A SILENT MOTHER

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE PART 1

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:26:00 +0000

Martina McBride - Concrete Angel (Grammy's)

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE PART 1

I remember telling all my friends that I had a job and I was leaving for Spain to work as an aupair. It was now 1979 we were looking forward to leaving my god-forsaken life behind. I was 16 and when I look back through my childhood I didn’t have many friends for a number of reasons. I was moved from School to School from the age of 11 and had now been to 4 different High Schools. I had also had whooping cough at 15 and been hospitalised with suspected TB and spent a couple of months in isolation ward in the LGI which had left me with a weak chest.

I missed loads of school because of the whooping Cough and with the bullying too I didn’t really want to go to school. I remember the truant officer coming to the house once mum was at work and I had to sit down and explain because of my illness I couldn’t go to school in-between barking like a dog most of the time and the upset of my family life and the fear that those two girls would be waiting for me every night was all too much. I never told my mum about the girls but my sisters knew not that they cared I would go to the point of saying my step monster of a sister and my other sister were actually friends with these girls and never tried to ask them to stop. As long as it wasn’t them then it was ok. Sisterly love has brought another new meaning to me and it definitely didn’t exist in my family. More like dog eat dog and look after number one. Have my sisters hated me all my life maybe yes because my mum was never there I suppose I became the mother figure and they maybe resented me for it. I suppose I used to take it out on them for the life I had. Never being aloud out to play, I can never remember having a friend in the house, I can never remember having a birthday party and I can never remember being loved.

I remember my exams coming up before I left school and was really scared I was going to leave school with no exams at all. I decided I was going to try so I bought a second hand tape recorder and about a dozen tapes from my baby-sitting money.

I then borrowed girl’s books from school that she had had for the past two years and sat in my bedroom at night alone and read the books into the microphone. At night I used to play these tapes over and over again this is how I learned my schoolwork. I would lie in bed and sometimes fall asleep with the headphones playing. From listening to the tapes I started to love history I listened all about the first and Second World War, the Crimean war and the Tudors. I loved history. English literature I read books into tapes and would listen to them I now knew to kill a mocking bird off by heart and I got hold of a copy of Under milk wood by Dylan Thomas and used to listen to Richard Burtons Welsh accent tell a wonderful story.

Because I wasn’t aloud out much I didn’t really mix with other kids so when I wasn’t working on my school work I read books I read Gulliver’s travels, Little women, Jayne Eyre, All of the James Herriot books. I used to read most days and tried to get my hands on any book I could. I was happy to be alone in my bedroom reading most of the time. The scary books were James Herbert’s the rats and the lair I used to go under the covers with a torch and scare my self that much I used to pull the covers tightly over my head so I could hardly breath and occasionally had to come out for air only to quickly go back under the covers because I thought someone was going to get me.

I am quiet shocked to say my mum actually had a leaving party for me in a local pub and remember getting absolutely pissed out of my head on Vodka and Orange and Larger and black and shall I say I have never drunk any of them again. I was that drunk I vomited pink vomit and it put me off for life. I know 16 underage drinking but I was leaving my life and I deserved a little fun. I had mixed emotions. One was I was free, another I was scared, and another what would now happen to my next sister down would she have to take over where I left off. Being the Mother because the real mother was working all day and going out every night. Its funny I remember her screaming at me one night saying she had to go out because she had me at 16 and then the other kids been in two bad marriages and it was now her turn to have a life.

I remember going to the airport I was flying to Barcelona where my new family would meet me. The woman was English and called Jaquiline the husband was called Mario and he was half Spanish and half Italian they had been married two years and she had just had a baby boy called Alexandra and they lived with Mario’s mother Senora Maria who was about 87. Jacqueline was 27 and actually from Hull her father was a captain of a ship and that’s why I had gone to hull for the interview she had come to England to have the baby so it had an English passport and to find an English speaking aupair. The idea was the I would speak to the baby in English, Jacqueline would speak to the baby in Catalan, Mario would speak to the baby in Italian and Senora Maria would speak to the baby in Spanish she was from Valencia so it was the Old Spanish dialect. I remember thinking this child would speak 5 languages and would it work how could a baby understand all this but who was I. I was employed to clean the house and look after the baby with senora Maria while Jacqueline and Mario went out to work. I found it confusing because Mario was a millionaire an Italian Furniture designer. They had six houses, a yaught, 2 Porsches a jeep for the beach and a seat, which is a little Spanish car to do the shopping in when we were in Barcelona.

I remember getting off the plain in Barcelona and looking around and couldn’t believe all the guards at the airport were holding what looked like machine guns Jacqueline was there to meet me with her mum and dad who had come over for a week to spend time with their new grandson and meet me. We set off for Santa Maria, which was just outside Lorret where they had a huge bungalow where we were going to stay for the summer. I remember driving down a long hill and pulled unto a bright yellow bungalow it was roasting hot and I couldn’t breathe.

Waiting for me was Mario and his mother Senora Maria boy at 16 she sure did look old and I didn’t know then her and Jacqueline were going to treat me as they did. The old lady didn’t speak a word of English and I had to respect her because she was the mamma of the family. I was shown my room I was quiet shocked it was a room I wasn’t expecting I was led into the garage and there was a set of steps up to a tiny little room. This room had a single bed a chest of drawers and a wardrobe in it. Then there was a partition where there was a toilet and a shower. The walls were painted white as were all Spanish homes just concrete no wallpaper and a few pictures on the wall

I was in shock had I jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. These people were rich and I had a room in a garage. I now realised I was basically a maid and a slave.
They asked me if I wanted to ring my mum to let her know I had got there safely I said yes I remember telling my mum on the phone it was lovely I didn’t want to tell her I was in a garage. I didn’t want to go back to my old life I thought give it a try it could be ok. I was then given instructions on what was required of me I had to get up at 6.30 every morning and put the coffee pot on it was one of those pots where you screw the top off the middle put the water in the bottom then add the coffee and put it on the stove to heat. I had to wear like a maids outfit a black tunic type thing with a white apron. My god it was like something I had read in a book was this my life now. Yes I was going to live or sort of live in beautiful homes but sleep in tiny boxes at night and be alone no friends anyone except this family.

The house was beautiful full or art and designer furniture the floors were all tiles and I remember we had a real ant problem I used to have to go out on to the veranda every morning and swill the ants off with a hose then sprinkle some stuff down to try and stop them coming in the house. I was told I was aloud one afternoon off a week to go to the beach. The beach was just down the hill and it was private for the residents of the street. I remember the first time I went I pushed Alexandra down the hill in the pram he was covered in sun cream and really protected from the sun. It was magnificent it was like a hidden cove big cliffs on each side and then the blue ocean and a beach that looked like it had been bleached was this Paradise.

Everyday I cleaned the house picked up the clothes off the floor polished and rubbed mirrors until they shinned. It was hard most of the days I was alone in the house with senora Maria she did all the cooking and had a dog it was like a sheep dog cross she used to beat that dog most every day and I wanted to cry she was so cruel to it.

Then language barrier was a problem and this is when the beating started I used to find it hard communicating with her and she used to scream at me in Spanish because I couldn’t understand her. She used to hit me with the frying pan and shout at me LA MESA, which meant the table, and then she would hit me again and say LA SILLA the chair. I was basically being treated the same as the dog. She wouldn’t try to meet me half way. I was alone in the house with this woman from 8am in the morning until 8pm at night. At night when Mario and Jacqueline came home she would start babbling in Spanish to them then they would pull me to one side and say you must respect senora Maria she is the head of the family and you must try to learn Spanish. But I was that was when I wasn’t scrubbing floors and looking after Alex. She was his grandmother but I used to love it when she went down for her afternoon nap I would sit in the nursery and play with Alex.

As time went by Alex grew very fond of me you could see he loved me he used to hold out his hands for me to pick him up. This alone caused other problems. It was now the End of summer and we were moving to the next house again, which was a penthouse right in the middle of Platha Catalonia, which is a famous square/roundabout in Barcelona. Mario had just taken a delivery of a new Porsche it was lime green and was supposed to be 4 seats but I would have called it 2 I remember getting in the back in a tight cramped space with senora Maria, she had Alex on her knee me next to her and Mario and Jackie in the front and we closed the house up and drown to Barcelona at a tremendous speed.

In Barcelona we lived on the top floor of an apartment block that had a guard on the door so no outsiders could enter the building without being unannounced. Here I was allowed out on Tuesdays and Thursdays 5pm in the afternoon until 9pm I had to be back bang on 9pm get changed quickly and then set the table for dinner. They never had their evening meal until 10pm at night then I would work until I had finished washing up after dinner which most nights was about 1am in the morning that’s after they used to sit there and I would pour the cognac into the glasses put out the cheese board and know that the meal was nearly finished. Most nights they would entertain and I would have to don my little black number that came down below my knees and looked like a black sack and my little white piny.

It was here things got really bad for me Jacqueline started pulling me up on the tiniest things and never stopped on at me the glass has smudges the balcony wasn’t clean the problem there was I have always been scared of heights and they used to make me go out there 12 floors up with the busy bustling road below and polish the bars. I was terrified and tried not to do it I sometimes wish I could have just thrown a bucket of water on them but being 12 floors up would have no doubt drowned someone on the path below. My Spanish was coming on and I only now occasionally got a whack with the frying pan and Alex and I were growing fonder of each other because his parents were out all day it was like he was mine. But senora Maria used to snatch him out of my arms and tell me to work and she would look after him but she was frail and got tired easily and that suited me fine.

My other problem was Jacqueline started to resent me I remember one night we were all sat in the room and Alex was crying and Jacqueline picked him up and he still kept crying he was holding his arms out for me. I could see the resentment on her face what did she expect she was never there except a couple of hours before the kid went to bed I was with him everyday all day. Mario said something to her and she passed me Alex and I grabbed him and he stopped crying. This was something else for her to hate me for. You have to remember too I was a young girl too and maybe she also felt threatened by me. Mario was a lovely man even though he was 54 he used to treat me nicely and many occasions he would pull me to one side and say try to do your jobs right and stay out of their way I have seen how they treat you but they are my family and I must stand by my family. So I knew then he had been watching and knew what was going on but he wasn’t going to help me. I know there had been some discussions about me at night I had heard shouting and my name being mentioned when I was in my room. Again this room was like a cupboard they had converted off the kitchen so I had to come out on a morning and fall straight into the kitchen so I had no release from it.

My dad used to ring me from Germany and my Mum Occasionally used to ring. I remember having the courage to tell my mum that I was unhappy on the phone once and she just said for god sake cant you just get on with it cant be that bad. But I also had to be careful because when I was on the phone one of them was always close by so I could never tell them how it really was.

When I used to go out on Tuesdays and Thursdays I used to go into a little café down near la ramblers here I met Paco a lovely boy he was 22 and from Portugal we became really good friends and then lovers I used to tell him how I was being treated and how I hated it there. He didn’t speak English either but buy now my Spanish was enough to be understood. We saw each other twice a week for the 4hours and it was really nice we went to the disco together used to walk round Barcelona holding hands and I would go to his flat and eat there with him.

Then the winter came and Jacqueline said we now move again for winter to go skiing at the weekends. The house is in the mountains in a small village called Berge not far from Montserrat That weekend we set off for the mountains away from the bustling city of Barcelona I remember the long winding roads and getting to Montserrat I have never seen anything like it. It was like a mountain with a Monastery right at the top it also had one of those trolley carts that could take you to the top.

Jacqueline explained to me that Monks built it years ago and they had used only donkeys to climb it to build the Monastery when you look at it you cant imagine how anyone got up there Apparently now it is a restaurant. We carried on driving and eventually came to the village of Berge Jacqueline then told me this was a military village and was the closest village to the house and here I would not be aloud to have any free time because it was a village full of young Spanish men. Ok I thought trapped again. We then left the village and started to climb I couldn’t believe it.

We were driving through a forest the trees were like the ones they have in Canada cant remember the names you know the ones that are about 40 foot high it looked unbelievable. The house was up the mountain on the edge of the cliff. We arrived and when I went inside it was amazing inside everything was black and white all the carpets where white and all the furniture was furniture that Mario had designed it was like black Perspex all I could think of was my god how am I going to clean that it would take me hours. The living room was on the top floor and a huge window covering the hole of the outside wall looked over the village of Berge. It was like something you would see in a movie or Brad pits house or something. The view was breathtaking.

How the rich lived I was in awe but white carpets I was petrified no shoes aloud in the house of course. No rest for the wicked as soon as we arrived Jacqueline said I had to open the windows of each room and air the rooms and then go round dusting and cleaning, which I did it took me hours and that night I collapsed into bed about 1am.
I was now 17 and exhausted I felt like I had been working for about 10years and only been with this family since June

I was trapped here until Christmas time when they said they go back to Barcelona and spend Christmas there. My life there was get up clean the house wait on them at dinner and occasionally I got to hold Alex because Jacqueline had now become very jealous of my relationship with her son she had told me that she and Senora Maria would now watch Alex and I just had to clean and be the maid.

Christmas was coming and we were not going to close the house up one because the weather gets pretty bad up there and you can get trapped in when the snow comes and two parties and dinner parties in Barcelona must have been high on their agenda. Jacqueline had told me I could go home to England for two weeks at Christmas and they would pay for the flights. It was strange I had tried to get away from home for years and now being treated basically as a slave I was glad to go home. Here was a chance to tell my mother I hated it and they were not treating me well but how could I everyone thought I was having a wonderful time. Jacqueline used to tell my mum on the phone I was fine, every time I made a phone call home she stood in the kitchen listening to what I said and I felt like a prisoner that had just got two weeks leave.

THE NIGHT MY SON WAS SAVED

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:38:00 +0000

Sin City - Cry little sister - Gerard McMann!

[via FoxyTunes / Gerard McMann]

THE NIGHT MY SON WAS SAVED

The night they found my son in Manchester is still raw in my mind even though it’s been four years now. It was about 8pm in the evening when I received a phone call saying that the police had found him. There had been a tip off by someone that my son was in a bungalow in Manchester. The Police acted on the tip off and managed to do a raid on the property and found my son inside. Apparently I was told that there were other children in the house besides my son. But I believe these children were over the age of sixteen and there were a brother and sister in the house too.

Raymond Colin Hawthorne was apparently a well-known Pimp in the Manchester area and was known for having children working and living with him. I believe my son was kept in a room in a bungalow in Manchester where he slept the nights on a mattress on the floor in a small room along with others. He was given drugs and alcohol to keep him subdued and threatened with death and also our lives were threatened to keep him there. Raymond Colin Hawthorne made suggestions to my son that if he tried to escape someone would find me.

When the police told me they had found him I was overjoyed for a split second that he was alive and safe. But then my heart sank I started to panic I didn’t know what condition he was in? Whether he was well? If they had fed, looked after him or what or even how abused my son was?

The police said they had to question him so I wasn’t aloud to go to see him yet and could I please wait for a phone call for when to set off the Manchester.

I was in Leeds so I had a long drive down the M62. I told my husband what they had said and I paced up and down the room smoked about 40 cigarettes waiting for the phone call. It was one of the worst nights of my life.
What was I going to say to him? What was he going to say to me? How do I react with him? My head was just a fuzzy mess I just wanted to hug him and tell him it would be ok and he was safe and we would get through this. It was something like you watch on a movie and even now I think back it seems to be surreal and I can see my self and it all happening in slow motion.

Eventually the phone call came about 1am in the Morning. It was a policeman on the phone who gave me directions to a Police Station in Manchester where they were holding my son.

I got in the Car I still don’t know why my Husband didn’t come with me or even say he would come for support. But he didn’t, I drove like a mad woman towards the M62. I think back now if the Police had pulled me for speeding I wouldn’t have been able to deny it and I wouldn’t have really wanted to explain it. I remember it was cold as I drove in the Dark past Bradford then headed for Huddersfield, Halifax towards Manchester. Its then you start to climb a big hill where there’s a sign telling you this is the highest road in Britain. There is a farm right slap bang in the middle of the M62 where I believe the farmer refused to leave when the road was being built. I don’t think he actually lives there because there were no lights on at the house just pitch black it was as black as coal up there on the road. I thought there would have been a lot more traffic on the road but then again it was now about half past one in the morning and I was still driving like a mad woman. Luckily I had a sat I nav to help me try to find this police station otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue where I was going.

I remember the sat nave took my down a long winding road and then on the left hand side there was a building which said police station. There was only one problem it was in pitch darkness. I pulled into the car park and got out of the car everything was dark the place looked empty. I started to panic and didn’t know what to do I was now alone in the dark in the middle of Manchester and trying to find my son. I had my mobile on me and telephoned the police I then had to explain to them my situation and was told to hold the line. A couple of minutes later I was told my son was at another police station at the other side of Manchester.

I am angry a little now that I was to do this on my own, no police woman or man was there to help me My son had just been found after a nationwide investigation and I his mother was alone in the dark and so scared. No one even offered to come with me I am full of anger because I should have been given some kind of support as to how to react around him, how to speak to him and some one to help me even breath properly.

Again I had to drive in the dark across the other side of Manchester to another police station where they had him. I arrived in the dark it looked like it wasn’t a very nice part of Manchester and had to drive into a car park. I slowly got out of the car and walked towards the door. There was a policeman on reception and I said I am here for my son, he then proceeded to take me to a room and told me to wait in here and someone would be with me shortly. It was a cold looking room and had no decoration what so ever just a table in the middle of the room one of those tables you used to get in school classrooms and two chairs either side.

I was left in that room again alone for about an hour I was pacing up and down up and down. Then all of a sudden the door opened and a policeman showed my son into the room I ran across the room and hugged him. He seemed very cold and distant he sat down on a chair and I sat in the chair opposite I just wanted to hug him love him and cry. But instead he said mum “ I am bi-sexual” I was in shock I had had my son missing for nearly a week and the first thing he says was mum I am bi-sexual. I tried to act normal and said that’s good love but I was screaming inside I was lost and I didn’t know how to get my son back from this dark world.

He then said “Do you like my new clothes, they bought me some new clothes, Took me to see the London Eye, Blackpool pleasure beach and swimming” I said yes they were lovely and then said to him why are you doing this love I know you have been through something really bad.

It was then my son decided to get up out of the chair and go towards the door he said he didn’t want to come home with me he didn’t love me and didn’t want to be with me. I couldn’t believe it I was in complete shock and didn’t know what to do the only way I can explain it is you feel like a chicken with your head cut off and running around in pain.

How was I supposed to get my son back I mean my real son this wasn’t him it was like some nightmare. The film the body snatchers comes to mind when I write this someone had taken my baby boy and swapped him they must have.

A policeman then came into the room to explain to be my son didn’t want to come home with me and I now had to leave. I walked out of that room scared again and felt like I had know one to help me and make me understand why. They said because he had told them to make me leave I had to go. I left the building and got into the car I looked towards the building and saw my son in a darkened room waving to me. I was told before I left my son would be taken back to Leeds and put into a temporary foster care until the problem was resolved.

I started the drive back to Leeds in the dark and cold alone again knowing that my son was now in a police car somewhere on the M62 also going back to Leeds and not home with me but to a home where I wasn’t aloud to know where. After driving about 20minutes I had to stop the car I couldn’t see properly because I was crying that much my vision was blurred. I stopped the car in a lay-by and I phoned a friend I told her what had happened and that I didn’t want to live anymore my son had rejected me I wanted to kill my self I didn’t want to live anymore.

I wanted to kill Nathan Eyre I wanted to kill Raymond Hawthorne I wanted to kill any man who had touched my baby in an inappropriate way. But I couldn’t obviously so I wanted to die. My friend told me not to do it she said if you do they have won everyone who had hurt you would have won and you would just be remembered as the mother whose child was abused that killed her self. I wanted to get out of the car and start walking down the M62 and hope I would be hit by something big and die straight away. I couldn’t stop crying I decided to have a cigarette and try to calm down and think to my self it would be alright. After about an hour I pulled my self together and carried on driving up the M62 towards LEEDS and home. I must have got back to LEEDS at about 5am in the morning I was cold, tired and lost I fell into bed exhausted and slept

I HAVE ONLY REALLY EVER LOVED ONE PERSON IN MY LIFE

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:39:00 +0000

Moulin Rouge - Not a Dry Eye in the House

[via FoxyTunes / Meat Loaf]

I want to be honest I have only ever loved one person in my life and I left him at 16. I hope he knows who he is. I met him when I was 14 and LOVED HIM and Always have and always will.

He was two years older than me he lived just down the road. He lived at home with his mum and dad. I remember he had a brother called Nigel, a bother Called Steve who was a bit weird and a sister called Susan. His parents were also foster carers. I used to love going to that house there used to be children everywhere it was always full of kids and babies and I always felt safe there. He was a roofer and had freckles all over; he melted my heart and broke my heart too.

My mum had decided to leave my step dad and I remember we had left in the middle of the night. I was 14 and my sister was now 12, my step monster sister was 10 and my brothers were now 8 and 6. We moved into a maisonette on the top floor of a block of 3 in LEEDS. I was a bit of a Tomboy and loved playing football and boys stuff like climbing trees etc. I wasn’t aloud out much because most of the time my mum worked and I had to look after the kids. My mum used to empty jukeboxes in pubs and was out most of the day and sometimes didn’t get home till late at night. So my routine was take the younger kids to school on my way to school Id drop them off I was lucky because there school was basically opposite to where we lived then I would walk the 20 minute walk to my School.

The problem was I was bullied at school like my son and didn’t really go to school much I used to sign in the register then leave and go meet my friends and we would go to Tam O shanters in Leeds and play pool all day then get the bus home in time for me to pick the kids up from school.

If I did go to School two girls used to follow me home every night and kick the shit out of me well one did while the other egged her on. I once asked her why she did it she replied cos I don’t like you! Ha life hey. Hope they are proud of their youth and they remember what they did. They made my life hell Vanessa Fenton and Deborah Shanahan thank ladies you helped me realise what life can be like being bullied and I hope no one ever bullies your kids or grand kids

HOW I LOST MY LOVE
Because my boyfriend was older than me he used to go out on a Friday night with his mates to the local pub. I used to have to baby sit my younger brothers and sisters because my Mum used to go out with her friend Susan I didn’t mind cos it gave me some time to my self.

You have to understand my mum was blonde very pretty and single now. She used to go out at night to pubs and clubs and enjoy her now single life. This particular night she came home from the Pub and told me she had been up to the pub where my boyfriend used to go and he was in there with his mates.

She must have been talking to him all night and she told me they had all gone for a Curry to Naffees in Headingley after the pub. She then told me that she had given them all a lift home and my boyfriend was the last one in the car. She then told me something that broke my heart forever She said “ He had tried it on with her and told her that he only went out with me to get close to her” I was in total shock she told me I was never aloud to see him again.

Can you imagine maybe you can how I was feeling I was destroyed and I remember crying myself to sleep? It was then I realised I had to get away from her from Him from everyone. I had always planned to get away when I was 16 and this was a good reason. Even now grown up and through what I have been through in my life I still think that night was the start of my downtrodden life.

It was a few weeks later I was looking through the Yorkshire Evening Post and saw a vacancy for an Aupair.to work in Spain. I applied for the job and had to go to Hull for the interview. I remember asking my mum for the fair to go to hull she was reluctant but she did in the end I was praying I got the job and I did thank god.

I was lucky and two days after I left School I left home and left for Spain to be an Aupair.

I don’t think I have ever forgiven her or him for what he did but its strange years later I was told by my sister my mum lied whether she did or didn’t it doesn’t really matter now I lost the only person I have ever loved I mean really loved and I am sorry to say that also includes my ex-husband.

I HAVE BOUGHT MY LOTTERY TICKET

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:33:00 +0000

TEARS FOR FEARS: Woman In Chains

[via FoxyTunes / Tears for Fears]

It’s ironic two years ago, I had to leave LEEDS because after my divorce my husband assaulted me again and I had to get an injunction out on him. After he actually broke the injunction three times I decided to leave LEEDS and move away I now live 70 miles away from LEEDS and that’s why I find it hard to help my son.

I left behind everything and took my youngest son with me. It has been hard for him too at 14 trying to adjust to a new area, a new school and make new friends but he’s been ok.

Last year I tried to have my son living with me who was abused, but after a suicide attempt and the depression both he and I decided it would be best for him to go back to LEEDS and live there. I did this for a number of reasons one was I live in a small village by the sea and they don’t have the resources here to help my son.

In a big City like Leeds, he can tap into all sorts of Groups and the Health service for help. Another reason was my youngest son was finding it hard also and I had to think of him too! He only had two more years at school and I needed to give him a childhood too. He was nine when his brother was abducted and I forget that he lived through it too. It’s strange the authorities never offered him or my eldest son any form of counselling or de briefing.

I am still shocked that the authorities and the powers that be, don’t know how to really deal with families that have been through what we have. There isn’t any help out there that the Government or the National Health Service provide. The only help are voluntary organisations and charities that you can never get through to, because of a number of reasons. The main reason is the Government, Even the Lottery Fund or Even Children in Need which is a joke don’t want to recognise there are thousands of People who have suffered Child abuse out there. Another is public awareness the public are just kept in the dark about child abuse its one of BRITAINS dirty little secrets and lets deny it happens, lets not talk about it and it never happens. What gets me too is I have never seen any Movies Star, Musician or any one in the MEDIA stand up for child abuse sufferers. Cancer awareness, HIV and all the other illnesses are supported by them but I have never seen one wear a T SHIRT saying stop child abuse. I have read books that they have written confessing they were abused but they never seem to stand up and shout STOP CHILD ABUSE and HELP THE CHILDREN AND FAMILIES WHO HAVE SUFFERED CHILD ABUSE.

Why is it britain's dirty little secret its all about awareness and giving information on how to watch out for it its like the GOVERNMENT are saying right we are spending X amount of money for sex abuse awareness and chasing paedophiles on line etc there fore it doesn't exist and we have done our jobs.

I get so angry and feel like screaming from the top of a building but does any one care? would anyone listen and does anyone ever help?

It's like there saying suffer in silence and it will go away and get on with your life ok you were abused so what!

I would like to know the Statistics if there are anyhow many sufferers of Child abuse are under the Mental Health or are Drug abuses or Alcoholics. I’m not saying some don’t make it to go on to lead Normal if I understand the word Normal lives. How many hide behind Jobs Families and Friends. How many out there have never spoke of it or had therapy or even just spoke to someone about it.

It’s strange I had two friends in LEEDS and when it happened there were there for me but I still had one of the greatest shocks I COULD EVER HAVE. These were two girlfriends that had never met each other. One I have known since 1990 and she had never told me anything about her childhood really but when I told her about my son she then told me she too had been abused as a child a neighbour who used to take her to the allotment as a child and abuse her in a shed. She had told her mother and her mother never believed her HE WAS NEVER BROUGHT TO JUSTICE. But she told me he still lives locally and she was once in Sainsbury’s and as she was walking down an isle he was pushing a trolley coming towards her and she froze.

The other friend told me that back in the early 1960s her mother used to sell her for 2 and 6 to men in her bed-sit she was about 8 years old. I was totally stunned about both these women I wondered if this had never happened to us would my two friends ever have told me? Is it true we keep it tight to our chests and only share it with people who can understand? Both these women had been my friends and I would have never have known yet they both chose to tell me when this tragic thing happened to us.

My son is supposed to have 24 hour care and he has told me he is leaving his fathers and the reason is he is fleeing violence. He has decided to go back into hospital for a while. I would like him to live with me again but how do I cope now he has admitted he’s a drug addict, how do I get the help out here he needs? How do I find services to help him when there aren’t any? Is it fair on my younger child to put him through it? I would do anything for my children but what do I do now. Can I cope with his volatile personality? His mood swings; depression threats of suicide and staying in bed all day and being up all night too put a strain on my financial resources too

My head spins with this everyday and I end up getting depressed and down thinking about it, worrying about it and not knowing the answers!

I think one of the reasons why my son is getting so agitated and the drugs and the alcohol is not just the HIV and the Leukaemia it’s the thought that the man that groomed him and the man that bought him are due up for parole again next year. RAYMOND COLIN HAWTHORN from Manchester. The man that bought my son was up for parole this year only a couple of months ago actually and his parole was denied. Another thing that shocked me was no one asked any of us for an impact statement to be read out at the parole hearing NOTHING! It just seems to happen without any input from the victims.

I received a phone call from probation services telling me the parole hearing was due. My son wasn’t informed as on the past 5 occasions one of these Paedophiles have been released my son was told then attempted suicide so we decided for his own safety for him not to be informed any more.

But next year when the hearing comes up again if they get released he may have to be told. One of his fears, nightmares is that when they do get out there going to come and find him?

I have tried to explain to him that they won’t and he is now at an age where I hate to say it he would be no good to them. Thinking he thought in his head they were going to abuse him again. But no he is worried they are going to seek out some vengeance on him for them being convicted.

I tried to assure him they wouldn’t and if anything happened the police would be rung straight away. He then told me that two men have already tried to take him away. I said what do you mean he said two men came in a car to LEEDS and grabbed him and put him in the back of a car and drove off with him. My son believed they were sent by Raymond Hawthorne or Nathan Eyre to take him back to Manchester. He said he managed to jump out of the car near LEEDS TRAIN STATION when the car stopped at the Traffic Lights and he ran.

I can’t believe this it is like being in a Movie or a Nightmare. I wish I could whisk my son up and take him to another country and start a new life. I pray every Saturday for my lottery Numbers and live in hope like 50 million other people in this country.

But there is one difference it could mean the difference between life or death or insanity for me and mine.

Please don't talk about Dying

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:44:00 +0000

In The Arms of The Angel (City of Angels music video)

[via FoxyTunes / Lost City of Angels]

PLEASE DON'T TALK ABOUT DYING

My son phoned me last night and we had a three-hour conversation.

He asked me to find a video on UTUBE and asked me to play it this is the video at the top. He then said to me mum when I'm dead please could you play this at my funeral?

He then started to read a speech out to me that he wanted reading at his funeral. I didn't want to here it but he made me. As a mother you don't want to hear it and try to tell them they will be here long after you have gone? All he kept saying was mum I wont be here in two years!

He cried and told me he didn't want to be here anymore, "Mum I've been abused, raped, I have HIV and blood cancer why would you think I would want to live"

He also asked why nobody loved him? I said, " I do love" I love you to bits. He said yes mum but only you. My brothers hate me my dad hates me. Why doesn't my Nana love me I replied your Nana never loved me so why would she want to love you. I said to him there not worth it please just think you are better than them and you will find someone to love you and you deserve to be loved you're a good person inside and its there loss not yours.

Please rise above them and don't worry about it. How do you get through to a child that just all he ever wanted to be loved and maybe that's how a paedophile got hold of him maybe my love wasn't enough? I said to him you know I worked from home and I took you everywhere with me to the markets I was always there and always wanted you with me. He said my brothers would never love you as much as I do who was the one who used to jump in the car every time you were going to leave my dad. He's right every time I got in the car that poor baby used to put his clothes in his rucksack and clamber into the back of the car. My other boys would just sit and wait for me to leave and that's probably why I never did.

I made the mistake of staying in a bad marriage because of my children and now I realise I should have left my husband years ago and taken my children and never gone back but how can you turn the clock back? You can only live with your mistakes and I am now being punished for it!

We both cried he was breaking my heart he told me he wouldn't be around in the next two years. He also said to me mum I'M A DRUG ADDICT how can I help my baby how can I make him see life can go on and he can grow to be a strong young man and have a future in this life.

He went on to say why doesn't any one love him? I replied I do I love you to bits he said I love you more! I love you more than my brothers every will and you are my life.

Sorry writing this I can't stop crying. I told him my life is shit too but I carry on I work and live. He then said to me mum I love you to bits and I would die for you. If you want to jump of a cliff I will hold your hand so we can be together forever.

How do I help my baby, my child my son. I am writing a letter to ask for help.

Dear GOD

I am writing you this letter to please let me start over again I only want to replace the past 7 years I'm not asking a lot just to be able to save my baby and know what I know now

Yours forever

A silent mother

My son told me he was going back into hospital and would be leaving his fathers home next week I didn't really want him to because there I know he has a warm bed and a roof over his head. But what I didn't realise was his fathers violence towards him was getting too bad. He has now told the crisis team and they have agreed he is fleeing violence and will go into hospital, then a hostel then hopefully they will find him a flat.

He also said something that threw me off my feet a minute he said Mum I have something to tell you and you wont like! I said what? He said my dad is sleeping with Aunty Joanne. This is my step monster sister I'm not really surprised and I think it was going on when I was married I remember once mentioning it to my MUM I had suspicions I remember now she wasn't shocked or stunned she just said, " well what do you expect she is a younger version of you". I think she knew back then and that was the answer I got off my birth mother. I have the last giggle the man has a small penis and is not good in bed anyway at least someone is giving him some

Then I think she is welcome to the little man. The only thing I am upset about really is in my family BLOOD is not thicker than water and my family have no morals, no scruples and definitely no LOVE for each other. Maybe it's our upbringing again I am just unfortunate that I was born into that family. What do they say you can't choose your family but you can choose to disown them and I have, did and never ever want to go back in my life? I have never fit in and never been able to live life as they do She has never worked a day in her life and got everything the good old social security have paid for everything and she has done every scam going known to man fake her house being burgled to claim insurance, Always had men to pay for everything while claiming benefits She got caught once and got away with it by the skin of her teeth One of her friends did it she said because they were jealous.

She even had her television hooked up illegally to get every channel she can. Scams in Marks and Spencers and its people like her that have show homes, kids in designer clothes and never has had to work a day for it.

Don't blame them really when you see a single parent going to Lanzarote in all inclusive holidays three times a year, a house like a show home and a new car and on benefits you wonder and some jealous friend would just pick up the phone and grass her up. My only regret is I didn't now do it my self. I have worked hard all my life and have nothing to show for it where is the justice in the world? What's the saying they say in Yorkshire they always get their comeuppance?

Forgiveness doesn't even come into it and I would like to meet the person who can forgive and look them in the eye and say if you have lived in my shoes you are a better person than me.

My son said to me he had just watched a program on channel 4 about a girl who was a heroin addict and her mother was helping her he asked me if I had watched it? I said no he said, "Mum would you stand by me" I said what do you mean your not taking heroin are you he replied mum I am taking everything! My heart sank he said mum you saw me the other week at yours I said yes he said I was taking them at your house I didn't even realise maybe one night he was admitted I thought that was because I had forgot to tell him the shop closed at 10pm and he couldn't get any alcohol.

The government are paying my son disability benefits for him to spend on drugs and kill him self slowly what do I do? I asked him why he said his drugs were better than the hospitals drugs on the drugs the hospital gives him he is like a zombie and one occasion when he was in the hospital he didn't even recognise his father. He just slept most days and was numb and didn't think about anything. He SAID my drugs make me feel good mum.

How does a mother fight with that which is the lesser of the two evils? One evil is illegal and the other evil is numbing the pain and not making the symptoms go away. I wish someone could answer my question and give me the right answer. What do I do as a mother? I want to have him here and look after him and get him off drugs and make him better but how. What would most people say you can only be there if he needs you.

I sometimes wish I could hold his hand and leap of a cliff to a better place!.

Bullying Zero Tolerance

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:43:00 +0000

Gerry The Pacemakers - You'll Never Walk Alone

[via FoxyTunes / Slade]

BULLYING ZERO TOLERANCE

I decided to come to bed to write this bit I feel better in the dark and alone.
It took two years for Nathan Eyre to groom my son. It was a slow process looking back now he was a prime candidate. He was a sensitive child and had ears that stuck out at the sides of his head.

My son was born like that I remember when he was a baby my husband and I used to try to tape his ears back with plasters and put a little hat on him. But to no avail they would not go back a little boy with sticky out ears was a target for Bullying at school. regularly? Don’t think Prince Charles was bullied though?

Schools make me laugh every school my children have gone to seem to have a zero tolerance to bullying and it doesn’t happen in their school but it does.

When a child comes home upset and crying telling you he’s been bullied at school What does a mother, do you have a child screaming at you not to ring the school because he will be called a grass and his life would be over You want to go to the Childs parents and tell them but no your child is having a panic attack because if you tell anyone you’re a grass and the problem becomes worse. Your child turns round and tells you they hate you when you do ring the School and now you have made the problem worse. All you want to do is protect your baby and not let it happen but how?

As a child he was a sweet boy don’t get me wrong he wasn’t perfect the little monkey used to have tantrums get upset hold his breath and pass out. The doctor told me he would grow out of this and he did eventually. It was just when it happened he would pass out and keel over it didn’t matter if I was in the middle of a supermarket or he was in the garden he would pass out and fall to the floor. I had a few cuts and bruises Ill tell you

When he was born the doctors said that he must have been a lazy baby and not moved much in my womb and his ears had unfortunately grown in the fibrous layers in my womb and got caught in a position where they stuck forward and not back. School was hard for the poor baby and he was picked on a lot I have three children but he was always mummies boy.

My other two are athletic sporty and into football and Sports, he never found any of these of interest to him he was into drawing, Cooking and Making anything give him a piece of card crayons and glue and he’d make some strange object which would take him hours till he would say look what I have made mum. Give him an old cereal box and some sticky back plastic and I’d have a rocket lol.

I think teachers and Schools need training in how to deal with bullying and need to acknowledge it does happen and it has to be stopped!

When I look back he was the only son who never got invited to friends houses or parties the signs were there but when you have 3 children and trying to run a business it was hard.

I made soap for a living back then and worked from home. The house was always full of soap and a mess to be honest and I don’t suppose it was an environment they wanted to invite friends back to? You have to understand I was in a marriage where my husband gave me NO money at all No money for the kid’s clothes, Presents or Treats. I was quiet happy to wear clothes from charity shops and Car boots it didn’t bother me as long as I had enough money for my kids to have the clothes they wanted I wasn’t bothered.

My Ex husband had a job with good pay even though in 24yrs I never saw a wage slip. I never knew what he did with the money our mortgage was only £198 pounds a month so it wasn’t that. Or maybe now I do spent it on going out to nightclubs buying women drinks and cheating on me.

His routine was go to work come home go to bed for 2-3 hours get up eat, watch the tv and fall asleep with a beer if he had one. The house was undecorated for years and I remember once saying to my husband can you decorate His words were “ You live like this, get fxxing used to it cos this is how it is staying” I used to ask him if he could work on the house just one hour a night and it would be done but no. He was a DIY man and if his family rang or friends he would go out in the car like a good little soldier and fix their pipes, electric and anything else his family or my step monster sister wanted. That’s how he became a superstar to everyone else and everyone thought he was so lovely!

Food was another issue in the house. I always saw couples and families going shopping in the supermarket. He controlled my children’s lives and mine. He would go shopping and choose what we had for tea and only purchase what we needed that day. The routine was he would go get the food for tea, come home then he would also cook the meals because he continuously told me I couldn’t cook

I look back now and know it was a form of abuse I was controlled by this man completely even though everyone thought I had my own business so I must be strong behind closed doors was another issue. My children would complain that there was never anything to eat in the house. The money I earned I used to go food shopping so my children could eat when they wanted something.

I’m not sure how other people live but I had to earn and work hard just to survive. I remember once telling my husband one of the children needed a pair of trainers and he gave me a fiver laugh now, I could cry. I had to start the business just to make sure my kids had Food, Clothes, Christmas Presents and Treats when I could. How can you explain to someone you are married and you get nothing is that because you deserve nothing?

Everyone in my family thought my marriage was wonderful and I expect my Husbands family did too. Oh he was a wonderful man I’m not saying I am not at fault I must have had many faults too but the fact was everyone thought he was such a lovely man and outside the house he was perfect behaviour everyone liked him and his family loved and adored him.

What do you do when you live with a man that keeps you controlled by money?
What do you do when you live with a man that tells you that no one else would ever want you?
What do you do when you cry and a man pushes you on the floor and calls you pathetic and says things like look at the state of you I don’t love you and you make me sick?

YOU HATE HIM with every inch of your mind and body YOU DESPISE HIM
But everyone sees you arguing with him, which I was only brave enough to do with an audience so they saw me he was really a very clever man and never did it in front of the kids or in front of family or friends. So I was the bad one, I was the one everyone judged and thought was a nutter a bad wife and he needed to get away from me

Even my kids decided I was the one that argued and fought all the time he was very careful to keep quiet when they were around he was sly and I hated him for it.

I know what people say don’t do it in front of your kids! But I was chocking and screaming inside because of how he treated me and I had to suffer mainly in silence.
I remember once he had me by the throat and was holding me up in the air against the wall and I couldn’t do a dam thing about it. I remember him throwing me against the living room wall and as I fell in a heap on the floor and crying he said “get up you stupid cow what you gunna do now ring the police” I never did of course. It got to a point where I couldn’t have the man even in the same bed and he would sleep on the sofa the routine was he would fall asleep on the sofa usually with the TV on all night I would go to bed and as he left for work at 6am he was normally gone when I woke with the kids in the morning.

Then the routine would start again me making soap all day to try to get money together. I always thought I worked from home so I was there for my kids but the sacrifice. I paid for that was a soap filled house and my kids being boys hated it. I am left bitter and angry because being kids they didn’t appreciate what I did for them. A nice clean house, no soap meant no money no clothes no presents no Christmas and sometimes no food.

Kids are so fickle would they really have been happy without a pair of trainers or a new bike they wanted or anything else for that matter. The world around us has made kids materialistic and if their friends had the latest designer gear they wanted it and I was always scared my kids would be bullied if I didn’t work day and night sometimes to make sure they had it but I was hated and resented because of the soap, soap, soap but I did it to survive.

To the outside world my marriage looked perfect on the inside I was with a spineless man who I think resented me for making the soap and resented everything I did. The only way he could control me was financially and he made sure he did a good job. How do you explain to people and the powers that be you are married and have nothing to live on family allowance used to go on the kids dinner moneys and trips and day-to-day things? He begrudged giving me that when I didn’t have enough money to pay for it. Arguments ended in well get your arse out there and get a proper job like me. It takes two to argue and I did fight back I screamed, shouted and really got nowhere

He was a man that was never wrong and would argue and argue until I gave in. If you can imagine a man who when watching the TV and watching game shows he would have to shout out the answer to the questions before the contestants that was my man. A man who would eat food like it was his last supper, a man who would never be proved wrong and was never wrong.

Living like this I blame my self and me alone that I should have taken my child and left and protected him I know my husband would have looked after the other two boys
Maybe my son found a friend in this man someone who didn’t argue and agreed with everything he said. They say we are drawn like moths to a flame by anyone who agrees there life is shit. This man took my son shooting in the woods, taught him how to drive a car and took him out.
What did we do as his parents argue and spit at each other. So I hold my hands up and say yes I was to blame for being weak and not doing the right thing DIVORCING him and running like hell as far away from there as I could. But then would my other children have hated me how could I win, how can I answer my questions maybe I will be judged in Hell.

I'M NOT PERFECT and I'm NOT saying he was the only one to blame I argued and fought back and I have many faults too but I need someone to understand he was ex forces and a cruel man and in this world being controlled financially and being bullied mentally and occasionally physically but maybe only physically 3 or 4 times during the marriage. Now when I look back on my life I think maybe physically is better at least people could see bruises? I am now damaged goods through years of mental abuse I don't have any confidence, I don't make myself look attractive to the opposite sex at all. I have even gone to the extreme of cutting all my hair off so its really short, I dont wear makeup, I don't make an effort at all. I suppose its a mixture of my marriage and the fact that I have a younger child three years younger than the son that was abused. am I Physiologically damaged too.

I know what men reading this say don't tar us all with the same brush. I know there are lovely men out there and women who find them my hats off to you and maybe it is who you are determines whether you find a good man or woman. Or is it a decision out of our hands and maybe God if there is one decides who is a good person and who deserves to be happy. I am tired, too tired to even look for a man.

My dreams are I will find one eventually and be happy my soul mate? Someone who will love me for who I am and what I am faults too and not for what they want me to be.

I am not one of those women who say I won't change for anyone. People can change and my life has changed me. I would love to be loved, cared for and for me to love and care back. But for now I dream and don't dare go anywhere or do anything to make this happen. It will never happen behind my door that's for sure.

The only stipulation I would put on a relationship would be not to judge me for my sins and not to judge my children for theirs but to accept them for who they are. I judge myself enough and think myself as one of lives failures enough as it is. I think I have a right to feel sorry for my self enough as it is and I know people will say life is what you make it! Only you can change it. But our life experiences and childhood mould us into who we are and when I look in the mirror I don't like what I see so why would anyone else?

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:32:00 +0000

Knocking on Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan

[via FoxyTunes / Bob Dylan]

Mr Jack Straw
House of Commons
LONDON
SW1A 0AA

Dear Mr Straw

Mr XXXXXX has very kindly agreed to deliver my letter to you personally.

I am the mother of a 19-year-old boy who was groomed by a paedophile from the age of twelve and then at the age of 14 was abducted and sold at a McDonalds on the M62 for £500 to a national paedophile ring. Approximately 200 members of a paedophile ring subjected my son to multiple rapes over a period two years.
The police only found my son because the man that actually sold him feared for my son's life, informed the police of what he had done and whom he had sold him to. "A touch of remorse from a sex offender does not justify a lenient sentence"?

In addition to the physical injuries sustained he was plied with alcohol and drugs throughout the prolonged attacks.Please may I add only 7 men were brought to justice because of a number of reasons one being lack of police recourses.

I also don't think there is justice in the system when all men pled not guilty until a week before the trial and then changed them to receive a lenient sentence.The case was reported widely when the perpetrators were brought to justice in Leeds Crown Court in 2004.If you wish to find out more about the case you will find it by typing Nathan Eyre into Yahoo search engine.

During the investigation and trial and throughout the intervening years I have found so much that is wrong with the criminal justice system.I understand that changes are made to the law as an ongoing process, according to research and the findings of people who have been a victim of crime or a family member of the victim.My son is not able to communicate on his own behalf and has given his permission for me to carry out all the necessary administration relating to the aftermath of this unspeakable crime

I have summarised my recommendations for the treatment of criminals found guilty of serious sexual assault on a minor.

A judge has condemned the "absurdly limited" jail terms he could impose for men involved in the sexual grooming of a 14-year-old boy who was sold to a national paedophile ring. Mr Justice Holland called on the crown prosecution service to look at the issue. He said the maximum seven-year sentence for people living off the earnings of prostitutes was "quite absurd".

I am still shocked at this statement as to the living of the earnings of prostitutes. This was my child not an adult who had decided to become a prostitute and hired a pimp?

I would like to campaign for the sex offences act 2003 to be amended. As I find it confusing and with discrepancies.The Judge on our case made this statement to the press saying his hands were tied and the sentence did not reflect the crime.

I have learned from being in the criminal justice system and having support from probation services. That as each Sex offender is released; they do not serve their whole sentence? But merely half with the other half on probation.

Another one of my arguments is if there is lack of police recourses to catch them?

I am sure there are not enough resourses to watch them twenty-four hours a day? I would like to see the sentences increased for paedophiles and for crimes against children.

I would like to see the criminal justice system acknowledge the seriousness of these crimes. I have had a conversation on Prison Overcrowding and I will not accept that excuse.I know committing any crime is illegal and punishable. But if you asked any Mother of a child who has been sexually abused "would you rather lock up a paedophile, sex offender or a motor vehicle or council tax offender? You would receive the same answer every time. These children are the Future of Britain and if Britain is failing them whom do they turn to? If one power stood up and said zero tolerance and meant it our world would be a better place.

Thousands of pounds are spent on public awareness on these perpetrators but when they slip through the net and are caught they seem to get a slap on the wrist and its wrong.The human rights of a child have been violated and therefore the human rights of the Offender should be violated too.

Not just the victim suffers in these cases but the families of the victims too.I lost my Childs innocence, My Marriage, My Home and My business. Where is the Justice please?

If I had lost my child forever at least I could grieve for him and in some ways it may have been better? Now we live a life sentence and statistics show most of these children never recover fully even with therapy and love.

Before this happened to us I always thought it happened to children who were neglected and from council estates.We had three children; our own home, my own business and we had never broken the law. But unfortunately I had a child who was bullied at school and was a prime candidate for a predatory paedophile, a friend and an advocate? Who was to tear my son away from me and alienate him from his family?

I live every day with my mistakes as a mother and will die consumed with guilt and remorse, for not only my child but also the child up the street, the child in the next town or city.

One of the Sex offenders in our case was charged on two counts of buggery and one of indecent assault and the judge could only impose a 36-month sentence of which he served 18 months.

Precedence should be established for buggery of a minor. I would like the Sex Offence Act 2003 to be amended to rape of a child under the age of 16 and not 13. I believe it is illegal to have consensual sex under the age of 16 in this country. Then why is there a gap in the law for children between the ages of 13-16? Precedence should be established for buggery of a minor under the age of 16.My son was raped from the age of 12 and at the age of 14 abducted and sold. This law failed us and must fail other families in this country.It is now nearly 2009 and I am pleading with the powers that be, to show compassion for the victims and their families.I think promiscuous behaviour and religion is another issue and should be separated from Paedophilia.

The victim should be allowed to receive therapy in the period leading up to the trial. This should not be used against the victim in a trial.Compensation should reflect the severity of the crime. This I need to elaborate further on As I have been fighting for compensation for my son since 2005 through the Criminal Compensation Board.Not to add my most disheartening case is my civil case through the courts to get compensation for my son and having fought for four years and may end up with large legal costs as the Legal Aid board seem to Fail in their recognition of Paedophile cases too?

The visual identification process of the perpetrator by the victim should be improved.Voice recognition could be used.In my sons case the only identification process was a video screen and my son was angry because most of the rapes were in darkened rooms and the only way he could identify his perpetrators were from their voices or their smells.

I am now a mother of a broken child who has been sectioned under the mental health act three times, that has tried to commit suicide on many occasions and on each occasion one of these men have been released my son has attempted suicide.I have had my child on life support, I have a child whom has been diagnosed as having a personality disorder, had Gonorrhoea, had Chlamydia and three weeks ago was diagnosed HIV Positive with Blood Cancer and he is now Nineteen years old? I am sure you are aware that it is impossible to explain in detail what went wrong and how the system let us down.I hope that by putting these views forward I can help to improve the experience of future victims.I am able, with the help of a voluntary advocate, to communicate further with you or other appropriate agencies, as necessary.I would like to elaborate on my suggestions and findings but appreciate that this initial letter is not the place to do so.

Please advise me as to how I can get my voice heard on these issues.I look forward to your response.

Yours Sincerely
A SILENT MOTHER

My Darkest Hour JULY 2006

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 18:12:00 +0000

Annie Lennox - Many Rivers To Cross @ Idol Gives Back 2008

[via FoxyTunes / Annie Lennox]

When I have watched films about dying, the one thing they all seem to have in common is when you die you are supposed to go into a bright light. I wonder if it is the same if you try to kill your self. I’m not religious but I remember something about if you commit suicide its hell and damnation

With me there was NO light just the pitch-black blackness and a feeling of serenity and peace. I didn’t see a white light, a bright light nothing just the dark. When I think back about that day it was a nice warm feeling but I really shouldn’t say that don’t want to encourage anyone to be as mad as I was But then as I came back to my god forsaken life.

I gasped for air it was the most horrendous feeling I can remember it as if it was yesterday and the feeling I took one large gulp of air and there was a tight feeling of my lungs filling back up with air. A policeman leaning over me telling me to breathe comes on breathe. It hadn’t worked I was still here!

Its strange that morning when I awoke I wasn’t feeling particularly depressed. It was July a nice sunny day and quiet warm outside.My youngest son had gone to school and my son who had been abused by the paedophiles was in bed.

I remember my mum telephoning and I didn’t pick up I’d had quiet a bad night and she was telling me to pick the phone up on the answering machine. I remember her shouting down the phone pick up the phone I know your there. I waited while the machine stopped.

I went upstairs and got dressed I made a coffee and had a cigarette I don’t remember feeling depressed at all that morning I’d looked out of the window at the sunshine it was a lovely day.I was quiet calm really no crying no panic attack nothing. I must have been pretty low at this stage. I remember going to the garage and getting the stepladders out and putting them in the back of the car.

Then I grabbed my bag and got in the car.It took my about ten minutes to drive down to a local garage at the bottom of pool bank. I went inside the garage and purchased a yellow towrope it cost me £6.50 threw it in the back of the car and drove off.I was heading for Otley Chevin This is a large hill over looking the Town of Otley in Yorkshire where I had happy memories as a child. I remember the whole family going up to the Chevin in the winters when the snow came armed with cardboard boxes and sliding down the hill on the cardboard in the snow.

The hill goes down about 500 yards its full of heather and rocks then there’s the woods hundreds and hundreds of Trees. I had been up to the Chevin with my Mum and Step dad to sprinkle my brother’s ashes up there. We had decided to put Nicholas my brother up there because we had so many happy childhood memories of that place. So I knew he was there waiting for me.My sweet brother had died in 2004 August 30 of a heart attack at the age of 31 No age to die really poor soul.

When I arrived at the Chevin I drove the car into the little car park, looked around to see if anyone was about took out the stepladders and the tow rope and walked down the hill into the woods. I must have looked like a mad woman really I had on a skirt, a t shirt and a pair of sandals a step ladder under my arms, my mobile phone in my pocket and the towrope in the other hand.

I walked around looking for a tree, my tree, and the tree that would take all my pain away the tree that would save me from any more pain. After wandering round the trees for a while I came across one that had a rock beneath it this was the tree I could stand on the rock and jump swing and I would hang myself.

I opened the stepladders and placed them carefully under the tree opened the packet with the bright yellow towrope in and climbed up the ladder.

It being a towrope was great all I had to do was throw it over and pull the long bit through and I had a noose already made.I had got my Noose sorted out so I put the ladders down on the floor and sat I decided to have a cigarette and I know this sounds really stupid. But I started talking to my brother.

Was I mad I asked him to please come and get me please hold my hand and take me to where there was no more pain, no more heartache and no more life. Heaven Hell WHERE EVER HE WAS I WANTED TO BE WITH HIM. I was praying and saying if there was a god please makes Nicholas and my Daddy come for me then we can be together.I was weeping by this time uncontrollably when I look back I was actually weeping like a child and me an adult too. I knew I was doing the right thing. I had failed as a mother and not been able to protect my child from this evil, this pain and this suffering. I knew my children would be looked after by their father and the rest of my family would be all sympathetic and make sure my kids were felt sorry for that their bad mother was selfish and had left them behind.

I had come to a dark place in my life where I didn’t want to be here anymore. Why was I doing this?

AUGUST:My baby Brother had died of a Heart attack at the age of 31

OCTOBER: My Poor Child had been abducted and sold like a piece of meat to be abused by Paedophiles all over the UK

DECEMBER:My Husband had run off with one of my Staff and a so-called good friend and had an Affair.Saves me right for employing a woman who was more attractive than me. A single parent who was confident and used to make fun of me I only have my self to blame!

JANUARY:16 weeks after my Brother died my Father had collapsed in the Car Park of Leeds Playhouse and died of a Heart attack.

JANUARY:I took my husband back like a fool and he pleaded with me to forgive him I couldn’t manage to make love to him for three months then when I did he’d given me a venereal disease He had been cheating on me for years with lots of women If I didn't laugh I'd cry

NOVEMBER: I had not long since divorced my husband and he told me he didn’t want any money from the sale of our house. He told me he would walk away. I trusted Him and only 9 months later to start legal proceedings to take everything I had financially. He was even trying to take my home. I guess the guilty conscious and the remorse had gone by 9 months?

JULY: I WAS CUT DOWN FROM A TREE

How was I saved? My own fault really I was sat in the damp cold woods and phoned my son who had been abused I told him I was sorry I hadn’t protected him I was sorry I hadn’t run away with him and left my husband and saved him.

I was sorry for everything and I loved him but I couldn’t live with my self any more.He was pleading with me on the phone to tell him where I was I didn’t tell him I wouldn’t tell him then I made a big mistake I told him I was with his Uncle Nicholas and I would be ok. That was my down fall he must have remembered that I had told him I had been up to the Chevin with his Nana and sprinkled his ashes up there. I put the phone down.

My Son saved me he must have rung the Police and told them I was missing and in the Woods and trying to kill my self. Within a couple of minutes he had rung me back and was saying please mum don’t do this please. The guilt was consuming me that I should have stopped what had happened to him but I had been fighting a battle I had been to the police prior to his abduction and they had told me grooming wasn’t illegal and unless my son went to the police and said this man is abusing me they couldn’t help me.

I should have used my gut instinct and done anything to protect him. I’m so sorry my child! I should have walked away from my bad marriage and my other children they would have been looked after by my husband I should have I should have those words ring in my head every day now

My leap into the unknown was bundled now I was sat in the woods on the mobile phone to my son when I heard the police helicopter overhead he told me He had rung the police I dropped the phone to the floor as I saw a police man entering the woods from the top of the hill I ran to the noose and put my head threw it I ran backwards then took a giant leap onto the rock where I knew my feet would be above the ground and I would hang that’s when the pitch black came the calm the feeling that all the pain was gone and I would be punished for not protecting my child.

I’m still here apparently that policeman ran for his life and held me up in the air by my legs shouting and screaming for help until he had assistance to cut me down.

If I look back on this day and say would I do it all again? The answer is NO but do I wish that policeman hadn’t got to me in time the answer is YES.
I spent a week in a psychiatric hospital, which I will save for another night

I also had a wonderful red necklace for about a month and a sore throat but I’m still here. I have been to the darkest part of death and come out of it alive thanks to my baby my child my son Those paedophiles who took my son took away his innocence, His Life, My Life, My Business, What was left of my Failing Marriage, All my Money and ME.

FOR MY SON

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 09:05:00 +0000

Fallen Angel By Gabrielle

[via FoxyTunes / Gabrielle]

VENTING MY ANGER

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:45:00 +0000

OCTOBER 17^TH THOUGHTS

SAT ALONE

I haven't been able to write for a while as the heartache of my child is consuming me. I spent about five hours on the phone to him the other night and received more devastating news!

Having gone to the hospital after his HIV diagnosis and having tests, x-rays, scans prodded pocked and looked at. We now have to cope with a new diagnosis of cancer of the blood, which I believe is quiet commonly related to HIV

I have since read up on the Internet and it seems to be related to his white blood cells and a bacteria. I'm not sure how much more I can take, where do I keep getting the strength to get more bad news. He's nineteen and been through so much in his life. I am finding hard as his Mother to go on its so hard. I struggle in debt trying to make ends meet as a single parent, as most do I am sure with the credit crunch. I'm not suggesting I am the only one in debt. But I am finding it so hard just to go through the motions of each day, every day. Having to deal with my son's illness and try to be strong for him is taking my breath away and would love to go to sleep and never wake up.

God I am taking risks here I suppose the help lines and the hospitals if they heard this would have me in a psychiatric ward again for sure. Just getting out of bed and going to work is such a chore. I feel short of breath all the time, I find my self having panic attacks and shut myself away from the world and don't speak to anyone. I have the odd day every couple of weeks where I ring some kind of help line, when I can find one that's open that is, just to release the pressure.

It make me laugh sometimes how each organisation can only talk about certain things and when you start rambling about what's happened the so called volunteer on the phone starts to panic and informs me they can't help me with that. Have you tried another agency? Have you gone to your doctor shhhhhhhhh PROZAC will help me I'm sure but don't take too many come back and see me in 2 weeks because there addictive.

I do wish I had never been born. Then I wouldn't have put my child through such misery. As I wouldn't have had my child does that make sense. Maybe I'm not making sense to my self I don't know any more I seem to walk around in a haze and life is a blur at the moment. There are just some people in this world who are dealt bad cards and I must be one of them. What do some people say life is what you make it and you make your life. But there seems to have been uncontrollable powers that made sure my life was bad. Fate plays a big part, wrong time wrong place I can go on but why my life has been shit and will no doubt continue to be shit till I either give up or die.

Is someone going to shout for god sake woman pull your self together and just get on with it?

My son cried again on the phone the other night and all he kept saying was

"it's your fault you lied to me? You told me my life would get better after the abuse. " I did I kept telling him he had his whole life to look forward to. Did I lie Im supposed to say that to my children things will get better, it will be ok Are we not?

We are all victims of this crime, the whole family really including my younger son who I forget was only nine at the time it happened. I never talk about it to him, I never mention it to him its just a taboo subject and has it?

His main concern is I never mention it in front of his friends, I never mention it to anyone in the village and please don't talk about it, I don't want to. Is it healthy not to talk about it will he suffer in later years for ignoring what happened and pretending it never happened? I don't know I'm not a professional but then again what is a professional.

The only people I can relate to are those who have suffered the same as I have only they can understand and know what we go through. So-called professionals empathise, sympathise and try to diagnose and stop the pain. I'm surprised no one has suggested an operation to cut the pain out and maybe then it would go away.

When you watch a child abuse them selves by cutting their arms and legs with razor blades and telling you it releases the pressure and stops his head from wanting to explode, taking drugs and cant sleep unless they have 3 litres of cider a night so they don't have nightmares. When you have a child who walks into a department store and smells an aftershave and wants to be sick because it's a smell they remember how do you keep going. Am I strong? Am I just weak and bleat on about it? Should I be like my ex-husband and tell my child there's nothing wrong with you just go get out there and get a job?

I don't care what anyone say's. As a mother you carry your child for nine months, you feel them kick inside you, you give birth to them and the bond is different and they are part of you. You breath and they breath. I can't explain it only a Mother knows what I am saying. You hold that baby in your arms for the first time and all you want is a good and happy life for them. You sit and nurse them and watch them sleep. You pray they grow up good and free from harm.

How do you cope with a crime your involved in, committed by male sex offenders. Men who are Accountants, Funeral Directors, Solicitors, Builders, Disabled, Coach Drivers. Cry Its almost laughable many who have never been brought to justice. I have two choices curl up in a ball, forget about it and just move on or FIGHT, FIGHT for justice and also tell my story so others can understand the devious world of a paedophile, the Justice System in the UK and how it fails you, The National Health System in the UK and how its not set up to cope with this kind of devastation.

The compensation system for victims and the understanding that it's a token gesture. Yes you were a victim here's your pennies, we are so sorry, now go away and get on with your life! I cant get into my head that a degree in psychology and the name doctor or professor can diagnosis what's wrong with you. They can form an opinion of you be it good or bad. The powers that be listen and the mental health system who think by administering drugs to make the pain go away.

Today I feel like a bad person for feeling resentment and anger at the Weeks news of the McCann's and the Tapas seven. Celebrating winning one point seven million in liable from the Tabloid Press for slander. My heart goes out to them and if they ever find Maddie

I hope she has never suffered like my son had suffered at the hands of paedophiles. God forbid they ever have to endure getting your child back broken and abused and destroyed.

I am sorry for feeling resentment but when they offered my son thirteen thousand pound for being abused by nearly 200 men through out the UK. When they offered my son thirteen thousand for helping convict 7 paedophiles and making the streets little safer for other children even though it was only for a little while.

When they reduced the amount they offered my son by five thousand pound because at the time of the abuse my son was under the influence of drugs and alcohol

The man that groomed my child drugged him and gave him alcohol to abuse him Where is the justice in this world?

I need someone to explain to me if there is a god where was he when my child needed him? They offered my son who is mentally ill physiologically ill, who can't work in the real world, who lost his childhood, his education. How does that compare?

I feel angry with my self because it isn't about the money really. The money can't make it better, it can't make it go away and it can't make it so it never happened. But it can make them pay for what they have done. I want them to stand up and be counted Prison wasn't enough it will never be enough I want them to suffer financially for what they have done. I am not religious but I hope there is a god and I hope he punishes and I hope the devil and hell exist and fire and damnation and suffering when you dead and I hope they suffer as much as my son has suffered.

Having gone through all this MY HEART goes out to those who do recover from similar crimes. Maybe were not strong enough? They say time is a healer, but how much time do I have with my son?

Everyone keeps saying HIV is not the disease it was they can live normal lives, Leukaemia can even be cured. My fear is I will more than likely lose my son to another suicide attempt, be it blundered.

I don't really think he wants to die he just needs help and he cant get the right help. He is screaming inside as I am and no one listens. How do you make this better? How do you make it go away?

Would I be arrested if I say the truth? All I wanted to do was take these men into the woods pour over a can of petrol, set fire to them and watch to the end. Can you be arrested for having bad thoughts? Or are they good thoughts. The law states they have human rights. They are people, they have families, for god sake some of them were even married. But my thoughts on this subject at the moment are As soon as they took away the human rights of my little boy and raped him and abused him They should have lost their human rights because they stopped being human.

I am angry, that the men my son put in prison have had more money spent on them in so called rehabilitation programs in prison, probation officers, being relocated, being given somewhere to live, be it next to some unsuspecting single mother and even helped to get a job to integrate back in to society. I am angry at the fact they have supposed to pay for the crime they committed and got lenient sentences because they admitted and pleaded guilty in a court of law. Do I have the right as a mother to be angry and scream at the powers that be or should I SIT CRY FEEL SORRY FOR MYSELF AND MY SON AND MY FAMILY shut up and get on with my life?

I am sure some do gooders out there will say they have paid for their crimes but god forbid it happens to their child, their grandchild, their brother let me be judged for hating them all.

Where did I fail as a mother? Why didn't I protect my child? Why didn't I run away with my child when I thought there was something wrong? Why did I not save my child? I can't answer these questions. I wish I could turn the clock back and if I could have seen into the future that this man was going abduct my child and sell him for a measly £500 at a McDonald's to a monster. I would have run, I would have left my husband and my two other children behind and saved him. Now it's too late too late for us all. I am angry at everyone including myself and I'm hoping it will go away or it will get better they say time is a healer but most days I wish time would end.

Daily Diary Sunday 21st of September 2008

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:05:00 +0000

I had decided to do a car boot today as the weather forecast had said no rain thank god it's rained here for weeks and weeks and always on Sundays for some reason. My son had gone to his dads for the weekend so I was fine to go with the dogs and hopefully get rid of a bit more junk from the shed. My sister, her boyfriend, my niece, nephew and 3 dogs fit in my car as well as 2 tables and the stuff to sell. My god I thought it's a good job it's a people carrier. We had a long day and took about 30 quid between us but it was fun and we all had a day out on a field, in the cold and fog. No sun again but I was looking forward to my son coming home as my 19-year-old son who lives with his father was also coming for the week.

It had been my birthday on the Wednesday and he was bringing me a card. I waited patiently after I had dropped my family back home. I waited for quiet a few hours then about 7pm my son came in and dumped his bag on the chair as usual "where's Sam" I said then my younger son replied "he's not well and not coming" I was disappointed.

Just then the phone rang it was my son he and my ex-husband live about 60 miles away from me. He said hi mum and then told me hadn't been feeling well lately so he wouldn't be coming but said "don't worry mum Ill come next week and take you out for a lovely meal for your birthday you choose." He the proceeded to have a moan at his father telling me he hates him and he makes him mad. I said what's up this time as I had had an episode a couple of weeks ago with a knife and his father. He told me he'd been for his Aids test and because he hasn't been feeling well he had asked his dad to go with him for some moral support and his dad had said NO.

Again I was angry but I have a relationship with my ex-husband where we can't have a civil conversation and his favourite trick is slamming the phone down on me if he doesn't like what he hears. I somehow knew then there's something not right. He seemed most upset that his dad wouldn't go with him for the test. I told him I couldn't make his dad go with him I hate my ex-husband he is a self centred, lying nasty man and hope he's judged in hell. There got that off my chest for a start and no am not a man hating woman I believe there are thousands of lovely men out there its just I didn't find one. I said it will be OK hunny and we said our usual when parting I tell him I love him and he tells me he loves me.

Diary Day Tuesday 23rd September 2008

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:02:00 +0000

I awoke this morning about 5am after a night of tossing and turning and broken sleep my heart is sinking fast and I still feel numb I must keep my self-busy. I decided to go down stairs, feed the dogs and then opened my laptop and search for information on HIV my head was spinning two hours later I had another two hours to wait for the vets to open. The poor dog she needs help too maybe this will give me something to help me caring for the dog I need to focus on staying strong for my son. I arrived at the vets about 10am and came out £80 lighter on my credit card and 2 bags of medication.

I then drove to a ladies house who I had met at the car boot who had a tens machine for sale which I decided to purchase for £7 to help my own back pain but that's another story. I rang her on my mobile and she only 7 minutes away from the vets a lovely lady. She invited me in for a coffee and we ended up talking for hours she was amazing and had had an amazing life she had thousands of vinyl records in her house shed been collecting them since the 70s.

She told me she, had lived in Canada and the south of France and back in the 60s her friend owned the Penthouse in Scarborough and used to have parties where David Bowie and Brian ferry used to go she'd sat and drank with them and smoked joints with them I thought wow This again was another distraction trying to hold my self together you cant just come out to a complete strange and say I have just found out my son is HIV Positive its just not done. I enjoyed the escape but on leaving again my heart sank and felt guilty I had enjoyed her company.

I arrived home about two thirty I knew my son was at the hospital at one thirty with his dad I made a coffee and sat and waited for the phone call. I waited and waited and waited it got to about five o clock and I tried to ring the house my ex-husband answered the phone he told me yes its confirmed he has HIV he said they told him my son didn't need to start medication it could be five years before he needs it something about his CD4 count and when it gets low that's when they start him on medication.

I asked where my son was and how he was he replied he seems fine and he had gone to Megan's mums with her Megan is his best friend and she helps him when he's low. I told my husband I had informed my sons solicitor that he is HIV we then had another confrontation that I shouldn't have told him even my sons doctor doesn't have to know stupid stupid man. I put the receiver down and my son rang about ten minutes late and said mum did dad ring you I explained no my son told me his father left him in town and went straight to my sisters house and told her. GOD have you ever hated someone so much you want to explode, he had gone there before ringing me. As you have probably guessed by now the hatred for my ex-husband consumes me and makes me want to burst.

What kind of man doesn't ring the mother of her child that has just been diagnosed HIV Positive to let her know what is happening I think he thinks its a game and this is the only way he can hurt me and this is the only way he can hurt me through my children he is a small little man who I have nothing but contempt for and for this statement Maybe later all will be revealed? And maybe thrashing out like this will make me remember life is too short don't hate the man pity him a little voice keeps saying in my head. Use your energy on something positive but where is the positive and where do I find it in my life?.

This man is lecturing me that I shouldn't have told my sons solicitor and he goes and tells my step monster sister before me his mother what ever he does doesn't bother me he can sleep with half of London and I would just feel nothing but pity for the women he meets nothing more.GOD im starting to worry my self reading this I sound like a real man hater i'm not honest. I suppose we all have bad marriages and good ones just im bleating about mine a bit too much. My son is my priority and he needs us both to help him through this

DIARY DAY MONDAY 22ND SEPTEMBER 2008

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:00:00 +0000

I got home about 3pm with the dogs made a coffee and sat down the phone started ringing again it was my Son he was sobbing uncontrollably whets up love I said then my world came crashing down "I'm HIV Positive mum" he couldn't stop crying all he kept saying was he had wanted children I started crying. I told him I was so sorry I couldn't make it better I couldn't say it was going to be ok I didn't know what to say he's 19 for god sake I just told him I loved him very much. But I am also angry that he's played Russian roulette with his life and paid the price the reasons I will reveal later.

I still feel numb I cant believe this has happened what do you say to one of your babies? How can you tell him it will be ok you cant you can just tell him you love him and be there for him if he needs you. He kept saying to me I want to be buried don't burn me please He then told me he couldn't get hold of his dad as he hadn't come back from work and had switched his mobile phone off. This was a trick he used to pull on me switch his phone off when he didn't want you to know where he was and everything would be fine. He is now pulling the same stunts on his children and I hate him for it. I told my son to keep trying as being 60 miles away I couldn't be there.
He was saying he wanted to kill him self I just wanted someone to be there with him I had asked him how he had found out he said the hospital had sent him a text on his phone to get in touch and then told the poor kid over the phone I am so angry my son is not well the best of times a high suicide risk and mentally unstable and to tell him that over the phone was heartbreaking. I told him to keep trying his dad I didn't want him to be alone as I thought he may try harm himself. within minutes he rang me back he had managed to get hold of his dad he was at his mothers and told him he would be back in an hour. Again this made me mad he was about 15 minutes away and his son needed him.

I had decided to take a weeks holiday from work as I haven't had a day off since August 2007 I had asked my boss on the Friday if it would be ok I'm now glad I did! On Friday my sister and I had rescued another baby from a lady who was advertising a dog for sale on the internet a Neapolitan Mastiff we had brought her home to my house she had sores all over her back, green grunge coming out of her eyes and didn't seem a well baby I had to take her to the vets as soon as I could I planned to take her Tomorrow. But today I decided a day out with the dogs in town fresh air and a nice walk would be good for us all. I waited while my younger son got ready for school said good bye then went and got a shower, dressed and put the dogs in the car. One Neapolitan mastiff and one baby bullmastiff that I have had for 8 weeks now. It had been nice just walking round town with the dogs peaceful I had called in a health food shop to get some manuka oil for the dogs skin as I had been reading it was a good antibiotic and I thought it may help her sores with some water in a spray bottle while I could get her to the vets in the morning.

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 17:13:00 +0000

Acker Bilk - Stranger On The Shore

[via FoxyTunes / Acker Bilk]

MY CHILDHOOD

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:36:00 +0000

Ani DiFranco - Falling Is Like This (BSG Vid)

[via FoxyTunes / Ani DiFranco]

Not much sleep again last night maybe two hours I don't know how my son is coping with it I'm just numb and can't seem to get motivated to do anything. Where do I start at the beginning should I be afraid when telling the truth of offending anyone? To be honest I don't care any more my life has just been one long hurt and If I didn't have my children and my dogs it would be so easy to end this pain and hurt. I am ashamed of my family, but you can't choose your family they are the only ones you get so make do.

I was born in Leeds in 1962 my mother was aged 16 when she had me. Here I can only tell hear say from my mother she was the middle child of three nana was quiet strict with her children all I remember is mum said she had a terrible childhood but never spoke of it much. I used to see photos of my great grandparents who had a farm and must have been quiet wealthy I think my Nanna was outcast because we never seemed to meet any of my relatives when I was young.

Mum only spoke to me once of my grandfather and that was when my nana was young on the farm. She told me it was a pig farm, which I somehow guessed old pictures in my Nannas house of a couple stood in a pig pen and the man holding a big staff. During the war second world war of course. There was an Italian prisoner of war camp near by and the story goes my Nanna caught a soldier who was supposed to be guarding the prisoners, stealing eggs one day. One thing led to another over time and mum was born. I remember her saying the soldier was from down south near London and was married with a family so that was the end of that conversation. Mum never met her father and I'm not sure if she ever did?

She never mentioned her own father to me again, I just remember her telling me about her younger sisters father. My aunty Sheila father was supposed to have sexually abused my mother from an early age and was sent to prison for his sins even back then or maybe he wasn't?

My family never really tell the truth and keep many secrets in the closet. Should I get angry or is this like any other family I get confused over what is true and what is not. My problems occur because I am not like my family I am the odd one out always have been. Because I tell the truth as I see it. I hate liars and everything is black and white and I don't like grey areas or fuzzy bits. I am a problem solver and probably like my self to a pit-bull terrier once I need to know something or something or someone has vexed me. I always remember my mum saying to me as a child your tongue will be the deaths of you keep it shut.

Its strange I don't remember anything about being a baby I don't remember where I lived or where I even started school. I get upset sometimes because most adults remember their first day at school whether it be a happy or unhappy experience I don't.

The story goes mum was 16 and it was 1962 the time of teddy boys Rock and Roll and she used to go dancing in Armley It was a swimming baths and they used to have a dance floor. It was there she met my father pictures I have of him with the Teddy boy's haircut that looked like it was covered in chip fat. Mum told me once it wasn't even my father she fancied it was his mate and his mate wasn't interested my father was obsessed with her and asked if she would like to come to his brothers wedding as a first date. My mum agreed and she told me it was my Aunty Olive and Uncle Keith's wedding he was supposed to have got her drunk on Cherry Bs and while she was unconscious had his wicked way with her on my Grandmas sofa. That's how I was supposed to have been conceived. I remember my Nanna used to call me the Cherry B baby. So it was a so-called Shot Gun wedding.

I was born in my Nannas bed the 17^th of September 1962 I know that for a fact I think mum had left my dad on many occasions don't think she knew he had an alcohol problem when she met him. Two and a half years later my mum was carrying my sister and no long after she was divorced I have a copy of the divorce papers it's a bit battered and worn now.

It says Matrimonial Order in the City of Leeds. It says The Defendant my dad that is has been guilty of persisting cruelty to his said wife. The date on the divorce paper states 27^th of July 1965 so I know from the date my sister must have been only three months old and I must have been three when this happened.

I don't have any childhood memories and the ones of being small are blurred. One of my first memories is I was sent to a lot of foster homes and me and my sister used to go to a place called Silverdale this was run by a charity in Leeds where they sent children who's mums couldn't cope and needed a break. I remember mum used to go what u call converless at the coast quiet often

I remember a foster family I spent time with in Leeds I could even take you to where it was a maisonette just up from Wortley where the wool shop used to be on the corner you followed the road down to a row of maisonettes on the right hand side. I remember smashing my head open on the jungle gym at Silverdale holiday camp that's strange! The next memories I have are living in Kirkstall Road with my step dad rod mum had remarried and had been pregnant with my second sister when she met this man fell in Love and married. Again I don't remember much of the beginning of that I can even remember my sister being born or what we did as a family. Mum says we lived in Quarry Hill Flats when I was younger you know the place that's now the social security building I remember Diana Dors used to do a show that was based on those flats but I can even remember ever being there if I was happy or what it was like.

Memories of Childhood Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:13:00 +0000

A whiter shade of pale

[via FoxyTunes / Joe Cocker]

After my bungled suicide attempt it was even worse at home my stepfather never spoke to me, never looked at me. I would sit on the dog shelf like a good girl and not look him in the eyes. I decided I needed to get a job to maybe stay out of the way of everyone. Mums and dads arguments got worse I remember the screaming shouting he wore glasses and one day I saw a fight where mum grabbed his glasses off his face and scratched all his face. I didn't know what the arguments were about but it could have been me. We used to have an old bendix washing machine in the kitchen one of those ones you used to see in a laundrette it was concreted onto the floor so it didn't move when it spun. We also had another machine with an electric mangle and above that machine was a serving hatch I remember one-day mum must have leaned over the hatch with the mangle going and her hair got caught in the mangle. She was screaming because she couldn't reach the button to switch it off her hair was long and she always used nice and easy blonde on it I think it was mousy naturally so she died it. I remember running into the kitchen the machine was reeling her hair in and nearly up to her head. I pressed the button as she screamed and it was the most massive bald patch I had ever seen it had dragged her hair right to the scalp.

I managed to get a job I was too young for a paper round so I got a job as a baby sitter. I baby sat for a little girl whose parents were chefs in an Italian restaurant all I can remember is they were Scottish or he was! It was great it was a sleep in job Monday to Friday for £25 a week that meant I slept there instead of home and only stayed at home weekends. This was great for me and I suppose great for them too I was out of the way.

I opened a post office account and was going to save up and run away when I was 16 I had a plan. But things got worse at home they were still fighting even when I was gone. So it couldn't have been my fault or was it? Then my by this time I had another brother so there was five of us me being the eldest. Weekends were good my sister and I used to go to Grandma and Granddads house occasionally on Sundays. It was hard there too because my younger sister looked different she had dark hair, hazel eyes and didn't look anything like me. Mum used to say to me that my dad's family never believed I was even his but when I was born with strawberry blonde hair and looking exactly like my granddad they couldn't deny it anymore. But my sister didn't look like me or any of the family.

My dad had moved to Germany not long after my mum divorced him. He used to work as an engineer and had immigrated to Germany. He always came home in September for my Birthday and for Christmas. The arguments, there were he never came home for my sisters birthday in May why? My Grandparents lived in Burmantoffs near where Quarry Hill flats were where we had once lived and I can't remember. We used to have a ritual we would get there be made a fuss of then Grandma would make the dinner she would put the joint in the oven on a low light, make the Yorkshire pudding batter and then we would all go down to the club. Yes club Beer and Bingo typical lower class, as the upper class would say. I remember pop and crisps and running round the chairs tables and having fun. I loved my Granddad he was my hero. I remember Gran and Granddad used to argue all the time but it was fun they always ended up laughing Gran was bossy and told Granddad what to do and how to do it. But in a funny way

I loved hearing the sound of the ice cream van and would shout gran can I have an ice cream? It's here I would peer out of the flat window five floors up and say hurry hell leave before I get down the lift. Gran would say no Granddad would whisper come here give me the money and say shhhhhhhhh don't tell your Gran. But that was impossible coming back up with a giant Cornett and ice cream all over my lips. This would cause another row, which was so funny I loved him to bits. The only time I hated going to Gran and Granddads was when my mum used to make me ring them to find out if my dad was coming home. Apparently with him moving to Germany he never paid maintenance and every time he arrived on British soil she would have him banged up in the cells in Leeds under the Town Hall he would pay a lump sum then he would leave for Germany again. I remember mum instructing me on the phone ask them when he's coming I hated it. I felt like I was betraying him and I had to carry the guilt again I thought I must have been a bad person.

My dad was an alcoholic. There I have said it, admitted it and he was. I have memories of him shaking and shaking when I would see him. He always smelt of alcohol and always wore loads of after-shave to disguise it. I sometimes used to wonder why? He did it. Drink I mean the after shave just used to make the smell worse and I would feel sick sometimes when I was up close to him. But he was MY daddy and I loved him and he loved me. Every time he came home he would bring me a present I remember one year I got a German costume another year a German Doll that was nearly as big as me. My sister was left out and I couldn't make him treat her as he treated me. Mum again used to go mad I remember one year he bought me a record player and my sister didn't get anything. My mum screamed at him down the phone and eventually we went on a shopping trip, Lewis's on Briggate up stairs and she chose a drowsy doll. I suppose it was the same with him he maybe thought and the rest of the family, that my sister wasn't his. She looks like my aunty Sheila my mum's sister though we all look different and are different but adults do discriminate. I was hated by my step father because I wasn't his and I was the eldest and most alienated and my sister was sort of rejected by my real family. But it wasn't that bad she was loved and cared for by them I know she was. Although sometimes I did go alone they would tell mum they didn't have enough dinner for her and again I would be alienated and hated because I had a bit more love from my dads family.

Later that year I decided I needed to get another job so on a Friday Night I got a job working at Bryans chip shop in Headingley I loved it yes I know daft me I used to come home stinking of chip fat and loved it. I would start work at 5pm and work till finish at 10pm Brian actually owned it back then a big stocky man and he was lovely to work for you had a break in the canteen and could have fish and chips and a cup of tea for free. Then when you had finished you could take home any fish that was left over for your supper and they provided a staff taxi to make sure you got home safe.

I loved Friday nights I used to bring home a special that was the size of a whale and lovely I would get in the taxi arrive home and everyone was in bed sit on the sofa in the best room where I wasn't aloud to sit and watch my favourite movie Appointment with fear. I remember all these faces used to come .. the film to scare you then the movie Dracula or Wear Wolves or Mummies and a special from Bryans was my heaven.

Memories of Childhood Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:08:00 +0000

Is there something wrong with me childhood memories start when I'm ten before that I dont remember anything I don't remeber my first day at school. I couldnt event tell you which school I went to for the first five years of School.

I remember we lived on Kirkstall Road a house that had many steps. every fifteen steps to the right of my was a section of garden There was about six pieces going down so there must have been at least fifty steps to the bottom which led to the main Road.. There was a back garden and a gate which led to a ginal which led on to a housing estate at the back. The ginal was the easiest way to get to the Shops and School so I used this ginal every day. It was there I went to Kirkstall Road School and I fell in Love for the first time Oh so I thought his name was John and he was very popular with the girls blonde hair and blue eyes

I must have been about 10 years old but unfortunately it was a short affair and only lasted a week he finished with me because I wouldn't kiss him and the next girl he asked kissed him in front of everyone in the play ground I was stunned and broken hearted for about and hour then got over it.

I remember playing kiss catch in the playground, Jacks remember those with the ball and the metal prongy things you used to have to drop the jacks, bounce the ball once pick up the ball and the jack at the same time then two bounces and two jacks and so on till you had to grab a load of jacks at the end and the ball without dropping any. Wow I didn't realise I still remembered that game. By this age mum had had a few more children let me see if I was 10 my younger sister was 7 and a half my next sister down was 5 and a half. My brother must have just been born he was born in 1972 so he must have been a baby.

My memories of living in Kirkstall Road are Fish and Chips were I used to get a penny a day for school and would go into the local veg shop near school and but a pound of carrots and with the change I would buy 2 ounces of Kay lye, sherbet in Proper English and a liquorice stick to dip in. I remember the shop as if it was yesterday little and pokey and full of sweets in jars. Imps were on a little tray on the front counter and it smelt musty I can still remember the smell of that shop even though it was a sweet shop.

I remember while living there was the first time and the last time I ever stole anything it was in a shop three doors down they had just got some new sweets in a raspberry creamy thing that was 2p I wanted one I needed one I desired to taste the creamy raspberry filling and that was 2 days money. I walked in the shop and proceeded to look around as if I was going to buy something, quickly stuffed the raspberry treat up my sleeve when I thought the shopkeeper wasn't looking and started to walk out the shop. All I can tell you is a giant hand grabbed me as I tried to leave the shop they'd seen me I was caught with a 2p raspberry cream bar red handed. All I can tell you the shop keeper scared the living daylights out of me told me I would go in a naughty children's home and everyone would know I was a thief and when I grew up I would never be trusted in a job cos I had a criminal record.

My god when I look back I still remember shaking and being terrified but I was more scared they would tell my mum I remember pleading with him telling him I would never, ever, ever do It again and I haven't I have remembered that experience all my life and never stole again. It was different back then or was it now kids probably would stab the shopkeeper or not even care. This experience terrified me and even now I'm 46 remember it wow just writing this sends chills I know I never wanted never ate or never needed a Raspberry Truffle Bar as long as I have lived.

I also remember it was living here I had my first experience of death. At School we had a pet hamster and each week it was someones turn to take the thing home. I remember I put my hand up and was picked and I carried the cage home with great care. I remember we had a fridge in the dining room and my mum told me to put the smelly thing on top of the fridge. Two days it lasted and the bluddy thing died on me. I woke one morning to find it stiff in the cage. I was in pieces why did it have to die on me, why not someone else. I remember my stepfather made me go in the garden and dig a hole and I buried it about two tiers down. I was heartbroken, not for the hamster though. How was I going to tell the hole class the classroom pet had died in my care? That put me off hamsters for life I can tell you.

My second death experience was a friend down the street whose guinea pigs had had babies. While I was there one day watching these tiny squiggly balls move about, we suddenly saw the father guinea pig put a baby in its mouth Oh my god I cried it was actually eating the things. That experience also put me off guinea pigs for life.

I remember having to take my little brother to nursery on a morning for my mum living there too before I went to school I had to push this maclaren buggy for what I thought miles to the nursery. I remember this particular day it was really windy and I pushed this baby all the way to the nursery. It used to take me about half and hour along the top road from the school and along Burley Road to this bluddy nursery. One day I arrived at the nursery and went to pay for my little brother to stay the week and when I looked in my pocket the crisp twenty-pound note she had given me was gone. I panicked all I could think of was I had lost it on the way some how. Maybe the wind had blown it out of my pocket. I thought retrace your steps look for it everywhere I was in turmoil but I was terrified what mum would do to me too. Having to go home and explain to my mum I had lost twenty pounds was a nightmare. I remember the shouting screaming you stupid girl and funnily have never forgot.

Do we only remember the bad things and never the good things in our lives? I don't know. I am trying to remember the good but it's hard I can't. It was now 1973 and we moved we bought a house in Horsforth a lovely house in a nice area with the most enormous garden I had ever seen. We moved there in the summer my two sisters and my brother my mum and my step dad. I was to start big school in the September Benton Park. I had to wear a uniform and wait at the top of the street for the school bus to take us there it was about six miles from where we lived but it was big and I had fond memories of the short time I spent there. This house was where I had my own bedroom for the first time be it a tiny box room just enough for a bed and a chest of drawers it was all mine I could be alone at last.

It was a large three bed roomed house with a dining room, the best room and a garage, green houses, sheds, strawberry patches and the allotments were at the back of the house so we had no one looking over us. It was massive I remember we had rabbits and ferrets and polecats and ducks. Next door was a girl called dawn her mother was a singer on the cruise ships. They were strange but fun they had a huge piano in their front room and dawns mum used to sing at the piano while that bloke that used to be on calendar in the early 70s would come round and play while she sang. It was loud in their garden they had chickens cockerels and even a horse in a shed at the bottom. I used to look after the horse for them and spent every bit of spare time I had with the horse Sparrow it was called. I remember he had colic once and I used to give him molasses on a wooden spoon and he used to spit it at me. He used to escape on many occasions we would chase him up the street I even laugh now chasing this horse up a posh street in a posh neighbourhood must have been funny.

See I must have had some happy childhood I remember that. I also had a ferret called Simon he was my best friend I know stupid a bluddy ferret. I had been given him by a guy in a house that faced onto the other side of the allotment. Mick he was called he used to play rugby for LEEDS RL. He had the mother and she had started eating the babies so he gave me Simon. I didn't know ferrets are bald when there born and so tiny I fed him every day with bread soaked in warm milk and I used a puppet to feed him milk. I loved that ferret and he knew all my secrets. I used to take him out on a dog lead or carry him around my neck everywhere He was my pal my confident my best friend. I know your saying it's a bluddy ferret.

It's strange I don't remember having many friends as a child maybe it was me. Maybe there was something wrong with me shy and withdrawn and afraid of most people. I used to help mum mostly with the kids I'd do the ironing and the washing up, clean the house and any chance I had to escape I used to sit in my bedroom where I could read and escape my life. James Herriot Vet books. Little Women, Gulliver's Travels, Jayne Eyre and Enid Blyton. This was my escape from reality. My stepfather hated me and I hated him so that was fine. My sister and me weren't aloud to sit on the settee in the room we were always told to sit on the dog shelf that was the floor in our house.

I spent most nights in my bedroom wishing he was dead or I was dead. I know that's a horrible thing to say but it's true. I would cry most nights till I fell asleep. The man spoke to me with contempt and if he didn't he ignored me never looked at me and never spoke to me I wasn't his and he didn't really want me All I do remember is mum saying "cant you get on with him? Stay out of his way you are going to ruin it for us All". He would pull stunts like buy the other kids a bag of sweets and not me and then turn round and say if you want a sweet ask your sisters or brother.

It was here I had my third experience of death I was 13 now and decided I didn't want to live any more the arguments in the house had got worse and I was the blame it was all my fault every argument between my mum and him ended with your gunna ruin it for us all. But what was I doing ? I didn't even know what I was doing wrong! If I did I could have stopped doing it or tried to at least.

I thought its because I'm breathing that's why I need to stop breathing and everyone including me would be happy. I decided to find as many of my mums tablets as possible when the coast was clear.I then decided I would die in the allotments and no one would even think to look there to find me.

But it didn't work I had taken the tablets and my sister had spotted me she ran to my mum and said mum she's taken a load of tablets. Again it was you stupid bluddy fool what you done that for now ill have to take you to the hospital. I remember the tubes the swallowing and then the vomiting it was nasty I would rather be dead than have that done again or so I thought!

MY CHILD, MY BABY, MY SON

noreply@blogger.com (SILENT MOTHER) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:23:00 +0000

Man jailed for prostituting boy

A 14-year-old boy was groomed for sex and "sold" at a fast-food restaurant to a paedophile ring.

For the next six days, the youth was taken across England and subjected to "degrading" sex acts, a court was told.

His ordeal came to an end when he was reported missing after failing to come back from school - leading to the arrest of two men.

Nathan Eyre, 38, of Leeds, was jailed for eight years for grooming the boy and selling him to Raymond Hawthorne, the leader of a paedophile ring.

Hawthorne, 40, from Manchester, was jailed for seven years after admitting a range of offences.

Leeds Crown Court was told that the boy was subjected to a "blur" of sexual abuse.

'Quite absurd'

The judge criticised his lack of sentencing powers after hearing how the boy was groomed for sex.

Mr Justice Holland said the maximum seven-year sentence for people living off the earnings of prostitutes was "quite absurd".

He sentenced Eyre to just five years because he had to take into account the guilty plea. Eyre was also given three years for conspiring with Hawthorne to sell the boy.

Leslie Loram, 50, of Rochdale - "one of Hawthorne's best customers" - was jailed for three and a half years after admitting two serious sexual offences and one of indecent assault on the 14-year-old boy.

Neil Davey QC, for the prosecution, told the court the young victim "serviced so many clients in so many parts of the country and in so many different ways it became impossible for him to remember how many men he had serviced or in what circumstances."

Text message

One of Hawthorne's "customers" was found guilty of conspiring with him to commit indecent assault on the 14-year-old.

The jury heard Hawthorne had sent Barry Carman a text message saying he had a 14-year-old boy who was the "cutest" he had ever had.

The court was told Carman, 56, from Regent Street, Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, sent a text message back saying: "When is he working?"

Carman is due to be sentenced at a date to be fixed

Another client, David Riley, also 56, of Eccles, Manchester, pleaded guilty to indecent assault and was given a two and a half year sentence.

A further defendant, Eric Groves, 44, of Shifnal, Shropshire, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit indecent assault at a previous hearing and is due to be sentenced at Manchester Crown Court at a date to be fixed.

After the hearing, Det Insp Paul Jeffrey, of the Leeds child and public protection unit, said he was still "stunned" about what the men had done.

He said officers became increasingly concerned when it transpired a much larger group of men were involved, living across the country in Lancashire, Bedfordshire, Merseyside, Shropshire and Leicestershire.

Mr Jeffrey explained that Eyre "sold" the boy to Hawthorne at a fast food restaurant on the M606 roundabout in Bradford.

"I remain stunned and in a state of disbelief about how these people view children," Mr Jeffrey continued.

"They see nothing wrong with buying and selling children for sexual gratification."