The Girl Nobody Wants: A Shocking True Story of Child Abuse in Ireland (16 page)

I looked around, then I left the barn and I headed back to the house. But on the way back, one of the boys came up behind me and he shouted at me, making me jump. ‘You’re stupid’, he said. ‘No, I’m not.’ ‘You come from a nuns’ home and you’re stupid.’ I felt like crying, but instead I walked away and I went back into the house. The woman came over to me and she gave me my dinner. ‘It’s only me and my children’, she said. ‘I have no husband, he’s dead, so tomorrow I have to go to work and the children will look after you and feed you.’ All the children soon came back into the house and after dinner we played around for a while and then we all went to bed. I lay down on the bed and thought to myself that this was not that bad and then I fell to sleep.

The next morning, I got up and I went into the living room, but no one was around; so I went outside, it was very quiet and I could not see anyone. I walked around for a while, then I went into the barn and one of the woman’s sons was standing next to the tractor. It was dark in the barn and, as I stood at the entrance, I could see the boy looking over at me, then he walked over to the barn door and closed it, locking himself and me inside. ‘I want to go outside’, I told him. ‘Shut up. You can’t’, he said. ‘I will tell your mum’, I said. ‘No, you won’t, she’s gone to work. Now get on the floor.’ ‘What?’ ‘Get on the floor.’ ‘Why should I?’

Then he pushed me hard into my chest, ‘Stop it’, I said, then he hit me into my face with his fist and I started to cry. ‘Kneel down on the hay’, he said. I did what he said as I didn’t want to get hit in the face again, and then he stood in front of me. He looked down at me and he began to undo his trousers. I looked up at him and he had no pants on. ‘Touch it’, he said. ‘No.’ ‘Do it or I will kill you and feed you to the pigs. I’ve done that before you know.’ I tried to get up, but he grabbed me by my shoulders and he pushed me back down, then he grabbed one of my hands and put it on his dick. I didn’t want to touch it and I tried to pull away, but he pulled my arm even harder and then he moved my hand along his dick, moving my hand up and down it until it went hard. Then it made a mess all over me. ‘Now get up and get out, and if you tell anyone, I will kill you and feed you to the pigs.’ I got up, he walked over and opened the barn doors and I ran outside and back up to the house. When I got back, I went straight into the bedroom and I never told anyone, not even his mum about what he had done to me.

The next day, I tried to stay away from him, but eventually he came looking for me; and when he found me, he grabbed me by my neck and then he forced me back into the barn again. I was frightened and I began to shake at the thought of what he might do to me, then he pushed me into the corner of the barn and he told me to take my clothes off and to lay down on the floor; but I said ‘No, I won’t.’ ‘Do it or I will kill you’, he said. I had no choice, I started to cry and then I lay down on the hay next to the tractor.

He walked over to me and he started to touch me, he moved his hands all over my body, moving his hand over my clothes and around the top part of my legs, then he made me take all my clothes off and open my legs in front of him. I felt cold and sick and I was shaking with fright, but it did not bother him and he began rubbing his hands all over my body. I started to cry because of what he was doing to me, but he kept touching me, while at the same time telling me to be quiet. Then he stood up, undid his trousers and wanked himself off in front of me, and he kept doing it until he had finished and I had to lie there, covered in his mess. I was too scared to move an inch until he said I could, and then he told me to get dressed and to go play with his brothers and sisters. I got up, but I felt sick and I wanted to go home; but I knew no one could help me, so I just walked away and I said nothing to anyone.

Every day, I would try to hide from the boy, but he would still come looking for me and, when he found me, he would do the same things to me. Day after day, it went on for the whole of the holiday and all of the time I was too afraid to tell his mum, just in case he killed me and fed me to the pigs. He said that the pigs would eat every bit of my body and my hair and no one would ever know what happened to me. All I wanted was to go home and eventually one of the nuns came back to pick me up. I knew it wasn’t worth telling her about what had happened because she would just hit me for telling lies, so I said nothing and I went home with her in the car.

However, about a week later, I told my sister Karen about what had happened to me while on holiday and she went and told Sister Ann. I was frightened that Sister Ann was going to beat me to death. But instead, she asked me about what had happened to me, and she made me tell her every single thing that the boy had done to me; making me repeat it to her again and again, until I got so upset that I couldn’t tell her anymore.

Then she left it at that and I thought no more of it until later in the year, when the nuns decided to send me back to the same family again, for another holiday with them. And the same things happened to me all over again, with the boy making me touch him and do things to him that made me feel sick; and at the end of the holiday, I left the farm saying nothing to no one. And the following year, the nuns sent me off to them again, but this time it was for the whole of the six-week summer holidays and by the end of the holiday I felt like I wanted to die. The boy had abused me every day for six weeks and sometimes he had done things to me that still upset me today. He treated me as if I was nothing, worthless, and as if I had no feelings at all; the boy treated the animals on the farm better than he treated me, and all the time his mother never once asked me if I was ok. Her son was happy, and what he was doing to me was keeping him out of her way for hours, so she was happy too.

When Sister Ann came to pick me up, she could tell that I was unhappy and that something had happened to me, but she said nothing to the woman or me. On the way home, she looked at me and she promised me that I would never have to go back to the family again and that made me happy. Later that evening, one of the staff came to my room and told me that one of the nuns had spoken to the woman and her son over the phone, and they all knew about the abuse I had suffered, and now that would be the end of it; then I realised they had known all along.

A year passed and I forgot all about the boy and the things he had done to me. I was nine now and Simon was seven. The summer holiday had started again and the nuns began to send all the children off on their holidays, and they split Simon and me up again, sending Simon away with my sisters to a place by the sea and then it was my turn. Sister Ann told me to get in the car; she said that I was going back to the same family that I went to last year and the year before that.

I could not believe it and I went crazy. I told her that I could not go back to them anymore, but she said that she had no other place or people that she could send me to and I had to go. I began shouting at her, telling her that she had promised me that I would never have to go back there again. But she shouted back at me and then she pulled me over to the car, ‘You’re going and that’s that’, she said. I was frantic and I began shaking from the shock of the thought of going back, she opened the car door and she pushed me inside, locking the door so that I couldn’t get out. Then she stood against the car with her back against the window; she was breathing heavily from struggling with me, with her body moving up and down until she got her breath back.

After a few seconds, she moved around to the other side of the car and she got in the front seat. ‘What’s your problem’, she shouted. ‘I hate them. Don’t you remember?’ I said. Then she turned to me and said, ‘You should have been good the first time you were at the house and none of this would have happened.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t have touched the boys.’ ‘I didn’t’, they did it to me. The big boy touched me. He touched me bad, all over my body.’ She looked at me in shocked amazement, and for a moment I thought she was going to let me out of the car, but then she said, ‘You’re still going anyway’ and then she drove off. I sat back in the seat and I stayed quiet. I knew that nothing would stop her from taking me to the house, so I just sat back and waited for my fate.

When we arrived, Sister Ann got out of the car first and then she walked around and opened the car door for me, as if I was royalty. I got out and I looked up at her and she said sorry, and we both looked over at the house. ‘Go on then’, she said. But, instead of shouting at me, she spoke to me in a soft and gentle voice, and as I walked towards the house, the oldest son, the boy who had been abusing me for the last few years, walked out of the barn and towards me, with the woman, his mum, following close behind him. As they approached us, the boy said, ‘I’m going shooting in the fields and you’re coming with me.’ Sister Ann gently pushed me towards him and said, ‘That’s a good idea. Go with him, it will be fun.’ I looked at him and he had a shotgun slung across one of his arms. I had no choice and I followed him off into the fields, leaving Sister Ann talking to the woman.

The boy walked into the middle of the biggest field on the farm, with me following behind him, and then he stopped, turned around and faced me. The grass in the field was tall and thick and he had made sure that no one could see us. Then he looked at me and said, ‘You told them, didn’t you?’ and then he pointed the gun at me and again he said, ‘You told them what I’ve done to you.’ I took a step back, I brushed my hands against the tall grass to make myself some space and then I said, ‘No.’ ‘I’m going to shoot you and feed you to the pigs’, he said. ‘I’ve done it before and I know how to do it and no one will ever find you.’

He then poked me in the ribs with the shotgun and he told me to walk back towards the barn. I was shaking and I had no choice as I didn’t want to die, so I turned around and I slowly walked in front of him and I headed towards the barn. I looked around for help, but there was no one around; the nun and the woman had vanished. I continued towards the barn and, when we got to the barn, I walked inside and he closed the door behind us. ‘Lie down’, he said. ‘No, I won’t’, I said. ‘Lie down.’ ‘No, I won’t and I’m going to tell everyone what you’re doing to me’, I said.

He looked at me for a few moments and the moment felt like forever, then he pointed the shotgun towards my chest and pushed the barrels into my ribs. I stood still and stood my ground, then he pointed the shotgun down towards the ground and took a step back away from me and, without saying a word, he opened the barn door. I took a deep breath and stood up straight, and then I began to walk towards the barn door, thinking to myself that he was going to shoot me in the back. I kept walking, praying that he wasn’t going to shoot me and I managed to walk out of the barn without making eye contact with him.

And then I slowly walked away from the barn and up towards the house. I knew he was behind me, watching me from the barn door, but I never looked back; and with every step I took, it felt like the house was getting further and further away from me, but eventually I made it to the house and I went inside. To this day, I do believe that if I had not stopped him then, he would have had full sex with me and then he would have killed me and fed me to the pigs.

After that incident, he left me alone for the rest of the holiday and all I could do was sit and wait for one of the nuns to come and take me home; and after six weeks, one eventually did and she took me home, back to my brother and sisters. The nuns sent me back to the family one more time after that; I hated going and I was frightened at the thought of what the boy might do to me when I arrived at the farm. However, the boy never came near me or touched me again and I spent most of the time hiding out in the fields, as far away from him as possible, waiting for the time to go home. And I never went near the pigs, just in case he shot me in the back and then fed me to them.

CHAPTER 7

Getting Older

I was getting older now and for some reason Sister Ann began to show some interest in me; she still hit me every day, and pulling my hair and calling me names was the normal thing for her to do. But now that I was older, she would spend more time talking to me and she just couldn’t stop looking at me. And she would talk to me about things that I didn’t understand and I had no idea why she was being my friend, and I always felt strange and uncomfortable when she was around me.

Sometimes, she would rub her hands gently down my hair, showing me kindness and affection, and I felt sick when she touched me. But then a slap on the back of my head with a hairbrush would show me that she had not changed and everything was still the same between us. One day, I became ill and she seemed to be genuinely worried about me, then Simon became ill too, so the head nun took a look at us and she decided that we needed to go to the hospital. The nuns treated us as a burden to them and they hated having to take us to hospital.

When we arrived at the hospital, the doctors looked at us and they said that we had whooping cough and they said that we both had to spend a few weeks in the hospital. Well, it was the best time of our lives; we both had to be isolated from all the other children in the hospital and we had an entire ward all to ourselves. It was great being in hospital and we spent hours every day jumping all over the beds. We swung on the curtains and Simon would swing from one bed to another, screaming as he held on for his life, as he pretended to be Tarzan of the jungle. The nurses even allowed us to play with some of the instruments they left lying around the ward and it kept us occupied for most of the time; and occasionally, the nurses would walk in and check on us, to make sure we were ok.

Then one day, I decided to play doctor and I pretended that Simon was the patient and I was the doctor; and because he was sick, I needed to check his temperature for him. I told him that he had to lie down on his belly as he was very sick, and then I stuck a glass thermometer up his bum. But as I pushed the thermometer into his bum, he moved and the thermometer broke and half of the glass tube became stuck inside his bum. I shouted and I screamed for help, and I kept on screaming until the nurses came running in. Then I told them what had happened to Simon and they quickly rushed him away. Eventually, they got the broken pieces of the thermometer out and they said that he was ok, and they cleaned him up and took everything dangerous away from us and they gave us soft toys to play with instead.