her siblings, having never mixed with other children in this way, picked up a lot of  illnesses in the short months that they were at school, which added to the misery. The house had a tiny shower room, and she had never used a shower before, and was afraid of it, and afraid of the moths, spiders and other creepy crawlies that infested the shower room.

Her brother, the one who had abused her, left home aged 16, supposedly to join his older sisters in London, but her family later said he went after a woman at the hostel who he had been having an affair with, some of them added that it was the woman's children that he was interested in, which is paradoxical because they denied that he had abused her, and vilified her for reporting him later on to stop him getting custody of the younger siblings, but that's another story.

Social services and the police came round, when the school had strategically got her parents out the way, but her older sister defended the house fiercely, and stopped any access or custody occurring.

This maybe why the family lost the house, because of course the landlord was a police officer. It was time to move on, and her parents were so angry and disgusted with the schools that the children would never go to school again.

Stepping into the Circle. 

End

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





Chapter 7   31/10/2017 


In the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

8 years old and she has finished school after two terms.
Must be a genius. Maybe not the idiot that her siblings and father said she was.
Only joking.

Her mum said they all had polio, among the other illnesses and diseases.
Polio, if it was that, is what might have caused the pain in her hip, or was it? 
The hip/groin area caused her chronic trouble for life, but she never got help or diagnosis. The NHS of course, rubbished her in her adult life, as with everything else.

In adult life, with other joint problems and tiredness, her hypochondriac friends who got her the autism diagnosis, tried to get her diagnosed with fibromyalgia M.E. but she was given no clear diagnosis or result, and continued to be treated as a malingerer. It was just before the NHS threw her away during profound crisis as a 35 year old adult, that hypermobility disorder was vaguely mentioned, as is the way with the NHS but she was left without help, support or information anyway, as is the way with the NHS. No help in childhood and no help in adulthood.

The family moved to the new house in December of the year when she was 8 years old. And the new house was pretty luxurious compared to the flea-ridden terrace that they were leaving.

The family had a friend at the time, as sometimes happened, vulnerable hangers-on joined the large family, and sometimes the parents managed to indoctrinate them with the religious beliefs, sometimes not.
So when they moved, this person helped them to move, as she could drive.
There was an accident when they moved, her little sister hurt her head, and because there was this friend helping the family to move, she took the little sister to the hospital, it seemed that because there was a friend in the system, who had witnessed the accident, it was possible to get medical help without any social services intervention. So her sister had butterfly stitches for her head.

The new house was rather nice, it was strange that the family had got such a house, it was a spacious four bedroom house, open plan downstairs and with a proper bathroom. She shared a room with her older sisters rather than sharing with everyone at the terraced house. The girls room at the terraced house had been a walk-through room, so there had been no privacy.

The house was on a quiet housing estate right next to the seashore, and the children loved it. The neighbours weren't enthusiastic about them though, the notoriety of the press and media onslaught was still fresh, so the neighbours knew who they were, and a large unruly family didn't fit in. The quarrels with the neighbours escalated, and it got tense and unhappy, despite the house and area being so nice. 
Of course the children didn't return to school now either, which the neighbours objected to.

They lived at that oasis of paradise for six months, with tensions with the neighbours being the main problem, the children loved living there, it was better than anything they had known. Their dad was now working from home, and running up huge phone bills with telephone canvassing, which his bosses were supposed to reimburse but didn't.

Her dad continued the harsh lesson work and physical violence. She was anxious all the time, and didn't know what would merit punishment next, as he often was violent when he was stressed and she didn't know or understand what this was about.

Her mum was pregnant again, and there were big rows, it had only been a year or so since the last baby had been born, and there had been a miscarriage in the meantime, but the thing was, what could be expected if her parents didn't use birth control? But she didn't understand, didn't understand about the babies or the facts of life or what was happening, only that there were rows, and then her mum ran away from home, tried to get to grandmother's house hundreds of miles away. It was confusing and her dad was very upset and stressed. No one knew what to do.

She was 9 years old now, her mum came back, and then they had to prepare to move house again, as they weren't being allowed to stay in their home.

The police decided to pick fault with her dad for riding his bike through the precinct, they were aware of the tensions with the family and neighbours and wanted the family out, many people would ride through the precinct, but the police decided to try to bring charges against her dad. And turned up just as the family were leaving to go to the new house. The police officer on his bike, obviously couldn't chase after the minibus.

She didn't want to move, didn't want to leave the sea and the South Coast that despite the ongoing harshness of life, she had come to love. She was sad and worried, she wasn't reassured by her older brother and sister who told her that she could come back when she was grown up.
But she promised herself that she would come back, would come home.

Stepping into the Circle.

End.
















 

 

 

 




Chapter 8  31/10/2017 


In the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

The NHS fed her anti-depressants for half of her adult life, from when they first met her as a teenager, as if any sort of drug would make any difference to the damage done by her upbringing. They never asked any questions about her background, never tried to match up her upbringing to her state of mind and behaviour, and to make things worse, they gave her one antidepressant after another that made her ill, and affected her behaviour and mood, and didn't monitor any of it, but went on blaming and branding her.

Despite it being glaringly obvious, as she went on being abused, they failed to even formally diagnose traumatic stress until she had a private assessment done with her own meagre money, while she was sleeping rough. But having been forced to see her background and trauma from the private report, they did nothing, and threw her away like a bit of rubbish not long afterwards. 
They even forcefully tried to tell her that the undiagnosed severe whiplash that made her vomit, was psychosomatic pain.

Back to childhood. It was a hot summer, 1990, there was a drought and a hosepipe ban. The new village that they had moved to was a lost unhappy places, you know the ghost towns in the USA, deserted and semi-deserted places in the desert, well this village in the dust-blown fens was reminiscent of that.

But it had gangs of bored teenagers, bored teenagers who attacked her sister so badly, that she left home and returned to the south coast within weeks of them moving there. Aged 16 and having suffered so much abuse and violence already, she went back to the South Coast, and being only young and naive, she ended up injured and starving. When her sister left home, she left saying that her parents didn't care, but maybe they were just preoccupied with the new baby being on the way, and the hostile new neighbours and gangs and general ongoing money and domestic worries.

The new house was only three bedrooms, or so she thinks, possibly four, but she had to share with three sisters, four before her sister's departure.

She missed her sister, she had become close to, and reliant on, her older brother and sister for companionship and protection, they were in a way, like parents to her.

The parents let the children roam a lot of the time, too preoccupied, and she went to the shop one day, alone, not a long walk, ten minutes maybe, but she was set upon and captured by a gang, she was trapped and subjected to hours of assaults and being spat all over. She was terrified, trapped, and the whole time they called her terrible names, eventually she broke free and ran for her life, managing to get home.

Her family hadn't even noticed her absence, and her mum scornfully said it was her own fault and that she had warned the children not to go out anywhere, which wasn't true, in any way. The children quite normally would go out and play in the streets around, and go to the shop. It certainly wasn't her fault, but her mother's cold scorn affected her badly, as did the attack. Nothing was done about the attack, no police were called.

The hot weather was oppressive, it broke 100 degrees on the fens, while on the south coast, she imagined, it would be cool in the wind and by the sea, she wanted to go 'Home' to Hampshire.

The baby was born at home, the fourteenth child, and social services and the police yet again seiged the house and terrified the children.
This time social services were more grimly determined, and wouldn't go away. 

Her mum fled with the baby, to her grandmother's house, where at least there were trees and shade. Social services could do nothing, but kept bombarding her dad with letters demanding to know about the baby and about where mum and baby were and what standard of education the children were getting, they were determined to carry out their right to inspect the children's education. The landlady was now getting very concerned about the situation, especially as the neighbours were complaining, so the family prepared to move again.

Social services didn't get what they wanted, and when the family moved, they had trouble keeping up with them.

The family moved to a ramshackle old house in poor repair, she remembers how cold it was, the boiler had problems, and her parents said that the boiler had a gremlin in it, they meant it literally, not jokingly, gremlins were responsible for the boiler and the dangerous wiring that led to her getting electric shocks all the time when she made tea for the family.

From an early age, the children made meals and tea and did housework, especially when Mum was ill, which was most of the time. 
If they got anything wrong, they got punished. If the tea or meal was wrong. She got punished a lot for getting it wrong, for spilling tea, for making sandwiches wrong, she was clumsy, motor problems, so it was easy to make mistakes or drop cups. For years after leaving home, if she dropped something she expected to be hit. It took her a long time to come to terms with the fact that in the world outside the family, people would laugh and cheer if you dropped something, rather than hit you.

Their parents rented a television, usually they would claim that television was a terrible thing, to do with spirits and the spirit world, but now they rented a television, and they were obsessed with the gulf war, and had to watch the news on it all the time. 

She remembers that her mum ignored the baby all the time, the baby cried and cried all the time and her mum ignored it, she used to go and tell her mum that the baby was crying and her mum would send her away. She ended up being the main person to feed the baby, with bottles of formula milk. She remembers her mum jeering at her when she said she was going to feed the baby, her mum said 'you haven't got the right parts to feed a baby'.
The baby became introverted, with a strangely grey skin colour, but he would survive, just as the rest of them, albeit to grow up, with the youngest sibling, profoundly introverted and disturbed, with complex behavioural problems and needing care.

The intense lessons and religious worship and punishments continued as normal.

The house was cold with mould and condensation, and they did what they had done before at other houses, tacked plastic to the windows to keep the heat in.

The police turned up and arrested her dad, but she never knew why. He came home eventually, but she never knew what it was about.

The house was too hard to maintain, and the impact of such a large family didn't help, the landlords wanted them out. The neighbour did too, they only had one neighbour and he had gone mad at one point about the noise.

It snowed very deep that winter, someone got stuck in a snowdrift, but he owned one of the first mobile phones, and was able to phone for help.

She was 10 years old when they moved house again.

Stepping into the Circle.

End. 



















Chapter 9  31/10/2017


In the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

Aged 10, she moved with her family to another village. This was a smaller village, away from the main road, out in the countryside.

The village was reminiscent of the first village they had lived in. It was a lost place, with bored gangs of teenagers.

The house was better than the one they had left, it was cleaner and without mould and damp, or maybe that was because it wasn't winter now. But the house had wiring problems, and with such a large family using the electricity, the electricity would often go off.

Her dad was struggling to make ends meet for the family, he wasn't working, and hadn't been working for some time, and he was worried about money, and angry a lot of the time.

Her sister who had left home to return to the South Coast, was forced to return to the family due to having injured herself and having been left starving due to the injury stopping her from working.

Her sister had to sleep in the lounge at this house, and was very depressed and confused, she would tell her about her suicidal thoughts and attempts, this had a lasting impact.

The usual lessons and punishments continued, and her younger brothers were found to be deliberately making the electricity go off in order to halt the lessons.

They weren't at this house for long, but long enough for more gang related trauma. She was beaten up and throttled by a teenager from the gang who wanted to fight with her sister and was trying to provoke her sister to fight. Her sister was very tough and had a reputation for fighting.

Nothing was done about the incident or her injuries. 

They weren't at this house for long, but while they were there they did manage to make friends with some local children, despite their mother coming out and discouraging some of that. 

The family fell out with the local shop owners whose garden backed onto theirs, her brother had been doing some work for them, but the falling out was more about noise, she thinks, and with that being the only shop in the village or for miles, they had to cycle or get the bus to other villages or town to get anything. In those days there was no home delivery from big supermarkets, it was between the time that local grocers did deliveries and supermarkets did home deliveries.

They moved again, to a huge and very derelict house, a former pub, it was the biggest house they had lived in. In another village away from the main roads, but better connected this time, with B roads to the city and A road. This village was about 7 or so miles from the village that they had first lived in on the fens.

The house was in poor repair. She guesses that the landlord was just glad to make some money out of it as it was, rather than having it repaired or demolished. 

The house was next-to and over a chip shop, owned by the same landlord but rented and run by a couple from a few villages away, the family had an on-off friendship with the chip shop people, who were nice people, but sometimes got overwhelmed with the family's problems. 
The wiring and electricity in the house were really dodgy, and at times when there was no power, the chip shop people provided meals for the family, and when there was no water, reason unknown, they also let them have water.

Stepping back into the Circle.

End







Chapter 10   01/11/2017 


In the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle. 

They were there for 9 months at that ramshackle old pub house, 9 months was quite a long time for them to be anywhere. They got to see the terrifying fen-blows in the summer, the dust storms that blew up and blotted out the light and rained down on the houses. They got to endure the stubble burning that sent fields up in flames and smoke over the villages, and they got to see the fens flood and freeze in winter, into exciting and dangerous lakes of ice, and they carefully skated the edges of the ice.

The village had gangs, as most fen villages seem to. And her sister fell out with the gang, as she always seemed to. They didn't like her being solitary and hard and having short hair, that is one of the things that gangs seemed to hate, but she didn't understand. 

No, their mother had suddenly got all the three remaining older girls to dress in boys clothes, and had cut their hair, she didn't understand it or what the problem was, wearing trousers and having short hair made things easier, and it certainly beat her mother making her wear horrible wool clothes that she had a bad reaction to, which is what her mother used to do in the rare times her mother paid any attention to her. 

The itching and scratching and discomfort would be something she always remembered, it was a strange thing, her mother forcing her to wear them on pain of physical punishment, in the brief spells of attention her mother paid to her. Thankfully now there were only dirty old trousers and boys shirts and jumpers to wear.

The children's clothes came from jumble sales, mainly, and the old women in the village who ran the jumble sales didn't like the family, but at least they bought the old clothes on sale for whatever charity the jumble sales were for.

The time at the old pub house was fraught with problems with collapsing walls, mice, electricity short-outs, water cut-offs, and other issues, a lot of the time they were in darkness without the electricity, they had candles, an open fire, and a few gas heaters in that vast old house.
The good side was that lesson work was impossible a lot of the time.

The gang problems affected the whole family, and she was the victim of an incident where a car was driven at her by a gang member and had a genuinely very narrow escape, the driver was high. The police came this time, but her parents told her what to say, and they told her the wrong type of car to say, and the police were confused as she terrified insisted it was the car her parents told her to say, she was more afraid of her parents than the police, but had no idea why they would try to make the car out to be a different type of car.

The gang violence sometimes involved stone throwing and verbal abuse, the gang would be up by the shops if they went up there. There was a younger gang as well as an older one, the younger gang tended to hang around the school and park. 
She and her siblings spent a lot of time at the park, and at the traveller camp nearby, and they were bullied and abused by the younger gang, so were the traveller children who they were friends with.
The traveller family were good friends with their family.

One day she and her siblings were set upon by the younger gang, she was injured by a stone that one of them threw, it hit her on the side of her head. The traveller children were more robust and angry than her family, after all, they didn't endure physical violence from their father, so they set upon the gang, taking the siblings with them, and got the gang on the run, and when a gang have to back down and run, they stop being a gang, they are finished, and that gang was finished. Amazingly the older gang called truce not long after, and her older siblings started hanging out with them.

Her injury wasn't serious, and the mother of the boy who had thrown the stone dragged him round to apologize. She was astonished and didn't know how to react, no-one had ever apologized to her for anything, especially not the violence that was simply part of their lives.

Her older siblings were out and away a lot of the time now, getting away from the misery of the cold dark and crumbling house, her brothers had an allotment and jobs at a shop about 10 miles away, and that was their excuse, and her sister went back to Hampshire for the weekends. It felt lonely. Her year older sister was the oldest at home most of the time now.

There was an accident, her older sister was chasing her brother and he slammed the door, her sister ran into the door, unable to stop, and it was glass panes, she put her arm through the glass, cutting an artery.

Thankfully an ambulance was called and her sister was taken to hospital, she was in hospital for a while, and her mum stayed at the hospital, and accused the hospital of trying to kill her sister with morphine. Unfortunately, while her sister was in hospital, someone set fire to her sister's play house which was against the garden wall, built from old wood and carpet, it burned down, and her parents blamed the man who had an art studio behind the house, but there was no proof, and sometimes she wondered if it was her brothers, who later tried to burn down her playhouse as well. Her sister kept many prized possessions in the playhouse, and they were all lost. Unfortunately her sister's accident lead to social services being alerted.

Her mum and dad had a row when her mum told her dad to stop hitting the children so that social services would not see the bruises if they examined them.
Her mum had befriended the village doctor anyway, and because the children weren't underweight and could all talk a lot, apart from her, the doctor would apparently back the family up to social services, and of course the children had been taught what social services would do to them so they were adamant that they would support their parents in making sure 'the social' didn't get them. And probably because social services couldn't handle such a volume of children to custody, they faded away again, or maybe it was the house move that did it.

The problems with the house and family were again leading to the landlord being involved, he was a fierce little foreign man with fierce little friends, and there was violent confrontation. 
She was 11 years old now, and it was time to move house again.

Stepping back into the circle.

End.

 

 

 





Chapter 11   01/11/2017


In the Circle.
                   
Stepping out of the Circle.

She knows that there will be things she forgets, but they will be in other books.

Aged 11, she was depressed, she was struggling to relate to the few other people who interacted with the family, such as the shopkeepers and the local vicar's wife who kept interfering.

They pretty much fled the ramshackle pub, with social services still a threat in some way, and angry neighbours and the aggressive landlord.

They hadn't been able to find a place to rent, so they broke into an empty farmhouse and let themselves in.
The farmhouse had no doors inside, the floors were collapsing and only one tap in the house had running water.

The biggest problem was that there was no electricity, and this led to them having to trace the owners. Or the people they thought were the owners.

The owners were not local, foreign nationals from London, possibly, she can't remember, the house was an investment that had obviously gone wrong, and the astonished people took the parents call, said they could stay for now and have the electricity, they were astounded that anyone would break in and live in a house in that condition. 

The house really was dodgy, they never had more than the one tap, never had hot water or heating, even the toilet had to be flushed with a bucket.

Her mum got obsessed with getting doors for the house, and she took her out over the fens, to Soham and Stretham and all around, begging old doors off builders, and bringing them home balanced on bike pedals.

The police turned up and searched the house, the landlord at the old house had accused them of theft, she was terrified when the police walked into her room, it was intrusive and upsetting. Nothing appeared to come of it though. It was just another upset.

The children loved playing on the farmland, and being somewhere without gangs, although the neighbouring farmer's children were aggressive. 

Her mum talked about making it a working farm again, but it was another of her pipe-dreams, she talked about running bed and breakfast, which terrified the children because of their experience of bed and breakfast and homelessness.

But then the landlords turned up, and no agreement could be made on rent and plans for the house, the landlords had a problem, she thinks, that they didn't own outright, the house was more owned by the local Diocesan Board of Finance, she doesn't understand, but anyway, the landlords talked about the family renting as bed and breakfast only, but that wasn't practical, and rent and repairs couldn't be agreed on. In the end the family were only there for four months or so as a legal battle ensued.

Her older sister returned to live and work in Hampshire now, and her brothers were out at work. 

It was the beginning of November, the anniversary this week, maybe 25 years ago, she can't count, that they had to leave, they had a big November 5th bonfire, burning all the doors that they had collected for the house. 

And then it was time to go.

They were close to being completely homeless again, when a local farmer's son who worked as a removals van driver,  took pity on them and offered them a few days at his farmhouse, his father had died and the farm was no longer in use, but he had a young border collie who would have been a sheepdog.

The family accepted the offer, and stayed in the farmhouse, but the noise and disruption had quite an impact on their kind host, who said he couldn't keep them, and asked if there was anywhere he could take them and their possessions in his van.

There was only one choice now, and it wasn't a good one.

Stepping back into the Circle.

End. 


Chapter 12   01/11/2017   


In the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

The move was a long one, they were told to be quiet because it was illegal for them to travel in the back of a removals van.
She was worried about her younger brother, his skin was very grey and he slept most of the journey.

They arrived back in the city that they had left when she was 7, the city of sink estates and gang violence and kerb-crawling politicians.

They didn't want to go there, but there was no choice, the only good thing was seeing the hills and trees again after the vast empty fens.

They had to go to her grandmother's house on one of the estates, her grandmother was elderly and disabled and lived in an adapted bungalow, the family descending on her must have been a shock, and of course the large family couldn't stay there, so just the parents and the youngest four children stayed, while the other children were farmed out to relatives that they barely knew, the family had been distanced from their relatives for some years now. 

She and her sister lived with their aunt and uncle.

It was strange and awkward living with a 'normal' family briefly, she felt out of place and worried. Her uncle and aunt did their best, they were worried about the children not going to school, but it was November, coming up to December now, so starting school at this point in the term was unlikely even if her parents had allowed it, and they were technically homeless still.

It was a brief stay with this normal family, who tried to make them welcome, she and her sister were un-socialized, and unused to the way of life.

Her aunt came home one day and told them she was taking them to their parents, and that they shouldn't believe anything nasty or unkind that her parents said about them. This worried her.

They were taken to her grandmother's bungalow, where an almighty argument was going on, the relatives had been very concerned about the whole situation, and the stress it was putting on their grandmother, and the whole lot of relatives were involved in a heated row with the parents.

The end result was a bad falling out, some of which never got healed, and the family were thrown out.

They didn't know where to go now.

They went to old friends, in the town where she was born, just outside the city. 
The old friends were also bewildered, and not very nice.
The stay lasted a few days, and they were again sent away. It hurt her a lot because she used to play with the girl her age in the family, that girl now seemed to mature and grown up and looked down on her with scorn as she struggled to communicate.

They ended up in a homeless hostel. Thankfully they were only there briefly this time.

The hostel rules meant that people had to share, so that no family could get security of tenure, and normally families were small enough for this to be simple, it was a bit more tricky with a large family, but they ended up sharing with another family, a family that seemed to have one woman and several men and various children that weren't the men's children, she was puzzled. Her father was angry that their children ran around naked when the men weren't even their fathers and the children were too old to be running around naked, it all seemed incomprehensible, her family wouldn't dream of nudity in the home, let alone in a hostel among strangers.

The hostel had cold tiled floors in the bedrooms and beds lined up with mattresses as hard as concrete, or so it seemed, it was not a welcoming place.

They weren't in the hostel for long this time, but she remembers the payphone being stolen and an staff member saying comically 'Good Lord! Somebody's pinched the phone!'
The children in the hostel picked fights, but they fought back and gained their respect, she ended up friends with a boy who had tried to beat her up.

Now they were offered a council house, it was a three storey house in the corner of a very run down and desperate estate, it was like going back five years to the old estate which was less than 10 miles away.

She was hopeful, optimistic that this would be a fresh start and a permanent home, after all, it was council, not private, so they could stay for a long time like they did when she was young.

But unfortunately this was to be the beginning of the worst experiences of her childhood.

Stepping into the Circle.

End.










 

 

 

 




Chapter 13  02/11/2017    


In the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

No matter how much time goes by, this year of her life will never be easy to explain, it will never be easy to explain because it was surreal and violent and without any light.

It has got easier for her to think about and explain without such bad flashbacks, but it will never really 'make sense' so to speak, and to try to explain it to strangers, police, Samaritans, and others remains difficult.

She went back recently, because of a hate attack on her for the abuse in her adult life, she was triggered into terrible flashbacks and ended up back here.

That three storey house still remains in the corner of the estate, a reminder that what happened was real.

When severe trauma happens, part of you gets left there in that time and place, and sometimes you may try to go back and get yourself.
Parts of her are scattered many places, and sometimes she goes back to try to pick them up.

So where can she start, with this impossible to tell part of the story? 

They moved to the council house in December, just before Christmas, three months before her 12th Birthday.

The house was a bleak red brick three storey, typical council house, only the council have such monstrosities.
It was in the corner of the close, by the entrance to the 'country park'.
The Country Park was just a wasteland typical of the area, full of rubbish and dog mess and stray dogs. Abandoned trolleys decorated it, and the occasional burned out motorbike or car.

The children had, since that Christmas in the hostel, worked hard to make Christmas special, and to get each other gifts, and this Christmas was no exception.
She took her younger sister to the shopping centre up the country park path, it wasn't far, and they were allowed to go, she wanted to get her other younger sister a present, some pencils or crayons, and maybe a colouring book if there was enough money. 

She didn't really understand yet that this estate was like the one that they had left when she was 7, maybe even worse.

They were at the shop, looking at what to get, all excited about Christmas and gifts, when the police approached them. She had no particular reason to fear the police really but was surprised at first, the police started talking to them, but then they were asking if she had been shoplifting, and if she had ever 'been down the centre', but she didn't know what that meant, whatever faults her parents had, they had taught the children that stealing was never justified, even if they were starving. No, she hadn't been stealing, and to be asked that by the police was traumatic and shocking, and she started crying, embarrassed because she was crying in front of her sister.

She told the police that they had just moved to the area and she was buying her little sister a present. One of the officers was talking to a shop manager, they said 'mistaken identity' and let the girls go, but she remained shocked and upset, and told her dad, who was angry.

Their Christmas was uneventful, apart from her mum having hysterics and screaming as usual.

It was after Christmas that things were getting worse.
Her dad and older brother worked in town, and in the afternoon her other older brother went to deliver papers, leaving just her mum and her siblings from her year older sister downwards at home. 
They were allowed a television at this house, so they enjoyed children's programmes, and you can't beat the 90s for good children's TV.

But the gangs were becoming a problem.

Those reading this who don't know about gangs, they do exist, bored teenagers hanging out, getting into mischief because they can't occupy themselves well. They are worse in villages, with nothing to do, and on sink estates where it is a culture.

The problem was, the family was different, they were set apart and didn't deliberately do anything illegal, no drugs, smoke, drink, shoplifting illegal vehicles, and suchlike, and they were one of the only nuclear families, with both original parents to all the kids, and being such a large family, with the religious beliefs and not going to school, they stuck out like a sore thumb.

The younger gang were a problem to start with, a lot of places have older and younger gangs and kids graduate from one to the other. 
Early on, the children, trusting and naive, were invited to a youth club, held in an old tin hut on the country park, and presumably held to keep the gang members out of trouble. It would be unusual for her parents to allow them to go to such a thing in case social services got set on them.

The gang leader had a problem with her younger brother, he had been angling for a fight, maybe saw him as a threat, although her brother wasn't interested, but at the youth club, the gang leader pulled a knife on him, there was a fight but the knife was retrieved and no-one was badly hurt.

This is when the gang problems started to get worse. 
She and her siblings never went back to the youth club. But they had daily problems with the gang after school, when they went to school, although truanting seemed to be monitored on the estate, it's a pity not much else was.

The young gang, aged 10 or 11 to 14 or thereabouts, would hang around the house, and the house could be hung around on three sides, it fronted directly onto the public footpath out the front, had a footpath behind, and had the country park to the side. They would hang around looking for a chance to jeer at the children, throw stones and missiles, and generally be menacing and a nuisance. It made afternoons and evenings hard to bear.

But the neighbours also had troubles and were troubled and troublesome. The woman next door was a single mother to a teenage girl, and she didn't like the family or the noise.

One day she and her brother were in the back garden when the woman next door threatened them with a knife, the woman had got tired of the noise and she had problems anyway, and their mum had accused the neighbour of letting her daughter go to an underage sex party, the truth of which is unknown.
Anyway, so this woman threatened them with a knife. 
The gang was hyped up by the violence and anger, and were throwing stones, and the police were called.

The woman never did anything after that, a new fence was put up between the houses, and she moved out before long. She was replaced by a family who quickly joined in the gang problems,  a single mum with two boys who thought it was all great fun and joined the gang.

The neighbours the other side were very hostile to the family, and the next family along, they had started out OK but things had not gone well. Her mum had accused them of being involved in stolen goods.

There was a family up the road who had a boy of 13 who had learning difficulties, and for some time he would come down and play with the family, but her mum said that his uncle was a boyfriend of the local politician and said his uncle was pimping him out as well.

The local politician, the local MP, was the one who had been allegedly kerb crawling on the estate they had lived on before, and he was supposedly kerb crawling and abusing boys locally as well. Unfortunately these things weren't baseless allegations but it was many years later and too late, that it hit the press headlines.
At the time her parents got increasingly involved because they passionately wanted something done about it. Which led to them being involved in something else as well.

A local children's home manager was arrested, he was charged with many counts of child abuse and it was all scandal. 
But her parents said that this children's home manager was framed by the local politician. They said that the two men looked alike and it was easy to persuade the children that it was the home manager who had abused them and not the MP.

Her mum became involved in a campaign to prove the innocence of the children's home manager and the guilt of the local MP, she joined forces with the man's fiancé and his legal clerk/solicitor.

But on the estate, with bad feeling increasing, it got harder to live.

It was March, her Birthday was in March, and the clocks changed for spring in March, she always hated the clocks changing because it meant spring and summer were coming, and in the summer she suffered untreated hay fever, sun allergy and hyperthermia, she still suffers all three, but treated to make them bearable, but as a child, with no medication or diagnosis, her life was hell for six months or so of the year.

The tensions and gang violence had been building, especially with the fallings-out with the neighbours and just because the family didn't fit in, were an easy target, especially as they reacted to the gang.

There were some fights, mainly her brothers were targeted. 
But worse, there were stones thrown, windows got broken, and of course trying to prove who did what was pretty much impossible, and this would all occur while her dad and older brother were at work.
Until March 21st, when things changed for the worse, the day the clocks changed, just after her Birthday.

The afternoon was almost as normal, the gang hanging around, looking for entertainment, her mum could be relied upon to shout at them or throw tea at them, things like that, and they always wanted to attack her brothers if they came out. This kind of gang are fearless and not too bothered by authority, and gangs like this do exist, and occasionally when they cause deaths, such as happened not far from this estate a few years back on a similar estate, it makes headlines, but not much is done.

Her older brother, the one who delivered papers, went out to do his papers, and he was set upon by the gang and chased into the country park.
Her mother started having hysterics and said her brother was dead.

She was cold with horror and fear, how could her brother be dead if 'God looks after us'?

But it was impossible not to believe her mum, after all, they weren't allowed to disbelieve their parents. It had to be true. 
Her younger siblings, the four youngest, didn't know what was going on, her year older sister always hid her head in the sand and pretended all was well. Her twin brothers were on 'lookout' but couldn't tell what was going on in the country park, there was no sign of her brother.

She didn't know what to do, she wanted to go after her brother, but of course she couldn't, and she couldn't stand against the gang.
Her mother was hysterical.

In reality, the danger of death was both real and small, these gangs were vicious and unafraid, but they were also children. 

The gang had returned, with no sign of her brother, and they were pelting the house with stones, the kitchen window was already boarded up. 
Testimony to the constant stone attacks, the windows spent much time boarded that year, and when unbreakable panes were fitted, the gang would smash them out of their frames. The house had no garden, no protection from anyone on the street, it was literally out on the street.

Anyway, her memory is of the half-dark of the boards, her mum having hysterics, and the gang attacking.
They didn't have a phone in the house. Back then there was only BT as a phone company, and her dad had run up huge bills telephone canvassing, that his bosses were supposed to pay back but didn't, so the family were cut off and blacklisted by BT.

As the gang raged, her mum said that the gang would kill her, and she told the children to go upstairs so that they wouldn't see, her siblings all obeyed this, but she couldn't.
She picked up one of the tree branches they had handy for self-defence, the family had tree branches and ammonia spray to protect them from attacks.
She told her mum that she was staying with her to defend her.

The police turned up. One officer.

The officer had turned up because of her brother, but he refused to radio for reinforcements to keep the family safe, indeed he was bewildered by the situation.

Her mum said she was going to kill the policeman because he wouldn't radio for help, he was still trying to work out what was going on.
Her mum told her to go upstairs so that she didn't see. 
She doesn't know what the officer thought of this, the stairs went round and round in flights up the three stories, she climbed the first low flight to the first landing, she stopped and asked the policeman to get her dad and brother.

Her mum shouted at her, telling her not to tell the police where her dad and brother were, she was confused, her mum considered the police to be a danger to the family as well, because she was involved in the MP case, and she considered the police to be protecting the MP.

It was then that time stopped, she was 12 years old, two days after her 12th Birthday, and she had a nervous breakdown that would affect her for life.

She didn't know or remember what happened. She was crying, collapsed, didn't know anything, everything was blank and blurry.

Thankfully no-one was killed. Her brother had been rescued from the gang by an off-duty police officer on his way home through the country park, and they had called the police.

Her mum didn't kill the police officer, he radioed for help, and her mum didn't get into trouble for threatening to kill him either. 
Her dad and brother came home, and it felt as safe as it could now, and they had 24 hour police protection for a while. The reason for this and the reason it ended is unknown to her.

But the impact was severe on her, it affected her more than her siblings, more than her mum, more than anyone. She was collapsed, confused and distressed for some time. Her dad called it a nervous collapse. She didn't get any help, and it affected her for life, she remained like a 12 year old, that 12 year old, pre-pubescent  in mind, and unable to cope. She never did get help. Her parents knew very well that she was profoundly affected, and her dad called her condition 'nervous collapse' but they did nothing about it.

Unfortunately for her, rather than that being the conclusion of the violence, it was the beginning.

Stepping into the Circle.

End.






 

 

 

 




Chapter 14  02/11/2017 


In the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

It is best to press on now that she has got to this point in the story, because if she stops, she gets trapped there in her mind.

The police protection didn't last long, and she didn't recover well, but the violence escalated and it was the older gang taking over now, the hardened and uncaring older teenagers and early 20s gang members, most had no occupation, well, no legal occupation.

The gangs wanted the family to leave, and normally if they wanted people to leave, they successfully drove them off the estate. 
The family had been told by a young boy when they first arrived, that everyone got attacked by the gangs when they first moved in, it was like initiation, and usually they stopped when you gained their respect. But obviously her family tended to fight back, and never gained the gang's respect, and indeed the fighting back seemed to keep the gang occupied and coming back.

Her mum had filled spray bottles with ammonia, which if you sprayed someone, it made their eyes sting, and these were used to stop physical assaults, and it made the gang afraid, they had never faced something like that before.

When they attacked the house, the family actively returned fire, the stones came in the windows and the family threw them back, the family also used milk bottles as missiles.
It all sounds bizarre, and it doesn't get less bizarre.
They also used a hose, connected to the bathroom tap, aimed out of the window, to hose the gang down.
It was a battle of wills. The estate wanted the family out, the family had nowhere to go and wouldn't be re-housed if they gave up the property, so they fought back.

She was shaky and afraid, but she continued her defence duties. Mainly gathering stones and missiles that landed in the back garden, to be used as ammunition, carefully dodging being seen or heard in case she was attacked.
Her brother got knives one day, gave her a knife, taught her to hit the solar plexus with the flat of a knife.

The gang would break down the front door, so her dad put grease on the front door so that gang members slipped and fell when they leaped at the door. The original door had been glass panes but it had been smashed up, so the new door was a council special, anti-vandalism door, a solid wood door with a spy-hole, chains, locked letter box, unbreakable maybe, especially with grease on, but in determined efforts, the door might have gone, for example when members of the gang were high, they could hit the door really hard and throw rocks really hard.

Some nights when it was like that, there was a trolley crate of rocks to go against the door to keep it stable.

Her mum was often out now, at court, fighting legal battles about the house and housing benefit, the neighbours, and also the matters to do with the local MP, the Children's Home manager, and the police.

At some point an important Chief Inspector from another police force came to investigate the matter to do with the Children's Home manager, and her mum took extensive part in that, but then she was upset because she said it was a whitewash.

Sometimes there were injuries, her brothers both had injuries that needed treatment, one went to hospital for it. And at some points air rifles were used, she was hit three times by air rifle pellets, not serious injuries but at some point her mum dragged her to the police station, which surprised her, and she was examined, her mum hadn't checked the injuries herself and they were very minor, not worth police time, she felt silly.
At one point things got terrifying because it looked like the gang had a sawn-off shotgun, but when the police came, it was a powerful air rifle.

There were many attacks and physical assaults and near misses, it may sound surreal but this was a way of life for some time, the sound of stones impacting on the house, and assaults on the doors and windows.

There were other terrifying incidents, the fire and petrol bomb and fireworks incidents, the gang found firepower a good weapon and started making amateur petrol bombs, bombing the garden and setting fire to rubbish and playhouses in the garden. They also threw fireworks.

One evening her dad sent her to run for the police, they had no phone and mobiles were not common yet, so she had to wait for the gang to all be round the front, as they attacked from all sides, and she had to get over the garden wall and run up the country park path, to where the police station was, directly at the top. She got to the police station, but they were tired of the family and sent her away, she went to go home but the gang were in the country park.

She couldn't get home or go back, they had spotted her and started to chase her, she ran for her life, she really ran for her life, screaming wildly, she ran through the hedge and onto the close and her dad was standing there with the skullbreaker, a solid baseball bat type weapon that he used for defence.
He stood there and she ran into the house and the gang stopped. The gang were afraid of her dad, he would curse the spirits and demons out of them and although they didn't fear authority, they were afraid of him. Dad got back into the house safely. But she was shaken and traumatized. One of the gang lived next door but one, and he jeered at her for days for screaming for help as she ran. And as a 12 year old, she was ashamed.

But the second worst incident since the March 21st incident was one of the two times that her dad got his skull broken.

They gang had a cupboard that they turned upside down over their heads to shield them from return missiles while they tried to ram the front door.
Her dad went out with the skullbreaker and beat it on the cupboard while several gang members were inside, this sounds bizarre and hard to explain, but it was real, the cupboard was a long white one, not very deep, but it covered their heads and made an ingenious battering ram, horrible as that sounds.
Her dad was hitting the cupboard when he was struck on the forehead by a flying bit of breezeblock flung by a gang member, it caught him between the eyes, he had blood pouring from his head and he was dazed, he had brought her out with him, and he shouted at her to run back into the house, and she did, he got in the house, blood pouring and soaking his shirt. 

In her nightmares for years after, he was killed in that incident, but in real life he survived with a lifelong scar.

The doctor came and bandaged his head, she didn't know how the doctor came or who called them, but the doctor came to the house and bandaged his head. She was hiding in a corner, shaking, as she did, and the doctor asked what was wrong with her. Her dad told him that she had had a nervous collapse, the doctor hesitated and then left. Nothing was done to help her.

Bad weather usually put the gang off, so rain was welcome. Snow not so much, because they wrapped rocks in snowballs and threw them, she thinks their genius was wasted on being sink estate gang members. But when it rained, the rain it made the gang go, and once the rain was so bad that the houses flooded, including theirs, there was water everywhere, the house was already filthy, dark and damp, never cleaned or tidied any more as mum was away on court and legal stuff all the time and the rest of the family were too busy fighting, and dad had given up work after March 21st.

It was strange and funny that despite everything, lessons and punishments continued, as did the religious way of life, worship on Sundays, and celebrating the Jewish feasts, the family spoke, read and wrote in Hebrew as well as English, but this was supposed to be a deadly secret from the outside world, she didn't know why.
At one of the feasts it was her mum telling the Bible story, not her dad for some reason, the front window was dark with boards but someone smashed the board out and threw a brick that hit her mum. Her mum had to go to hospital.

It wasn't long after that that she herself was hit by a brick, it hit her neck, and not very hard, but she saw stars. She had to stay where she was though as she was defending the house with the hose, yes, a 12 year old girl defending her family's home with a hose against a gang, so bizarre it is unreal, unfortunately it was real.

There was a time when she was attacked by a gang member no older than her, and he was high, he had a knife, and she knocked it out of his hand, but the tip caught her left hand, leaving her with a small scar that enabled her to tell left from right from then on.

In the early mornings she would go with her brother to deliver newspapers, outside of the 'war zone' in an area where people lived relatively normal lives, in the cold that froze her fingers, she wondered what life was like for the normal people who didn't even know who delivered the papers, she wondered what it was like to wake up without fear and go to school and work and come home to safety and peace.

She was developing physically, beginning to go through puberty physically although she remained childlike mentally. She got sexual harassment on the estate, and threats of rape, her mum was too preoccupied to buy her bras and proper clothes, or to even notice that she was developing, and she was bigger and developed faster than her year older sister.

Her clothes were filthy and ragged old boy's clothes and she wore a man's jacket to hide her lack of appropriate underclothes. Maybe that helped to discourage any actual physical attacks at the time. But she was self-conscious and afraid.
Often her clothes and short hair meant she was called transgender and all sorts of vile things by the gangs, but she was a young girl, immature for her age, and who didn't have access to normal clothes or a normal way of life, and sexuality and gender were not issues that were relevant to her yet.

There were times when police vehicles in the close were attacked by gangs, they smashed a police car windscreen and let the tyres down when the police left it unattended, and when there was a police van and her mum and brother were in it, the gang rocked the police van, the police seemed helpless.

A year of violence came to a violent end not long after the second Christmas there, yes, that all happened in approximately a year.
She had a tennis racket, she used to bounce a tennis ball off the house wall in the early days, before the worst of the violence. During a gang attack, her brother took her tennis racket and literally returned fire. Using the tennis racket to serve the rocks back at the gang.
One of his returned missiles hit a gang member and knocked them out.
I don't know what the gang expected, using violence for entertainment, but they didn't seem to have expected injuries to themselves. 

The injured gang member was on his feet again very quickly but the indignant outrage led to the most violent and sustained attack on the house so far. The gang's families joined them and the violence was deadly and sustained.
In the midst of this, and no joking or distortion, the police arrived and arrested her brother and her dad and left, leaving her mother and herself and her siblings alone against this severe and unrelenting violence, the police did nothing to protect or help them.

They were going to be killed if they didn't flee, and this time there was no doubt or uncertainty.

They were amazingly able to get out of the house and away from the gang, they left everything, all their possessions behind. There was no time to rescue anything.

They made their way as quickly as possible up the country park path to the police station, and it was over, the worst year of her childhood, not that there was anything good to come.

At the police station the children waited outside, perfectly safe there, while her mum tried to work out what was happening to her dad and brother. 
None of them knew what to do, they played games, and she used what money she had from her paper rounds, to buy them food and drink from the shopping centre over the road.

Their mum came out, distressed and frantic, and told them that they were going to walk the few miles down to the homeless hostel that they had been in before.

She wants to go on, to run from the estate and on into the next chapter but at least she has again escaped the estate, in her mind. So she needs to rest.

Stepping into the circle.

End.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 




Chapter 15   02/11/2017 


In the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

They walked that long walk down the hill to the hostel, with nothing but the clothes that they stood up in and whatever they had in their hands or pockets, not a lot.
With no-one defending the house they had fled, they knew the way of the estate was for gangs to ransack or burn houses.

She remembers that before they moved to the estate, the house was shuttered up with a material called sytex, a material used to protect houses from gang raids and burn-outs, her mum had made a brilliant slip of the tongue back then and caused panic by asking the council to remove the 'semtex'  from the house, instead of the 'sytex', not that semtex would be that far off on that estate.

The hostel took them in, and put them in separate units this time, the family was split up, their mum was put in one unit with the youngest four children, while she and her sister were put in a unit with two couples who had alcohol and other problems, while her brothers were placed in a unit with other people, her brothers were lucky to be with safe people, but you may agree that it was madness to put young children with strangers for the sake or making sure a family didn't get security of tenure.

Her mum went back to the police station to see what was happening, and she was arrested.
Now her mum, dad and two brothers were in custody. She doesn't remember who was looking after them now, she remembers sleeping on the hard hostel mattress in the cold tiled room, and dreaming that her dad had been killed in the attack that broke his skull.

But her mum and dad and brothers came back, she doesn't know what happened about charges but she thinks they were cleared, no-one could disprove the gang violence and self-defence, but the story her dad told her affected her for life.

Her dad said that there was a drunk man in the cells shouting and singing, until the police beat him up to shut him up. Her dad said that he knew the police hated him and would also beat him up, so he walked round his cell all night, praying and singing praises to God, and the police didn't dare to touch him. He and mum were always saying the police worked for the pervert MP and hated the family for trying to get something done about him, and sometimes it was suggested that the trouble on the estate was linked to this.

They were to be at the hostel for 9 months now, with the council refusing to re-house them.

They were destitute, everything was left at the house that they fled.

She was confused when her mum came in with something for her, specially for her, a nightshirt.
A nightshirt that barely covered her, when she was sharing a unit with adult alcoholic strangers, why would her mum suddenly buy her anything, she was confused, she never wore it, it was safer to sleep in full day clothes.

Her parents arranged with the police to go back and collect basic possessions from the house. The house had indeed been raided and messed up, but very little had been taken, the family didn't own anything of worth, and even the gangs scorned the family's clothes and possessions as 'dirty gyppo stuff'. But the police could see first-hand that the house had been raided and messed over, and they never did anything about it.
Several trips were made to salvage basic possessions and clothes, she really wanted her recent Christmas presents salvaged, she was so upset that they couldn't be.

Then the house was really turned over, and set on fire, and that was the end of salvage, and it remained sytexed and derelict for some time.

The hostel, which is still there and still running as a family hostel under the same name 25 years later, was an unsettled place. Traveller families being settled, drug addicts and dealers, people just out of prison, abusers, people with all sorts of problems, were all there, it was a step up from the estate because there were staff to prevent, or try to prevent, things from escalating. But of course other families from the estate ended up there too.

A lot of the time that they were there, the hostel was undergoing renovation, and the builders would leave pornographic magazines lying around and blowing around, her brothers quite liked that.

Her brothers shared with reasonable people, her brothers were a year younger than her and could look after themselves but she was scared of the people in the unit she and her sister shared. The people would drink and they would simulate sex in the lounge area all the time. One day when these people were drunk, one of them knocked another out and they ran to ask her mum for help. She had worked as a nurse, so she knew what to do.

The siblings were split between units, and her older brothers were put with people who really led them astray, but the siblings would gather at their parents; unit for meals and daily life. 

The staff really struggled with the family, especially when her mum called members of staff 'raging queers' or 'practicing lesbians' or even 'card-carrying communists'. Her parents were homophobic, as for the communist bit, she never worked out what this was about.

As with all hostels, there were disputes and incidents. And her family being her family, the disputes would get bad sometimes.

Her mum continued to be heavily involved in the case of the children's home manager and the local MP, and sometimes would take her to visit the woman who the imprisoned children's home manager was engaged to, and the adults would talk strategy and next steps towards his appeal and getting the MP brought to justice.

There were all sorts of court cases, it was a way of life, council and housing disputes, cases to do with what had happened on the estate, she never really knew what was what, it was just what her parents did and talked about all the time.

Now too tired to even think, it is time to step back into the circle.

Stepping into the Circle.

End.

 

 

 




Chapter 16   02/11/2017


Inside the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

The 9 months in the hostel seemed like a lifetime to her. It was an unendingly troubled time.

She remembers how tensions got worse as people came and went in the hostel and some were very aggressive, she and her siblings, despite their youth, suffered verbal and physical attacks by residents, mainly residents with drink and drug problems.

Her parents' unit was the same as all their houses, dirty and messy. Too many children, too much washing up.

There were loads of Readers Digest magazines in the hostel, and for once this was something that their parents didn't ban.
She was growing into puberty but her parents hadn't taught her anything about growing up and the facts of life, so she learned it from Readers Digest.

She learned a lot more than that from Readers Digest, she learned about a different world where there wasn't always violence, where people loved and respected each other and showed it, she read about stories where parents and children loved each other and could express that love and show it. She longed for that world, the real world outside her family, and she wondered how children could respect their parents without being beaten, she wondered how parents could love their children and express that love, and not beat them or shout.
Most of her experience was her family, who were devoid of affection, and the violent families of the estate. She wished sometimes that even one time, her parents would hug her and tell her things would be alright. But they never did, and things weren't alright. 

Most of the time her mum was too busy with court cases and fighting on behalf of the children's home manager and against the MP. But one day her mum startled her by realizing belatedly that she needed a bra. Her mum gave her one of her sister's bras, but she was already bigger and better developed than her sister, and it was a horrible harsh chafing bra, too small for her and totally see through, completely useless, and at first she thought that was what wearing a bra was like, but it left deep sore lines on her, and she stopped wearing it and continued to do as she had been doing, covering up well to hide herself, which wasn't good as the weather got warmer.

Eventually her mum woke up again and gave her some of her own bras, which fitted better.

Her mum had a miscarriage at some point.

People moved in and out of the hostels, and for a while drug addicts inhabited the other rooms in the unit that she and her sister were in, and it got too scary, so they had to sneak into their parents' unit to sleep at night.

Her mum was in an accident, her mum and her sister had been going somewhere and their bikes had collided, leaving her mum with a broken collarbone, she was taken to hospital by ambulance but came home screaming in pain. Her mum and dad splinted the collarbone with clavicle rings, and it healed quickly. Their contempt for the NHS was certainly not lessened by that failure.

Her mum had no idea that her periods had started, and she simply couldn't tell her, her mum was away at court and the solicitors or in bed ill all the time, so she had to steal sanitary ware or the money to buy it, she never forgave herself. Her clothes were so ragged and badly fitting that a female friend of her brother's gave her a pair of jeans. She couldn't believe it, they fit so well and were so clean and smart. She didn't have money for clothes and shoes. 

Her younger brothers, the twins, came to live in the same unit, and then it all felt safer, the third room was empty now, and eventually a deaf couple moved in, and they stayed quietly in their room and did very little, so the children had the run of the flat and listened to music all the time.

The children's home manager died of a heart attack in prison, her mum was devastated, so was the woman who he was engaged to, the evidence for his appeal, which would also incriminate the local MP was still in the hands of the legal clerk though, and they still wanted something done about it.

Her mum attended the cremation, with her older brothers, her mum said the local press, who often smeared the children's home manager and upheld the MP, would have to report that there were young men at the funeral.
Her mum went to Dartmoor for the scattering of the ashes, as he had loved Dartmoor.
But after that, there seemed little that could be done about the whole matter.

It was a while later that the legal clerk with the evidence had a motorbike accident and was killed. Her mum said it was deliberate, the bike was sabotaged, and the police, being on the MPs side, would have covered up. But she never knew the truth, it just meant that the evidence was buried.

Things got worse at the hostel, there was more violence, some very troubled families moved in. One family had trouble when the man of the family went mad, literally, whether it was drugs or mental illness, he spent the day raging and shouting innuendos, then he raped his girlfriend and jumped onto the hostel roof, he looked in the bathroom skylight of their unit, where a girl, not a member of the family, was on the toilet, but then the police got him.

But it was towards the end that things got really nasty for the family, there were several hostile families, the worst of these was a large traveller family, whose life was about fighting, and she and her family were the obvious target, the traveller family were raw about their own situation and seemed to see them as an obvious target. Life got very uncomfortable, as the travellers teamed up with other problem families, while her family as usual kept themselves separate.

Life was a misery of dodging assaults of all kinds, she couldn't play in the playground, couldn't even go to the shop in peace. One time they ambushed her, pelting her with sand, she brushed most of it off, but some was in her hood, and it fell out in the shop, the shopkeepers didn't have enough English to understand what had happened and were angry with her, which didn't help.

Most of the hostel children didn't go to school, including the travellers, so for once the family weren't the odd ones out in that. 

Her mum was looking for houses for them, and one day they found what looked like an empty house, and asked the house next door if they knew who owned it. It turned out that both houses belonged to the same owners, who lived in the house next door, and they also owned smallholding land behind the houses.
Sadly the empty house needed extensive work before it could be inhabited, and was only three bedrooms. But the owners said that the family could come up and use the land as a kind of refuge in the daytimes to get them away from the hostel.

Going to the smallholding in the daytime was a relief, but they had to make sure the travellers didn't follow them, and they did try, there was a massive fight one day when the travellers attacked them and started beating her brother severely, she helped him to fight them off, and they took her glasses and smashed them. She had been wearing huge ugly NHS glasses since she was 8 years old, scratched and covering half her face, they had always been a point of jeering and taunting for the gangs, and often they told her to 'take her goggles off' and similar.

Now that they had smashed her glasses and left her feeling naked and embarrassed, they would spend weeks jeering at her. but because she and her brothers fought the travellers off so well, the traveller parents tried to get the police involved, but without much success, as the police saw the broken glasses that the travellers couldn't deny, and saw the children's bruises, and decided it was not possible to do anything more. She felt strange without her glasses and couldn't see very well, and it was a while before they were replaced.

Not long after this, one of the travellers accused her dad of assault, and he was arrested, without their dad to protect them, and with the travellers making out that one of their own had been assaulted, the hostel, already unsafe, became really dangerous. Too dangerous, her mum couldn't cope, and her older brothers were in a unit the other side of the hostel. Mum and all the other children now spent most of the time in one unit and they all slept there.

Their dad wasn't allowed back to the hostel and was bailed to their grandmother's, there had been some rebuilding of their relationship with their grandmother, and she knew that dad wasn't violent.
But this meant that dad, who had always done the food shopping, had to do the shopping and bring it to a meeting point where the children could collect it off him.

Her mum couldn't bear it at the hostel, so she took the children and went to the neighbouring city to beg to be housed there as they had family there, she left the older boys at the hostel to protect their units and their possessions.

The neighbouring city council refused to help them, and they were stranded. 

It was very worrying and confusing, hours went by as they waited, and eventually they were given bed and breakfast of sorts. 
The bed and breakfast was pretty terrifying, no better than the hostel really, there was a man there who was obviously unsafe and on something, he called himself the boss and kept trying to proposition her mum. There was no way they could stay there.

She got her period while they were there, and was frantic as her mum didn't know she had periods and wasn't alone to be talked to, so she had to use toilet roll.

Her brother and his friend came to collect them very late at night, unfortunately the car was illegal and her brother's friend was arrested and the car taken away.
They ended up at the police station.

Her mother was actually trying to hand the children over to social services now, for the first time ever. But social services wouldn't take them, what a turnaround! Maybe social services couldn't house so many children. But it is no bad thing, as abuse in care in that town is now notorious.

It was the early hours by the time they all got taxis home, it is not known what became of the friend who was arrested. The taxis drove the long distance to the other city while a storm broke, lightning struck the river bridge as they sped over it, and they arrived back at the hostel at around 3 or 4am, and slept wherever they could.

It wasn't long after that when their dad returned to the hostel, which was a great blow to the travellers. He had been cleared, she thinks, but isn't sure. The family seemed stronger now, seemed to be winning. 

And shortly after that, they left the city. Travelling in the back of a van again, obviously there was no money for a minibus, they set off for the ghettos of another town, and another harsh way of life to learn about.

Her parents warned the children not to talk about the past or the MP or the children's home manager as it would put the family at risk. But of course none of it really went away, it was a reality that had happened, and eventually it would have to come out and be heard.

Stepping into the Circle.

End.




Chapter 17  04/11/2017


Inside the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

She remembers the house move, they moved in the back of a van again, it was still illegal and they still had to be quiet.

The people who had the smallholding near the hostel helped them to move.
Her sister had found a kitten not long before they moved, and the people at the smallholding had to adopt it as the family were not in a position to have a kitten, it made her sad that they had to give up the kitten, the cat at the council estate had come to an uncertain fate when they had been forced to flee the house.

They arrived in the other city to pick up the keys for the new house, but horrifyingly, it seemed like a repeat of being left homeless was on the cards.
The new house wasn't ready.

But because the house was let through an agency, thankfully the agency worked very hard to arrange them a temporary home, a house that was promised to someone else but was still empty for a few weeks.

The new temporary home was a strange blessing, it was in a quiet area outside of the city. It reminded her of the estate on the south coast that they had loved, it was similar, but there was no sea, there were canals instead.

The house was almost empty, and they slept on the floors with only basic bedding.
Her brothers found some rather dodgy books and westerns to read, and she tried to read them but they seemed very violent, people being scalped and raped and things, she missed the Readers Digests, but all their things were in storage again.

There wasn't much to do in an unfurnished house, so she took her younger siblings for walks, along the canal and round the estates, there was a dead dog in the canal, and that shocked her, who would leave a dead dog in a canal?

Her brothers shocked her too, one of them describing another of them using a mirror when one of them was doing something lewd, she was too young and immature for this, even with everything she had seen or heard, and she did and still does, think that her brothers shouldn't have been talking to her about this.

She had her own problems with growing up, she still couldn't tell her mum that she had periods, and she was struggling to get sanitary ware. Her periods were heavy and painful too, but she didn't really know how periods should be. She tried to get the courage to speak to her mum, but there wasn't any privacy and she didn't know how her mum would react. 
She asked her dad if she could have money to take the younger children on a picnic, and as she was keeping the children occupied while mum and dad were busy trying to sort out the move, he was willing to give them some money for a treat, and she was able to get sanitary products as well as treats. She hated getting sanitary things or deodorant, she was so embarrassed.

Now things were getting urgent as the family who were promised the house they were in, needed to move in, thankfully the new house, the original and unready new house, was going to be ready.

Her mum and dad had lied to the agents and landlord about the number of children they had in order to get the house, which worried her. She knew it would get found out.

She didn't really know why they had left the other town and come to this one, but her parents said it was about being safe from the bad people, and that they were never to mention the MP or the children's home manager or anything that had happened or they could be harmed.

They moved to the new house now, it felt a pity to be leaving what was a fairly nice area, a bit bland and nothing but nice and quiet, and now they were moving to the city ghettos of the big city.

The street that they moved to was dark and dirty, the once grand Victorian houses were now dirty and ramshackle, and the old trees that lined the street were lopped short, and dark with pollution. 

Her brothers joked about them being the only white faces in the area, but it wasn't really a joke. They had Asian Gangs and Black gangs, who didn't tend to mix, and kept their own territories, and none of them were that keen on seeing white people around. That isn't in any way exaggerated or racist from her point of view, and it was her brothers who later said that the racism against the family was severe, she never looked at it in terms of racism against the family until they said that. She supposes it was.


The house was a huge old Victorian house on the corner of two roads, one of the road had the unfortunate distinction of having the same name as a notorious site in Northern Ireland, and her dad said it was appropriate, and jokes were often made about it.

The house was quite run down and ramshackle when they moved in, grimy, the landlord and his family had lived there, but even so, it was old and poorly maintained. 
At least there was space, and they got their possessions out of storage.

The landlord realized early on that there were more children than he had been told, and he took it pretty well, there wasn't much he could do now, and he was from an ethnic origin that generally has large families. But things were difficult with him from early on. 

Things were difficult generally from early on, the ghetto wasn't friendly. But at least there were new things to learn, for example about Diwali and the beautiful lights and sweets and fireworks that that brought with it. She liked the sweets, Burfi, Halva, and others.

The first Christmas was a lonely one, there seemed no point in Christmas any more. Normally she would go shopping with her older siblings, but this time they left her at home on the excuse that they wanted to go into a pub.
Not many people in their area celebrated Christmas. Diwali was the bigger festival.

She and her sister shared an attic, her brothers had the other attic, and the other children and parents had rooms on the first floor, the house was big, and there was a garden and outbuildings, plenty of space.
Not that it stopped her brothers from bullying her. They were worse now that they were growing older.

She and her sister got paper rounds at different shops, they didn't get on well and wouldn't work for the same shop, but both of them got paper rounds on the edge of the ghettos, where it was slightly safer, and they were the only paper girls in the ghettos, where the culture was male-dominated and where females weren't supposed to go out and do things. She felt trapped and oppressed in the ghettos, her childhood was fading away and she was a young female who didn't belong anywhere or fit in.

Her mum would raid skips for clothes and other things, any other clothes came from charity shops and sales, and she was very poorly dressed, and with the awful haircut, if things weren't already bad enough for a female in the ghetto, dressing and looking like that, complete with huge ugly NHS glasses, made her an easy target, for anyone, even the paper boys from the shop, who jeered and teased her mercilessly, her silence didn't help, she had been very quiet, sometimes elective mute, after the violence on the council estate.

She was struggling with growing up, trying to get sanitary products, trying to even get appropriate underwear, her brother laughed at her when he found her deodorant. 

Her older sister showed some rare compassion, and told her about a store she had found that sold cheap underwear, her sister was buying herself clothes there, she told her that they sold one-size crop top style bras that would fit her. It was a blessing, and she used her paper-round money to get clothes there.

She was 14 now, much bigger and sturdier than her year-older sister, and taller than her, self-conscious and awkward in a body that seemed too big for her and almost as if it was not hers, she felt like a child and not an adult in any way.

She delivered papers, and she was soon given the job of checking that the other paper rounds had been done, and if not, she did them, so she earned an extra fee for checking back, plus money for any extra rounds she did.

At home things were as usual, her dad made them do hard lessons and punished them a lot. At some point she couldn't get sanitary towels and she had to ask her mum. Her mum showed no concern for her privacy or dignity, and immediately shouted to her brother that she was going to the shop to get sanitary towels as she had started her periods. 
Well, she had been having periods for a year now, so the amazing thing was that no-one had noticed.

They suffered assaults while delivering papers or while out and about, her sister was luckier with the safer area, but she suffered ongoing assaults, some quite severe, and she continued, but was afraid.
One time a local young man who hated the family and always attacked any of them, attacked her, tried to take her bike, and hit her round the head. 
The police were called this time.

It got terrifying when the police officer tried to break the ice by asking her star sign.
Her parents were vehemently against horoscopes, it was one of their pet hates, she didn't know her star sign, but when she had been reading out some joke horoscopes to her brother, her dad had not seen it as a joke and had beaten her for it.
So when the police asked her star sign, in front of her parents, she froze in terror. Her parents remained dignified and told the police officer that the family didn't do star signs as it was against their beliefs.

The police officer said that the young man, who seemed like a teenager with his girls and drink and violence, was actually only 11, and although he was well known to them, there wasn't much they could do except speak to him, again. He went on making trouble until her year older sister severely beat him, and being beaten by a girl didn't look good, he faded away, and was replaced by a similar vicious young man who also had no fear or self-control, and also attacked them until he was beaten.

Not all the attackers could be beaten, and alone on her paper rounds, she suffered more assaults and damage to her bike than she could keep count of, but it was worse for her if they stole or ripped her papers, as it cost money to replace them and upset the shopkeepers.

Her brothers rebelled. Her brothers were now old enough to leave home and her dad still hit them, her older brother, her lifelong protector and friend, stood up to her dad and said if he ever hit him again he would knock him out. 
Her brother then left home in disgrace, and went to the town where they had been before, to join his friends he had made in the hostel, and to live on the sink estates there. The other brother joined him, but got a broken leg and all sorts of problems, while their mum made scornful comments about STDs and other things.

It was lonely at home now, with just her year-older sister as the eldest, and all the older siblings estranged. 
The estrangement of the siblings who left home probably hasn't been mentioned but yes, they had differences of opinions with the parents and were banished, the parents said that they were serving wicked spirits. 
Her brothers used to joke about that too, they wanted some of the wicked spirits being served up, they had a whole culture of jokes about their parents' beliefs.

The niggling troubles with the landlord escalated as the property's disrepair grew worse. A lot of the time there was no hot water due to the boiler needing replacing, but the landlord wouldn't replace it. She would boil kettles and hand wash her shirt, she had tried to get clothes for herself and smarten up due to the paperboys bullying her. But the family had never done things like daily showers and her parents hadn't taught her that as an adult, washing and hygiene was very important, she did wash her shirt though. She probably smelled bad herself though, she doesn't know.

The landlord wanted them out, so another protracted legal battle started, often one of the problems was housing benefit not making payments so the rent fell behind, and that was probably one of the issues there. 
It didn't help that her mum accused him of having pornography in the garage, and being part of a blue movie making outfit, the truth of that is unknown.

Their neighbour was a drug dealer, who most of the time didn't like them, and the family next-door but one, were alternatively hostile and tentatively friendly, their culture and religion clashed with the family's.

She started spending more time out alone, not coming home after the paper rounds, staying out of the ghetto and the family home for as long as possible. Sometimes she was tentatively joined by other youngsters with problems, who also had no wish to go home, but she was the quietest.

Her brothers came back from the sink estates to live nearby, and established a friendly relationship with their parents again. This was a relief for her, it was so lonely without them.
The younger of the two started hanging out with the drink and drugs crowd though, and dating one of them, his girlfriend was surprisingly concerned about her and her solitude and silence, and would get her clothes and do her mix tapes and acted like an older sister.

Her brother got arrested for a car with no tax or insurance, and he didn't have a full licence. Their grandmother had just died and her mum used the small amount of inheritance money on getting her brother out of trouble. She thinks it was simpler back then, he could drive but didn't have a licence, so he took the test, while her mum insured and taxed the car and backdated it all. Neither of her parents could drive or knew anything about cars, so she admires that sacrifice her mum made.

Stepping back into the Circle.

End






Chapter 18   04/11/2017


Inside the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

The song 'Luka' by Suzanne Vega, reminds her of the city, the ghetto, the tower blocks, and how lonely and violent life was. The video to the song is of flats and ghettos like the area where she delivered newspapers.

She didn't get to go to her grandmother's funeral, her mum went, the children didn't, her mum said it was too dangerous for them to go back there, to the city with the hostel and sink estates, so she was alone with her feelings, alone, delivering the papers and wishing there was one person in the world who she could speak to, who she could say to 'My grandmother died, but I couldn't go to the funeral'.

Her dad decided to ban her from doing morning paper rounds, no reason, didn't tell her, humiliated her by telling the shop and not her, and left her confused and devastated and depressed. the paper rounds were her reason for getting up in the morning, and without her to do the extra morning rounds, someone else got the job of doing any extra rounds, morning and evening. The money she had been earning for clothes and things she needed was gone.

The paper rounds were her only relief from the unhappy atmosphere at home, her mum was pregnant again after so many years, she had assured the children that God wasn't sending any more children, so now a 15th child was on the way. It was a shock as she had thought that everything her parents said about God was true.

The parents' fight with the landlord had got bad, and the family were being forced to move again.

They were lucky in finding a house on the same street, but at the other end, it was a long street, and the house at the other end of the street wasn't in the darkness of the dirty trees, it was in the light and opposite the park.
The park was a dangerous place, lots of strange people hung out there, and there were often assaults, but the bit of open parkland in front of the leisure centre was relatively safe. The children never ventured any further into the park any more, after suffering assaults so much when they first moved to the ghetto.


The leisure centre had been there before the area became a real ghetto, and it was still OK, the children would go swimming there sometimes when they had the money. Which was one bright spot in their lives.

The new house was smaller. And she had an attic cupboard for a room, no room for a real bed, she had cushions on the floor, there was room for a chest of drawers and not much else. 
Her brothers had the full size attic room next to her room, their parents had long since banned television again, but her brothers secretly got a television and let her watch it with them, they watched soaps. Her sister had a room downstairs and out of the way, and was away all the time at college outside of the city, she had pretty much escaped, aged 16.

It was lonely, they saw less of the older brothers now, and the younger children played together but most of the time she was alone. She would do the papers and stay out as much as she could.
At least her dad had allowed her to return to doing morning paper rounds now, no reasons at all, it was strange because it was evening paper rounds where she would get attacked and assaulted, so it wasn't about her safety.

They had a lonely Christmas, no older siblings, no real point in Christmas, and her mum was quite ill.

Just after Christmas, her mum was taken to hospital, too ill. 
Her mum had pre-eclampsia, and had to go to hospital to have the baby by C-section.
The baby was 3 months premature.

Her mum was very ill, and the baby nearly didn't survive.

During that crisis, she was badly beaten while doing the papers, by someone who tried to take her bike, she was left bruised, but she had refused to let the person steal her bike.
She didn't say anything to anyone, but her dad saw the bruises, and while the crisis with her mum was going on, he was very alert and caring, and she was surprised by his sympathy.

Eventually her mum came home, and then the baby did, they had visited the baby at hospital often,  but when the baby came home, it's lungs collapsed and it had to be rushed back to hospital for some time.

Eventually the baby came home.  And the baby and mum made a recovery. But at some point they were attacked in the street by a thug who was troubling the family, he tried to tip the baby out of the pram. Members of the public intervened this time, and that thug, who was only a teenager, stopped being a constant threat to the family.

She was worried, the 15th baby was a girl, which meant that there were now 7 boys and 8 girls, and her mum had previously said that there were only to be 7 of each, according to God. She wondered, as she already felt that she was useless and unwanted, if the new baby girl was to replace her, and if God was to get rid of her as useless. She felt like the failure of the family. She didn't really know that some of her siblings were really struggling too.

He dad got tired of shouting her and hitting her for her struggles with lessons, he gave up trying to teach her, so she bought herself textbooks with her paper round money, and taught herself, getting up at four in the morning to take her time, with mugs of tea, to work slowly through exercises, using a lot of paper as well. 

She wondered what it was like to do GCSEs, but she felt that no matter how much studying she did, she could never catch up with teenagers who went to school, she had no idea that her dad had been teaching her at GCSE level since she was young.
She also had no idea that children who went to school didn't choose to learn and often didn't pay attention to lessons, she just thought that no matter what she did, she could never catch up, she also knew that she didn't communicate normally and she was really worried, worried that she would have to go into the real world before long, whether she fled her family or was kicked out, she was 15 now and that could happen within a year, if her siblings were anything to go by, although her year-older sister hadn't been kicked out or left home yet.

She was worried that she wouldn't be able to look after herself in the real world, even though she already earned money for delivering papers, even though she would do her share of the washing up and housework when she got up at 4am, before going to do the papers, even though she was educating herself,  even though she got her own meals now and sometimes bought chips for all the family, just to get them to sit down together like they used to, she didn't know how to communicate and relate to people, she was afraid, afraid of the sexuality and relationships that seemed to be so much part of the adult world, she wanted no part of that, but it seemed that all the adult females that she knew, relied on men and relationships. 
She was worried, afraid. But more crisis was to overshadow her worries.

She applied successfully to college to take GCSEs on what was effectively a GCSE retake regime for those who had failed at school, and she still felt inadequate and worried that she wouldn't be as prepared as other students, but she still had some months before college started in which she could prepare. The college would only allow her to take 5 GCSEs because she hadn't been to school.

The Princess of Wales was killed in a car crash in France, but that wasn't her crisis, although the music that the radio stations played resounded with her sadness.

She had made friends with an elderly couple, and their neighbours to some extent, these were people who she delivered papers to, she didn't realize that they may have been concerned for her, but they would bring her out refreshments and talk to her when she came round with the papers.
One day the man of the couple died, and his wife wasn't there to chat and bring refreshments any more. She didn't know what to do, but decided to drop the wife off a sympathy card. The neighbour told her that it was appreciated, but then the wife of the couple died too, within months, they died of a stroke and a heart attack, and her life was empty and lonely again.

The real crisis struck when her brother tried to get custody of her younger siblings. This was the brother who had sexually abused her, he had been working as a nursery nurse, working with children, and he thought he could look after the younger children better than the parents could.

He went about it all in a very damaging way, he went to the press and media, raked up the buried stories from when they were in the halls of residence in 1988. It made headlines again, nasty damaging headlines. 
She knows about the press being harmful and lying to sell stories, she really does. She remembers being attacked and bullied in the ghettos and at the paper shops because her family made the headlines again, she remembers the shame. She remembers her older brother and eldest sister turning up at the shop where she worked and talking to her loudly in front of everyone about her parents being mad and why they wanted the children to be taken away. She remembers her parents' devastation at the whole matter.

She spoke out.
Aged 15, she spoke out, to prevent her brother from getting custody of the children, because he had abused her and she was afraid that he would abuse them.

The whole world collapsed.

Her parents had no idea she had been abused and were devastated, her mum screamed and hugged her dad, but ignored her, but her dad was very upset. They believed her, which is a good thing, and doesn't always happen. Her dad told her they were praying for her, he asked the other children if they had been abused too, but it seems it was just her.
Her brother, unaware of this, continued to be on the radio about the family, and in fury, even though she had trouble using a phone, she phoned the station and named herself as his sister and asked to be allowed to give a counterpoint view.

In the meantime her parents called the police. 
And her brother went on the run and his bid for custody was over.

The whole crisis had a devastating effect on her and on the family. And the impact went on and on, with years of family division over whether she was abused or not. But at least she felt, and still feels, she did the right thing. Her concerns about her brother have been repeatedly backed up by other stories and evidences of his behaviour, but as she writes, the police don't appear to have ever put a case together.
The landlords obviously heard about the matter, and they were forced to move again.

Stepping into the Circle.

End.












Chapter 19   06/11/2017


Inside the Circle.

Stepping out of the Circle.

She helped with the house hunting this time. She looked in the shop windows and checked the adverts in the local papers as she did her paper rounds. 
She found several possibilities for houses, and to her surprise, and maybe pride, they got one of the houses she found.

It was a huge rambling old house, deep in the ghettos, close where the famous riots had happened. There was a mosque over the road, but surprisingly the area was mainly populated by Black people, not Asians, and the Asian people would walk from the other ghetto areas to the Mosque.
And despite the troubled history of the area, it was generally peaceful. Although not far away, the ghettos were so troubled that they were a police no-go area, and there were shootings and rapes.

It was a bad time for her though, her older sister and her younger brothers, the twins, had always bullied and tormented her, especially since she had become almost mute after the horrifying events on the council estate, and for some reason, or no reason, they stepped up their bullying as the house move went ahead. They even went as far as telling her she should just get lost rather than moving house with the family. She was sixteen now, but very young for her age, very anxious and very messed up, and when they treated her like this, she wanted to run away and never come back. But she had nowhere to go.

She had run away before, a few years ago, when her mother was being unkind, but she hadn't known where to go, so she had walked and walked for miles, ending up lost.
She had been brought home by police that time, much to her parents' horror, especially as it led to social services asking questions.

But this time there was nowhere to run. And thankfully her older brother came round and talked to her, and settled the situation down, and she didn't run away anywhere, she was too vulnerable to be out alone at 16.

At the new house, the last house that she lived in with her family, she had an attic room. Her twin younger brothers had the other attic, and they made lewd remarks and said they wanted to drill a hole in the wall and watch her undressing. She shudders to think that her own brothers would treat her like that.

Her older sister had a small room downstairs, so did her baby sister, who had survived and was now thriving, or so she thought.
Her younger brothers and younger sisters were two to a room.

It was different now, her dad was out training all the time, learning computer skills and overcoming his hatred for the internet, which he said was something terrible spiritually, to do with the devil and the beast. He trained so well that he got work easily and was away a lot. Her mum spent most of her time in bed, and her older sister was away outside the city all day, working with horses.

The days of horrible family meals were over, but it was lonely all the same. Those horrible family meals had been at their worst when they first moved to the ghettos, because as well as her dad using mealtimes for intensive lessons and harsh punishments so that no meal was eaten in peace, her mum had had a fad of making them all sit squashed up on benches for the meals, no room to move and lots of sharp elbows, she hated it, physical closeness and bullying from her siblings, and being punished for eating instead of answering hard questions. But now there were no meals, no family really.

Well maybe  a few times a week there was a meal, but most of the time everything was empty and lonely, she would get up to do the papers alone in the early morning, her brothers slept in and then went and joined the same addict and alcoholic group in town that her older brother used to hang out with. 
Her younger siblings did their own thing. So she was alone mostly, and she did her own thing, did the papers, stayed in the library, went to the play park and wondered what life was like for normal people and how she was going to survive in the normal world when she left home.

She tried to be more normal, she cut her own hair now, and although it was uneven and sloppy, it looked better than the haircuts that her mother did. She was 16 and had never been to a hairdresser or had a proper nice neat haircut, she knew nothing about hair, how her hair was exceptionally thick and needed thinning. She started to wear it brushed back under a hair band, and her brothers jeered that she was trying to be a real girl. 

She wanted to be a real girl, but she was afraid, she was already pestered enough by males in the ghettos. She didn't know how other girls survived, her sister got out early every morning to the bus and was out all day, her sister didn't go into the ghettos at all, just to and from the bus stop, her sister was grown up now, no biking around and no paper rounds.

She would buy teenage girl magazines, they would come with free nail polish and lip gloss, and she would try to learn how to be a normal teenager, but it all seemed beyond her, teenage girls didn't seem to do much, they appeared to spend  all their time on their appearance and hair and boys, but she didn't really want to be like that, she wanted to look normal and be able to relate to people properly.

She tried wearing lip gloss and clear nail polish, like her older sister on the south coast did. Her dad didn't like her using make up and nail polish, he said that all she needed was short clean nails, no decorations. But she didn't progress with nail polish and makeup anyway, she was allergic to most makeup, as she found out when her sister tried to get her to wear it. And she had no reason to wear makeup, she didn't want to attract more attention from males, she wanted to be normal.

Her sister encouraged her to come and stay on the South Coast for the weekend, but she found the change of environment stressful and overwhelming, she wasn't used to the 'normal' way of life that her sister and her sister's husband had. Her sister had married without telling the family because she didn't want to deal with quarrels and embarrassing behaviour from the family at the wedding.

It was too stressful, the weekend, and her sister didn't know how to help her. Her sister had left the family so long ago that she didn't have to live through the council estate, the hostel and the ghettos and had been able to make some recovery from her upbringing.

But she came home longing to return to the south coast and build a life in the real world like her sister had.

Now she worked in the shops that she delivered papers for, mainly stock work as she didn't have the communication skills to work with customers, and she was laughed at by the other assistants as she was so dumb and weird. She still did the papers, but also stock work, and was saving her money desperately for her unknown future. She struggled pitifully through the process of getting a bank account as well, and got her wages paid in to that.

She was starting college now, and that was stressful. But she got a local authority bus pass that gave her access to all buses around the city and conurbation area, which was a vast area, and she roamed for hours when she wasn't in college. No-one at home missed her, her family had drifted into their own worlds.

She didn't fit in at college, it was a lot like school when she was 8, everyone else had been through the system and knew how to handle it. She was afraid and alone. The few girls who tried to include her soon gave up, and she was bullied, a few ghetto teenagers were at college, they recognized her and bullied her. The crowds and noise overwhelmed her, and because she hadn't been to school and thus hadn't been statemented, she didn't know about her learning difficulties or conditions.

It was a difficult 9 months at college, and she had never taken exams before. She took 5 GCSEs, with unremarkable results, the two that she did worst on were maths and accounting, she didn't know she had maths learning difficulties and she had been afraid that the college learning support were like social workers and had treated them with fear and hostility when they approached her, she didn't know any better, but she had startled them with her fear.

When her mum heard her grades, despite having shown no interest in her studies and college at all, her mum told her that they were fail grades, but they weren't. But she felt awful until her dad told her that her mum didn't understand GCSE grades, and her mum hadn't got any school qualifications.

Her sister had got a boyfriend from the stables where she did her training and had been taken on as staff. The boyfriend also worked there, but while her sister was in her teens, her new boyfriend was in his late forties. He started to drive her sister home from the stables rather than her having to make a journey of a few hours each way, and he would sleep outside in the car. Her parents didn't know he was basically homeless and they thought he was very gallant, and took him in.

Their parents abhorred sex outside of marriage and had estranged each sibling who had left home for engaging in sex, but they made a strange exception for this man, they allowed him to sleep with her sister in her bedroom. They liked him, he became a close friend, even though the age gap between him and her sister was huge. But they didn't know that he was a predatory paedophile who preyed on the younger siblings. That wasn't discovered until he was arrested and imprisoned many years later.

She had no idea of her future but the college learning support who had finally been able to approach her without making her panic, had told her that if she wanted to do a mixed vocational and educational course, they would support her. But there was another option, and she took the other option. 
She was in the careers library at the college, with another girl who mentored her as best she could, the other girl wanted to study architecture, but unfortunately got pregnant by a father who didn't want to know, but this girl asked her what she really wanted to do.

She replied that she wanted to work outdoors like her sister on the south coast who was a gardener. The girl found her a prospectus for an agricultural college on the south coast.

It was hard to fill in the forms, the agricultural college's forms were designed for people who had grown up in the school system and had a record of school-related milestones and qualifications. She had to do a covering letter about being home educated and how she worked part time for a living and was mature and independent.

The college asked her to come on a three-day residential taster course. 
She was daunted by the long journey although she spent so much time out and about, journeying alone around the city. She arrived in Hampshire, nervous but overwhelmed with joy to be back in Hampshire, the county that she would always think of as home.

She was collected in a minibus with other prospective students, but while they chatted confidently, she had trouble joining in at all, and that set her apart from the start.

It was a stressful three days, she absolutely loved every minute of the practical tasters, grooming horses, planting trees by the river, milking cows, lambing, driving tractors. She was amazed by it all and by the huge open fields and the trees after years in the dark and dirty ghettos.

 But the other students and the social requirements weren't that easy. The instructions had said 'Bring smart evening wear to dine with the principal'. She didn't own anything smart, she didn't even know what evening wear was (still doesn't, harhar). She was panicked about that part of the schedule as she was going to have to attend in jeans and a jumper.

The other students had soon realized that she was different, and they teased her or rather bullied her. But things got nasty when someone's key went missing and they didn't want to pay for it, and they accused her of stealing it 'because she's weird'. 
She sobbed alone in her room as they made accusations, thankfully there were no grounds whatsoever to accuse her, and she was happy to have her things searched, and the staff gave the other students a very stern telling off. 
After that they were better behaved towards her, some were apologetic, but it was a shocking incident for her, that took a lot of her hope of a normal life away for a while.

She returned home to the ghetto, with the college offering their support and assistance if she would like to join them for the next academic year, but she had no money, and wasn't entitled to any support except tuition fee payment from the local authorities. She couldn't see a way to support herself though college in Hampshire, but it was all she wanted. She lay on her bed wishing there was a way, but nothing good had happened in her life and she couldn't see a way that anything good could happen, because life didn't bring good, why would it change after 17 years? It couldn't.

But she continued to work to earn money for her life when she left home. She had no idea how she could get a tenancy and the money to fund it, she had no idea what living alone would be like, and she was afraid, afraid of adulthood and everything she felt that she couldn't handle.

Her brother married his girlfriend, but the shop that she worked for didn't want her to be off work and go to the wedding, she had to fight for time off, and was only allowed a few hours off, with the boss impatiently trying to contact her during those few hours.
The wedding was in a registry office, and her brother wore white while his girlfriend wore black. Her younger brothers spiked the cake with hash, and her dad got high, which must have embarrassed him considerably as he was normally very conservative in public and wouldn't dream of touching drink or drugs. The wedding was spoiled for her by her boss not wanting her to be out of work even though it was a Saturday and a family wedding.

She applied to the agricultural college in desperation, there had to be a way, she would find a way.

She applied to charities and grant bodies for help, with some success. And she knew she would seek work as soon as she arrived in Hampshire if she got to go to the college.

She was harassed and jeered in the ghetto as she went to interviews with funding bodies, wearing one of her mother's old skirts, the first time she had worn a skirt since she was young, she felt stupid, it was an old fashioned pleated skirt.


She gathered up enough money to make it look possible for her to go. She had her saved wages, she had a small grant and the possibility of more, and her brother and sister chipped in.

At this time her younger twin brothers had become out of control, they no longer respected any authority, they had been heading that way for some time, committing acts of vandalism, sleeping with the under-aged girl down the road, basically doing as they pleased, and they were clashing with her parents.

Unfortunately, they tended to clash in the attic and on the attic landing, which of course was all next to her room. The arguments got violent, and the twins seemed to enjoy this.

There were barricades, missiles and physical violence, the twins wanted to do what they wanted and not endure their parents' rigid rules and ways. Of course the parents put it all down to wicked spirits.

She was afraid that someone would be seriously injured or killed. And one evening she decided to go out. Someone had given her the number of the Samaritans, someone who was worried about her, and she went to a call box and phoned them. They told her that they listened to people and kept them company but they didn't counsel.
She didn't know much about any of this, she needed to tell someone how scared she was, and they arranged for her to come in the next day and see someone.

When she went home her mum scornfully accused her of 'stalking out like an old maid' but the answer to that was 
'No, I was getting away from some violent idiots fighting outside my door at 11pm at night with no thought for my wellbeing or sleep'.

Her brothers ended up with the police and social services briefly before returning home, peace reigned, her brothers could do as they liked, they could redecorate their attic, have girls and a TV and anything they liked, the parents would turn a blind eye.
But when she decided to decorate her shabby and mouldy attic, her parents were outraged, as if she had done something terrible. Even though she paid for the paint herself.

Most evenings, even though the violence had stopped, she would go to the Samaritans or the library, which was open late, and then just wander the streets of the city or bus-hop, sometimes even to the next city, no-one noticed, no-one cared. And she knew that she had no-one on earth who loved her or cared about her.

She was accepted to agricultural college. Her mother seemed outraged and refused to say goodbye to her, went off to the car boot sale when her brother came to collect her to drive her to Hampshire, while her dad and the baby came out to wave her off.

She was afraid, she had spent 17 years in solid company with her family, no school, no holidays, no time away, and now she was leaving them, and her mother was treating it as a betrayal. She was afraid of ending up back with the family, injured and starving like her sister had all those years ago. She had no idea how she would survive alone, but she was grimly determined that she would, and that she was never going back.

Unfortunately for someone from a background like hers, life was unlikely to be easy as a young adult alone in the real world, and the future depended on the right people, help and diagnosis. Whether or not she got those or remained vulnerable to abuse and harm will be told in the next books in the series.
But at least, after everything, she was going home to Hampshire, as she had promised herself that she would, when they left the south coast all those years ago.

Stepping into the Circle.

End. 

This is the conclusion of the childhood book of Stepping out of the Circle. The story will continue.

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