Deliver Me From Evil (7 page)

I would go to school feeling utterly horrible, hoping no one knew what had been done to me at home. Sometimes I’d continue to dribble and leak during the day and I’d have brown stains on my pants, which felt very humiliating.

The poo check and enema regime continued day in, day out until I finally escaped from Eunice when I was seventeen.

If Eunice thought we were lying, had spoken out of turn or said something blasphemous, we would be summoned to the kitchen sink. The first time it happened I had no idea what she was doing. She just stood there for a moment before picking up the washing-up liquid bottle.

‘Stand still and open your mouth,’ she ordered.

As she moved towards me, I could see she was aiming the nozzle of the bottle at my mouth and I naturally jerked away. Sensing my resistance, Eunice grabbed my long hair hard and yanked my head back. I was in her iron grip and she was only inches away. She then pushed the nozzle of the bottle into my mouth so I could taste the pine and feel the slime.

Suddenly I felt a huge squirt shoot into my mouth. I could feel it running over my tongue and teeth, heading for my throat.

‘Swallow,’ commanded Eunice, still holding my head back forcefully.

I swallowed the disgusting stuff and she carried on squirting. ‘I’m washing your mouth out with soap because you told a lie,’ she said as she continued to squeeze.

By now I was choking and I could feel the slimy soap churning horribly in my stomach. Eunice then released my head suddenly and I almost toppled over. I felt sick and disgusting; she simply went back to the sink and plonked the bottle down on the drainer.

I saw Eunice do this to the other children too, particularly Sarah and Thomas. In fact, I saw Judith take shampoo and force it down Sarah’s throat in the bathroom once. Judith had learned Eunice’s tricks and would use them with the same force and ferocity.

When I had washing-up liquid or shampoo squirted down my throat it was difficult not to be sick. This, however, brought with it an even more vile punishment.

One day, we were lined up at the sink, waiting to have our mouths washed out as Eunice believed we’d all lied about something. Charlotte was left out of this, but I was behind Sarah, whose turn was next. I saw Eunice yank her head back and she must have administered a particularly large dollop because Sarah threw it up, leaving a pile of half-digested All-Bran and linseeds covered with washing-up liquid in the sink

Keeping hold of Sarahs hair, Eunice snapped, ‘Eat it.’

Sarah was shaking and crying helplessly, but Eunice didn’t care. We all watched as she got a spoon and lifted a mouthful of slop to Sarah’s quivering lips.

‘Eat it, or you’ll get worse.’

Crying silently, Sarah took the spoon’s contents and chewed, retching as she did so.

‘Swallow.’

Eunice was relentless as spoonful by spoonful, the mess in the sink was forced into Sarah’s mouth. She had to eat the lot.

I watched, horrified. I felt sick just seeing Sarah having to eat her vomit, knowing full well that I was next. How could I escape? Thomas was behind me and Charlotte watched, sniggering, from the other side of the room. There was no way I could run away from this ritual humiliation, but I vowed I wouldn’t be sick, no matter how ill Eunice made me feel. It was almost as if her vile treatment made me tougher in response. I decided that when it was my turn I would blank out my mind and try to keep it all down, no matter what. Watching the other kids suffer meant I soon learned to resolve not to throw up and to this day I cant bear being sick.

So what were the terrible lies that brought on this regular, daily punishment? It might have been doing a poo when I shouldn’t have (a terrible offence) which, if I lied about it, resulted in the washing-up-liquid treatment. It might be lying about watching a video we weren’t allowed to see or simply touching something I shouldn’t have – after all she was watching me all the time, and I wouldn’t necessarily know that I had done something wrong, until I was standing by the sink and that nozzle was heading towards my face.

The washing-up-liquid routine was a regular occurrence for all of us except Charlotte and Robert. It happened so many times I lost count. In fact, it’s left me with a total loathing of green or yellow washing-up liquid; even if I get just a whiff of the smell, I feel utterly sick. I now won’t buy either of these types, and choose fancy, expensive ones instead, only blue or other completely different colours.

Eunice not only had her eagle eye trained on all of us, making sure we all behaved as she wanted us to every minute of every day and even night, she also made us all watch and grass on each other: vigilance was her constant watchword.

Eunice read her Jehovah’s Witness
Watchtower
avidly and indeed, it was as though I was constantly being watched by her from her parental watchtower. It felt like being under the gaze of a pious Big Brother. Eunice watched us when we were indoors, then when we went out into the garden, and finally, even when we went to school, as my school’s grounds backed onto her house, so she could even watch me when I went out to play at break and dinner time. I would feel her eyes on me and would look up to find her staring at me fixedly from the window. I would instantly feel I’d done something wrong.

But sometimes when I was at school and peeked up at the bedroom window, I would sometimes see Sarah there, on the top bunk bed, peering out timidly at the playground. At first, I would wonder why she wasn’t downstairs at her lessons with Eunice and why she was in bed. Later, I would understand she was being punished, especially when the same thing started happening to me. Sometimes, if Sarah saw me, she’d wave limply, and I’d wave back coolly. We weren’t very close and didn’t like each other much, but there was an understanding between us, a sense of each knowing what the other was having to endure.

Eunice’s constant vigilance meant I became vigilant too, and as she was always peering out of a window trying to see where I was in the playground, so I always felt as if I was under her gaze. Whether I was or not. One thing she was monitoring was whether I was playing the games she allowed me to play or not. Eunice had strict rules about what was acceptable. For instance, I was not allowed to play cowboys and Indians as it involved the use of guns or ‘Power Rangers’, which were all the rage at the time. This game was ‘demonized’, as were many others. If I played the wrong thing, I would be punished later at home. I used to hide behind the hedge to avoid her gaze, then I’d play something forbidden, like ‘Ninja Turtles’, my heart in my mouth, hoping she couldn’t see through the hedge. Or that someone wouldn’t tell on me, somehow.

Ironically, Eunice would drum into us that playing these ‘worldly’ games would make us more aggressive. She said she was punishing us to save our souls. Eventually though, when she decided we were the Devil’s kids, we couldn’t be saved, so it was just Eunice venting her anger, by then. If I looked up and found her looking at me, she’d say to me I wasn’t ‘innocent’, like a normal child. I was too ‘aware’, and thus I was ‘demonized’, I had the Devil in me. She said the Devil was what made me look at her when she was looking at me. Only she didn’t know how many times I had looked up when either she wasn’t there or when she wasn’t looking.

One day at school I had been playing Power Rangers in what I thought was a safe place behind the hedge. However, Charlotte had seen and reported me to Eunice. Charlotte was the main squealer at home but Sarah sometimes buckled under the pressure.

As I came in from school Eunice was standing there, waiting for me. She looked extremely grim and I knew instantly I was in trouble.

‘What were you doing?’

I had to think quickly.
What did she mean? What had I done now?

‘Nothing.’

‘You evil little liar. I saw you. You were playing a demonized game. You know you were. Own up.’

Oh Lord, she saw me.
I said nothing, however.

You know you’re not allowed to play worldly games. I won’t allow it.’

Eunice strode over to me and grabbed me by the throat, squeezing the life out of me. For a moment everything went white, then black, and then I was back in the room, with her eyes boring into mine, her mouth, with its foul breath, only inches away. I could smell her body odour, which was always rank, as it wafted over in her excitement.

You are not to play the Devil’s own games. D’ya hear? You’re not innocent enough.’

I was choking, gasping, my two hands trying to wrench her one hand away from my throat. There was no air going in at all and I was struggling against fainting altogether.

‘Relax, child. I’m teaching you a lesson. It’s for your own good. You’re too aware, you’ve got the Devil in you, for sure.’ Out of the corner of my eye, as I struggled to breathe, I could see plump Charlotte watching, looking smug. However, Sarah was peeping through the banisters at me, looking terrified, as always.

Suddenly Eunice let me go and I fell to the floor, gasping like a fish that had just been landed. My throat hurt like hell and I gulped air in as fast as I could. My head was swimming and I still felt faint. All I’d done was play a game behind the hedge – that was innocent enough for me.

By the time I was approaching nine years of age, I was doing quite well at school. I liked my lessons and the teachers, who were kind and thoughtful – the total opposite of Eunice. I loved art, especially drawing, and I also had a go on the school piano and found I was quite musical, too. There was a nice class teacher there who cast me as an angel in the school Nativity play
.
That Christmas I was very excited as we rehearsed the songs and lines at school. However, when the time came, nobody came to watch me; I had kept the whole thing secret from Eunice because it was against Jehovah’s Witness rules. I was a bit of a star at school, but I kept quiet about it at home, knowing that Eunice would never have approved. It hurt, none the less, that nobody ever saw me shine.

When I was almost eight and a half Robert became pretty ill. As a consequence, Eunice had to stay with him in hospital and I went to stay with an old friend of hers, ‘Auntie Vera’, who lived next door to her parents, giving me a brief reminder of what ‘normal’ life was like. Eunice’s mother, Katie, and father, John, only lived a stone’s throw away from our house in George Dowty, and they saw Eunice quite regularly. Actually, it was a mystery to me as to why Eunice was so awful when, in fact, her mum always seemed quite nice.

Anyway, Auntie Vera treated me like a normal child for a whole week. We went to the mini-market and did our shopping and she bought me a secondhand My Little Pony – something I’d always wanted and had gone on at my parents about to no avail. But this nice lady took me out, she gave me food, she tucked me up at night, she washed my clothes and she was kind. There were no beatings. It was an utter revelation to me to be reminded of how life could be without daily, ritualistic punishment – a total respite from the horrors and pressure of living with Eunice.

This window on to normal life highlighted just how much, in the two years since I’d first set foot in 24 George Dowty Drive, things had gone downhill. For a start, Eunice was far from the generous person she had seemed to me when we first met. The knitting wool, the lovely Sunday lunch – they were all part of the seduction plan. In actual fact, she turned out to be extremely mean, a real Scrooge. When, for instance, I needed plimsolls for PE at school, she refused to buy them, which meant I often couldn’t do PE, although I was desperate to join in. But she wouldn’t spend money on me.

In hindsight, I think that while Eunice was undoubtedly mean and penny-pinching, another major reason for preventing me from doing PE was because I would have to take my clothes off, and then the pupils and teachers would see my bruises. Similarly, the swimming I had once adored was stopped, which again, I now realize, was not only because of the cost but also because someone might spot the obvious signs of my maltreatment. School trips were also forbidden because they cost money and I clearly wasn’t worth it. And she would have worried about me being beyond her control – who knows, I might have spilled the beans and someone might have believed me.

I remember once when, for some reason, I was supposed to go home at lunch time to eat but Eunice was out when I got there. When I went back to school and told my teacher there was no one home, she gave me a school dinner and a receipt to take back to Eunice for £1.50. Eunice went ballistic and clouted me hard around the head saying, ‘Why didn’t you eat the apples from the garden?’ So the next time I came home for lunch and nobody was there, I knew better than to take the offer of a school meal and pleaded with my teacher, ‘Please don’t give me a school dinner, because I’ll be in a lot of trouble.’ I remember one of the teachers giving me one of his own mustard and ham sandwiches, which I ate in the staff room.

Around this time, too, what had been a nice, neat school uniform was beginning to look quite shabby. I must have looked different from other children, always wearing charity shop hand-me-downs and being unnaturally obedient. Indeed, I found out, during the court case, that several of the teachers had been worried about me and one had even written several letters to Gloucester Social Services, although I obviously didn’t know about that at the time. In fact, I think Eunice did have a visit from someone, but she was able to pull the wool over their eyes, as always.

Also, the house in George Dowty, which had seemed such a cosy paradise at first, was also becoming increasingly messy. Eunice was a real hoarder, and would never throw anything away, so rooms began to fill up with junk and there were evergrowing mounds of clutter everywhere. I found this very distressing and would sometimes pick up armfuls of junk and simply plonk it all in a bin. However, in a silent war of wills, Eunice would simply take it all out again and put it back in my room or the shared rooms.