Free What Daddy Did by Donna Ford

to go with them – but they decided to go it alone.
     
The next morning, Helen came into my bedroom first thing and obviously knew that the others had gone. 'Where are they?' she asked, shaking me into a sitting position and grabbing my arms. 'Where have those other two little bastards gone?' I was bleary-eyed and still sore from the beating of the previous evening. 'I don't know where they are!' I said, and I was telling the truth. The plan we had all concocted was half-baked and, if the others had come up with any detailed escape route, they wouldn't have told me anyway as I was too little in their eyes. 'Don't you lie to me,' Helen shouted. 'You're all in this together, all you little bastards!' She went on and on with her usual tirade, name-calling and hysteria. Naturally, it became physical and she tried to, as she said, 'beat it out of me'. There was no point in her trying, as I didn't know anything, but that didn't stop her.
     
Later that day, my Dad came home with the two runaways. The police had gone to the GPO where he worked, after finding the children at St Andrew Square bus station trying – in vain – to get away somewhere. Anywhere, I'd guess. My Dad explained all of this to Helen and then went back to work. He had barely left the house when she started on us. Although most of her physical and verbal anger was concentrated on the two older children, she hissed to me that, 'You needn't think I've forgotten about you.'
     
All of us were set to scrubbing the house, but she dragged me off cleaning duties at one point as she said that I wasn't 'putting my back into it'. Off I was sent to the bathroom and made to stand over the bath, as usual, while she beat me with a belt. I was calling out, 'No, Mummy! No, Mummy! I promise I'll be good, Mummy!' but this seemed to enrage her still further. Whacking at me even more, she shouted, 'I'm not your Mummy! How often do I have to tell you that I'm not your Mummy? You have no Mummy, you little bastard, and you will call me Mrs Ford if you know what's good for you!'
     
From an early age, we had been brought to the attention of the RSPCC, and from that moment there were files on all of us. There were files from Barnardo's, Social Work Department files, files from Rillbank, doctors' files and school files. Each one of them expressed a concern, yet nothing was done. When these files were produced in the High Court in Edinburgh in 2003, they showed a pattern and a link of opinions that was not picked up on and recognised back in the days when I was left there to my fate.
     
As an adult I asked my father why he had let things go on. He just turned his head away, without giving me so much as one word for an answer. Why did he do nothing? Why did he not see what she was doing? How could he be so blind? What made him take her word without even asking me? Fathers are supposed to be protectors. They are supposed to love us and nurture us and listen to us and allow us a voice. They are supposed to praise us and instil us with confidence. My father didn't do any of these things. Yes, he gave me a roof over my head, but it was never a home.
     
How I craved the same attention that he gave his boys with Helen, who were both golden in hair and nature in his eyes, as that was what she told him and that was what he chose to believe. Never once did he see or question my bruises or gaunt appearance, nor did he notice the vacant look I knew I wore when I had been sexually abused.
     
I felt different after the sexual abuse began. I knew that I acted differently too because I couldn't bear to look at people. I was too embarrassed. I was mortified about what had happened to me, what had been done to me. I didn't really know very much about what had gone on, but I knew it was wrong. That my own Daddy wouldn't notice seems beyond neglect.
     
My father would come back from work and know only what Helen told him. He may have been tired from work and life but he never noticed me full stop. Even