Authors: Gitta Sereny
The women in the group often talked about their crimes and their feelings about them, he said.
“And one day one of the girls did ask May about what she had done. And she said that she had picked little Martin up by his ears, just to show her friend Norma how strong she was, and that he slipped out of her hands and fell and that that was how he died. And she added that she had picked Norma up that way, too, and other children.”
Had she mentioned the other child, Brian? I asked, and he shook his head.
“She never mentioned him and she certainly represented Martin’s death as an accident.”
Did you believe this? I asked, and he shrugged.
“Not really,” he said.
“But on the other hand, nor did I think that as a tenor eleven year-old her intention had been to ” murder” or even to ” kill”.” He shook his head.
“It is quite incredible,” he said, ‘that no one tried until now to help her confront herself. It shows how little we value human beings. “
Did you ever tell Chammy about what happened to you when you were a small child? I asked Mary.
“Not in so many words, no, I didn’t,” she said.
“Not in the group. He and I came to an agreement though about the book you know, the one the screws were not supposed to read but I knew they would anyway. So he and I agreed he’d give me two books: in one of them, the one I carried in and out like everybody else in the group, I wrote so to speak for the screws … sort of nothing, you know, like, ” I hate Mrs. Jones” or whatever. But the second one he gave me, I wrote in during the sessions, thoughts, and poetry and what have you, and then gave it to him and he held on to it for me and brought it back every Thursday. And in there I think I did perhaps write some stuff. Maybe he still has it, he could show it to you.”
“She has forgotten,” Chammy said.
“She wrote to me and asked me to send it to the governor of Askham Grange [her last prison]. I wrote back and asked her whether she was sure she wanted me to do that and she said, yes, she did, she wanted him to know her, so I sent it off.”
Did you write about your mother in that second book? I asked Mary.
“Oh no,” she said at once.
“Not about my mother. I couldn’t have. I told you: she was blameless. She had to be blameless.”
“Well, she did actually talk about her mother,” Chammy said, ‘but only basically in the past tense, to say that her mother had been inadequate, drug-or alcohol-addicted, a prostitute and that she’d always gone to Glasgow. “
Had she expressed hate or love for her mother? Or fear?
“I don’t recall her doing that,” he said.
“The one word that remains in my mind is ” inadequate”, and that she said she had had no mothering whatsoever.”
He did not remember her mentioning her ‘dad’. Billy, nor did he see his name in her file.
“That’s really strange,” Mary said, ‘because one of the few times I did talk to Chammy on my own, just for a few moments, he told me something that upset me a great deal. He asked me who would I like to see most walk through the door. And I said, “My dad, because he hasn’t been to see me even once since I came to Styal.” And he said, “Which dad?” And I said, “Well, not Georgie [Betty’s second husband], that’s my stepdad.” And he said, “No, I know, but Billy isn’t your father, either.” And I just. well, he hadn’t said it to hurt me . he thought I knew you see, he told me the governor knew, and then I thought everyone knew, and I wondered did Mr. Dixon know . well, then I went a bit funky you know, confused, angry, up the wall, and, much later, well, years later, you know, I asked Billy and he says, “Who says I’m not your father? Of course I’m your bloody father.” And he is, of course he is. But then, also, he isn’t. Not my biological father. But nobody will tell me who is. “
Soon afterwards she had asked her mother about it.
“When my mother came on her next visit it wasn’t long after, and by that time I’d decided it had to be something, you know, really awful I said, ” tell me, just tell me. Look,” I said, ” was it your father? Was it your brother? Is that why I became what I became? “
And Betty had answered very quietly: “You are the devil’s spawn,”
she said.
“That’s what you are.” And then she had got up, Mary said, and left.
A long letter Mary wrote to Carole and Ben in 1976 is indicative of the changes being wrought in her at that time.
At long last a reply to your letter, it cheered me up . I had some bad news from home. There’s been a car crash on the motorway and George is in hospital. Mum is ill which is the cause of the delay in my letter-writing.
Well, not much news. Haven’t heard anything about parole yet. I need you so very much lately. I know it’s very wrong and weak. I don’t like weakness of character but I feel myself falling into depths of despondence and non-identity. I try to talk, to relate, but having built up a barrier around myself for such a long time I guess people think I have an ulterior motive when I try to break it down. I don’t know, things just don’t seem to be going right at all. I haven’t given up hope, just given up hoping. It’s strange, because I lie awake at night and try to think, picture faces, to put things in perspective, but nothing comes, just a sort of emptiness. Blackness, like I feel mindless. I’m writing this to you because I know you understand, because you know me so very well.
Also the absolute enormity of my crime has suddenly dawned on me, that I have actually taken a life. I just cannot bear to hardly think of it. I know it was a very long time ago, a lot of tears have been shed, but bitterness has grown too. But I know too in my heart of hearts that I couldn’t do such an awful thing on purpose. I can’t remember exactly what happened. The other girl who was charged with me, I don’t feel bitter towards her, I feel very very sad, because she knows that what happened wasn’t meant in my case. I cannot find it in my heart to forgive her, because she has for nine years been walking free while I’m inside.
I just want someone to talk to, I want to be The’ again, Ben.
All this bottling up of emotions doesn’t do anyone any good. But it is very difficult here for a number of reasons. I can’t turn to drugs as the doctor doesn’t approve. Also I don’t want it to get to the Home Office that I cannot go without drugs, so I’m stuck. I’m not feeling sorry for myself, just very frustrated and I suppose lonely. Do you ever get the feeling of being scared and not knowing what of? That’s how I am, frightened but I don’t know what of. I want to be alone, but I’m scared of being left alone. Very hard to explain.
I’m trying so hard to be good, for a number of reasons. I have a new AG [assistant governor] and she’s been very straight and fair with me:
she reminds me of Mr.
P.
in her way. I’m no angel, not by a long stretch of the imagination, but slowly and surely I think I’m finally learning to believe in people again. It’s taken me a long time to reach this point. I just lost all faith in mankind, but I shall eventually be restored. I get into trouble here and there but nothing very serious. At the moment I’m working on the painting party. I enjoy the work painting the hothouses in the nick and there are only six girls, so I’m not being smothered by people, which I found was happening to me in the workrooms. I was getting really paranoid. And I’m the invincible Mae [she had now altered the spelling of her name to the Scottish “Mae’], the one who could walk through life without being affected by it, who said ‘prison won’t change me.” It has changed me, but in what way it’s hard to say, for better or for worse.
Basically it has hardened me, and at the same time softened me. I feel harder, in that I can accept knock-backs and let-downs as part of the day, but softer because maybe I have an insight into how others feel, like I really feel. getting involved with some people makes one softer.
You know, I got involved with a girl in here . she’s gone now. To me she was a very beautiful person. The side of herself she let me see was. For a while I was very happy until she went home, that finished it. After all this time of seeing people come and go, one would think it wouldn’t be too bad, but it cut me up so much, because I loved her, I really loved . had a genuine affection for that girl. And now, she’s Just going to be another memory, at the moment a painful one, for I just can’t get used to the idea that I ought to forget. She’s done a lot for my mind, she made me want to be alive and happy. I guess I’ll get over her in time it’s the in-between stage that hurts so much. I’ve kept the letters from her to me. Some were just pretty ordinary, but she’s such an honest person, so good for me. Something she said to me once almost made me cry. The day before she went home she said “If there was one thing in this world I could do, I’d give you back your childhood, Mae.” That she could say something like that was just typical of her consideration, her depth of feeling. Usually I can dismiss nick friendships with the vagueness they deserve, but this was so different. It was more than a friendship.
Well, I really must close. Thanks for being you, just standing there and listening. I can’t say I feel like a new woman now, but I know you’ll receive the feelings I’ve been trying to portray and write back to me. So my friends, I shall close now. Along with all my love and thoughts, and smile sweetly upon your cactus for they have not seen the sun. Forgive those who torment you, for they have not travelled far in realms of understanding. My friend told me that. Love as always, Mae
defiance sty al moor court, risley
1977 to 1978
When Mary arranged for me to see Chammy and the G. s, she said I could tell them anything; she trusted them absolutely, and she’d given me a note for the G. s and one for Chammy, to say that they could tell me anything too and show me any letters or poems of hers they might have.
With the amazing Chammy I talked mostly about Styal and about how an ideal system, capable of recognizing the difference between a seriously disturbed child and an ‘evil’ or ‘criminal’ personality, would have handled a child such as Mary. The very first time I talked to him, on the telephone, he quite rightly corrected me when I told him that Mary was only just beginning to confront the reality of having murdered two children.
“Not murder,” he said.
“She killed. And it is terrible that this eleven-year-old child killed. But for anyone working with May, the difference between these two terms is absolutely essential to always keep in mind.”
In the case of a child such as Mary, he said, “The very first thing that should have been done, instead of punitive incarceration, would have been to find someone who could have created a relationship of trust with her. Yes, it would have been a desperately difficult task, which is why all those psychiatrists you spoke to during and after her trial said they wouldn’t have been able to take it on: it would have demanded a huge commitment. Because of course the answer to her terrible troubles was perhaps still is her mother. So do you see what such a therapist would have been asking her to do, a child only just eleven years old? He would have had to ask her to betray her mother, the deepest bond there is. Of course, her mother had broken this bond, almost since the child’s birth, but as you are discovering, this is precisely what May, in order to function at all, has had to hide from herself for what is it now? more than thirty years. And anyone who treats such a child would have to help her abandon that hiding place.
“When I was starting,” he said, ‘analysis which meant peeling away the layers was de rigueur. It is true that this is different now and many of the new methods of therapy work. ” But the treatment of severely disturbed children, he feels, allows few short cuts: ” The maxim “the younger the sapling, the easier to train” still applies,” he said.
“But it is true that this demands enormous energy, enormous faith and, if it is to be properly done (and as we can see from what was done with May in the surely well-meaning Red Bank, there is no point in not doing it properly), enormous resources. I cannot tell you,” he said, ‘how completely I stand behind you in your effort with this book to effect changes in the system both as regards how children who commit crimes are tried and how they are dealt with afterwards. “
Unfortunately, he said, the fact that in the long run it is infinitely more cost-effective to find out what has gone wrong in a child’s life and put it right before such a child turns into an antisocial adult is only very, very slowly entering the official minds.
“The whole experience of May’s life,” he said, ‘proves the crying need of children in trouble for yes therapy, but more than that:
for the will to believe in them, for the will to believe . ” He stopped, watching my face for signs of scepticism as I noticed his hand lying, as if by chance, on the Bible.
“Don’t worry,” he said, laughing.
“I won’t preach. The will to believe,” he then repeated, ‘in the capacity of the individual human being, however young, to overcome impossible odds. The will to believe,” he said, more quietly, ‘in the intrinsic goodness of the child.”
I spent many rich hours with Carole and Ben G. ” who have devoted their working lives to helping children such as Mary, but I was surprised to find that it had been fourteen years since they had been in contact with her.
“When she phoned us now,” Carole said, still sounding surprised, ‘it was out of the blue. “
“How can I explain this?” Ben said.
“On the face of it, it seems so wrong not to have kept in touch with her.” In his career there have probably by now been some five hundred children with similar problems between him and Carole, nearer a thousand.
“All we can do,” he said, ‘is to give our best while we are with them and hope against hope that whatever they are going on to they will continue to benefit from that. “
“You are bringing us up against a moral issue we have pondered together innumerable times,” Carole said.
“But we have had to consider our self-preservation, our home, our daughter, everything that’s vitally important to us.”
“It may sound like a cop-out,” Ben said, ‘but it is in fact why we switched away from residential work with such children: the intensity of it became impossible if you were going to have a life of your own, a family. In order to keep your sanity, you have to learn to shut off, to turn the key, to walk away and say: “Right, that’s me, that’s us, it is our life, too.”