Free The Girl Nobody Wants: A Shocking True Story of Child Abuse in Ireland by Lily O'Brien Page B

he asked daddy if he could think of any reason why they should not take us all away from him; but daddy just cried and, shaking his head from side to side, he told us that he loved us and that he was so very sorry for not looking after us better. Then the court staff all stood up and left the room, leaving the police and social service staff to sort things out with us. They told us they were very sorry, but it was time for us to go with them and that daddy could not come with us.
    Then the social service staff escorted us all out of the building and, at that moment, we all began to cry and we shouted at them that we didn’t want to go and to leave us all alone, as we wanted to go home with our daddy. But they just looked down at us and I could see that they were struggling no to cry, but they just couldn’t help themselves and soon everyone was crying and sobbing and the people said that they were sorry, but they had to do their job. And the police officer who knew daddy began to cry, but he still had to take us away.
    And once everyone was outside, the police had to take daddy to one side and hold him back while the social service staff put us girls into one car and the boys into another. Daddy then broke down and collapsed to the ground, he was shouting and begging them to stop and the police had to hold him up and comfort him, while we were all driven away, screaming and shouting at him from the cars’ windows, and then we were gone. Leaving daddy standing at the side of the road emotionally devastated and he had to be taken to hospital. Sometime later, some people told us that daddy had suffered a mental break down and he needed professional help to recover, so they put him into a mental home for three months, until he was able to cope with losing us all and he was able to go home and look after himself again.

 
    CHAPTER 4
    The Convent Home
     
    After leaving the courthouse, the police drove us around in the cars for hours. I think it was more to do with trying to wear us out rather than us having to travel very far, and by the time we pulled into a drive it had worked. Because all we wanted to do was to get out of the cars and be with each other; but as we drove up the drive, we went through a big set of iron gates and up towards a very large building. ‘It’s a convent’, the driver said.
    But as we pulled up, only our car stopped at the front of the building and the other car with the boys inside carried on past us and around to the back of the building and out of sight. It was very quiet and, as I looked through the car window, I noticed some nuns coming out of the convent and they were heading towards the car. As they approached the car, one of the nuns opened the car door and in a strange but soft voice she said, ‘Welcome to St Joseph’s convent. Please get out of the car.’ I looked around and it was now getting dark and a misty fog had begun to surround the nuns and the building; the atmosphere surrounding the place was creepy and I felt like I wanted to stay in the car. But one of the nuns grabbed me by the arm and she began to pull at me, but I held onto my sisters tightly so she could not easily separate us. But the nun kept pulling at me until I was out of the car, then she did the same to the others and once we were all out of the car the nuns gathered around us and they led us up towards the building. While at the same time, they told us that everything was going to be ok and that they were going to look after us for a little while.
    We all looked at each other and I asked the nuns what was going to happen to our brothers, and one of the nuns said that they had to go to another part of the building to stay with other boys the same as them. Then we all walked through the front door of the building and into a hallway; and once inside, the nuns shut the front door behind us and they led us through a large room and into a bathroom. They said that they had to give us a bath and that we had to take off