Charlie Mitchell - The Nipper - The heartbreaking true story of a little boy and his violent childhood in working-class Dundee

In 1976 after the breakup Mum and Dad started a three-year tug of war over us kids. There were doors kicked in, fights between uncles and aunts. One incident in particular stuck in my mind and later on in life made me realise that he never just flipped overnight but that he had always been an evil bastard.

I’m aged about three and Mum is at the social security sorting out her family allowance when out of the corner of her eye she spots Dad. Unfortunately they have both been booked for appointments in the same building at the same time. Mum’s heart sinks at the sight of him but there’s no place to run. Then Dad looks right at her and walks towards her with that evil smirk that she knows so well by now. As he approaches he doesn’t do much at first, just asks how she is and how we are.

After a short conversation Dad asks if he can hold me, as Tommy’s now hiding behind Mum’s leg with a plastic gun pointed at Dad, saying. ‘No Dad, go away.’

I can see in an instant the look of fear and hesitation in Mum’s face and then she’s handing me over to Dad and he’s grabbing me like I’m a rag doll. I’m scared, but mainly because I can see that Mum’s starting to cry and it’s making me cry too and I try to reach out to Mum, but Dad’s now holding me in a tight grip and won’t let go, even though he has sworn on us boys’ lives that he’ll give me back to her. Then that look comes back on his face and the voice she’s been so scared of reappears.

‘Do yi really think yir getting the nipper back, you bitch?’

Mum now realises that he’s again managed to twist her mind and sneak under her guard, this time bargaining with our lives.

He’s far too strong for Mum as he’s a big lump of a man and she is small and petite. Mum is now screaming at the top of her lungs, pleading and begging Dad to give me back to her, but Dad just stands there laughing at her, as he gets off on things like this – you know, watching people beg.

‘Please, Jock, geeze um back.’

‘If yi come back ti the hoose now, y’ill git yir bairn back.’

‘Kin yi jist hand ’im back in case yi drap um.’

‘ Fuck off yi cow! If yi want um, come and git um.’

He pretends to drop me.

‘Oh, do yi want yir bairn?’

By now he’s taken me out of the social security office and we’re on the street. He carries me into the middle of the road and then puts me down between the two lanes of traffic, as cars swerve to miss me. I’m lying there, petrified, listening to the screeching of brakes and car horns hooting at me but I’m unable to move, confused about what’s happening.

‘ Mum…Dad! ’ I start to wail and scream.

‘ Help! ’ Mum screams. ‘ Somebody please help! Look what he’s dain ti mi bairn!’

Everyone just walks past, not batting an eyelid. It’s in the middle of town first thing in the morning and not one person even stops to ask her what is going on.

Dad picks me back up off the road and points at Tommy.

‘I’ll be back fir him the morin tae, yi fucking bint.’

He’s holding me in one hand and has a cigarette in the other. Mum stands there screaming and begging passers-by to help, but her pleas fall on deaf ears.

Dad is now turning to walk away, throwing his Regal King Size towards her. Mum has no choice but to go back with him. Even though she knows he might kill her this time, the thought of leaving me with him is too much to take.

‘Jock, wait, I’m coming!’

He turns around with that evil smirk on his face. ‘I thought yi might.’

She walks up towards the house behind him, and is now trying to devise a plan. She will go back, take a beating, then earn his trust. That way she can wait until he’s at the pub and move us somewhere far away from there before he gets home.

As for me, I’m getting used to this constant snatching of me by one or other of my parents. It’s like they’re using me as a toy, a possession that both of them want. When you’re growing up, you’re learning to talk, learning to walk. I’m not – I’m just getting dragged around all over the place, listening to women getting beaten up.

I’m almost expecting Dad to snatch me away from Mum or Mum to grab me again. There is no such thing as routine in my life, as I never know whose house I might wake up in, who will be feeding me or putting me to bed, or whether I’ll get a bedtime story, although on the whole I’m spending more time with Dad than Mum so bedtime stories are definitely out of the question, apart from stories that begin with a clip round the head and end in being kicked around the house.

Apparently at one point when I’m just one year old my dad even holds me out of a window in an apartment seventeen storeys up – it’s my Michael Jackson moment – and says:

‘Do yi want me to let your fuckin’ son go?’

I later find out that from the age of six or seven months if Mum left the room, I’d start to cry. She’d come back in and say to Dad, ‘What are yi doing to him?’

So at that early age I must have been very attached to Mum – and also aware of what Dad was capable of doing to me.

* * *

About a week after Dad snatched me from Mum in the social security office, he decided to go out with one of his mates, as Mum had lured him into a false sense of security – a trick that she’d picked up from years of living with him.

I was in bed, but not asleep, listening to the sound of the evening traffic, when I heard her jewellery clanging and footsteps approaching the bedroom door. I knew it was her, I knew the sound of her heels on the creaky floorboards.

‘Wake up, Charlie,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll be goin’ to meh hoose. Wir goin’ on an adventure. But we’ll have to hurry up so come on – get your coat on, pal.’

She helped me dress and then packed a few clothes and I picked up Boris, my old one-eyed bear, and we walked out of Arkly Street, ready for a new life, a fresh start. Anywhere would do, as long as she never had to see his evil, scarred face again.

What Mum hadn’t counted on, though, was just how selfish and unsupportive the people around her could be: nobody wanted to get involved in this nightmare in which she was now living. There she was – two kids, no house, and no money for food in the freezing cold winter with a paranoid schizo wanting her dead.

My Aunty Molly (Dad’s sister) took Mum in for a while and a little later she met a man called Blake. He was a quiet, introverted man with a moustache and glasses, but he was actually very tough, an ex-soldier. You wouldn’t want to meet him up a dark alley. But at the same time he was very gentle and protective towards women.

Mum stayed at Blake’s mum’s house for two weeks while waiting on the council to give her a flat. But three weeks after Mum had escaped from Arkly Street Dad snatched us back. Blake was out in town somewhere with his mates and Mum was working that night, waitressing at a café up the road. Dad simply walked through the back door of Blake’s mum’s house and crept upstairs to the bedroom where we were asleep.

We woke up, dazed and confused about what was happening, until we felt Dad’s clawlike nails digging into our arms as he dragged us out of bed. We both of us cried and whimpered as we realised who it was, but he ignored us and hurried down the stairs past Blake’s mum who tried to stop him in the hall, but he grabbed her hair and shoved her out of the way and walked off with us into the dark, cold night.

Over the next two years Tommy and I were stolen back and forward at least five times. Every time Dad or Mum spotted the other one out in town, they tried to steal us back. Sometimes it was when Dad was working, or when we had babysitters looking after us.