Jane Smith - Trafficked Girl - Abused. Abandoned. Exploited. This Is My Story of Fighting Back.

Some of the very few good memories I have of my early childhood are of standing at the front door waving to my dad as he left the house in the mornings. The happy feeling was always short-lived, however, and it would disappear as soon as the door closed, because I knew that, for the next few hours, it would just be Mum and me.

I loved both my parents when I was a little girl. Although my mum treated me very badly and I was afraid of her, I thought it was my fault she didn’t seem to love me and I desperately wanted her affection. With my dad it was different, and despite the fact that he very rarely actually did anything nice for me, he sometimes stood up for me, didn’t hit me and wasn’t nasty to me the way Mum was. So I really did love him, in the years before I learned to be frightened of him too.

I can’t recall one single instance of Mum ever being nice to me. She had only two sides to her when it came to her dealings with me – stern or nasty – and she could be very violent. In fact, the only time she ever touched me when I was a little girl was when she was pulling my hair or slapping, pinching, punching or kicking me, beating me with her fists or hitting me with the heel of her shoe, a book or, on one occasion, a baking tray. She didn’t ever hug me, or put her hands on me for any other reason except in anger. And it seemed that she was always angry with me, however hard I tried not to do anything that might irritate or antagonise her. It wasn’t until much later that I realised I didn’t really do anything to justify her cruel mind-games and vicious physical attacks. To my mum, I was simply a scapegoat, someone to blame for all the problems she had, many of which must have resulted from her own damaging childhood, although I didn’t find out about that until much later, when it was almost too late for me to be able to understand and accept the truth, which was that I had never really been the problem at all.

She would sometimes throw things at Dad too, or smash ornaments when they were fighting. But she never did to him – or to my brothers – any of the vicious things she did to me, I suppose for the same reason most bullies don’t pick fights with people who can fight back.

Fortunately, when I was alone in the house with her before I started going to nursery, when Dad was at work and my older brothers were at school, she spent almost all day every day in the kitchen. I don’t know whether she was already drinking at that time, but I think she probably was. So maybe that’s what she was doing in there while I was in the living room, trapped at a distance from her by the baby gate that blocked the doorway.

It was during that period of my childhood that Mum started refusing me access to the potty, and later to the toilet. I don’t know if she did it out of spite, to humiliate me, or if it was simply another way of exercising control over me. The baby gate was just a piece of wood my granddad had cut to size and attached across the doorway, but I wasn’t allowed to touch it, and never tried to again after the first time, when Mum beat me and shouted at me. So when I needed to use the potty, I would stand close to it and cry, while Mum either ignored me or watched me from the kitchen, impassively at first, then with increasing amusement when my discomfort turned to pain as I tried to hold it in. Then, when I soiled myself, as I always inevitably did, she would shout in my face and hit me, which made me believe that it really was my fault, however long she’d made me wait.

Sometimes, when I was a bit older and the baby gate had been removed, she would leave a tin plate in the middle of the kitchen floor for me to use as a toilet, as though I was a dog or a cat rather than a human child. I was probably four when she started doing it, and perfectly able to use the potty or go to the toilet by myself, but it was difficult doing it on a plate, particularly when she was watching me, as she often did, and I knew that if I misjudged it and let even the smallest drop spill over on to the floor, she would hit me.

Dad did shifts in a factory at that time and when he was working at night she’d quite often drink herself into a stupor, then fall asleep on the sofa. My brothers, Jake and Ben, who are nine and seven years older than me respectively, were old enough to put themselves to bed by the time I was born. But between the ages of three and five, I was often left downstairs on those nights and although I suppose I must have got some sleep, I don’t know when or where. I just remember wandering around the house in the dark, then seeing the sun shining in through a window and knowing that it was morning again. Mum would always make me get dressed quickly on those mornings, before my brothers woke up, and as she pulled my hair and hit me with her hairbrush she would warn me, ‘Don’t you dare tell Ben or Jake, or your dad, that you haven’t been to bed.’

I suppose those sleepless nights were the reason why I often fell asleep during the day when I started nursery school, and later in the reception class at primary school. In fact, I can remember on one occasion waking up in a state of near-panic when my teacher threw her shoe at me, then told me off for sleeping in class.

Mum did sometimes carry me up to bed when I’d fallen asleep. And sometimes she would drop me, then shout at me as I was tumbling down the stairs, ‘That was your fault,’ before stamping down to where I was lying in a crumpled heap, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me up to my bedroom, where she would almost throw me on to my bed. And on those occasions too, I would be determined not to cry, although I came very close to it whenever she said, in a spooky, sneering voice, ‘Watch out for wandering hands in your bed tonight.’ Then I would hear her laughing as she closed the door, shutting out all the light as she stomped back down the stairs.

I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed for any reason without Mum’s permission. So when I woke up from a nightmare, as I often did, I sometimes wet myself. The first time it happened, I cried and screamed for my mum, but no one came. So I lay for the rest of the night on the wet mattress and waited fearfully for the morning. She must have heard me whenever I called out in the night because she always seemed to know when she came into my room the next morning that the mattress would be wet, and after she’d yanked me out of bed, she’d drag me around the room by my hair, slapping me and shouting that I was worthless and stupid and did nothing but cause trouble for everyone. Then she would strip the wet sheet off my bed, take it downstairs and show it to my brothers, who would laugh with her and make fun of me.

We had a washing machine, so it wasn’t a huge deal having to wash a wet sheet, although perhaps it seemed like it to her, because when I finally stopped wetting the bed at the age of seven, she only ever washed my bedding once a year.

Mum never took me anywhere and she’d be angry on the rare occasions that Dad ever did, like the day when he got home after working the night shift and decided to take me with him to the supermarket. I think I was four years old, and I don’t know if I’d asked to go, or why Mum kept insisting on him leaving me at home. But the more she argued with him, the more determined he became, until eventually he shouted, ‘I’m taking her,’ then pushed me ahead of him out of the house before slamming the front door behind him.

Maybe their argument would have ended there if I hadn’t fallen asleep on the bus on the way back from the supermarket, and if Dad hadn’t told Mum it was her fault I was so tired and accused her – with more justification than I think he realised at the time – of not looking after me properly. So then they had a huge fight, while I tried to shut out the sound of their angry, hate-filled voices and not see what they were doing to each other.