Maria Landon - Escaping Daddy

I felt as though I was suffocating and I struggled to get away, which made him angry. Tears were streaming down my face and I was gagging and choking, certain he was going to kill me. I couldn’t breathe because his thing was so huge. It was a nightmare that never seemed to end.

Soon he was forcing me to take his penis in my mouth regularly and then he began trying to have penetrative sex with me, not caring how much he hurt or frightened or disgusted me, making it clear that there was no point struggling because it was going to happen anyway and I would just make it harder for myself by fighting. It hurt so much that I was convinced I was going to die. I thought I was being torn in half, but there was no point in struggling because he was too big and strong. He told me over and over that I must never tell anyone about the things we did together, terrifying me with stories of what would happen if I did.

‘If I go to prison you and Terry will be sent to a children’s home and everyone will hate you,’ he would warn. ‘You need to have your daddy here to protect you. This is our secret. No one will believe anything you say until you are ten anyway.’

I hated the things he did to me, but I still adored him and longed to please him so that he would stop hurting me and telling me how bad I was. I longed for the times when he was nice to me and told me I was his favourite. I’d do just about anything to win his praise. He was my dad and I loved him.

When I was twelve he took me up to the streets where the city’s hookers plied their trade to kerb-crawlers. This was his little kingdom where he set himself up as a pimp, the place where everyone knew who he was. I knew a lot of the girls already because they often came round our house after they had been beaten up or robbed, looking on Dad as a friend and someone who understood their world because he was a part of it. Some of them were really good to me and I considered them to be my friends too. He proudly showed me where he had put Mum to work and where he was going to make me follow in her footsteps, spending my evenings lurking in the shadows as a steady stream of punters slowed down in their cars, in search of business, taking a look at the goods on offer.

I liked it the first time Dad got his friend Lucy to dress me up in a tight skirt and stilettos. I felt glamorous, like a little girl playing make-believe, and I was happy when Dad admired my legs and said they were just like Mum’s. I didn’t let myself think about working on the streets though. I hated what Dad did to me in his bed and couldn’t bear to think about any other man doing it to me. My throat closed up in dread every time he talked about me becoming the best little prostitute on the Block.

But when I was thirteen, the day came when Dad decided I was ready to start fulfilling the destiny he had chosen for me. I felt an overwhelming sense of hopelessness as I got ready, knowing there was no way out of it so I might as well get it over with, just as he had told me a hundred times when he raped me. I obeyed him automatically, like a robot, still wanting to please him and win his love despite everything he had done to me. I had to drink a lot of vodka to build up my courage before the first time I went out on the street but I got through it somehow, trying to make my mind go blank as I spread my legs and let businessmen thrust away inside me.

Once I had serviced a few punters and earned him some money, Dad bought a bottle of whisky and took me back to Lucy’s house to celebrate. The mix of whisky and vodka was too much for my young stomach and I threw up all over Dad’s suit. I thought he would be angry but he wasn’t–he just thought the whole thing was funny and in a way I was glad that I had been able to make him happy. But I dreaded having to work on the Block again. No matter how many times I did it, I always felt terrified as the car pulled off with me inside, and I always felt as though I had been raped afterwards, even though I was clutching the punter’s money.

All the girls would use drink and drugs to help them get over their fears every time they went out on the street, or to drown out the memories afterwards. The irony was that once they had habits, they needed to go out to work more often in order to earn the money they needed to satisfy their cravings, creating vicious cycles that many never escaped from. I was no different to the rest and Dad was always happy to supply me with as much drink as it took to make me co-operative. He didn’t approve of drugs, but there were plenty of other people around who were happy to supply me with those when I asked. I started on cannabis but before long speed became my drug of choice and I took it whenever I could get my hands on some.

There were times when Dad would get caught by the police for thieving or fighting and sent to prison for a while. Terry and I would then go into children’s homes or foster homes and I was surprised to find that they weren’t as terrible as Dad had warned me they would be. But by that time he had messed with my head so much that I couldn’t settle anywhere. A lot of teachers and social workers told me that they thought I had the potential for a better life, but I always ended up back in trouble one way or another. As soon as he came out of prison Dad would order us to go back to him and I always wanted to go, hoping beyond hope that things would be different this time; that this time he would be kind to me, that he would stop doing those things to me.

But it was all a game to him. He convinced me that wherever I was taken I should run away and go back to him at the first opportunity. I never questioned this wisdom, even though I sometimes knew I was better off in the places the social workers sent me to. I desperately wanted us to be a happy little family, but he just wanted to have me in his power in the same way he had with Mum. Whatever efforts the authorities made to get me to safety he just had to snap his fingers and I would go running back to him. Sometimes I would try to explain to people what he was doing to me, but Dad always managed to get out of it, to turn everything round so it seemed as if I was the problem, not him.

Social workers were as confused as I was. One wrote about me: ‘Maria is in some ways functioning at a four-or five-year-old level and in others at a sixteen-year-old level, plus being an intelligent twelve-year-old. She is over-fond of her dad and wants him close to her, up to a certain point, and beyond that she starts complaining.’

At one of the homes, when I was fourteen, I asked if they would try to make contact with Mum for us. They managed to track her down and she actually came to see us. For a while it looked as though Terry and I might be able to live with her, but we were all too damaged. Within six weeks the relationship had broken down because Mum couldn’t cope with our disruptive behaviour and we were taken back into care.

I was fifteen and on the run from one of the care homes I’d been assigned to when I met a guy called Brian. He was a thirty-five-year-old biker and I fell in love with him because he was a kind and decent man. I had ‘property of Brian’ tattooed on my upper arm, just above a tattoo I already had of Dad’s name. We even bought a silver ring down the market and announced to the world that we were in love. Brian gave me the courage to break away a little from Dad, even though I was still working on the street to make the money I needed for the drink and drugs I was using.

Brian wanted to help me to escape from my fear of Dad and from the social workers who he thought were letting me down, so we hitchhiked down to London together. It was a dream that neither of us had thought through and we ran out of money almost immediately. Brian might have been older than me but he wasn’t capable of earning a wage and supporting us; he was a dreamer with a dope habit who liked playing his guitar. The only way we could support ourselves was for me to go back to work doing the one thing I knew how on the streets of King’s Cross. I was terrified and I didn’t want to do it, but the thought of going back to Norwich and letting Dad know I had failed was worse. I didn’t want him to see that he had been right, that I couldn’t manage without him.