They Stole My Innocence Read online

  Something about him made me trust him. He had our welfare at heart, of that I was convinced.

  ‘Tell me what it was like for you when you went back, Madeleine. You were that much older, more aware of what was taking place in the home. In one of your statements you told the police officers that Colin Tilbrook continued to assault not just you but also other children, and that certain members of the staff did so as well. And not only that, there were visitors to the home. Men who came for one purpose only. One of them, you say, was a well-known celebrity and another, who has already been convicted for his crimes, acted as Father Christmas. You said, too, that beneath the home there was a maze of rooms where orgies took place. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And I forced my mind back to that time.

  As that carousel of images and emotions spun in my head, so the words of what happened spilt out.

  When I had crossed the threshold of the home on my return, my body had shaken. I watched my mother walk away until the sea mist’s shadows swallowed her. I wanted her to look back, run to me and give me one last hug, but I knew she wouldn’t, for I would have seen her tears.

  A hand fell on my shoulder. One with black hairs sprouting on the fingers, reminding me of a spider. ‘Welcome home, Madeleine,’ he said.

  This time I knew what lay in store for me in that dark, silent place. I had never experienced terror before. Fear, yes, stomach-clenching fear, but not terror. There was no rational thought in my head, just instinct, and that instinct was telling me to run. But my body did not respond. I was frozen to the spot. Through the fog of my fear I knew that there was no place to run to.

  The hand lifted and the man gave me a tight smile, one that both mocked and frightened me, then told a warden to take me to the dormitory. The only person I wanted to see was Frances and there I stood, by the bed she had slept in.

  ‘She’s not here any longer,’ said the warden, who had escorted me.

  ‘But she isn’t sixteen yet,’ I blurted out. Frances had told me there was no chance that she would be allowed to leave before then.

  ‘She’s been sent away. Got herself in trouble. But she’ll be back, never worry.’

  But I did worry. Without her I felt I had no protection.

  I was sure that Colin Tilbrook would send for me that night; that a boy would walk into the lounge and say I was wanted.

  But I was wrong, it was not him who sent for me.

  There were others, I was to learn, who shared his interests.

  They came for me while I was drifting off to sleep, two female wardens, with the sour stench of alcohol on their breath. ‘Out you get,’ they said, pulling the sheets off me.

  Surely they’re not going to make me stand in the corridor on my first night, I thought. I felt the urge to pee and a tiny trickle leaked out. ‘Please don’t let them see it,’ I prayed.

  ‘How old are you now, Madeleine?’ one asked

  ‘Seven, miss.’

  ‘I see your stay with your family hasn’t made you forget your manners,’ said the other, then broke out in giggles. ‘Oh, don’t be scared! We’re not going to punish you. You haven’t done anything wrong, have you?’

  ‘No, miss.’ A tiny bit of confidence came to me. I knew they had been drinking and were in a good humour, so whatever they wanted with me wasn’t going to be bad, was it?

  It was.

  They took me to a room and all I can remember of it was that it had high, arched windows. ‘Now,’ said the younger of the two, ‘let’s get Madeleine something to drink. Make her feel as good as we do.’

  A glass was handed to me and my fingers wrapped round it.

  ‘Say cheers, Madeleine,’ they chorused, as they lifted their glasses and swallowed the contents.

  ‘In one, dear.’ A finger went under the glass and pushed it up to my mouth. A face loomed near mine, so close I could see the pores in her flushed cheeks. ‘I expect you like playing games, Madeleine. Doctors and nurses, perhaps?’

  ‘You show me yours if I show you mine,’ said her friend and, as she spoke, the room tilted and my legs turned to jelly.

  Arms held me, then pushed me down on a couch. A wet mouth covered mine, sticky and rubbery, and I tried vainly to turn my head away. Then her friend ran her hands down my body. ‘A nice little chicken, all right,’ she said.

  My nightdress was lifted. Sharp-nailed fingers touched me between my legs. My head was pulled to their breasts, clothes slithered off and my hands were forced to stroke their bodies. Another drink was given. And, as the last drop was swallowed, the time there drifted away.

  My head was dragged down again, my lips forced to touch places that I didn’t want to touch. All the time I fought nausea. ‘We’d better get her back to the dormitory,’ I heard a voice say, through the mist.

  And, at last, my ordeal was over.

  I was half carried, half dragged along those dark corridors by the two wardens, who were still giggling at my efforts to walk. I don’t know how long they had kept me in that room. I remember that I was dazed, confused and frightened.

  In the morning I couldn’t open my eyes – the lids seemed to be stuck together. My mouth was dry, and my head ached so much it was as though it was splitting in two.

  Had that evening happened? Had I been taken out of bed? Had female hands done those acts? Or was it another of my nightmares? An endless blur of pictures, all bad, spun in my head.

  But I knew that it had all been real.

  At school all I wanted to do was sleep. I was so tired that I felt my eyes closing, which the teacher took to be another sign of my lack of interest in lessons, and voiced her recriminations loudly. No matter how angry she became, it made no difference. The letters made even less sense, and simple arithmetic was beyond me. When I looked at her I could see her mouth moving but the sounds stopped forming words.

  Maybe if I had lived at home she might have asked if I’d had a late night, been allowed to watch too much television, perhaps. Questions I had heard her ask other children. It was unlikely, though, that it entered her head that I might have been deprived of sleep. After all, I lived in a children’s home, where we were strictly supervised. And if she had asked me, would I have been believed if I had talked?

  There were many nights when sleep was denied us. Children in the home aped the adults’ tyrannical behaviour. Some teenage boys forced sex on girls, and others on younger boys. Some girls assaulted younger ones. It was long after the night when the wardens had taken me to the room with arched windows that I was woken by a girl who had crawled into bed with me. ‘I saw you go with them,’ she said as, pushing her nightdress up, she climbed on top of me. In a parody of the sex act she bounced up and down on my smaller body, her face pressed against mine, making it impossible for me to cry out. But, in any case, I was too frightened to scream. What good would it have done me?

  The wardens must have been aware of what went on. They had little listening devices fixed to the walls that told them of any talking. This was clearly not something they had any interest in putting a stop to. The wardens who would come into the room might be the same ones who had corrupted the ten-year-old girl who was abusing me. After she left me, I lay there, paralysed.

  Was there no safe place left? No one I could trust?

  At that age I didn’t understand everything that was happening. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know why. Only that it made me feel unclean.

  A few days later the girl came up to me and offered me some sweets. I wanted to knock them out of her hand, to hit her as I had hit the school bullies. But her face wore an expression that I can only describe as hopeful. She hoped I would be her friend. I dipped my fingers into the bag, pulled out a toffee and popped it into my mouth. We were just two children making a tentative effort to be normal. One was already an abuser, the other her victim.

  ‘What happened to her, do you know?’ Graham Power asked.

  ‘She ended up working at the home. Left for a short time and sudden
ly she was back. There was no sign then of the girl who had tried to befriend me with sweets. She wasn’t the only one, either. There was a boy who had been brutalised – I gave the police his name. And he, in turn, abused children as soon as he had a bit of authority. So the cycle just kept repeating itself.’

  I went on to talk about Colin Tilbrook. He was dead, but lived on in my nightmares. ‘He took his pick of the girls,’ I told Graham Power. ‘Chose which one he was going to favour that night.’

  ‘Can you clarify for me what you remember? How you knew what was going on with the other children?’

  For a few seconds, I squeezed my eyes shut, conjuring up the image of that black-clad figure creeping into the dormitories. Whatever I had thought the screams and cries meant when I was five, at seven I knew what was happening. I might have been in bed, might even have fallen asleep, but I think there is something in us that sends a message saying, Danger. Even when we’re asleep we receive it.

  I would wake up knowing something was wrong. Keeping my breathing as even as I could, I would strain my eyes to see. And there he would be, that darkly clothed figure, holding a pillow.

  One of the policemen, who had interviewed me previously, had asked whether it might have been a nightmare.

  It was not.

  Neither was it a figment of my imagination.

  I saw him looking down at girls who, like me, pretended to be asleep. Of course, he knew which one he wanted but he enjoyed the game of putting fear into us. He took pleasure in watching little girls pretending they were unaware of him, as they prayed for him to pass them for someone else.

  ‘And to what use was the pillow put?’

  That question took me back to when I was a frightened seven-year-old, my stomach clenched, my hands damp, as, through half-closed eyes, I watched him. Watched his hand, which had run over my body so often, pull back the bedclothes before he slid into a child’s narrow bed. Then a girl trying to get away, her limbs thrashing, his hands pushing her back, her mouth opening to scream, and the pillow pressing down on her pleading face.

  I had watched those pointless struggles, seen his head bending close to her ear, but although I couldn’t hear what was said, it wasn’t long before I learnt what he whispered: unless she kept still he would hold that pillow over her face until she turned blue. And should she think that the moment he released it she could scream, well, he would put it back again. For longer. Did she understand?

  She did and, hearing those words, lay still. Not another murmur of protest or muffled cry left her. The only sound we heard was his thrashing, his grunts, until the loudest one told us he had finished. Then, when he left her, she let small choking, mewing sobs escape her.

  All of that I told Graham Power as briefly as I could.

  I didn’t tell him that I’d had no need to search deeply among my forty-year-old memories to bring out that picture. I had only to think of the nightmare that haunts me. The shadowy figure still drifts through it. And, as I wake, he is still there in the shadows and the sounds of little girls’ sobs are in my ears.

  ‘Fear is how we were governed and how we were controlled,’ I told Graham Power, as I described, as best I could, just how we were infused with it.

  It had started with the warden’s bed inspection. Those women’s noses would almost quiver as they detected the faint whiff of urine where a terrified child had wet herself. Sheets were pulled off, curses uttered, and a small figure, with tears shining on her jaw and at the corners of her mouth, would gather up her bedding and stagger to the laundry.

  There were a thousand means of taking away our dignity. We were made to wait for our food until the numbers of our section were called. Silence was inflicted upon us. Our few personal possessions were taken. Food was withheld as a punishment, and visitors were sent away. To name just a few.

  That day, I told Graham Power what had happened in the home. The times I had run away. The detention rooms. The men who came. The boys who were taken out to the bunker. And, last, I told him about the swimming-pool.

  There were other things I could have told him, but I didn’t have time. I didn’t know when I left that that was the only time I would talk to him. Neither he nor I were aware of the events conspiring against him and us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  That night, after I’d talked to Graham Power, I sat deep in thought and painful memories. The smug, hard faces of the wardens swam in front of me. Oh, how I hoped there would be retribution for their crimes. Then, perhaps, we could find some peace.

  My mind slipped back to the time I had spent with my mother and Frank. If only I had remained with them, how different my life would have been. My mother had been rehoused. This place, she was told, was suitable for children. I didn’t know what instruction the authorities gave her then, but I’m sure it was that she should look after herself and her two children. That for me to be allowed to remain with her she must keep her home clean, cook nourishing meals and cut down on smoking and drinking, especially the latter.

  The day I walked away from Haut de la Garenne again, I had no idea that my mother’s actions would be scrutinised. I only knew that I was escaping.

  ‘I’ll never come back here,’ I said to myself as, once again, I picked up my suitcase and, with my mother, walked away from the bleak, grey building.

  Our new home was on what is known in Jersey as a housing estate and, in Britain, a council one: rows of grey houses, surrounded by broken bicycles, discarded prams and beaten-up old cars, rather than neat hedges and leafy trees. The flat, deemed suitable for children, was in ‘the alcoholic block’, as Le Geyt Flats was nicknamed.

  At the beginning I was just happy to be back with my family and, an extra bonus, that I was to attend the same school as I had before. It was just round the corner from where we were living. I didn’t think that the children would have forgotten me after a year. And I had left with a reputation for being handy with my fists, which would, I hoped, ensure that I wasn’t bullied again.

  It took a few weeks for the euphoria to fade.

  My mother had changed. A life of unfulfilled dreams had taken their toll. She had finally reached the age when, instead of dreaming of a bright future, she looked back on her sad memories. Her wide smile had disappeared, as had her promises of a better life. When I came home from school there was no smell of cooking, and the flat didn’t look as though she’d cleaned it. There was seldom any pretence that it was just a weekend celebration, when she picked up the bottle. The swallowing of its contents was a joyless drowning of reality.

  First, there was a gasp of satisfaction as the first glug slipped down her throat, then bursts of laughter that quickly became shrill. I would hear another bottle being opened and, with a knot in my stomach, wait for what must follow. Recriminations, tears, the unsteady walk to bed, shouts and curses, then deep snores.

  In the year I had been away, Frank, who had earlier opened bottles of beer good-naturedly and brought me fizzy drinks, had lost his energy and aged. With one wage coming in and a penchant for both alcohol and cigarettes, something had had to give: food and heating. In the tin-roofed house, we had been either too hot or too cold, but it had had a garden, which had provided us with steady crops of vegetables. To make matters worse, the barns where the cows had been milked had been moved so I could no longer collect milk for us.

  Even in those shabby bedsitters my mother had taken care to keep the places clean. Maybe it was the realisation that this was where she had ended up that had wiped out the last of her optimism. Nappies were piled in the bucket, my little brother’s face was forever grimy and the aroma of casseroles and roast chicken was mainly absent.

  People knocked on the door to see if they could borrow money or a cigarette – ‘I’m desperate for a fag,’ I would hear a voice slur.

  I overheard Frank saying to my mother that maybe they’d better be more careful. ‘Don’t want those do-gooders knocking on the door and finding you still in bed, do we?’ he said.

  That w
eekend, with Frank’s help, there was a flurry of activity. Floors were mopped, windows cleaned, washing done and food cooked. Makeup was once more on my mother’s face and the drink was limited to just a couple of beers.

  ‘I like a drink,’ my mother told me, as though this was a secret to which I was finally privy, ‘but I don’t want to end up like those other women, do I?’ She was referring to a couple who could be heard carousing from one end of the street to the other, as they made their unsteady way home from the pub.

  For a week after that, things seemed to have returned to normal. Frank’s cheerful whistle could be heard once more. The kitchen smelt fragrant, my little brother was clean, the social workers had been, then left with satisfied smiles, and my mother had not been drinking too much.

  It was just when I thought our lives had taken a turn for the better that my uncle Eugene came to stay and everything changed again. He arrived when we were sitting together, watching television. A knock at the door and a blurry voice announced his arrival. In he staggered, a bottle in one hand and a bag of fish and chips in the other. A big, blustery man, thick in the chest, muscled in the arms, with a drunk’s insincere smile and bloodshot eyes. Needed somewhere to stay for just a few days, he said.

  He could sleep in the baby’s room. My mother and Frank would take him in with them. It was only a small single bed in a room not much bigger than a cupboard, but it would have to do.

  That was the first time, and when Uncle Eugene left, Frank found his war medals had been stolen. He came back a few weeks later. I had watched him approaching the flat from my window and seen the wide-legged gait that told me he was already intoxicated. Again, a bottle of whisky was produced, glasses raised and I was sent to bed. This time, instead of lying in bed listening to their voices growing slurred, I heard Frank getting angry and Uncle Eugene shouting that he had been insulted. He was no thief! How dare Frank say he was? I heard my mother trying to calm them both down.

  I crept out of bed and, through my door, saw both men lurch to their feet. A fleshy fist sank into Frank’s stomach before he had time to put up his fists. My mother screamed, furniture was smashed and the baby howled in fright.