The Girl Nobody Wants: A Shocking True Story of Child Abuse in Ireland (7 page)

As we walked towards the house, we could see that it was quiet and no one was around. But as we got closer, I could see a filthy pillowcase lying on the ground at the foot of the front door and it was moving. I slowly walked up to the pillowcase and I poked at it with a stick that I was playing with and the pillowcase stopped moving. I could see that the open end of the pillowcase had been tied up with string, so I undid the string and I looked inside; and just as I put my face into the pillowcase, out jumped two chickens and they fell to the ground. And as I stood back, they began to run around, but they had nowhere to go so I ran after them, chasing them in and out of the house and trying to catch them, but they were too fast for me and I fell over.

Then Ted came out of the house and he asked us why I was playing with our dinner, but I just looked at him, not quite understanding what he had just said to me and then he just laughed at me as I continued to chase the chickens around the yard. Then Ted grabbed one of the chickens by its head and within a couple of seconds he twisted its neck until it snapped, and he pulled the chicken’s head clean off its body with his bare hands and dropped the chicken’s body to the floor. Straightaway, the headless body began to run around and the chicken was flapping its wings like mad, and then without warning it stopped moving and collapsed to the ground, dead.

So Ted picked the chicken up and walked back into the house, with it swinging by its headless neck. We all ran into the house after Ted and I asked him if he could do it again to the other chicken. ‘Please’, I begged him, but he said to shut the fuck up and then he put the chicken into a huge metal pot. He said that he was going to cook it for us and he began to light the stove; but he had not taken any of the feathers off its body, so I told him what to do. ‘Pull the feathers off it first or it won’t cook.’ However, he only pulled some of the big feathers off and then he filled the pot up with water again and put the pot back on the stove. I walked over to the stove and I looked inside the pot; some feathers and blood were floating around in the water and more blood was coming out of the chicken’s neck that was turning the water red. It looked a mess and I felt sick just looking at it, so I walked away and I went outside.

And by now, all the others had come back and they had seen the other chicken still running around the yard. I told them what Ted had been doing and then we all sat down in the yard and played with the chicken, while we waited for Ted to come out of the house and break the chicken’s neck. We sat waiting patiently with the chicken, and eventually Ted came outside and within a few seconds it was all over and the decapitated body of the chicken lay still on the ground and then we just sat and waited for the dinner to cook.

We waited for what seemed like hours and when the chicken was cooked, Ted put the whole thing onto a big plate and placed it in the middle of the kitchen table. It was steaming hot boiled chicken and nothing else, and the skin was pale and it hung from the chickens’ body as if it was too big and didn’t fit. We couldn’t wait any longer and we all grabbed and pulled at the chicken, breaking the legs away from its body and pulling at the skin to get at the meat inside.

Eventually, the chicken broke open and, as we continued to pull at it, the chicken split apart, steam rose up into the air and it smelt bad. Ted had cooked the chicken with all the guts and other stuff still inside and, as we pulled at it, the guts fell out of the body and spread over the table. We continued pulling at the chicken and, as we did so, the guts slipped down off the table and onto the kitchen floor and we all stepped in them as we continued to grab and pull at the chicken. We continued to pull at the chicken and we ate as much of it as we could, but the smell and slimy guts had put us all off and we couldn’t enjoy it as much as we had hoped; so eventually, I gave up and walked away.

It had now become so obvious that we couldn’t look after ourselves that people in the village had started to notice it too; we had done our best by scrounging food from people and from their rubbish bins, but it wasn’t enough, so we began to visit the rubbish dump just outside the village to look for food. We would walk to the dump almost every day and we would look through hundreds of black bags full of people’s rubbish, then we would go through all the rubbish bins we could find, searching for clothes and eating anything we could get our hands on. To us, it didn’t matter if it was dirty, old, smelling or covered in mould; we needed to eat and we did. We would rub any muck off the food and then put it into our mouths, and one of the best things to find was packets of out-of-date biscuits that supermarkets had slung out, as they would always taste nice.

But the dump smelt bad and it was full of things like needles and cotton with blood on it and other strange stuff from the hospital that would make us itch if we touched it. We would get cuts on our hands and knees from all sorts of things almost every day and our mouths would become so dry that we had to keep them shut; otherwise, bugs and big blue bottles would fly into your mouth. Then they would stick to the roof of your mouth and you would have to dig them out with your fingers or try to make some spit in your mouth so you could swallow them, and all the time the flies would be making a buzzing noise inside your mouth until they were gone.

And every now and then, a rubbish lorry would pull in with a new load of black bags and we would be the first to get on top of them and rip the bags open. We used to see many adults doing the same thing as us, but they would always wait until we had finished and moved on to another lot of bags before they came over to look through them. I think it was because we were the youngest and smallest in the dump that they gave us a chance to eat before they went through the bags. Even dad knew what we were doing and, some days before we left the house, he would tell us to look out for scrap copper wire and if we found any, to bring it home for him to scrap; and we did, but he never said thanks.

All this was fine and sometimes it was even fun; plus, down by the edge of the dump, there was a small stream and during the summer months we would climb down to it and wash some of the smell and muck off our hands and faces. Plus we would wash and swap some of our old clothes for newer ones that we had found in the dump, and at the end of the day, we would head back home with bellies full and happy faces.

However, one day while at the dump, we must have forgotten about our baby brother Simon being with us, as it was only after we had arrived back home and it began to get dark that I asked everyone if they had seen him, but no one had. The last time anyone had seen him was earlier in the day when we were all at the stream by the dump; in a panic, we all jumped up and we went off looking for him and we ran almost all the way back to the dump before we found him.

He was walking along the road and he was all alone, and he was dirty and wet all over and he was wearing only his underpants and a pair of socks. I grabbed him by the arm and then I cuddled him and he told me that he had fallen into the stream and he had shouted for us, but nobody came. So, he managed to climb out of the stream on his own and he took his clothes off because they were wet and too heavy for him and he couldn’t walk in them. I grabbed his t-shirt out of his hands, I rung it out and then I put it back on him; then Ted picked Simon up and put him on his shoulders and we all walked home happy that we had found Simon and that he was safe. When we got home, we never told anyone, not even our dad about what had happened to Simon, as he would have killed us if he had known what had gone on; anyway, Simon was ok and everything was fine now.

After a few weeks, the days began to get colder and darker and I began to feel ill, my skin looked pale and it was thick with waxy dirt, and red patches with rings and dots began to appear all over my body and I looked very sick. My hair had become so stiff with dirt that it just stuck up into the air, and my scalp hurt and it bled if I scratched it. So one of my older sisters, Jenny, who was ten years old, decided that we had to have a proper wash with hot water and soap, but I had forgotten what soap was.

Later that night, Jenny took Daisy, Simon and me, as we were the youngest and dirtiest, with her to an old people’s home and she managed to lift us up through an open window on the ground floor and into a bathroom within the building. We could tell that she had done it before because she told us to be very quiet and she knew where everything was, and then she locked the bathroom door from the inside. We took our clothes off and we all stood still while she washed us all with hot water and soap and it felt so nice being clean; once she had finished, she helped us back out of the window and we all ran off back home.

After that, she would take us back to the home every couple of weeks and we would climb through the same window and into the bathroom to have a wash. But the red marks and rings that were all over my body never went away and my skin was still red and itchy. We managed to get away with using the bathroom for a couple of months, before Jenny realised that someone was leaving clean towels and medicated soap for us to use and the bathroom door had already been locked shut from the outside. We think it was so that we could take our time and have a proper wash and even wash our hair without having to hurry. But my hair had become infested with head lice and they would never go away no matter how much I washed it. Anyway, we all had head lice and they would just jump from one head to another and simple washing would have never gotten rid of them, so we gave up trying and accepted them.

Then one day, while we were having a wash, somebody knocked on the bathroom door and said, ‘Be quiet and hurry up, the doctor is coming’ and with that we looked at each other in shock and grabbed our clothes. Then we climbed out of the window and ran wet and naked into the bushes at the end of the home’s grounds; and when we thought we were safe, we stopped running and turned around just in time to see a couple of nurses looking through a ground floor window and smiling at us.

We quickly put on our clothes, then we ran off, giggling to each other and, from that day on, every time we went back for a wash they would only knock on the bathroom door when a doctor really was coming or if we were making too much noise. Otherwise, they would leave us alone to get on with washing; and sometimes when leaving, we would look back and we would see them looking and smiling at us from the windows of the home. They were our friends and the only ones we had.

It had been almost a year since we had anyone take proper care of us and even after having a wash, we still looked bad, our skin was pale and we were getting sicker by the day. I had lost almost half of my body weight and Simon’s belly and face had swollen from drinking dirty water and having no proper food to eat.

Then one morning, a woman from the social services came to dad’s house and she asked dad if he could bring all of us for a medical check-up. At first, he said no; but after she had a another word with him, he agreed, and the following morning he got us all dressed in the best clothes that he could find and then he took us all off to the clinic for the check-up. It took hours for the doctors to check us all over and it was obvious to the doctors that we were in very poor health; and after they had finished, they had a quick word with dad and then they said we could all go home. We didn’t know it at the time, but they had already made the decision to take us all into care. And within a couple of days, two police cars full of police officers and social workers turned up at the house.

It was early in the morning when they arrived and, as they all got out of the cars, one of the police officers walked up to the house and knocked on the front door. I looked up at dad and by the look on his face I could tell that he knew they were coming; and as he opened the door, the police officer told him that he had to get us all dressed and that we all had to go with them to the police station. Dad shouted at all the people and he told them all to fuck off and he tried to close the door, but the police officer told him to stop messing around or they would have to arrest him. Dad said ok and then he came back inside the house and he told us that we all had to go with them, then he got us all dressed and he walked us out of the house and into the waiting police cars.

Once we were inside the cars, dad went over to one of the police cars and he got in the front seat, next to one of the police officers that he knew. The police officer told daddy that he was sorry, but he could do nothing to help us and then he drove us all to the police station. When we arrived, they took us children into the police station, but they would not allow dad to stay with us; instead, they put him into the back of the police car and they drove him straight to the courthouse.

Once there, they put him into a room and they told him that he had to sit and wait until they had time to finalise his court case, and until then he could not leave the building or talk to anyone. He asked the police officer what was going to happen to his children and if we were ok at the police station, and the officer told him not to worry, as they were taking good care of us and they would bring us along to him shortly. And dad had no choice but to sit down and wait for us. Back at the police station, we all shouted at the police officers and we made a big fuss, telling everyone in the station that we wanted our dad and that we should not have to stay there because we had done nothing wrong; and we told them they were bad people for taking us to the police station. But it didn’t make any difference; they just looked at us and tried to keep us quiet by talking to us.

Then, one of the police officers asked us if we were hungry and if we wanted something to eat, and we all said yes, so one of the older police officers who knew our dad put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a load of money. Then he told two of the other officers to go and get us some food, and he kept us occupied by telling us jokes and letting us play around with some of the things in the station. Then, after about half an hour, the police officers came back and they told us all to stop playing and to follow them. They walked out of the room and up some stairs with us following behind them, but as they got to the top of the stairs they all stopped and we all stopped behind them, but we didn’t stop quick enough and we bumped into each other and then we accidentally pushed one of the police officers into his back. He turned, looked back and smiled at us and then he opened a door in front of him, while at the same time he told us all to go inside, but just inside the doorway stood six police officers.