Joe Peters - Cry Silent Tears - The heartbreaking survival story of a small mute boy who overcame unbearable suffering and found his voice again

‘You’re an unfit mother,’ Melissa replied. ‘Look at you – half cut at eleven in the morning. Let’s see what the police think about that.’

I pressed my hands over my ears to block out the shouting and the next thing I knew, Mum had grabbed one of my arms and dragged me past Melissa out into the street.

‘You bitch!’ Melissa was screaming, but she let Mum take me. Maybe she felt she had no choice because she wasn’t my parent. I was crying out ‘No, Mum, no!’ as she hauled me down the street, utterly petrified, knowing that I was about to get punished although I had no idea what for.

As soon as we got in the door of Mum’s house, she punched me full in the face, sending me hurtling to the floor. She grabbed me by the hair to pull me up again then started beating me round my face and body in a fury. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, twisting away from her but unable to protect myself from the blows that were raining down.

‘Shut up, you little bastard,’ she hissed. Holding me by the hair, she picked me up and swung me round so that my legs clattered off the wall. When she dropped me, I crumpled to the floor, dazed and half-unconscious from the beating.

Mum wasn’t finished though. She looked around the room for some way to punish me that I would never forget and her eye alighted on a hot iron, which was standing on the ironing board. She must have been ironing when she got the call to say I was at Melissa’s and she’d left the iron on when she hurried out of the house. She grabbed my hand and yanked me across the room, then pressed my palm tightly against the scalding metal until my flesh sizzled. I screamed uncontrollably with the shock of this unbelievable new level of pain.

‘You are a spoiled little bastard,’ Mum sneered, ‘and you are never going to see your fucking father again.’

She pushed me and I collapsed on the floor, sobbing, clutching my scorched, throbbing hand, terrified that somehow she would manage to arrange things so that I really wouldn’t see Dad again. ‘Dad,’ I sobbed. ‘Dad, help me.’

The moment Mum had snatched me from her house, Aunt Melissa had rung Dad in a panic to tell him what had happened. He must have downed tools at the garage and come running immediately but by the time he got to Mum’s house he found me in hysterical tears with a black eye and livid burn marks on my hand. As soon as I saw him I ran behind his legs, clinging on with my undamaged hand, shaking with fear, desperate to get away from her.

‘Look what you’re doing to him!’ Dad shouted. ‘He’s terrified of his own mother.’

‘It’s not me, it’s you,’ she screamed back. ‘You and your whore! You’ve turned him against me!’

‘What the fuck has he done to his hand?’ Dad demanded, looking in horror at the bright-red, blistered skin.

‘Oh, he touched the iron,’ she lied. ‘He was messing around as usual.’

‘And what about the bruises on his face?’

‘He fell over.’

‘Get me out of here, Dad,’ I begged. ‘Please.’

Mum grabbed one of my arms so Dad quickly grabbed the other one and they both pulled at me, like dogs fighting over an old bone. I thought my arms were going to pop out of their sockets, they pulled so hard. Beside himself with rage Dad punched her in order to force her to let go of me. The moment she released her grip he swept me up into his arms and ran from the house, clutching me to him as if he was never going to let me go. I just screamed and sobbed hysterically. He bundled me into his Ford Capri and drove me to the burns unit at the hospital to have my wounds dressed. I remember I couldn’t stop shaking, even after the nurses had given me something to help with the pain. I must have been in shock, I suppose.

‘That’s it,’ Dad told Marie in a grim voice once we were safely back at her house again. ‘I’m not leaving him with anyone else; not you, not Melissa, no one. He’s going everywhere with me from now on.’

I felt a huge wave of relief. Dad would look after me. He would keep Mum away from me. I would be all right now.

It was soon after this event that Marie sat me down and explained to me about the root of the problems between Mum and Dad. First of all, she told me that Mum (whose name was Lesley) came from a very strict family. Her father was in the army and her mother, a factory worker, had been a strict disciplinarian at home, so Mum must have thought it was normal to bully and beat up children. Maybe she thought that was how all children were brought up.

As Marie spoke, I remembered the times I’d visited my grandmother’s house with my older brothers. It felt more like being drilled on an army parade ground than welcomed into a family; everything was forbidden, everything was punishable. If any of us so much as moved we broke some rule or other and ended up being shouted at or slapped. The seeds of violence that were later to grow so strong in Mum must have been sown during the beatings she received from her own mother.

I can’t remember how Marie explained the complex relationship between my parents and her to a four-year-old boy. Maybe she just said ‘Your mum’s cross because your dad wants to stay with me and not her.’ But over the years I pieced together their story from bits of information I picked up here and there.

Mum had been married in her teens to her school sweetheart; she was forced by the family to marry after she fell pregnant. Their son, Wally, was to be the first of the three children the young couple would have together, followed over the next few years by two more boys, Larry and Barry. Once she had started having children Lesley became a full-time housewife, an undertaking that would soon become more of an obsession than a lifestyle. Her house was always kept spotless and woe betide anyone who so much as dropped a crumb on a carpet.

From what I’ve been told the marriage was pretty strong to start with, although the children were all brought up with the same ferocious strictness that Lesley had experienced herself, but the death of their fourth child at birth caused a rift between her and her first husband. The marriage quickly degenerated from that point and ended in divorce, leaving Lesley bringing up three children on her own, feeling angry and resentful towards the whole world.

It was at that stage that she started to drink seriously in order to dull the pain of losing her baby, and the children’s father disappeared for good from all their lives. The trouble with drink is that although it does help to lessen any pain you might be suffering, it can stoke up any anger that might be simmering below the surface, and Lesley had a cauldron full of that waiting to come to the boil. It also soaks up any spare money there might be in the family, increasing the very hardships that she was trying to escape from.

If there was one thing Lesley was determined not to do, it was be a prisoner in her own home and she became an avid pub drinker and partygoer. She was, after all, still a young woman in her early twenties and she craved a bit of fun. Soon after the divorce had come through she went to a party that Marie – an old school friend of hers – was having to celebrate the anniversary of her marriage to a man called Frankie. Lesley was still a vivacious, attractive young woman and that night she was up for a good time. During the party she met my dad, William, a friend of Marie’s and Frankie’s, and he appeared to be unattached and interested in her. What she didn’t know at the time was that Marie and William were in love but couldn’t do anything about it because neither of them wanted to betray Frankie, who William looked on as his best friend. Believing she was just enjoying a good night out, Lesley was actually stumbling blindly into a love triangle that was already on the brink of exploding.