They Stole My Innocence Read online

  Dismally, we trooped behind her as she led the way to the main entrance hall. ‘I want the whole of this, and the corridor you were racing along, scrubbed. I think, today, you can forget about using the machine,’ she said, referring to the large metal contraption that was normally used by the boys. ‘It’s far too heavy for you, so you’ll have to do it by hand. There are the brushes you can use,’ she said, pointing to several scrubbing brushes neatly laid out beside a stack of pails. The sight of them filled me with rage. She had decided that we would spend the day inside before she had seen us.

  Intuitively, I knew there was more to come and any self-restraint I had disappeared. I was unable to stop myself showing the resentment I felt and glared at her.

  ‘Do you have a problem, Madeleine?’

  ‘No, miss,’ I answered, in the most dutiful tone I could muster.

  ‘Good! Now, how long do you think it will take you girls to complete this task?’

  ‘Don’t know, miss,’ was the only answer we could give. Looking at the size of the brushes, which were just big enough for both our hands to grasp and to ensure that the work would take several hours, it was not a question we could answer.

  Seeing she was waiting for one of us to speak I replied hopefully, ‘By lunchtime, miss.’

  ‘Well, I do hope so, Madeleine. Your mother is coming then. She rang this morning. It’s such a long walk from the bus stop and, with her being asthmatic, well, I believe she finds it very tiring. So it would be a shame if, because of your bad behaviour, she has to be turned away.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’ Tears pricked the back of my eyes. She wasn’t going to let me see my mother, however quickly we worked. Of that I was certain.

  ‘Well, you’d better make a start, Madeleine, hadn’t you? No time to waste. I’ll be around to inspect your work. In the meantime, I trust you not to talk. Utter silence makes work go faster and it’s good for the soul as well.’

  There was nothing we could do except walk to the kitchen, fill up our buckets, one with warm soapy water, another for rinsing, and, arms straining under the weight, carry them back to where we were to start scrubbing.

  With the picture of my mother struggling up the hill in just a couple of hours, I clenched my teeth and moved the brush up and down as fast as I could. The others, maybe ashamed that they had not owned up to being equally as guilty as I was, were also putting in serious effort. If we finished by lunchtime perhaps they’d be able to go outside after all.

  As none of us had a watch, I don’t know how long it took to clean the hall – I think about an hour. Knowing she would be looking for any excuse to detain us, I inspected it carefully, searching for the tiniest speck of dirt, but it appeared that every bit was now spotless.

  When we started on the corridor we each took a section. My hands ached with holding the brush, as did my arms, legs and back, and my face was sticky with perspiration, but nothing was going to make me slow down. As I brushed a strand of hair away from my hot cheeks a shadow fell over me. I knew, without lifting my head, that it was Morag Jordan.

  I kept on rhythmically moving the brush, my eyes staring at the grey granite floor, glistening with soapy water, willing her to go away, which clearly she had no intention of doing.

  ‘Well, now, haven’t you been working hard, Madeleine?’ she said, in a voice too sweet to trust. ‘You’ve almost finished. You really want to see your mother, don’t you?’

  I nodded and gave her, against my pride, a pleading look. Oh, please, just say I’ve done enough and let me go, I begged silently.

  I should have known that was never going to be her intention.

  She moved fast, giving me no chance to hold on to the bucket. I saw her foot rise and heard the thump, as she kicked it over, and I saw the stream of dirty water running across the section I had just finished. I looked up then to meet those cold pale blue eyes. ‘Careless girl, aren’t you, Madeleine? Well, you’ll just have to mop it up with this,’ and she threw down a sponge. ‘It shouldn’t take you too long. But, I’m sorry to say, too long for you to see your mother. I’ll just have to explain to her that, even though you knew she was coming, you still acted badly enough for me not to allow you visitors. She’ll understand that we can’t reward bad behaviour, won’t she? Just think, Madeleine, she’s on the bus now. Soon she’ll be getting off and walking up the hill. And it’s a very hot day. Such a shame she’ll have had a wasted journey.’

  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that my friends were keeping their heads down and continued to scrub. They knew better than to offer to help me. I can’t say I blamed them. If they’d appeared to be taking my side it would not have lessened my punishment, only increased theirs.

  ‘Well, Madeleine, are you just going to look at that dirty water or are you going to clean it up?’

  Heat suffused my body as a fierce rage shot through it. A little voice inside me was saying, ‘Just do it, Madeleine. Say nothing and clean it up. Don’t rile her. She wants you to.’

  Another voice, louder than the first, shouted, ‘Tell the bitch to get lost.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not with that sponge. You knocked it over, miss, not me.’

  A triumphant smile lit her face and I knew that burst of temper was exactly what she’d wanted. If I could have, I would have swallowed those words back down, apologised and begged her to let me see my mother. But it was too late for that.

  ‘Rude, insolent and a liar as well,’ she said. ‘You leave me no other option, Madeleine, than to put you in the cells. A spell down there will soon cool that temper of yours. It’ll make you think about the consequences of being disrespectful. Now, stand up. Your friends can clean up your mess.’

  I couldn’t. The words ‘cells’ had sent fear crawling up my spine and my brain was having trouble telling my limbs to move.

  She laughed, reached down, entwined her fingers in my hair and yanked it so hard that she pulled me on to my toes. The pain shooting across my scalp was almost unbearable, I thought she was going to pull it out by the roots and then the pressure released. Her back-up had arrived. Anthony Jordan and another female warden positioned themselves on either side of me.

  ‘We’re going to take this troublesome miss down to the cells.’

  My arms were caught and I was half carried, half dragged along the corridors to a flight of steep stairs, cunningly concealed behind the cupboards where we stacked our outdoor shoes.

  ‘Down you go,’ she said and, knowing she was quite capable of pushing me, I did as I was told. Again my arms were taken in a hard grip. What did they think I could do against them?

  It was cold and dark down there. I heard a key turning in a lock, a door opening, and I was propelled into a small room, with the three adults following me. The space was almost too small to contain us all and I could feel their breath on my face.

  ‘Get her clothes off,’ Morag instructed. ‘This one needs to learn a little humility.’

  The female warden moved to lift my dress.

  ‘No, let him,’ said Morag, nodding towards Anthony.

  With a knowing smirk, he bent down and took hold of my hem. ‘Hold her arms up,’ he said to Morag, and my dress was pulled over my head in one slick movement. I was left standing in my vest and knickers.

  ‘I think the rest better come off. What do you think?’ she asked him.

  ‘Oh, I think so. This one’s trouble, all right.’

  I forgot my pride then, forgot I’d made a pact with myself never to beg, never to cry in front of those bullies. The shame of a little girl, not quite eleven, drove that away. Tears ran down my face as I begged her not to do it. Words like ‘Please, I’ll be good, I promise,’ came out of my mouth, but none of them were to any avail.

  ‘You should have thought of that before, Madeleine.’

  And, to add to my humiliation, their faces showed gloating satisfaction.

  It was she who yanked my knickers down, but not before she had pulled them up as high as she could so that they cut into
me. It was he who pulled my cotton vest over my head and I felt his fingers running across the back of my neck.

  ‘Here’s a blanket,’ she said, throwing it at me. Then, gathering up my clothes, they left me in that small, cold room, locking the door behind them.

  * * *

  I was there for more than forty-eight hours.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  In July the headlines of every newspaper were about the capture of Edward Paisnel, the man I had known as Uncle Ted, the so-called ‘Beast of Jersey’. On street corners, in pubs and shops, small groups of people gathered to whisper gory details about the man who had terrorised the island for over a decade. He was the monster of nightmares, a creature wearing iron-studded wristlets and a hideous rubber mask. A mask which hid a face that, when finally uncovered, was almost as terrifying as the artificial one.

  Unbelievably, he had crept undetected into people’s houses for eleven years. Initially he attacked only women, but as his confidence and depraved appetites grew, he started abducting children. Threatening to cut his victim’s throat if they screamed, he led them into the woods and fields where he abused, raped and sodomised them. After he had finished with the children, almost as though he was mocking the authorities, he led them back to their homes. In some cases he told them to go to sleep before he disappeared into the darkness.

  It seemed impossible that out of a population of less than ninety thousand, on an island measuring only seven miles by twelve, no one on Jersey guessed his identity.

  During his horrendous reign, I doubt there was one family not terrified of the man whom no one had managed to describe sufficiently well for the police to compile an identikit picture.

  The close-knit community of Jersey, who, until the man in the mask arrived, had had no reason to doubt their neighbours, now locked and bolted their doors and kept their children close by. There must have been suspicious glances, not just at strangers but at anyone whose lifestyle was slightly unusual or even solitary but, at first, it must have been unthinkable that such a monster was an islander. With the first three attacks, all on women, taking place in November, though, when the last of the holiday-makers had left, the growing fear that a local man was responsible spread across the island.

  After those three attacks, there were no more for at least a year. People began to think the man had left Jersey, driven out by his notoriety. ‘Must have been an outsider,’ they said.

  But early in 1960, he crawled through a downstairs window, climbed a flight of stairs and abused a ten-year-old girl. He had planned the attack carefully, luring the father away from the house. He was gone for just a short time, but that was all it took.

  ‘It wasn’t the same man,’ the police said, as the words ‘serial rapist’ spread, with outrage and fear, around the community. ‘The other victims were adults. This must be an isolated case.’ A statement they had to retract.

  The next victim was a twelve-year-old boy and the one after that a young woman. Any doubt that only one man was behind the atrocities disappeared when all three victims described the mask he had worn.

  The pressure was on for Jersey’s police force, and experts from Scotland Yard were brought in. A fisherman, Alphonse Le Gastelois, was arrested and released without charge but had to flee the island. People wanted blood and, unable to lay hands on him, they burnt down his home.

  Then the monster struck again and again.

  It was nearly eleven years after the first offence that he was caught, not by brilliant police work but because he jumped a red light and, seeing the police car behind him, tried to outrun it. This time there was no doubt the police had the right man. The items found in his car, a rubber mask and a pair of studded wristlets, were evidence enough. As was his coat: its shoulders were embedded with sharp nails to pierce the hand of anyone who tried to either fight or apprehend him.

  There were celebrations when people heard the news. The feared prowler was going to be charged on thirteen counts. But, as the television newcaster said, who knew how many had never reported being dragged from their beds and molested?

  When first I heard about the monster’s capture, I was sitting on the couch, between Frank and my mother, watching the news on our small black and white television. A young man, microphone in hand, was telling viewers about the car chase that had resulted in the capture of the most feared man on the island. His voice rose as he painted the picture of two determined police officers giving chase along the coast road and how they had finally apprehended the Beast of Jersey, whom the islanders had come to believe was invincible.

  Frank and my mother were watching so intently that they were oblivious to the fact that I was staring at the screen and listening to every word. As his name, Edward Paisnel, was given and his picture flashed up, I froze. I recognised him. Gripping my mother’s hand, I squealed.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter, Madeleine?’ my mother asked.

  ‘I know him – that’s Uncle Ted!’ I exclaimed, almost stuttering in my haste to get the words out.

  My mother paled. ‘What are you saying? How could you know a man like that?’

  ‘He comes to the home,’ I said. ‘His name’s Edward, but we were told to call him Uncle Ted.’

  Frank got up and switched off the television, then turned and looked me in the eyes. ‘He came to Haut de la Garenne, Madeleine? Why? What was he doing there?’

  ‘He was our Santa Claus.’

  Silence fell and, nervous, I tried to fill it. ‘He’s often in the home. I don’t like him. He’s so ugly and he stares. But he and Mr Tilbrook are friends. So I suppose he comes to visit him,’ I babbled, hoping they would start talking about something else.

  ‘You mean he’s been visiting that place ever since you’ve been in there?’ asked my mother, looking a bit sick. ‘Did he ever touch you? You know – there?’ she asked, pointing towards my crotch in case I hadn’t understood what she meant.

  I felt like screaming, ‘Why is that so important? You know others have. Why would it be any worse if it was him?’ But even then I understood that when my mother had a problem she couldn’t deal with she pushed it so far to the back of her mind that it ceased to exist.

  ‘No,’ I said instead. ‘I only saw him when he was dressed as Santa Claus. It was when I was smaller. He sat me on his knee and asked if I’d been a good girl and what I wanted for Christmas. Because I knew what his face really looked like, I was just pleased that the fluffy beard he’d stuck on hid most of it. But I could see his eyes and they scared me. I just wanted to get away from him.’

  ‘But you’re sure he never hurt you? Never did anything bad to you? Madeleine, this is serious,’ said Frank.

  I felt cross. I didn’t want to be reminded of the time when I’d told them what happened in the home, or hear their excuses as to why they had done nothing about it. And, even more importantly, have them say that they didn’t believe me. Because I was sure that they hadn’t allowed themselves to accept what I’d told them. Otherwise why had they not acted? My mother had said they would take me away from her permanently if she did, but they had done that anyhow, hadn’t they?

  All the old hurt and my disappointment in my mother and Frank rose in me. If they weren’t going to protect me, who else would? Why be upset about this new revelation? But all I said was ‘No, I told you. Not me, but I heard he hurt some of the boys.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ my mother exclaimed. ‘I just can’t believe he was allowed in there. Not after what’s come out about that monster.’

  ‘What?’ I asked, wondering if he’d done anything worse than I had already seen, only to be told it was not suitable for children’s ears. That made me more determined to find out.

  Over the next couple of weeks, gleaning as much information from other children as I could and eavesdropping, I put together the shocking truth of what kind of man Uncle Ted had been. Our Santa Claus was a prolific paedophile or, in the words of the children who told me, ‘a dirty old man who messed about with boys and girls and was n
asty to women as well’.

  Girls, their eyes wide with ghoulish excitement, told me that he had worshipped the devil. And a boy, who wanted to outdo them, described how the police had found the remains of human sacrifices on an altar in his basement. Another said there had been a whole coven of witches taking their clothes off and dancing in the moonlight before they made the sacrifices. Each story was embellished with more and more grisly details. To children this was far more exciting than anything they were allowed to read between the covers of a book.

  I found out later that the gossip about human sacrifices was not true. What was true, though, was that when the police raided his home they found a room in the basement with a satanic altar. Although no human remains were found in the garden, cats that had been tortured were found hanging, dead, from the trees.

  The following Saturday I was allowed to visit my family again. The capture of Uncle Ted had made the wardens treat us more carefully. In fact, during the brief time when the police were questioning some of the older children about him, our ‘carers’ were almost lax in their vigilance and cruelty.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Maybe it was to divert me from talking about Uncle Ted, or perhaps to stop herself picturing me sitting on the Beast of Jersey’s knee, that my mother asked, for the first time, about my Christmases. For reasons understood only by the man who made the rules, the season of goodwill had to be spent at Haut de la Garenne. That was the rule, he had told my mother, when she had plucked up courage to ask.

  ‘Not many of the children in here have parents who want them home, so it wouldn’t be fair to them,’ was his only explanation, my mother told me.

  It made little sense as I was allowed to visit my mother on my birthday. It was not as though Colin Tilbrook cared whether any of the children got upset because one was allowed out on Christmas Day. It was doubtful that any of them would have minded. They had too many other things to deal with to give my going home much thought.

  More to the point, though, was that beneath the veneer of festivities, complete with Santa handing out presents, a huge tree and a turkey dinner; lurked greed and self-interest. Haut de la Garenne’s Christmas was far from happy.