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

I don’t think Mum’s reaction was because she was jealous. I think she just didn’t want me to have any positive experiences at all. And in the end she got her way, as she almost always did.

The only place Mum ever took me – and then only on very rare occasions – was to the supermarket. I certainly didn’t ever go to a cinema, a bowling alley or a park with her, and although my brothers had regular check-ups at the dentist, I never did. Even when I needed a haircut or new school uniform, it was my brother Ben who took me into town and paid for it with money Dad would give him. In fact, I only ever went to a playground once when I was a child.

It was on another occasion when Dad had taken me with him to the supermarket and we were on the way back that he said, ‘Come on, Zoe. Let’s go to the park.’ It was only a five-minute walk from our house, but although he’d been there many times with Jake and Ben when they were young, he’d never taken me. So I was very excited, and because I didn’t want him to change his mind, I didn’t ask him the question I was asking myself, which was, ‘What will Mum say if she finds out?’

When we got to the park, Dad took a white hankie out of his pocket and laid it carefully on the seat of the swing – ‘So that you don’t get your clothes dirty,’ he told me, which made me feel very special, like a princess. Then he pushed me, gently at first, until I got more confident and started shouting, ‘Higher! Higher!’

As all princesses know, however, there’s a wicked witch in every fairy tale and ours was waiting for us when we got home. Dad had only just opened the front door when she started shouting at him, asking what took us so long and demanding to know where we’d been. ‘We went to the fucking park,’ he told her, just before she hit him. Then he hit her and the row quickly escalated into a full-blown physical fight.

Whereas Dad had to be sober for at least a few hours every day when he was working at the factory, Mum had no such constraint and was eventually drinking more or less from the moment she woke up in the morning until the moment she fell asleep at night. And the more they both drank, the more frequent and violent their arguments became. So I spent many hours of my childhood listening to them shouting and hitting each other, and hearing Mum scream, ‘No! Stop it!’ when Dad lay on top of her and did something that made her struggle as she tried to push him off, which made me feel protective towards her, and guilty because I knew I couldn’t do anything to make him stop.

Looking back on it now, I’m glad Dad took me to the park that day, because although it ended in him and Mum having a horrible fight, he didn’t ever take me again. So at least I have that good memory of him pushing me on a swing before his attitude towards me began to change and it stopped being just Mum’s beatings that made me afraid to be in my own home.

Jake and Ben used to bully me a lot when I was a child. But whereas Ben was sometimes nice to me, Jake never was, and he would often beat me and call me names like bitch, slag and slut, which I was too young to understand. I think he probably would have treated me the same way even if he hadn’t been encouraged by the fact that whenever Mum heard him tormenting me, she would laugh and join in, calling me ‘thunder thighs’ or saying I was ugly and fat, or that I had a hideous smile and a pig’s nose. I was just four years old when she bought me a pair of pig slippers – ‘Because they look just like you.’

The fact that Jake was nine and Ben was seven when I was born meant that by the time I was old enough to do anything, they were already leading their own lives and I had very little contact with either of them during my childhood, particularly with Jake. But although Mum was almost always angry with me, she rarely was with my brothers. So I believed her when she said there was something wrong with me and that I was the cause of all the rows and everything else that was stressful in her life. Everyone else did too, particularly when they saw how differently she treated my brothers, who were included as an integral part of the family and given pretty much free rein to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. What other explanation could there be of why a mother would love two of her children and so vehemently hate the other one?

Then, not long before I was due to start school, Mum had another baby.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if my little brother Michael had been a girl – whether Mum would have hated her the way she hated me, or whether a little sister would have been included in the family the way Michael was when he was born. I often wonder if the physical contact I had with him when Mum wasn’t well and I used to have to give him his bottle was what made me able to identify and empathise with other people later, when I grew up, because he was the only human being I ever cuddled and hugged.

Mum had more or less recovered from her illness by the time I started school, so I was glad to have somewhere to escape to. I hadn’t ever played with other children before going to nursery – my older brothers only ever teased or bullied me – but despite having no experience of socialising, I got on well with the other kids and really enjoyed school, for the first few years at least, until what was happening at home made it difficult for me to cope with anything.

Despite being abused and excluded by my family, I accepted everything that happened at home as being normal. I think I was about ten years old by the time I even thought to compare my life and my brothers’ with any sense that the difference might be unfair. It was just the way things were: my brothers sat in the living room watching television and eating their meals with our parents, while I sat alone in my bedroom.

I spent many, many hours of my childhood on my own, sitting on the floor in the middle of my room staring at the walls. I wasn’t allowed to sit on the bed, move the furniture or play with any of the toys Mum arranged strategically on a shelf so that she’d know if I’d touched anything. I wasn’t even allowed to open the wardrobe or drawers until I was at least 11. Mum used to give me some clothes every morning and say, ‘This is what you’re wearing today.’ It was all about control, although obviously I didn’t realise that at the time. All I knew was that if I got so bored of just sitting there doing nothing that I managed to convince myself I’d be able to put something back exactly as I’d found it, she always knew. Then she’d shout at me and beat me, often with a half-smile on her face that reflected the enjoyment I think she got from punishing me.

There must have been many reasons for Mum’s behaviour, some of which I partially understand now, and some of which will, I’m sure, be locked away forever in the murky depths of her own psyche. One thing I did eventually become aware of is that she has obsessive-compulsive disorder, which got worse over the years, but which was already apparent in many of the things she did when I was a small child – although again, I didn’t realise that at the time. Some indications of it included the way she used to line things up on the bathroom windowsill – bottles and plastic containers of make-up all placed just so, and woe betide anyone who moved them – and the fact that, later, she always chose a cake bar and crisps to put in my school lunchbox that had a colour-matched wrapper and packet, which I used to think was an indication of the fact that she did care about me after all. Even today, she puts what she calls ‘traps’ around her house – an ornament or rug positioned at a particular angle, for example, or little stones lined up by her wheelie bin so that she’ll know if anyone has moved it, although I’m not sure why anyone would.