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1
 Nigel
A damaged boy

Written in the style of an autobiography

All names of characters and locations are fictional
Based on memories that are not necessarily
in the original order of events

2
 Dedicated to my wife, my children,
my family, my ‘in-care’ siblings,
and the friends that I have managed
to gather over 50 years of life.

Published by www.clickaread.com

Copyright © clickaread.com 2008

Nigel King asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN (Pending application)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author
or publishers

Proofread by Steven Meredith

3
 Prologue

As I set out to write this book, in the late afternoon of my 42nd

birthday, I am sitting at my personal computer in my bedroom, my
concentration battling with the sound of drums emerging from the
room next door. My son David is going through his daily half-hour
drum practice routines. The noise deafens me each time the heavy
thud of his bass drum pedal thunders through the thin walls, and I
feel the vibrations through my shoes. It may be surprising to you that
I am actually pleased to endure this deafening experience, no matter
how loud it becomes I am pleased because he is a normal boy with a
normal life, whereas I am a damaged boy, with an extraordinary life.
Apart from the drumming, his other passion is the Royal Navy. He is
about to apply to enter service at the end of this year and he knows
exactly what he wants from life and how to achieve it. I am very
proud of him and I will miss him immensely when he finally flees the
nest. At his age, which is just sixteen, I was completely screwed-up
and was already playing at being a husband to a twenty seven year-
old woman named Pamela, and a dad to her two children Gordon &
Teresa. The contrast between David’s life and mine is remarkable.

4
 I am researching and writing this book primarily for myself
because a psychotherapist has recommended that the process will be
good therapy. I have never attempted to write a book before,
although I have always believed that I had one in me, just waiting to
be written. Until now I have never been too sure that I should write
it. With the ongoing encouragement of my closest friend Andy, and
my wife Jane, I have decided that I will tell the truth about my life,
even when it hurts me to do so, and even if the truth makes me
vulnerable to other people’s judgment. I have promised myself to be
accurate and fully descriptive in the recalling, recording and
communicating of the pain, loneliness, guilt and despair that I
remember suffering. The strong emotion that I carry inside is
sometimes like a heavy weight in my heart and it has surely been in
there for too many years.

Although I am primarily writing this autobiography for myself,

I know others will want to read it. I must warn you that I will
sometimes use strong language in the dialogue and will include vivid
descriptions of sexual, emotional and physical abuse. I make no
apologies, as I believe this method of writing is necessary in
describing certain situations and feelings. My story will introduce
you to a world of sexual deviancies and child molestation that you
may know exist but have never been exposed to. My story may make
you cry when you share my recalled experiences of being an abused
and abandoned child and also a desperately lonely and confused

5
adult. My life, whilst at times unbearable, is real and you will read
about real life in this book.

As a child I was sexually, physically and emotionally abused.

As an adult I have had sex with too many partners to remember. I
have created and owned dating agencies, wife swapping clubs and
sex Chatlines. I have known what it is to live a ‘wealthy’ existence,
and what it is like to live in abject poverty.

I have experienced religion, drug abuse and violence first hand.

I once found healing and hope through believing in Jesus Christ. I
have since found peace through being honest about a new-found
atheistic viewpoint. In my teenage years I slept in open fields whilst
on the run from the police. At just thirteen years of age I was selling
and using drugs. At eighteen I seriously planned to kill myself and
my abuser. I have experienced the pain and unhappiness of divorce;
my parents, my own, and now my children’s also.

I have earned money doing one of the most dangerous jobs at

sea, working as a deep-sea trawler man, sailing from Fleetlea during
the years of the so-called “cod wars” with Iceland. I have also earned
easy money from running premium rate sex Chatlines. I have faced
judges due to drink driving, bad debts and business liquidations. I
have kept company with homosexuals, transvestites, lesbians and
bisexuals. I have associated with thieves, prostitutes, hells angels,

6
paedophiles and heroin addicts. I have had too many jobs to
remember, including one as Pastor of a Pentecostal Church. I have
also burgled houses to steal food and furniture for my family.

My life has been many things, but it has never been boring.

If you are a Christian or religious believer, or if you have strong

moral views in anyway, I can only explain to you that the purpose of
writing this account of my life, in such a graphic way, is not to shock
or corrupt you as a reader, but to help purge the memories and
confusions from within me, as a writer of my own story, telling it as I
recall it, without pulling any punches. I am confident that this book
will be published. I believe it will help others who have had similar
experiences, and also those who live with, love, or work with abuse
victims of any sort. However, I am writing this book primarily to
help me.

Please do not continue to read it if you think you will find the
language, subject matter or my open style of writing to be shocking,
too sexually graphic, or upsetting in anyway. If you are an abuser,
then please read-on and then go and get some help. If you are a
victim of abuse, and have not dealt with it, please tell someone who
you trust and start your own journey of healing. I have a website that
may help you; www.brynalyn.co.uk.

7
 My story will begin with happy memories from 1959. It will
then take you on a snapshot journey through many years of my life
and it will end with an overview of my life at the time of completing
this book.

I currently live in the beautiful Epsom Valley, in the North of

England. I am now able to enjoy each day without nightmares, anger,
guilt or confusion. The journey of healing has been painful for me,
and I suspect that our new relationship, me as the author and you as
the reader, will challenge us both as pages turn and we experience
together my dark nights of abuse, times of isolation and feelings of
deep despair, rejection and bouts of manic depression that became
cancerous to my human spirit, and very debilitating.

Today I am still learning to parent the child within me, a child

that was a victim of terrible circumstances, one who was neglected
and abused by legal guardians. This child is now healing and the
process of writing this book will act as a catalyst to lessen the
distance between anger and peace, lies and truth, pain and hurt, guilt
and forgiveness. Today, I have stopped making complicated plans of
revenge and I have learned how to take each day as it comes and to
live my life without the burden of the past.

My son David is very fortunate to have experienced the

childhood he has, even though he too is a product of a messy divorce.

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My eight and two year old boys, Anthony and Tim are also fortunate
to have such an extended family of brothers, grandparents and
uncles. I hope, and fully expect, that they will go on experiencing a
childhood of love and security. They are the benchmark in my
history that bears witness to the cessation of the cycle of abuse.

My two adult sons, Kevin and Nathan, who currently live in

Portugal, are not so fortunate. They are second-generation victims of
my unusual and disturbed childhood. I have learned that the abuse I
suffered as a child caused my dysfunctional lifestyle as an adult, and
it clearly caused my inability to parent them properly. When I was
their age I was in the middle of my second divorce and I was running
away from myself. I can only hope that they will read my book, as I
believe it will go some way towards helping them understand their
past and also help them to overcome the dysfunctional life they
inherited from me.

I love all my children very much and feel very privileged to be

their Dad and to be witnessing them progressing through life. I must
also mention Gordon, my stepson. He suffered first hand at my
inability to be a parent to him. Despite his negative experiences as a
child, both with me and with both of his natural parents, he has
proved to be a good man and a very good dad to his son. I must also
mention my step-daughter Teresa. She has also suffered. Her life, the

9
last time I heard about it, was awash with drugs, violence, abuse and
abandonment.

My mother will probably never want to read this book,

although I really would like her to do so. Whenever I have mentioned
to her in the past that I am writing an autobiographical story, she has
avoided further discussion about it. My brothers and sisters; Mike,
Natalie, Noel, Ray, Celia and Joan, none of whom share the same
parents as me, and some of which have never even met each other,
probably will read it if I send them a copy. My father has agreed to
read it prior to publication and to help me correct any dates or
recollections that have become obscured from the period after he met
my mother and from my early years as a toddler.

Some of the people who read this book will identify with the
things I mention and I guess one or two will lie awake at night after
reading it, feeling guilty or perplexed by the content. The two people,
more than any others, who should read this are Mr Shush, my sexual
abuser, and Mr Angry who was physically abusive to me (these are
obviously not their real names). Hopefully many paedophiles and
child abusers will also read this book. I feel they need to know what
it feels like to be at the other end of their addictions to child-sex and
violence.

10
 I have a strong desire and deep rooted need to show my
mother my story. I want other various guardians that I had as a child
to see how their lives and decisions seriously affected my life and
subsequently, the lives of my children, wives and partners. I want
them all to read this book. I also want them to understand me and to
know exactly what it is that I have quietly survived. I know that
some of them feel I am to blame for negative circumstances in their
own lives and I have always carried a heavy burden of feeling that I
have seriously failed as a child, son, brother, partner, lover, husband,
parent, and friend. I also believe that I can, through the writing of this
book, give the child in me a voice to answer some of these people. I
especially want the child in me to have the opportunity to shout back
at those who abused me or gave up on me. I think I am free of my
own anger and bitterness towards many of the adults in my
childhood. Knowing that they may read this book is very satisfying.
Perhaps this is my sweet revenge.

Today I am still trying to come to terms with, and also

understand, a childhood of abuse, lies and confusion that eventually
led me to live my bizarre and dysfunctional adult life that has been
dominated with the burning desire for money, sexual fulfilment, and
the control over my own life. This has been my obsession.

For now, the silence has now returned in my bedroom and I

can smell the aroma of the evening meal being prepared in the

11
kitchen by my wife Jane. I feel that I am the luckiest man on earth
today, despite my failings. I have a wonderful wife, great kids, and a
beautiful home. The only things I lack are earplugs for tomorrows
drum practice.

12
Updated prologue

The past nine years have flown by. My son David is now out of the
Navy having spent time at war and survived. He is now working for
his own company as a contractor servicing helicopters and
aeroplanes. Now, another son, Anthony, is about to join the Royal
Marines. He has just completed his (PRMT) Potential Royal Marine
Training. Much has happened in the intervening years. I now have
another son, Lawrence, and also a beautiful daughter, Annabel. They
are currently aged six and five. They are like peas in pod and play
together everyday. Chapter thirteen and my epilogue will bring you
update.

At last I have finished the book. It’s been a long journey. I have
picked it up, put it down, thrown it away, started it again, considered
it, despised it, wrestled with it, and cursed it.

Nigel 2008

13
Content

Prologue

1 Happy Memories

2 Haunting Memories

3 The Hospital Affair

4 The Home from Hell

5 Terror in Traquay

6 Running Backwards

7 A Woman in a Red Dress

8 Four Girls and a Baby

9 Sex on the Phone, Money in the Bank

10 Jesus in the Shower

11 The Rise and fall of Faith

12 A Born Again Atheist

13 The Third Quarter of Life

Epilogue

What is a bi-polar disorder?

14
 1
Happy Memories

When I first decided to start writing this book, commencing

with dialogue based on happy memories from my early childhood, I
immediately faced a writer’s block and had to stop. I wrote around
fifty words and then put it down for about two months. I found it
very difficult to focus on any genuine, and early, happy memories. I
persevered and eventually, after reading therapy information on how
to find my ‘inner-child’, and practicing regular deep meditation, I
recalled numerous memories that were truly happy ones. They came
from storage, somewhere in the back of my mind from the year 1959,
when I was nearly three years of age. Finding and reliving these
memories gave me a very pleasant feeling, similar to the joy you
experience when rooting through old photographs and finding a
cherished family snap, taken at that moment when everyone was
being very stupid. You must know the type I mean. Anyway, these
happy memories brought tears to my eyes and recalling the details,
and writing them down, has helped me realise that there must have
been other times in my childhood when things were normal and
happy, rather than abnormal and sad.

15
 My grandparents on my mother's side, Nana Dora and
Granddad Tim, had a back garden that was small, neat and
uncluttered. It had a border around three edges and the grass met on
one side with a wooden trellis framework that was attached to the
back wall. The house was situated on the right-hand side, at the
bottom of a cul-de-sac, at the end of a row of 4 or 5 houses, fairly
typical of the type built in Overpool in the 1930’s. I can recall the
smell of bread being baked as my Nana went about her business in
the back kitchen. My focus of concentration, as I recall, was on
balancing small metal Dinky toy cars along the wooden framework
of the back ground floor window.

I remember standing in the quiet garden with the sun hot on

my neck and the grass having a dry sort of smell. I can recall
watering the flowers with a small round watering can. I was happily
playing by myself. Granddad was at work and I knew that my milk
and biscuits would be waiting for me in the kitchen. “Tea for two!”
my Nan used to shout from the kitchen, “Come on Nigel, your milk
is ready!” She always placed a bright yellow china cup and saucer,
filled with warm milk, next to a china plate that had three biscuits on
it. “You can have four after your next birthday, if you are a good
boy”, she would say, whilst tickling under my chin with the tips of
her fingers. My baby chair was always set square in front of a grown-
up chair that served as my table with a tray on it. After finishing my
biscuits and milk I would quite often sit, content and happy, in

16
Granddad Tim’s glass shed that was at the side of the house, just
outside the kitchen door.

My Granddad was a watchmaker and jeweller with a business

in Overpool City Centre. The smell in his garden shed was very
strong. It was a pleasant smell of wood and linseed oil that emanated
from the dozens of small wooden draws and compartments, each
filled with watch parts, some only a few millimetres wide. Granddad
Tim had carefully stacked the specially made draw units on top of
each other next to his collection of carpentry tools and scraps of
wood. Sometimes, at the weekend when he relaxed after Sunday
dinner, he would sit in the lean-to shed, with me on his knee, and
allow me to knock nails into a piece of wood and build a toy boat. I
remember him as a very patient, loving and caring man who showed
me unconditional love. When I look at the few photographs I have of
him holding me, I see a man who looks as proud as a ‘dad’ could be. I
have been told that my mother, Amelia, should have been a ‘Peter’
and that Granddad Tim loved me like a son he had never had.

I think the daily ritual of warm milk and three biscuits, after
playing in the garden, was a pleasant daily event that reassured me
that everything was normal and settled. My Nan could be relied
upon; she was as regular as clockwork, just like my Granddad. The
milk and biscuits routine quite often signified the part of the day
when my Nan would draw the curtains in her posh lounge and we

17
would sit together in the shade by the window. She always let me
slide down her legs and on to the round gold coloured metal coffee
table where I would close my eyes and fall asleep, whilst I listened to
her gently singing nursery rhymes in a low voice. My mother still has
the coffee table. The room was very clean and was far too elegant for
such a small room in a tiny council house in Overpool. There was a
black ebony baby grand piano at one end of the room, in the bay
window, and I often ended up underneath it, happy, secure and
content. I remember the silence that was only broken with the
purring of the cat that sat, as if listening to the singing, on a shelf next
to the black ebony African figure that my Nan called Lulu. This is the
earliest memory I can recall. Nana Dora was like a mum to me, and
Granddad Tim was like a dad.

The cat, who was called Tom on account of him being a ‘ginger
tom’, was my best friend, even if he did hiss at me whenever I
wanted to play with him. The good feelings of this calm safe
atmosphere are something I can easily allow my self to daydream
about, and yearn for, when I think about that period of my life. I feel
at peace when I remember that house and the smells of Nana’s
cooking and the strength of Granddad Tim’s arms around me. I recall
feeling safe whenever he came home from work and picked me up
asking, “How is my big boy today?” I remember the atmosphere of
the rooms in that little house in Hilder Road, and especially the
images of my Nan’s collection of Toby jugs that had been carefully

18
placed on a narrow pelmet that ran around the top of the hall and
landing walls. These jugs were very colourful and some were quite
frightening, with funny twisted faces. Later in life, I collected Toby
jugs, buying and selling them on eBay. The row of toy cars, outside
the back window, in a long line from left to right and hiding the sun-
bubbled paintwork, is a very vivid picture in my mind. I remember
my joy when Granddad Tim would come home with a new Dinky
toy car as a present. I used to run outside to the windowsill and make
room for it in my collection. I would then go and stand inside the
house to admire it with my mouth and nose pressed up against the
glass. “Watch my nets!” my Nan would always shout from the
kitchen as I raced through, “I’m not boiling them again!”

It is confusing and deeply upsetting when I think of the same

strong, caring, loving and tender woman screaming abuse at me, and
often locking me a dark cupboard for no apparent reason, some six
years later in her big guesthouse on the Southall.

Nana Dora died of various cancers when I was about 20.

Apparently her brain had deteriorated over the years and she died
with a lot of confusion in her mind. I saw her quietly pass away in a
big oak double bed at her home in Arnold Road. She was clutching a
large black handbag, stuffed full of money when she died. I later
helped my mother distribute the cash between the various relatives.
We found several thousand pounds in her handbag and more money

19
hidden in a row of locked wardrobes that stood in her bedroom. I
got £35 from the tax free ‘booty’, which later became the subject of
many arguments between my mother and her sister Anne.

I guess my Nan did not understand how wickedly she had

treated me when I was a little boy in her big house, several years after
Granddad had died. This same woman became known by many
guests who stayed in her guesthouse, as ‘Dora hot-dinners’, and she
was also sometimes affectionately called ‘Fag-ash Lil’. I remember
once watching her cigarette burn down the full length to the tip, into
a three-inch curve of ash, just before dropping into the pan of scouse
stew that she was preparing for the workman who lodged with her.
On one occasion, some of the lads staying at the guesthouse grabbed
Dora, still in her curlers and slippers, and carried her to the pub over
their shoulders. My Granddad Tim would not have recognized the
liberated Dora that emerged with a new lease of life after his death.
‘Dora hot-dinners’ was famous, at least amongst the Wimpy and
Cementation workmen that helped to build the Causeway Street
flyover in Havenhead. She had a reputation for good grub and clean
beds. I was once very shocked to discover my Nan in bed with one
of these men. He was known as ‘Big Bad Barney from Barnsley’ and
he drove a giant D8 earthmover for a living. He often took me to the
Oxstone pub, in Talbot Village, when I was on home leave from the
children’s home, and got me very drunk on pints of bitter. Barney
loved to drink and party and looked like a gruff Buddha who never

20
shaved. On one occasion, during a get-together in my Nan’s best
room, he was dancing and caused the fireplace to fall away from the
wall. He could also get quite nasty when he was drunk and once,
after I had been arguing with my Nan, he literally lifted me off the
ground by holding me around the throat. During their relationship,
he and Nana Dora travelled the UK in a Morris car, despite the fact
that Barney did not have a full driving licence or any motor
insurance.

My mother was always busy helping with the cleaning and

cooking at that time. As I recall, she also had the occasional fling with
a guest. I clearly remember her entering the guest bedroom of a
Welshman, known as ‘Taffy’ who lodged with them quite regularly.
The door to the guest room was opposite the top box room that I
used when I was home. I watched them through the gap in the door
as they jumped about on the bed in the early hours. I was later taken
for a meal in a posh restaurant by Taffy and my mother. I thought
this was probably a treat, given to me so I would not tell my mother’s
partner that she had been unfaithful while he was away. His name
was Robert and would likely have given Taffy a good thumping if he
had found out.

My mother, Amelia Barron, had married my dad, Daniel King,

in 1955. They were young and both working in Overpool City Centre
where they had met and started courting. Daniel was a salesman of

21
some sort in the Henry Lee shopping store and Amelia was working
in accounts or administration in the famous Johnston’s store that was
opposite the Adelaide Hotel. My mother tells me that Daniel was
excited at the thought of marrying Tim Barron’s daughter. She
always gave me the impression that she was important, because
Granddad Tim was so well known and thought to be very rich. I
imagine that Daniel was somewhat disappointed when he finally got
invited to tea at the council house were they lived. Apparently
Granddad did not want to buy his own house but preferred to invest
his wealth in diamonds. My mother once told me that her father felt
insulted when the young Daniel proudly presented the ‘cheap &
nasty’ diamond chip engagement ring.

I know little about the circumstances that led to the divorce of

my parent’s because I have never been told the entire story. I do
however know, by way of the anger and bitterness displayed to me
later, whenever I mentioned my fathers name to my Nan and mother,
that whatever happened, had been very unpleasant for them all. I
was just an innocent child who had been born into an existing adult
fight that eventually ended in divorce, tears, anger and bitterness. My
medical records show that I was admitted to hospital at the age of
eighteen months with a broken collarbone. Someone, I can’t
remember who it was, told me years later that my mother had
dropped me on the floor and did not take me to the hospital until my
father found out about it three days later.

22
 The first home they shared was in Wullerton and the stories
later told to me about Daniel, by my mother, range from the sublime
to the ridiculous. I remember when I was around thirteen or fourteen
years of age, on a rare home leave from the children’s home where I
then lived, she went into great detail about how Daniel used to sleep
with women behind her back and also asked her to do what she
referred to as ‘disgusting things in bed’. She also claimed that he had
‘girlfriends in the house’ when she was at work and this is one of the
reasons she divorced him. True or untrue, my mother, like many
parents, totally ignored my right to have a relationship with my
natural father, and her stories about him made it almost impossible
for me to view him neutrally or fairly, years later when I met him.

Over the years, my mother seemed unaware of my

embarrassment when she talked of my father and other things that I
did not understand. For example, her exposition on why woman
bleed every month, and how her various husbands over the years did
not sexually satisfy her, only confused me and left me with a slanted
look at life and relationships. Today, if my sisters, Celia or Joan read
this, they will recognise the woman I am talking about since they
have told me that she has continued similar debates with them. She
seemed to think that discussing such issues with her children was a
healthy thing to do no matter how old or embarrassed they might be.
She also vented her opinions about ex-husbands with no mercy.

23
 I do not know who cared for me each day in my first two years
of life, whilst my parents, it seems, were mostly working. Reviewing
the confusion of stories that I have been told, it is likely that they took
turns throughout the day and perhaps they had a female lodger who
also helped out with babysitting. I guess that my father’s mother, also
named Dora, or my mother’s sister, named Anne, may have helped
out on occasions too. I do know for a fact that my auntie Anne often
took me to Hale Park in Wullerton for a secret meeting with my Dad.
This was after he and my mother had separated.

When I left hospital as a newborn, I was wrapped in a white

shawl that Dora and Tim had bought from Henry Lee’s, and I guess
at that point the young Amelia and Daniel envisaged a long and
happy life together with me at their side. The period from birth to age
four, with the exception of my happy memories in Hilder Close, is a
complete blank and remains a confusing mystery to me. I can only
surmise that the young couple, Daniel and Amelia, had made the
mistake of getting frisky, getting pregnant and then getting married,
under social pressure to do so, and they subsequently tried to live
together as unsuitable life partners. I am content in knowing that
someone loved me and that my mother probably did her best for me
with limited help from others.

The serious abuse in my life started at a later date, at the hands

of a stepfather; a few years after Daniel apparently disappeared from

24
my life due to my mother’s and Nan’s aggressive assertiveness to
keep him from me. I guess the law did not recognise fathers as
having any parental rights as they would today, and Granddad Tim
only ever got my mother’s side of the story. Like any protective
‘father’, Granddad Tim probably acted as a block when Daniel made
attempts to see me. I do know, because Daniel has since told me, that
he spent time in prison for non-payment of maintenance and my
other Nan, Daniel’s mother Dora, once told me that he had once
locked himself in a toilet and cried when he could not get to see me. I
did something very similar years later when I thought I had lost
custody my son David. I also tried to commit suicide on that
occasion. Daniel maintains that prison was light relief from what he
describes as the 'evil and wicked' Amelia and Dora. They lied about
him and cheated him to such an extent that when they returned his
clothes and personal items, most were cut in half or had parts
missing. This was an act of petty bitterness that he still blames on
Dora through gritted teeth some forty eight years on.

After the divorce, when I was two years old, it seems that I was
left to live with Nana Dora and Granddad Tim. I now have my few
happy memories of that time, but I do not recall my mother being
part of it. The images and feelings in my mind that follow the happy
memories are mostly of abandonment and loneliness.

25
 My mother was, I am told, a very loving, caring and generous
person. She always did her best to protect me and I can recall happy
memories of being with her when I was a little boy. Later, when I
lived with her and her second husband (who I will call Mr Angry)
she always baked cakes for me and made my birthdays very special.
She worked long hours and kept more than one job to help feed us.

Today my mother will not talk to me and our relationship has

declined to zero contact. I think she lives in denial of the subsequent
sexual abuse and torment that I suffered whilst in care. She has also
become a Jehovah’s Witness and I am sure this has also played a part
in her decision to separate herself from me. I have truly missed her
companionship in adult life and have a large vacuum of space in my
heart where her love used to reside. One of my greatest desires is to
have my mother hold me and tell me that she loves me and that she
believes and understands what I went through, both whilst I was
with her and Mr Angry, and also later when I was abandoned in the
children’s home. This would heal an open wound that I carry deep
within me. I have very mixed emotions about my mother, even today
as a fifty year old man, and I am constantly fighting the desire to call
her and talk to her. I particularly want to ask why she had left me in
the home, even though I had disclosed to her that I was being
sexually abused. This is something that I have never come to terms
with. Sometimes I catch myself daydreaming of the happier times we
had together in Overpool. I remember her taking me to Littlewoods

26
in my first school uniform to have my photograph taken sitting with
a chimpanzee, and I remember sitting with her in Café’s, drinking
warm milk. I can even recall travelling on the old style buses with big
leather seats and sitting on the inward facing bench seat at the back
near the conductor, which was a special treat.

These are happy memories, times in my mind that I feel safe,

loved and content again. I think I was very close to my mother when
I was aged five or six. These years were probably the happiest I had
with her during my troubled early childhood. I can vividly remember
being in her bed and cuddling up close to her from behind in a
zigzag position. Her body was warm and felt like a safe place to be,
with her cotton nightgown brushing soft against my face. In contrast,
I also recall what seem like long periods of abandonment, a time
when the dark is scary and the room I am in is empty. These
recollections make me feel desperate, frightened and unprotected.
Some of the memories I have recalled from this time are just too
overbearing and upsetting for me to contemplate. Even now, I can’t
bring myself to write down some things that happened.

I know that my mother worked long hours, and I suspect that I

was left alone in the house for long periods. Today this would be
classed as neglect, but I guess that back in the early sixties, in the
rough working class town of Houghton, in Overpool, it was the norm
for poor families who did not have social security to rely on for

27
sustenance. My mother once talked about getting blankets from a
workhouse and how she suffered with no maintenance from my
father, who by this time, I have learned, was living in a Comma van
whilst travelling around Welsh market towns selling plastic wares
and kitchen utensils. I know my mother often took me to work with
her and made me stand by the vegetable carts for long periods of
time, outside the lifts in Henry Lees in Overpool. She was working on
the next floor up, demonstrating Knit Master knitting machines, and I
remember being frightened of all the big people, passing by in a
hurry and in all directions. I remember being desperate to go to the
toilet; but too frightened to move from the place my mother had told
me to stand, in case she returned while I was gone and I would be
left in the shop alone.

I do not know all the circumstances that caused my mother to

leave Daniel, and I can’t sit with Tim and Dora to ask the questions I
have about this period, because they are both now dead. When I
imagine the plight of the young mother, Amelia, in early 1960, I feel
she is to be admired for her grit and determination. It seems that she
did her best at a time when society frowned upon single mothers and
did not offer the financial help and practical support that is available
today. It seems that she had it tough and she worked herself out of a
tough corner. If she had to make the hard decision to leave me with
her parents, then it must have been the only option she had at that
time, and I came to no harm with them. They loved me as their own.

28
My mother, it appears, came back for me as soon as she had a reliable
income and a place for us both to stay. This is surely a sign of a
loving and caring parent who was living with a failed marriage and a
divorce in an unforgiving society. She had no way of knowing that
her decision to move me from her parents would eventually lead to
greater trauma and heartache for us both.

29
 2
Haunting Memories

In this particular memory, it is probably 1962, and I am four

years old. Me and my mother are living with an old man who I call
Gandar, at 43 Vern Avenue in Hooten, Overpool. Gandar is blind and
he gives me a bronze coloured three penny bit every Saturday. The
coal fire in the back parlour is always burning and the house seems
very dark, with brown paintwork, deep green walls, and a smell of
damp in the air. I remember often walking around on my own in the
house, and outside in the avenue. I don’t remember having any
friends to play with, although I do remember little Kate from next
door. Gandar looks after me sometimes during the day and I get his
slippers for him when he wants them. I think my mother had a
second job during the day. When I contemplate the memories of this
time I feel lonely and sad.

I have learned that my mother worked as a housekeeper and

live-in carer for this old man. Following his death, which I
unfortunately witnessed, he left his house to us in his will. I have an
image in my mind of this man lying on the floor with blood on his

30
forehead and his eyes were still, and looking at me. I was later told
that it was my fault he died because he had slipped on a toy car I had
left on a step at the top of the stairs.

At this stage of my life, just like any little boy aged four, I was
basically content that I had a bed of my own, food and some toys. I
remember being lonely and isolated in that house with the old blind
man, but it was warm and it was home. I suppose I must have missed
my Nana Dora and Granddad Tim, but I do not remember missing
them. I do not recall any feelings about them at all during this period.
I do however remember being alone and frightened in that dark and
gloomy house. It was the house where we later became prisoners of
violence; violence that was dealt by the hands of Mr Angry, my
mother’s new husband, and my new step-father.

I do not recall Mr Angry entering my life with any sort of

announcement, but I do remember being shocked at the age of seven,
when I was told by my mother that he was not my ‘real’ dad. The
news was, in some way, a relief as I had thought that a dad should
have been kinder than Mr Angry was to me. I remember Mr Angry as
an evil and angry bastard who seemed to enjoy beating my mother
and hurting me. His influence on my life was negative in the extreme
and it caused me to have a terrible fear of men, and because of the
pets he kept, I also have an inherent fear of dogs. His actions are
beyond my understanding and his drunken frustrations with his own

31
past should never have been worked out on my mother or me. I was
later told that his dad had left the house when he was very young,
apparently to buy a loaf from a corner shop, and had never returned
home. This must have been hard for the young Mr Angry to
experience however, the violent and cruel ‘adult’ Mr Angry was a
much harder task for me to cope with.

I can recall many times of isolation, fear and loneliness when I

think about this period of my life, especially after Gandar had died. I
think my mother was working late nights, maybe with more than one
job, and this is why I was so often left in the house alone. It may be
that she thought Mr Angry was caring for me. I do remember, quite
vividly, one occasion when I was walking around the avenue, late in
the evening and in the dark, no older than four or five. I was feeling
terrified, alone and confused. It was a traumatic experience for a little
boy to feel so utterly abandoned. I can remember I was wearing short
grey coloured trousers and white underpants. I had soiled myself
and I had excrement running down my legs and into my sandals. I
was smelly and needed an adult to help me but I could not find one. I
remember having the fear of what Mr Angry would do to me if he
found out. His heavy slaps and pokes were something I often
endured when no one was looking, and the fear of his anger was a
terrible burden. Mrs. Jones, who lived in the house next door, found
me crying outside her house and she took me inside. I was cold,
frightened, and wet. She stood me in a bucket of warm water while

32
she washed me down. I remember her daughters, Beth and Kate, who
were a little older than me, laughing and pointing at me, holding
their noses and saying ‘stinky, stinky we saw ya winky’. I had to
wear a pair of knickers and a girl’s tee shirt until my mother came
home. I fell asleep on their couch and woke up in my own bed the
next morning. On this occasion I escaped a beating for my accident.
Unless something like this has happened to you, it is difficult to
convey just how traumatic an incident like this can be to a small
child, and how many scars remain in adulthood. Just recalling this
time in my life can stir up deep, overpowering emotions within me,
causing me to be uncontrollably upset, even as I write.

Living with my mother and Mr Angry was sometimes good. I

can recall days in the summer spent out as a family, travelling in Mr
Angrys blue Sunbeam Rapier, driving to Wales to watch motorbike
scrambling. I also remember Mr Angry redecorating the house,
making it a much brighter place to live after Gandar had died. I recall
helping to wash a new car that Mr Angry was so proud of. We
changed from being cramped in a small blue Sunbeam Rapier to the
absolute luxury of a big red shiny Vauxhall Victor Deluxe. We were
the talk of the avenue the day he parked that car outside number
forty three.

I have a frightening memory of watching Mr Angry beating a

young teenager outside that house after he had caught him breaking

33
off the Vauxhall’s radio aerial. Mr Angry was a bully and quite often
had confrontations with others in the neighbourhood. That young lad
was unfortunate enough to feel the full force of a punch in the face.
Mr Angry was a bombastic and arrogant ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ character
who once had a toe-to-toe fight with the headmaster at the Vern
Avenue Infant’s school, which I attended. He had been warned on
numerous occasions that he should not allow his Alsatian dogs to
foul the playing fields. I was with Mr Angry when that confrontation
occurred and a few months later, the headmaster brutally caned my
little hand in an outburst of anger in his office. I had apparently
‘cocked my eyes’ at him. It was an infant’s school. I was an infant. He
caned me with such force that he broke my thumb on the third strike.
I was sent back to the classroom and I just sat and cried until home
time.

I remember spending many months at home, kept off school by

my mother, who had made an official complaint to the School
authorities. I was told later that the headmaster was removed as a
direct result of the assault on me. I can only guess that he had been
working out the continued frustrations he had with Mr Angry and
his Alsatian dogs, and that this was his form of retribution. Ironically,
Vern School had originally been a happy place for me. I can recall
following the children down Vern road as they were going to school,
and sneaking into a class room to sit with them. This was before I had
officially started at school. On another occasion, when trying to make

34
friends, I climbed on the school wall by the gates. I was showing off
and then fell and broke my leg. I can also recall the first day at that
school, as an ‘official’ infant; most of the other kids were crying, but I
was just happy to be first on the rocking horse that stood in the
infant’s classroom.

I once got severe beating from Mr Angry after one of his dogs
had died. The dog, named Satan, had choked on a piece of pipe from
the shed and Mr Angry held me responsible because he said I left the
shed door open. He dragged me around the house, shouting,
pushing, shoving, and shaking me. His spit used to hit my face when
he did this and I was always terrified. This is another memory that
brings a wave of emotion when I recall it. It was after an attack like
this one that I developed a facial twitch and stopped communicating
with people. I remember being silent for a long time. I recall the
inability to speak and the frustrations of those who tried to
communicate with me. My mother took me to a child psychologist
and he sent me to a ‘special’ class in another school once a week. It
was at that class that I made a papier mache mask of an angry face. I
kept that mask until I was fifteen. No one ever realised that the mask
was Mr Angry, the cause of my silence and my twitch.

After my little brother Ray was born, Mr Angry resented me

even more than before, and his violent outbursts toward me
increased tenfold. He would always favour Ray. His mother, I think

35
she was called Annie, used to visit the house and bring sweets for
Ray. She too always left me out and had no time for me. I have
memories of arguments and beatings happening up to 1967, which is
when we had moved to thirty nine Larks Lane, in Southall. On one
occasion I can remember him poking me in the chest so hard that I
had small finger-sized bruises all over my chest for weeks
afterwards. After this I complained to my mother about breathing
pains but she simply told people I had asthma.

On another occasion, I had messed up Mr Angrys tools in the

garage. I was dragged upstairs by him and he held my head under
cold running water before throwing me on my bed and locking me in
the room. I recall whimpering alone in that room, and unable to catch
my breath. On another occasion Mr Angry literally hung me upside
down by my feet out of the back bedroom window. I was terrified of
being dropped on the concrete flags below in the garden. I remember
the feeling of hot urine running over my stomach as he held on to my
ankles. He was shouting and lowering me up and down, as if he was
going to drop me. The pebble-dashed wall cut my knees and elbows
as I screamed and apologised to him. He had caught me lowering my
action-man out of the window on a piece of string. It was just a game.
The fear of this incident left me with a terrible anxiety in later life that
would manifest itself whenever I was up ladders, or on the edge of a
sea cliff. I also had a fear of dogs that I took with me into adult life.
Mr Angry used to make me stand in the kitchen at Vern road if I was

36
naughty. The dogs were kept in the kitchen and they used to growl at
me. He would shout ‘guard’ and they would sit and stare at me. If I
moved, they would growl. This was a horrible thing to do to a child. I
was traumatised by the fear of being eaten by dogs. Later, as an
adult, I lived with such a fear of dogs that I would break into a sweat
and shake, even at the sight of a small dog. I always tried to hide my
fear because I was so embarrassed.

When my mother eventually managed to take us away from Mr

Angry, accompanied by two policemen she had asked to come with
her to protect us from him, I felt totally relieved, as if a nightmare
had ended. My little brother Ray was left behind with Mr Angry and
I pined for my brother for many months afterwards.

We left the pleasant neighbourhood of Larks Lane, and the

large comfortable and well fitted home we shared with Mr Angry
and Ray, carrying a few boxes of clothes, and as many toys as I could
manage. The previous months had seen violent outbursts from Mr
Angry that had become just too intolerable for my mother to cope
with. I recall the violence vividly, and remember often hiding under
my bed in the box room while they argued late into the night. I
would cuddle Ray, who would cry a lot, and I would hope that Mr
Angry would not find me and drag me out from under the bed and
beat me or humiliate me in some way. Towards the end of their
marriage, my mother would sometimes stay away overnight. On

37
these occasions, his violence toward me would erupt without
provocation. I recall one evening when I was sitting on top of the
stairs, when I should really have been in bed. I had heard shouting,
had gone to see what was happening and saw my mother trying to
get in through the front door. Mr Angry was leaning against it with
the chain lock on, shouting abuse at her and trying to trap her hand.
That night, after she had given up and left, He pulled my hair and
dragged me back to my bed. He called me a little shit and a twat.

Several years of abuse came to an end on the day we drove off

up Larks Lane in a taxi that was flanked by two police motorcycles.
The last thing I saw as I turned back to see Ray, was Mr Angry
standing at the gate sticking his fingers up. If my brother Ray reads
this, I want him to know that I did love him and I really missed him.
We had been very close for a while, but time and circumstance has
since made us total strangers. I wish I had been older and able to
rescue him.

Our new home was in Derwind Road in Havenhead, Southall.

It was a shock to find myself living with my Grandmother, Nana
Dora, and my mother in a small scruffy dark house that, at first, had
no furniture and not even any beds, carpets or curtains. My mother
had made it as comfortable as she could for my arrival, but it seemed
derelict to me. My first bed in that house was a door with a mattress
on it, supported by two wooden crates at either end. I was quickly

38
sent to a new school and, although I was happy to be away from Mr
Angry, this new life did not suit me and I slowly became more and
more depressed. I was just ten years old and very unhappy,
confused and desperately missing Ray. The grown-ups in my life
never asked me how I felt about things and I never told them. I took
to petty crime, stealing cash from the milkman that I worked with on
Saturday mornings, and stealing small Humbrol paint pots from the
local hobby shop in Oxtam village. I was an artistic kid who would
quite often spend hours upon hours alone in my bedroom, drawing
and painting. I had taken to painting naked women in oils, after my
mother had bought me an art book showing how to draw naked
figures. I used to steal dirty magazines from the local newsagent and
then copy the pictures and keep them under my bed. When my
mother discovered them I expected a telling-off, but to my surprise I
was praised for the artistic talent that I had demonstrated and she
encouraged me to continue with them. I think this is when my later
obsession with the female form was born.

Life at Derwind Road was pretty miserable and the divorce was
messy. Mr Angry tried to run us over one night near the Havenhead
Technical College, right outside the Glenda Jackson Theatre. His car,
a green Mini-van, mounted the pavement and came towards us at
great speed, just missing my mother as she pushed me away into a
bush at the side of the road. She was swearing loudly at him as the
car went past and he was shaking his fist at her through the window.

39
 I was very glad that my mother moved to our new big house in
Arnold road, in Oxtam on the Southall, and that Mr Angry did not
know were she lived. The divorce went through and my mother later
told me that it had been agreed that Mr Angry would keep Ray and
the family home in Larks Lane. I have never understood why she did
not fight for custody of Ray instead of just abandoning him like she
did. Ray was to be given my mothers 50% share of the equity when
he was twenty one, which is when Mr Angry was forced to sell the
house. It cost £3,000 in 1967 and later sold for more than £50,000. It’s
ironic that Ray and Mr Angry got a share and I did not. Especially
since the house in Vern Avenue that had enabled the purchase, was
originally left to my mother and me by Gandar, long before Mr
Angry was even on the scene.

I don’t object to Ray getting his share, but that bastard Mr

Angry did not deserve any of my rightful inheritance. Today, Mr
Angry lives at one end of Larks Lane, in a house he built himself, and
Ray lives in his own home, close by, with his partner and his two
dogs. He bought the house with some of the cash from the sale of
number thirty nine. Now Mr Angry and Ray do not talk because his
violence eventually spilled into Ray’s life in later years. Ray retaliated
when he became an adult and hit him back. I have recently visited Mr
Angry, as part of my research for this book, and I found him still
locked into his hatred of my mother, some thirty two years later. He
seemed nervous of me when I unexpectedly knocked on his door,

40
and I felt nothing for him. I had neither anger nor pity towards him
as he sat opposite me, pouring a cup of tea and mumbling something
about knowing a judge. My fear of him was finally under control. His
eyes did not often meet mine during the brief meeting and I noticed
his hand shaking and beads of sweat running down his left temple. It
was enough for me to know that I could have produced a baseball
bat, right there and then, and I could have easily beaten him to death
if I had wanted. I did consider it. Nothing would have brought me
more joy than to see him quiver with fear at the end of a bat that I
was holding. However, I did not take any action against him. He is
now a pathetic old man with health problems. I value my own
freedom and I would not let my family down by doing something
that could jeopardise their lives, and my liberty. He still drinks too
much and seems content in a tiny world that has become his own
prison, insulated with whisky and bitterness.

The abuse I had suffered at the hands of my stepfather was

extreme. I was regularly hit, shouted at, and poked in the chest until I
was bruised. Watching him argue and strike my mother was also a
regular occurrence and I often hid under my bed and cried late at
night when I heard things being smashed and my mother screaming.
The most haunting memory that I have is of him hitting me with a
belt after stripping me naked and then destroying my bedroom in a
rage. I was five or six when he first did this to me. I do not know
what I had done to deserve such a brutal punishment and he

41
attacked me as if I was a grown man. Firstly he ripped out all the
furniture in my bedroom, literally pulling them out of their fixings.
He smashed them with his feet and fists as he hurled them down the
stairs. He pulled down the curtains in his rage and even pulled up
the carpet until there was just a hill of mess and broken wood. He
then turned on me and pushed and pulled me and ripped my clothes.
He stripped me naked and then hit me with his belt. I do not know
were my mother was when this happened, I just remember cowering
in the corner and crying and shaking for a long time afterwards.

He also once sat on my little chest and force-fed me with

sprouts because I would not eat them. I remember the feeling of
choking on vomit when he did this and thought I was going to die.
He must have weighed at least fifteen stone. He was a fat bastard
with a moustache and I was a skinny kid with a pale complexion. In
adult life, even to this day, I baulk at the smell of sprouts. My wife
loves them but knows to keep them away from me when she is
cooking them. I also have a problem with the fear of choking. Many
times I have had to have abdominal thrusts performed on me to help
remove a small item from my throat. If I hear a child making a
choking sound, I experience a ‘fight or flight’ panic attack and my
heart rate increases rapidly.

Mr. Angry once took my mother to the pictures, in Overpool

city centre, to see Dr. Zhivago, and they left me in the back of the

42
green mini-van, locked in and alone for nearly three hours in the
dark. I wet my pants and was later dragged to the bathroom when
we got home for a strip-wash before being sent to bed without
supper.

This man was my father for a while. Surprisingly, I have happy

memories of sitting between his legs on the bench seat of his red
Vauxhall Victor, steering the car and changing gears with his hand
over mine on the gear lever. I remember standing by the edge of a
large pond in the north end of Havenhead, watching him racing his
model speedboats that he had made for himself. I was never allowed
to touch his toys. I also remember him helping me to ride my bicycle
without the stabilisers. I can only surmise that his relationship with
me changed drastically after his own son was born, and as his
relationship with my mother deteriorated. I have since been told that
he had a drink problem from an early age and that his father leaving
him, when he was a young boy, had affected him a lot. On the
outside, he was a ‘man’s man’ who could handle himself in most
situations. He was talented as a craftsman, working in the Overpool
University, teaching woodwork and model making. He was also a
qualified referee in his spare time. The man I experienced however,
behind closed doors, was a wife and child beater who drank too
much and seemed to be at war with himself and everyone around
him. He dominated my mother with fear and she lived, with me by
her side, in a constant state of terror. He never bullied or beat Ray,

43
who was the apple of his eye. I was often excluded from treats and
gifts while I watched him and his mother shower Ray with love and
affection.

44
 3
The Hospital Affair

The period of my life, just after escaping Mr Angry with my

mother, is somewhat hazy but several situations have remained vivid
in my memory. School was becoming a problem for me, and I was
also secretly drinking my mother’s whisky for many months.
Derwind road was in a rough area and I had started hanging around
with a lad called Stuart, who introduced me to school truancy and
stealing sweets from shops in Fenton, not far from the school I was
attending. I quite often said goodbye to my mother, dressed for
school and carrying a school bag with a concealed change of clothes
in it. The days I spent with Stuart seemed dangerous and exciting.
We often set light to Royal Mail post boxes and stole things at every
opportunity from front gardens or unattended garages. One shop we
went to regularly was an easy target for stealing bottles from its back
yard. We used to climb over the wall, empty the crates of a dozen or
so bottles, and then take them into the same shop and collect the
deposit refund. Somewhat ironically, one of our regular stops for
stealing stuff turned out to be my father’s shop in Franton. Part of the
attraction of that shop was the blonde woman who worked there. She

45
had really big tits, and her blouse was always open at the top. I was
later shocked to discover that this was actually my stepmother,
Verity. Years later I suggested to her that we have an affair. I used to
fantasise about her after I had seen her walk past a bedroom door
naked, when I once stayed at my father’s house for a weekend visit.
She said no to the affair, but promised not to tell my dad that I had
asked. I only ever stayed with my father on one occasion in my entire
life. I have also realised that we have never touched, let alone
hugged.

Stuart was a proper tearaway and seemed to have a

determination to get into trouble. I soon got used to the luxury and
excitement of lazy days hiding in fields near Stoby Village, instead of
being at school. We also managed to get a couple of girlfriends who
would join us, in a field in Stonewall village, for a snog and a ‘show
me yours’ session. On one occasion I took the girls to that field on my
own and made them look at my penis. They ran off and I just lay
there looking at the sky with my pants around my ankles. Stuart and
I both attended Fenton Boys School in Turnmere, next to Turnmere
Rovers football ground. I hated every minute of my time at that
school. I was still living at Derwind road at that time with my mother
and grandmother. Fenton was an all-boy’s school. It was rough, and I
could not understand the work they gave me to do. My mind at that
time was confused and I found it difficult to deal with the emotions
that would often well up inside me, at random times during the day,

46
when I sat looking out the classroom window. I did not understand
the trauma I was experiencing and I can remember crying for no
apparent reason and just sitting in class feeling totally disassociated
from the human race around me. The adults around me had no idea
what was going on in my life or my mind. The form teacher at that
school tried to be kind to me, and once asked the class to donate
money to buy a book token for me because I had told him I was poor.
Although well intentioned, I hated his act of kindness because it just
made me feel like a charity case.

It was one morning, on the way to school, that I finally lost the
ability to endure my horrible life any further. I got off the bus outside
Havenhead Children’s Hospital and presented myself to the nurses
in the accident and emergency department. As unusual as this was, I
managed to convince them to let me to see a doctor. His name was
Dr. Bradley, and I told him about the bumps and pains in my legs.
He contacted my mother, who soon came to the hospital. She tried to
convince the doctor that I was a ‘difficult’ child who made up stories.
She did not seem to comprehend my unusual behaviour. I do
remember rubbing my shin really hard with the heel of my shoe to
make it all look worse, but I really did have the pains and I was
determined to get attention and get hospitalised. I guess I was in
someway looking for respite from my life, and an escape from my
mother’s irrational lifestyle. Luckily for me, Dr. Bradley realised that
all was not well, and had me admitted to hospital immediately.

47
 I was in hospital for a long time. I was in the children’s ward
and I really enjoyed being there because it seemed every day, people
were nice to me. They spent time with me and they fed me regularly.
A teacher would come to the ward and give us work to do in the
mornings. For the first time in many months I enjoyed learning
things and I lapped up the praise for my efforts. I began to feel
valued again.

I met a girl at the hospital named Julie, who had been in a very
bad traffic accident. Her legs were damaged and she was bed-ridden.
We struck up a friendship and we were put together in a small
annexe that was attached to the ward. Twenty two years later I found
myself in that same annexe, shouting at Jesus during a prayer
meeting; but more of that later. The ward nurses thought it was
lovely that Julie and I had become friends. We talked a lot and kissed
when we could. I used to sneak out of my bed in the night and touch
her between the legs. I used to rub her vagina and then kiss it. We
were just two young kids exploring sex, and our secret world was a
distraction to the routine of hospital life. I was eleven and she was
ten.

During my time at the hospital I am almost 100% sure that I

was abused by a nurse or a doctor. This memory may be false, and
could quite easily be a recollection from another time, earlier in my

48
life. I have a vivid picture in my mind of waking to find a man and a
woman touching and rubbing my penis. I remember that the room
was dark and a torch light was shining on my legs.

I had a birthday while in the hospital; I think it was my

eleventh. I remember the nurses giving me cards and a present. I
remember expecting my mother to visit on my special day, but she
never arrived. My auntie Anne came to see me instead, and she told
me that my mother was unable to come because she was busy. I was
not really bothered by her absence, but I cried in order to illicit some
sympathy from the nurses. Their hugs felt really good. The warm
feeling of their soft breasts pressed against my face, through a fresh
uniform, made me happy. I am not sure if this was a sexual feeling or
just infantile comfort.

It was while in the hospital that I first heard about going on

holiday to Wales. A stranger, a man, came to see me and told me that
I was going on a two-week holiday to Wales with some other boys. I
was very excited at this prospect. I was taken first to an office in
Milton Square in Havenhead, to meet a man named William.

I later left the hospital and stayed for about a week in a home
that was run by nuns, before being taken to Wales. The nun’s home
was just a big house on an estate, and was called Fenton Dell. I
remember that the nuns were unfriendly and unloving. I was made

49
to get up early in the morning to clean steps with a hard brush before
I had any breakfast. When I left, they gave me leaflets about God.
That’s all I remember.

On the journey to Wales, I had my face pressed up against the

side window of the car, watching people and places go by. I was
happy for a few hours and excited at the prospect of a nice holiday. I
imagined the beach and the games. I also wondered why all my toys,
clothes, and art stuff, were stacked in a box on the back seat of the
car. That short journey was filled with wonderful expectations and I
do not recall being bothered about leaving my mother and
grandmother behind as I left.

50
 4
The Home from Hell

In 1968 I was taken to an independent boy’s home, which was

located in North Wales. I was taken by a social worker from the social
services department for Havenhead in Southall. There are no official
records available to me to explain why this happened, or who it was
that had authorised my placement in care. Only my mother, who is
unwilling to discuss the matter with me, knows the true
circumstances that led to my incarceration in an institution that is
now known to have been a barbaric place of rapes, beatings and
sexual abuse for many of its residents. I have written evidence,
supplied to me by Havenhead social services, saying that no official
records can be found that relate to my placement ‘in care’.

The home was a community centre for boys, later described in

the national press as ‘The Home from Hell’. It was an independent
business that later became known as (name withheld) Community
(Holdings) Ltd. The home today, 39 years later, has long been closed
down after becoming notorious for offences of child abuse that were
committed, mainly by its founder, who I shall call ‘Mr Shush’. He
was a charismatic man who dominated, and deviously preyed upon,
the children placed in his care. He was also able to mesmerise the
adult care staff with his charm and generosity. He also manipulated
many officials, who considered him to be a saintly maverick figure,
challenging tradition and revolutionising the approach to childcare.

51
 The home became a dumping ground for unwanted children
throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s. It was also a very convenient
playground for its paedophile founder and his secret friends. Mr
Shush, who was just 24 years old when he opened The Home from
Hell, was eventually jailed in 1995 aged fifty eight. He was convicted
of indecently assaulting young boys, and received a six year sentence.
His twenty seven year reign of abuse was finally exposed in 1995,
although I know, through personal experience, that this particular
conviction only represents the tip of Mr Shushes’ secret iceberg. He
has since served less than six years in prison, and is now a free man,
as far as I know.

Many victims, some themselves subsequently imprisoned and

not considered as credible, and many more who are simply unable to
talk openly of the abuse they suffered, have never told the full horror
story of their time in The Home from Hell. Sadly many of the boys
who I knew are now dead, having committed suicide later in life. I
believe their stories will never be known. Mr Shush probably abused
hundreds of children between 1968 and 1990. I witnessed him
abusing boys many times, sometimes as many as fifteen boys in a
single afternoon’s ‘medical check-up’ session. These sessions were
conducted in his private bathroom on the first floor of the home; next
to the clothing store and laundry room where his wife sometimes
worked. His 'modus operadi' was to invite a selected number of boys,

52
one at a time, into the bathroom, whereupon he would lock the door
and then explain that it was his duty to inspect us for head lice. He
would then ask us to drop our trousers and underpants. He said he
also had to inspect us for other diseases, and would proceed to
massage your testicles and move his hand up and down the shaft of
your penis. This would not last very long and then he would dismiss
you. I remember my shame and feelings of guilt after he did this to
me.

The length of time Mr Shush has served in prison is an insult to

the hundreds of lives he dismantled during his reign. The effect of his
manipulative and evil regime has been far reaching. Many boys, who
resided in The Home, grew to be men who carried with them deep,
dark emotional scars that have never healed. Not only has his reign
of abusive behaviour ‘infected’ the lives of some who were entrusted
to his care, but it has also subsequently impacted on the people who
later came to share their lives with those of us who had been abused
by him.. Some of those boys are now also convicted paedophiles, and
others have since been found dead after committing suicide, or
accidentally overdosing on drugs.

The lucky ones, many of whom had suffered sexual, physical,

or emotional abuse, have managed to scrape a life together after
escaping The Home from Hell, only to live lives cursed with crime,
broken relationships, low self-esteem and disabled hearts that have

53
struggled to really love or trust anyone.

The account of my personal experience in The Home from Hell

is by no means the worst experience that anyone ever had there, but I
believe it is probably representative of hundreds of accounts that will
never be written down. It is true to say that some enjoyed their time
there.

I, and many others, did not.

Mr Shush abused me many times during my time at The Home.

He also abused me in a tent in Spain whilst on a camping holiday. He
abused me in a bedroom in his private home that he shared with his
new wife, in 1970, and on numerous occasions when we lay together
in the dark, on Famoel Mountain in North Wales. We were supposed
to be playing war games against opposing teams of boys and staff,
but he was playing a game of his own.

I remember lying on the ground in the still of the night, high on

the Famoel range. Mr Shush would often choose me for his team and
then we would go ahead of the others to investigate the terrain. Once
we were alone he would push me down and say that the enemy was
ahead. It was on these occasions he would press himself up against
me in a heavy manner. I could feel his penis sticking in my bottom.
He would move about and murmur quietly in the dark. I honestly

54
can’t recall any pain, I am not even truly sure if he actually buggered
me, or if he just enjoyed rubbing up against me. I was a child, and I
guess I just blocked it out. I think the actual trauma has been erased
from my memory.

The last time he was able to abuse me was in his parent’s home
during 1972. He and his wife were taking me to Cornwall to start a
new life with my mother and her third husband, Robert. Mr Shushs’
wife and parents were asleep, while Mr Shush was masturbating me
and sucking my penis in the darkness of his parent’s living room. I
lay frozen like a statute on a camp bed pretending to be asleep. He
later gave me money, knowing that it was the last time he could get
his hands on me. I think it was about fifteen pounds.

I was, by this time in my life, sexually active and had

experienced many petting sessions with girls from school, in the
haylofts around the Clay area where The Home was located. I had
managed to have sex a few times but had never ejaculated, and most
of my sexual activity with girls was, up to this point, unsuccessful. At
around the age of twelve or thirteen I had developed a friendship
with a lad named Raymond. We had started to masturbate at the
same time when we realised that Mr Shush was peeping into our
annexed bedroom where we both slept. It was located at the back of
the staff bedroom which was used mainly by Mr Shush. I do not
recall any words or any formal arrangements with Mr Shush, or with

55
Raymond, but the nights of masturbation were usually followed by
extra treats from him the following day. Ironically, one such treat was
a meal out with him in the grand Merit Hall Hotel and Restaurant.
This place later became Mr Shush's ‘tycoon’ home. Raymond and I
eventually took to secretly masturbating each other and I think this
affected my sexual relationships with girls. I remember being
paranoid that people would think I was homosexual. This was
another root cause of my growing obsession with girls and sex. I
wanted to prove that I was not a ‘bummer’, and I later developed a
reputation as a ‘shagger’ who could get any girl he wanted. This
reputation followed me into my adult life and only ceased when I fell
in love with my wife in 1989.

The Home from Hell grew to around eleven homes between

1968 and 1991. It was a very profitable business, dealing with thirty
eight local authorities in the UK, and had a published turnover of
twenty eight million pounds between 1977 and 1990. Mr Shush
expanded his empire and moved from living in a small bedroom at
The Home from Hell, with an old blue VW Beetle car parked outside,
to living in absolute luxury in Merit Hall. His private residence was
both a home and playground to the paedophile tycoon. I visited his
grand house many years later and was first greeted by his wife.
Within minutes of arriving at this plush residence, I saw Mr Shush
walk past the window of his large games room. His hand was lightly
draped over the shoulder of a young blonde boy. I remember feeling

56
extremely sick at this sight. I eventually left Merit Hall after waiting
three hours for Mr Shush to come and see me. By this demonstration
of aloofness, it seemed he still had a mental hold over me, many
years after I had last set eyes on him. Without words or even seeing
me, he was able to frighten me away before I, like many before me,
tried to confront him about the past. I had gone to him in a desperate
situation. I had my son David with me, who was just a tiny baby, and
I was hoping to get financial help from him for me and my son to
start a new life. I left with some warm milk in the baby bottle that
Nancy gave me and nothing else.

When I was placed at The Home from Hell I was barely eleven
years old and had already experienced traumatic events in my
childhood that had left me emotionally disabled, deeply scarred and
very confused. I had been a patient in the Havenhead children’s
hospital in Southall, prior to being taken into care. I had been
officially diagnosed as suffering from a hypersensitivity reaction,
named erythema nodosum. Despite my mother’s claim that I was
telling lies about the pains in my legs, this condition was later
thought to be a reaction to the extreme emotional effect of violence
and mental abuse.

The day I was taken to The Home from Hell, a new nightmare
began, leaving a negative effect on me for the rest of my life. Through
my own subsequent research, I have learned that I was placed into

57
care at the request of my mother. I did not attend any court hearings,
I was not a criminal and I had never been in trouble with the police. I
also discovered that a social worker had been a guest at my Nan’s
guesthouse at the time I was taken from the hospital to The Home
from Hell. I wonder if there is a connection. His name was Ken.

Years later I was told that I had been reported as being out of
control at school, generally very cheeky to teachers, and quite often
found playing truant from school, usually with Stuart O’Brien. This
was true, but I was not a criminal. I was just a confused, shy and
introverted ten year old abuse victim that desperately needed
protecting from my mother’s irrational and often emotionally
charged lifestyle. My mother had rescued us both from the violence
of my stepfather but her new life with her mother, and the separation
from my little brother Ray, was too much for me to cope with. My
mother had also suffered at her husband’s violent hands and she was
trying hard to re-build her life. My parents had failed at both
marriage and child rearing, but I was the one who paid the price of
their failure. I was given an unjust sentence without trial, and taken
away. This damaged me for life.

I do not know who made the final decision for me to be taken

to The Home from Hell. I do recall a social worker type collecting me
from the hospital after I had been taken to see the bald man named
William Tirem. He told me I was going to go to a nice boy’s home in

58
the countryside for a couple of weeks. This was to allow my mother
and grandmother some rest, and to help me get back on my feet. I
later discovered that William Tirem was a member of staff at The
Home. I also discovered that he had an unhealthy interest in little
boys. He ‘accidently’ touched me in the showers whenever he had to
opportunity and he often stood and watched when I had a bath. I do
recall the feelings of embarrassment and shame. I did nothing about
it because I was alone and afraid of the consequences of challenging
him.

I finally left The Home from Hell some 5 years later, in 1973.

The day I arrived at The Home from Hell was a day of terror
and enlightenment. I literally wet my pants when a boy told me he
was going to hit me. On that very first day, I smoked my first
cigarette, I saw another boy’s erect penis for the first time, and I
experienced what I would describe as a ‘possessions rape’; as I sat on
Mr Shush’s knee in the small staff room, I watched William Tirem
handing out all my toys and clothes to the other boys who had come
to meet me.

They told me to call them Jim and William, and they said they
were going to be like fathers to me. On that first day I was made to
shower naked in front of William. I remember lying in my bed that
first night, terrified and very lonely. I had realised that this was not

59
going to be a holiday and there were going to be no games on the
beach.

Within weeks of arriving at The Home from Hell, Mr Shush

started regularly masturbating me with an older boy named Colin.
Mr Shush would creep into the room and start touching me under the
blankets. He would bring Colin who would also touch me. Mr Shush
often hit Colin if anyone complained that he had tried to touch them.
Colin is now a convicted paedophile who has been dubbed by the
national press as ‘Britain’s most notorious serial child abuser’. He
was convicted of rape, later in life, and was sentenced to nine years
imprisonment. On his release from a mental hospital he was found
wandering the streets with a colouring book and pencils, and he
admitted he was trying to entice children for sex.

The young Colin had learning difficulties and was regularly

beaten up by the boys in the home. I believe that Mr Shush is directly
responsible for turning Colin into the adult sex monster he later
became.

After two years in The Home from Hell I had managed to

change my image to such an extent that my mother, when visiting for
the first time in two years, did not recognise me when I greeted her in
the car park. I had a different haircut, and sported self-inflicted
tattoos on my arms. I was very thin and outwardly very aggressive

60
towards everyone. I was so thin that the boys gave me the nickname
‘Twiggy’. My mother gave me a red and cream coloured record
player with a few records inside it, one of which was the song, ‘He
ain’t heavy, he’s my brother’. She seemed to think this gift was
adequate compensation for abandoning me. It was not. I hated the
bitch and I wanted to spit at her. I kept my feelings inside and played
the happy son. I had learned that visitors often gave money and
sweets to appease their own guilt at leaving us kids when their visit
was over.

The record player made me popular with the other boys and it
was used by most of them regularly. I eventually swapped it for
cigarettes and a dirty magazine. I hated my mother for lying to me,
and did not cherish anything she gave me. I remember writing the
words ‘fucking bitch’ on my leg with a biro pen. I despised her. She
liked to project the image of a caring mother, but she was happy to
leave me behind again as she returned to her childless life. She had
abandoned my brother Ray and then she had abandoned me.

The routines in The Home from Hell were very disciplined and
regimental. Every day began with a dorm leader, who was usually an
older boy, shouting at you to get out of your bed. We all feared the
dorm leaders because they were allowed to hit us and humiliate us
without being reprimanded by the adult staff. Standing by your bed,
half asleep, and quite often with an embarrassing erection that was

61
difficult to hide, you held on tight to your toothbrush and towel in
silence, while waiting to be ushered in lines to the bathrooms, one
dormitory at a time, in numerical order.

The bed making and cleaning up, before 7am breakfast, was
done with fanatical precision each day and the reward of points,
given by the adult staff on duty, for the tidiest rooms, were highly
sought after. The dorm leaders were encouraged to be very
competitive and they would do just about anything to get the highest
points. Each of them knew that this would lead to them being
rewarded by the home’s founder, Mr Shush. The dorm leaders did
not tolerate bed wetting, and the other boys in the dormitory were
ordered to beat and whip with wet towels whenever a boy had a
‘little accident’. This would happen almost every day. Later, when I
became a dorm leader for room six, I ruled it with a stick and
regularly humiliated a bed-wetter named James. I am ashamed to
recall the pain and exclusion I put him through every day, for many
months. After two years in care I too had learned to abuse, and
induce in others the same amount of terror that I had suffered when I
arrived. I was a boy who was beginning to emulate my step-father,
Angry Man, with violence and arrogance.

My life at The Home from Hell was mostly mundane and the
time was broken only with outbursts of violence between boys, or
arguments with the staff. Some survivors have commented that they

62
experienced happiness and good care in the Home. Perhaps they did.
They were the lucky ones who did not attract the inappropriate
attention from Mr Shush. Many still hail him as a hero. It’s true to say
that he could be a kind and generous man. However, I would say
that this saintly persona was part of his elaborate and successful
grooming process. I accept that he did not abuse all the boys who
were entrusted to him, but, he did abuse me, and he has been
convicted of abusing others.

Things considered as intolerable and cruel by those on the

outside, were the ‘norm’ in The Home. Everyday activities such as
eating, sleeping, washing, schooling and playing were regimented
and in themselves non-eventful, apart from constant shouting of
verbal abuse at the staff. Food was never in abundance, and treats,
such as extra bread and chocolate biscuits, were rare and always
considered valuable currency. If I managed to steal any, I would be
popular. It was not unusual to be offered stolen booty in exchange for
doing favours, or as a swap for some cigarettes or dirty magazines.
Some lads would promise fags and chocolate if you entertained them
by hitting another kid.

The older lads would give you a fag if you ran errands for
them. The practice of gifts for favours was quickly learned, and of
course also practiced with more sinister results, by Mr Shush. If he
came into the dorm and quietly abused you during the night, you

63
could expect some sort of gift or special treat the following day. He
never discussed the abuse with you. I usually got a signed chitty
from him that allowed me ‘out on trust’, and I would quite often be
taken by staff for a spending spree in a Wroxham clothing shop. I
was one of the best dressed kids in the home.

Wroxham, the nearest big town to The Home, was a hostile

place for any ‘Home from Hell’ boy. We had a reputation for stealing
and fighting and this caused some shops to ban us. One shop, I recall,
had a sign in the window reading ‘No Home from Hell boys
allowed’. It felt like being a black person in a deep-south, racist
‘white’ American town. This type of exclusion just made us all the
more dependant on our 'saviour and protector', Mr Shush. He was
always defending us and promoting our rights. This was the façade
of the quiet abuser of boys. By day he portrayed a kind and caring
persona, but by night, some of us met his alter-ego.

Each unaccompanied visit to Wroxham was a test of bravery, as

local gangs of youths constantly wanted to test our reputation. We
were not allowed out of The Home from Hell in groups of more than
three at a time, so we were always at a disadvantage when
confronted by one of these mobs. We occasionally found one of the
local boys alone, walking behind the indoor market, and I remember
being party to the beating of one lad on such an occasion. I just kept
punching and kicking him in the face until his tears, teeth and blood

64
were on the pavement. I was terrified and yet excited at the power of
being in control. On another occasion we cornered a lad on his own
at the railway station, and we dragged him into the toilets and pulled
his pants down. We left him crying and crouched in pain after we
each took a turn at kicking him in the groin and punching him in the
face. One of the lads with us set fire to his pubic hair with a lighter.

Attending outside school was also a daily ordeal that we had to

survive. We were taken from The Home each morning in a light blue,
twelve-seat Bedford van. We attended various small schools in the
surrounding villages. Each school had agreed to take a few boys from
The Home. I went to a school in Gerveny that shared the same name
as The Home, but was not connected in anyway. The van, with The
Home from Hell's name written on the side of it, would drop us off in
the morning and pick us up at the end of the day. My school was
built in the middle of a small Welsh village on the outskirts of
Wroxham. It was a ‘closed’ community and they did not tolerate
newcomers very well, especially those who came with a reputation
such as that shared by The Home from Hell Boys.

Parents told their children to keep away from us in school and

teachers found us to be convenient scapegoats for anything broken or
stolen. Some teachers even made us stand at the back of the class to
sharpen pencils and excluded us from certain activities. We never did
woodwork, cooking, or science. I think this was in case we got hold

65
of a weapon and took it back to The Home. This was another form of
exclusion that contributed to our increasing resentment of other kids,
and anyone in authority.

The truth is that we were usually in the middle of any trouble,

but we were not responsible for every misdeed in the school. We
responded aggressively when being blamed for everything. Our
notoriety did however make us popular with the girls, and this was
some consolation for the many canings we received from the
headmaster. We were always caned as a response to our mischief, no
matter how trivial it was, because the teachers were unable to keep
us ‘on detention’ after school in case we missed the van. I think most
of the teachers viewed us as hardened criminals and felt that they
had more liberty when dishing out corporal punishment. After all,
our parents were hardly going to complain to the school. They forgot
that we were in care for protection. They forgot that we were just
children, like their own.

I attended my outside school along with a boy called Alvin. He

was one of my arch enemies within the home, but we always stuck
up for each other whilst at school. Alvin was a good little Geordie
scrapper, and he taught me to kick your opponent in the face as soon
as he was on the floor. He and I nearly got expelled when a teacher
caught us on the flat roof of the girl’s showers, peeping through the
clear glass dome window after the netball session. They were naked

66
and we were looking to see which of the girls had tits and a hairy
fanny.

The Home from Hell van was occasionally late, and this
sometimes led to fights outside the school gates with the local gangs
and older lads from the school. Alvin and I would stand back-to-
back, each armed with a stick or a brick, and take on these contenders
regularly. If we got caught fighting we were in big trouble at school
and even worse trouble at The Home. Conversely, if we did not fight
we were beaten up. School was a daily challenge of survival that was
only enjoyable on the days we managed to get a girl, literally, behind
the bike sheds, for a ‘fanny-feel’ or a ‘tit-squeeze’. In the van on the
way home, we often compared smelly fingers to see who had
touched the most girls. Sticking your finger up your bum usually
convinced the other lads that you had been successful that day.

The Home from Hell was a cesspit of sexual deviancy, violence

and abandonment. Each boy had a horror story to tell about their
past. Some were ordinary little boys who were simply the victims of
divorce. Some boys, as young as nine, were already hardened little
criminals. Some clearly had special needs and should have been
getting cared for elsewhere. Some lads were like men, whilst others
were barely out of junior school, and yet they often shared the same
dormitory. My first two years at The Home had changed me into a
person who had learned to survive by reflecting my surroundings. I

67
was learning to be chameleon-like, and was developing various
personas. It was a hostile environment, so I became hostile towards
those around me. The Home from Hell was a ‘living’ lie in itself, and
everything about me was also becoming a lie. My true self was
quickly being eradicated and I metamorphosed into a being that was
to forever carry the stigma of having once been 'in care'.

The nights in that home were sometimes awash with buggery

for some, and also the fear of beatings from older boys. The horror of
a pillow being pushed hard over your face in the silence of the night
while other boys whipped your body through the blankets with their
towels was, in some way, light relief from the feelings of horror,
invasion, helplessness and disgust that I and others experienced
when waking abruptly from a deep sleep to find Mr Shush sucking
your penis, his hand heavily draped over your mouth. He would
gently whisper “shush” with his finger over his mouth and his breath
would reek of alcohol.

The daytime was broken into segments of practical duties such

as cleaning, scrubbing and washing dishes. Each day was also a
regimental pattern of abuse, separation and depersonalisation. The
younger boys tried very hard to be young boys. It must have been
hard for us all in one way or another, no matter how tough our
previous lives had been. The young general staff, for the most part,
acted kindly towards us and they always seemed to have an air of

68
pity when they talked with you. A few older staff were really good
people who did care for us the best they could. Many people will
mention the same names when reflecting on those who did their best
for us. Some staff however where hiding an addiction to child-sex.
Many of them, over the years, became far too violent when their
patience ran out. I witnessed boys being beaten, out of the sight of
other staff and I occasionally witnessed an older boy retaliating. It
was a good feeling to see a staff member suffer a bleeding nose or a
kicked shin bone. My fellow care sibling, David, who has also written
a book, was one of the boys brutally mistreated by a particular
member of staff. David’s book is entitled ‘You Little Bastard’, and is
available on my website.

A typical twenty four hours in The Home from Hell, as I

experienced it, would involve several outbursts of violence between
boys, leading to the medical box being produced and someone being
slapped or reprimanded in some other way by the staff on duty.
Many days included cruelty towards younger boys, and the silence of
night was often broken with the sound of a boy whimpering under
his bed sheets. There were regular outbursts of shouting and name-
calling amongst different groups. Trips to outside school were a
highlight of the week day for me. It was safe ground between the
horrors of abuse left behind and the daily trauma of being targeted
by parents, teachers and other children.

69
 Sexual abuse was part of my life, I knew it was wrong and I did
not like it. I have struggled, as an adult, with the feelings of guilt and
shame. Telling someone did not seem an option. I don’t know how
other boys dealt with it. I just blocked it all out of my mind until I
was much older. Some boys were known to be ‘bummers’, and you
kept clear of them if you could. Colin was the one we all especially
kept away from. I remember one particular occasion, sitting in one of
the smelly toilet cubicles. I was still, like a statue; silent, scared to
breath as I listened to the painful cries of a young new boy being
raped in the next-door cubicle. I could hear the thuds of his body as
he was thrust against the wall of the cubicle. I could see the shadow
of his attackers under the gap, and I heard his agonised cries of pain.
I wanted to help him but was scared to move.

Looking back at my time in The Home from Hell, I understand

now how I became a daydreamer and an exaggerator who was
obsessed with sex, frightened of men, and totally devoid of any trust
towards anyone. That place was like a kid factory that took in
damaged children, and mostly churned out completely fucked up
teenagers. The competition between the boys was immense and
unhealthy. If you wanted respect from the other boys, you had to
have a bigger dick than the next lad in the showers or you had to
have stolen more things, shagged more girls, and you had to be able
to fight better than any new lad. When I arrived at The Home I was a
non-smoker, I did not masturbate, and I had never been a violent

70
person. My nickname after a few hours of arrival was ‘Ponsonby’. I
was a ‘Scouser’ with a posh way of talking. When I left I was known
as ‘Twiggy’ because I was so tall and skinny.

All my sexual boundaries had been removed and I had become

morally corrupt, just like many of my peers and carers. After initially
spending my time there as a victim, I learned how to victimise, and I
was soon amongst the lads who regularly bullied the weaker ones,
especially the new boys. A skinhead haircut, a few tattoos and plenty
of fags for trading, was all you needed to get in with the bullies. On
one occasion a lad called Stuart arrived. He was bigger than me but I
had the psychological advantage, and I did not waste any time
establishing my authority over him. We had a scrap behind the old
oak tree at the front of The Home. I repeatedly kicked him, egged on
by the other boys, until he submitted. We often acted like pack of
wolves at a kill, and we were reminiscent of the kids in the film ‘Lord
of the Flies’. His face was a mess and I was a hero. Some months
later, when Stuart had gained his bearings and confidence, he beat
me up.

Years later, after we had both left The Home, we met at a petrol
station in Wullerton. I was posing in my big American Pontiac car,
which I was buying from my friend Andy, and Stuart was in his
smart company car, and wearing a suit. We chatted briefly and
arranged to meet in Wroxham some time later. When we met, we had

71
a good night drinking and reminiscing about the old days. We both
nervously disclosed to each other the details of the abuse we had
suffered as little boys. Sadly, a few months later, Stuart was found
hanging in his garden shed, apparently another victim of suicide, just
like so many other boys that had shared The Home from Hell.

I finally escaped from the shadow of Mr Shush and the

institutional life, for the second time, when I was fifteen years old. I
was given a packed lunch and some cash, and then dropped off at
Wroxham train station. I set off on a new chapter in my life,
burdened with a mental and emotional illness that had not been
diagnosed. I was a scarred boy, with a mountain of confusion
regarding life in general, myself in particular, and my sexuality. Life
was not over for me, it was simply a new start. It took a further thirty
three years to unravel the knotted ball of anger, loneliness, confusion,
mistrust, and hatred that I had carried in my heart and in my mind.

I could write a separate book about The Home from Hell. Over
the years I have recollected a jumble of horrible memories from that
time of my life. TV programmes have since been made about the
goings on in that particular home, some of which I later featured in.
Over the years I have collected a lot of documents and press cuttings
that expose the sexual and physical abuse that some people
experienced at The Home from Hell. Sometime in the future, I may
write another book detailing the extraordinary stories of other

72
individuals who survived the horrors of that particular corner of hell.
If you have a story to tell, please email me at:
survivorsfrom@brynalyn.co.uk

73
 5
Terror in Traquay

My new life in Traquay got off to a bad start when I arrived at

my mother’s new home in Ribblecombe. She had promised me a
good life with her and her new husband. It had sounded like heaven.
She was pregnant and her husband Robert, who was actually away
most of the time, was the only man I ever really liked. He worked in
the construction trade and had originally been a guest at my
grandmother’s guesthouse. He and my mother had gotten together
when I was in The Home. Robert was always kind to me and he tried
his best to be fatherly. I started to dress, walk, and talk like him when
I first met him, and even dyed my hair blonde like his at one point.
He used to look perplexed when he visited me in The Home and
brought me gifts. Amelia presented herself as a happy woman who
now wanted to play at being a mum with me. She wanted ‘happy
families’, but I was having none of it. I had agreed to leave the home
and I was playing the role of the happy son, but secretly I had ideas
of my own.

We lived in a flat which was located in a very nice part of

74
Ribblecombe. The flat had a downstairs entrance, and at the bottom
of the road there was a school. Initially, the relationship between us
was all was a happy one, but this only lasted for a few weeks. Amelia
King had acquired her third surname and had now become Amelia
Linton. I took the new name and called myself Nigel Linton. I was
fourteen, institutionalised, and one of the ‘fucked up’ kids that had
left The Home. I was now living two lives; one, as the returning
prodigal son, lapping up all the guilt-ridden attention from my
mother, and the other as a kid looking for trouble and action,
whenever I was away from Amelia’s manufactured paradise.

She sent me to the local school, and the kids were told in
advance that I had been in a home. This set me up for failure before
I’d even arrived. The good kids kept away from me, the bad ones
wanted to test my mettle, and the teachers kept their distance. At this
time, along with my new-found friends, I was experimenting with
barbiturate drugs which we used to get from a biker in Traquay Bay,
the next town along the coast. It did not take long before I was in
trouble and one weekend, I broke into the school when it was closed.
I had broken in through a window in the sports hall and had climbed
the ropes to the ceiling to gain access to a loft above the school hall.

A girl that I had taken there for sex had told her parents about
the hideaway and they, in turn, had informed the police. The police
found me hiding in the loft, took me home and I was given a

75
warning. Amelia tried to give me a lecture about my behaviour and
my lack of respect for her. I lit up a fag, blew the smoke in her face
and told her to fuck off. I was out for revenge and intended to cause
her as much heartbreak as I could. Deep down I loved her but at that
time it was easier for me to hate her.

I met my cousin, Nathan, while I was in Traquay. It turned out

that my auntie Anne had also moved to the area. She was a
chiropodist and had her own business. Nathan was older than me
and was hanging around with a group of bikers. His sister, my other
cousin Mary, was also a biker. With them, I got involved with more
drugs and spent a lot of time with a gang of would-be Hells Angels
who called themselves The Pirates. I went to parties, drank lots of
beer, and experimented with many different types of drugs, mostly
LSD. I had a lot of sex with older girls in the gang and even tried to
have sex with my cousin Mary, but she was not up for it.

On one occasion, Nathan took me to a very nice house, to the

birthday party of a friend of a friend. Nathan, with me in tow, turned
up uninvited, along with a few bikers who proceeded to bring a bit of
excitement to the party. I was high on LSD and very drunk when I
was told to go into a bedroom at the top of the stairs. I climbed across
the bodies on the stairs and went into the room as Nathan had told
me to. He was my hero. In the room an older girl, about eighteen or
so, was lying naked on the bed. She was one of the biker’s girlfriends.

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She pulled me on top of her and took my jeans off. I do not remember
much, but I can recall her big hairy vagina, and the smell of her
sweat. She was a real greaser!

My mother eventually got fed up of the continual arguments

with me and gave up. At one point I had threatened to throw her
down the stairs when she tried to stop me going out. I bunked school
most days, and was coming and going whenever I wanted to. Nathan
and I spent a lot of time together in Traquay. One evening, we got so
lost in a haze of drugs and drink; we ended up in a small lake in a
park. We were up to our waists in water, pretending to be ducks.
Someone shouted at us and then called the police. We waited for the
police to arrive and then ran at them with Nathan’s whip. Nathan
often carried a whip and was known by the bikers as ‘Nathan the
whip’. We both kicked the police car and Nathan whipped the
policemen. After running away, we hid on a bus shelter roof. That
same night we kicked out every single coloured light on a massive
hillside flower display in the middle of Traquay bay.

While I was with living with my mother, one of her new

neighbours had asked if I would help her to decorate her bathroom.
She was the wife of a bookie and had a baby. She was very attractive
and when she was out of the house I used to look through her
underwear draw. I did the work for the money and spent many days
helping her to decorate and paint. I watched her every move as she

77
painted. I imagined her naked and wanted to shag her over the bath.
She eventually asked me to leave when I had plucked up the courage
to reach out and caress her breast while trying to kiss her. She was
shocked and I was embarrassed.

The drugs never really got a grip of me, even when I was
selling them in local pubs for the bikers. I got fed up of being sick and
out of my face. I drifted away from Nathan when I met a new mate
who called himself Skinner. He was into fighting and was obsessed
with the up-and-coming band called Slade, who were then
skinheads, Noddy Holder looking very different without hair. A
Clockwork Orange was also on at the pictures, and Skinner acted like
the main character in that film. Together we got into fights and really
enjoyed the violence and the chases. We took to wearing crombi style
overcoats, bowler hats and white tee shirts with braces. Of course, we
also wore red Dr. Martin boots to complete the look. When bored,
we would get drunk and walk through town laughing and
terrorising folk as they walked past. We even put makeup on our
faces and mascara on our eye lids.

On one occasion, we were in a sweet shop and I grabbed some

cigarettes from behind the counter. The shop keeper saw me do it so
Skinner punched him in the face and told me to run. We were
running for a long time and eventually bunked onto a train and hid
in the toilet. After a few stations had passed, the conductor started

78
knocking hard on the door and telling us to open it. Skinner went out
first and I stayed hiding in the toilet. That was the last time I saw
Skinner. I continued on the train and ended up back in Havenhead. It
was a long journey and I did not really know were I was heading.

This journey brought an end to my time in Traquay. I

abandoned the new home with Amelia, Robert and my newborn
sister, Celia. Despite the past experiences with Mr Shush, I headed
back to The Home from Hell. It was my home and I guess it was the
lesser of many evils. It was on that journey that I came up with a plan
for a new life.

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 6
Running Backwards

I eventually turned up at The Home looking quite scruffy, and I

was very tired and very hungry. I walked into the kitchen area late at
night and demanded food. The main cook in the home, who we
called ‘Dilly’, was a very kind and gentle woman. She had always
had a soft spot for some of the boys and she was very pleased to see
me. I told her that my mother was a cow and that I was very
unhappy living with her in Traquay. I wanted food, a bed, some rest,
and I wanted to see Mr Shush. Dilly gave me food and let me sleep in
the staff bedroom that night. The next day I was taken by a member
of staff to see Mr Shush in his new office in Wroxham. I was nervous
but determined. He kept me waiting in reception for a long time.
Whilst on my train journey, I had worked out in my mind that I
would demand £10,000 from him so I could start a new life. I
intended to blackmail him for my silence about what he had done to
me. I was terrified as I sat outside his plush office, and I remember
my heart beating fast.

I was eventually shown in and a lady gave me a cup of tea. I

80
did not say a word. Mr Shush, who was calmly sitting at his big desk,
told me that he was pleased that I had come home. He said he had
spoken to my mother. He told me I could stay in a new home he had
opened, but I had to go and work on a farm and pay for my keep
while I was there. I just said ‘thank you‘, without question, and
walked out of his office in silence. I did not have the bottle to
blackmail him. He seemed so powerful and confident that I just could
not bring myself to challenge him.

The new home he had opened was worse than the original. It
was a big old mansion house on the edge of a small Welsh village.
The actor Roger Moore had a house just a few miles away. The lads
in this home were older and most of them had jobs. Some were
working in the home as kitchen staff and general labourers. I hated it
there. I did a few weeks work on a local farm and I kept myself to
myself. The manager, Rob, was a kind man who always spoke in a
gentle manner. He was an ex-policeman who had at one time been an
alcoholic. He gave me extra fags and food when I asked for them. The
other lads spoke very highly of him. I met Rob again later in my life
when he had become a Christian and was singing in a country and
western group.

We subsequently travelled to Romania together to help ill and

abused children. He did not remember me from the home but I
remembered him, and I reminded him that I was around when Mr

81
Shush had turned up at the mansion house with a suitcase full of
money, asking him to keep it safe. Mr Shush was hiding his money
for some reason unknown to anyone at the time. Rob continued as a
good manager for many years after I had left. My stay at this
particular home was short lived, and it wasn’t long before I upped
and left.

My life was yet again about to change as I waited for my train

at Wroxham station. I was finally leaving The Home for the last time.
With my cash, packed lunch and train ticket, I was moving on again,
and heading towards Havenhead to meet my cousin Nathan. He had
returned to live in Havenhead and had a bedsit in a house that was
occupied by hippy types who did drugs all day. He had no idea that I
was going to turn up on his doorstep like a lost soul, but when I
arrived, he said I could stay for a while.

Nathan’s bedsit was in Lark Road East in Havenhead. It was a

very old house with seven floors, each floor having at least one bedsit
on it. Nathan had the top floor and he shared it with his girlfriend
Kirsty. I soon became an accepted part of the household. Everyone
knew each other and most nights were spent listening to Black
Sabbath or Led Zeppelin while smoking dope or dropping acid tabs.
California sunshine was the usual drug of the time. Again, this
period of my life is a bit hazy, probably because of the drugs. We
spent a lot of time sleeping in the day and doing drugs at night. No

82
one had a job, so being chilled out was the norm. On dole day, we
would go to a small co-op store nearby and steal as much food as
possible. Nathan taught me to steal tins of Heinz Toast Toppers. I
would wear his RAF coat and fill the inside pockets as quickly as I
could while the others kept the assistants distracted. This is how we
lived; drugs, booze, music, sex, sleep, and stealing.

Nathan often went into Havenhead town to score drugs from a

supplier, but would never let me go. He always came back with a roll
of sticky tape that had been re-rolled with dozens of LSD tablets
stuck on it every few inches. Nathan took me with him when
supplying these tablets to his customers for 50p each. We always had
a good supply for ourselves and the profit kept us in tobacco and
booze. We stole our LP’s from town, and Nathan’s dole paid for
everything else.

On one occasion, Nathan had left me in his flat with his

girlfriend and I remember getting into bed and having sex with her.
She was later petrified of him finding out. On another occasion, we
all took two LSD tablets each and had a really bad trip. In those days,
the effects lasted around twelve hours. I can vaguely remember
dancing in the local cemetery. Nathan stole a large black chain off a
family crypt and we took it back to his flat. Whilst we sat listening to
Black Sabbath, I thought I heard the chain rattling in the cupboard
and I was convinced that I could hear screams coming out of the

83
stereo speakers. This freaked me out and I ran out of the house. I
recall hearing an aeroplane in the sky and thinking it was going to
land on me. I also remember being chased by garden gnomes and
midgets through City Park.

During this short period, and unknown to me at the time, my

mother had also returned to live in Havenhead. My drug days ended
after another bad trip when I woke up half naked under my mother’s
car in her driveway. I remember on that occasion that I had thought I
was being chased by a man who had a dog's head. The drug scene
was not for me and I was getting fed up of life again. I convinced my
mother to let me lodge at my Nan’s for a short while. She reluctantly
agreed and charged me a weekly rent. I got my act together for a
short while and got a job with a building company named Haynes
Builders. My first real job was using a Kango hammer to rip up a
concrete roof. It was very hard work but the money was good.

I soon got a bedsit of my own and started to live

independently. It was a grotty room with a Belling cooker, a
wardrobe and a single bed. But it was mine, and that meant a lot to
me.

I continued to work with the builders and did odd jobs as well,
settling into some sort of routine. I also made extra money selling
stuff to people I knew. I gave up drugs and booze and just worked

84
hard. I did not enjoy being alone so I placed an advertisement in a
local paper named the Worral Independent. The advertisement was
in the personal section and read something like, ‘Lonely male seeks
female friends’. I had to go to the paper’s main office to collect letters
from my box number each week. I was inundated with letters from
women and I did my best to meet them all. I had sex with so many
women that I can’t recall them all. A few were reasonable looking
and some were not. I used a false name and made up a whole false
life, telling them I was a successful bachelor with my own business.

One date I had was with a very fat girl who begged me to have
sex with her, but I escaped out the back window of her house.
Another encounter was with the daughter of a vicar. She was a sex
maniac who basically shagged me silly in her parent’s front room. On
another occasion, just I as I was getting frisky with an older woman, I
realised that ‘she’ was a he. I shit myself and made the excuse of
feeling ill in order to escape. That was a close one.

This ‘shagging’ fest went on for many weeks, and I soon

became confident and eager for something more meaningful. My life
was like the film, ‘Groundhog Day‘. I eventually cancelled the
advertisement in the paper and started to look for sex partners in
nightclubs instead.

Although I was still only fifteen, I was able to get into a

85
particular club in Havenhead that was a fleapit known as ‘The
Cellar’. I was smartly dressed and looked confident. The bouncer let
me in regularly and I always sat on my own in a corner of the club. I
watched the older women dancing together, and they always seemed
more approachable when I cast a smile their way. A few had
approached me and after a dance, a chat, and a few drinks, I rarely
left the club alone. I always kept to the same story about being a
successful bachelor businessman and I often ended up in quite rough
houses on various estates in Havenhead. On one occasion I was
beaten up and chased by the husband of a woman who had taken me
in a taxi to her house in Lenton. He had come home from his night
job unexpectedly. Another time, a woman took me home and had sex
with me while her husband watched. They were swingers. This may
sound like a young man‘s fantasy, but my fantasy life was a reality, a
true fiction of events that may be unbelievable to others. I was
becoming more obsessed with sex. I think, underneath my confident
façade, I was really looking for love and somewhere to belong. I
needed to share my life with another human being.

One evening in the club, dressed in a new suit and looking

quite dapper, I noticed a woman who I had seen a few times before.
Her red dress had caught my eye. In the low lights of the club, she
looked stunning. She was skinny and bore a striking resemblance to
the singer Kate Bush. Little did I know that my life was about to
drastically change yet again. The first few words that we exchanged

86
that night, as I danced and talked into her ear over the loud music,
were the first words of many chapters that would change the destiny
of both our lives.

87
 7
A Woman in a Red Dress

Pamela, who later became my first wife, was a twenty seven

year old mother of two. I was fifteen years of age, although I told
everyone I was eighteen, and we hit it off straight away. Sexually, I
was an adult in a child’s body, and I was obsessed with sex and the
female form. Pamela in turn, had a ready-made family who needed a
dad, and that was a bonus for me. Almost immediately after we had
met in that seedy little club in Havenhead we saw each other
everyday. Her ex-husband never found out about me, when I was
staying in her house, even though he had often turned up
unexpectedly in the early hours of the morning, banging on the door
and shouting abuse at her. One morning he got very violent when
Pamela answered the door to him, and this led to her insisting that
we should escape Havenhead straight away. She was frightened of
him and wanted to start a new life elsewhere. I recall lying in her bed
listening to them arguing downstairs. I wanted to go and rescue her
but I was scared to show my face in case he was a big bugger!

88
 The night I met Pamela, I bought her a Martini, and then we
danced most of the night away. I smooth-talked her with a boyish
charm, and I tried to emulate the great Cary Grant who, as a matter
of interest, I am related too. His real name was Archie Leech and he
was originally from Bristol. His real mother, Lillian, is one of my
ancestors on my father’s side. That first night we met I thought I had
got lucky when Pamela invited me to her house on the notoriously
violent council estate known as The Lords, which is in Southall. I
remember walking into her house in the early hours, quite drunk and
ready for sex. As I entered her untidy house, I immediately noticed
that the walls in her sparse lounge were peppered with holes. The
holes, she explained to me later, were punch holes made by her
husband Harold who she was soon to divorce. Pamela had been
adopted as a young child and Harold was her ‘adoptive’ cousin.

Their relationship had broken down very quickly after they

married and she said it was destined to fail, despite having two
children. Both parties had filed for divorce on the grounds of
adultery. The first night I spent with Pamela was a night of discovery
for me, as far as sex was concerned. She was the first female that I
had felt any ‘love’ for. She did things to me that I had never imagined
and I became infatuated with her almost immediately. Although I
had been sexually active from the age of eleven, my encounters had
always been based on lustful sex, abuse or curiosity, and nothing

89
more. Being with Pamela was very different. She and her kids needed
protecting and I wanted a family. I realise now that she was like a
mother figure to me.

Pamela was very adventurous when it came to sex, and she

introduced me to sex-talk, porn videos, sex-games, mutual genital
shaving, and vibrators. Within months of meeting Pamela I thought I
was in love forever, and it all felt like I was living life just like a
‘happy’ adult.

Within days of our first meeting, I had virtually moved in full-

time with Pamela and her kids. Two weeks later we were running
away together on an exciting journey to a new life, which is what I
had always wanted. It was on that day, after Harold’s violence at the
door that, in a panic, we sold most of our possessions to a second-
hand dealer. The items we sold included Pamela’s budgie and a
rented television. We helped the second hand dealer to load his van
and posted the keys to the council house back through the door.
Pamela owed months of rent and hundreds of pounds on many
catalogues so she was also keen to escape the burden of debt. No one
knew where Pamela and her kids had gone, and I had no one to tell.
My mother was now living in Mexico with Robert and Celia, and I
had lost contact with Nathan. We asked the second-hand dealer to
drop us all off at the nearest railway station. We sat in the back of his
van with the kids huddled next to us. They were excited and we told

90
them we were going on a holiday. Pamela was in control, she had
planned this escape before I had met her. I guess taking me along
gave her confidence and I believe that she really wanted things to
work out. With our pockets full of cash, around £700 as I recall, we
ran away to Norpool. It was late April in 1974, and we left Overpool
City station with just two suitcases that were filled with children’s
clothes and toys, and a dozen or so shopping bags filled with
personal stuff. Pamela had a family allowance book that she was
going to cash when we arrived, before the Department of Social
Security discovered she had left Havenhead.

When we arrived in Norpool we rented a small holiday flat. We

lived in that flat for the rest of the holiday season. I was holding
down a full time job as a security guard, at the Norpool Theme
Beach, and I was acting as a ‘dad’ to her two children. I was sixteen
and having sex each day, as routinely as brushing my teeth. Pamela
was working as a waitress in the evenings and everything seemed
fine. It was like a fairy tale. We all seemed happy and enjoyed the
seaside entertainments. It was like a very long holiday away from our
past, and we were isolated with only ourselves to worry about.

When I reflect on this period of my life I realise that Pamela

was the second adult with whom I had a long-standing sexual
relationship. The first was Mr. Shush, the wealthy male abuser who
had taken my innocence without my permission when I was just

91
eleven years old. This second adult, Pamela, was also enjoying my
young body. The important difference between these two adults is
that Pamela had my permission, and I was a willing participant, even
if I was only a child in the eyes of the law when we first had sex. In
contrast, my abuser was an unwelcome intruder who invaded my
mind and body for his self-gratification.

My time with Pamela was to come to an abrupt end some five

years later, after we were married and had two kids of our own. The
run of luck and escapism that we had enjoyed during our first two
years together ran out once the cash had dried up. We became
homeless and spent a day wandering around the streets of Norpool.
Pamela finally decided that she should present herself to the social
services as a homeless single parent. We agreed that I would wait
outside their offices and whatever happened, she would let me know
where she was going to be that night if they agreed to look after her. I
spent hours standing outside that building in the freezing rain. I
remember fighting the desire to run away and start again without
Pamela and her kids.

Eventually I saw Pamela and the kids come out of the building
with a man and they got into a car. She turned and looked at me as
they drove away. Just for a moment, I was relieved that she had gone.
It was then, as the car drove away, that I noticed a piece of paper
lying on the ground at the spot where she had got into the car with

92
the kids. Something inside me knew that it was a note for me. I
picked it up and it had two words written on it in Pamela’s writing. It
read ‘Sea View’ and nothing else.

I knew this must be the name of a hotel or a guesthouse, but

where? Norpool had thousands of them. I walked the full length of
the Norpool seven mile sea front. I looked at every single hotel, B&B,
and guesthouse. Not one of them was called ‘Sea View’. I was ready
to give up and wanted to run away and escape Norpool, but I could
not bring myself to abandon the kids.

I went into a small café and asked the lady if I could have a cup
of tea for free. I told her my life story and she listened. This lady lived
in the next town along the coast, called Clevewood. She said that she
knew of a small hotel there named Sea View. It was a long shot but I
walked the remaining few miles to Clevewood in the dark. It was
very late when I got there and I was shaking with cold and feeling
very lost and alone. I spent that night sleeping in a pavilion on the
sea front.

The next day I woke when a family walked into the pavilion. I
went to the public toilets and had a wash. I was starving and still
very cold. I walked around for a while and found a road called Sea
View road. As I walked up the road I saw the two kids running out of
a laundrette, shouting ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ Behind them I saw Pamela

93
with a big smile on her face. The kids seemed very happy to see me.
She gave me a fag and a Mars bar and explained to me what had
happened. The social services had placed her in the hotel and had
given her money to buy some clothes for the kids. She had a room
with a double bed and bunk beds. The hotel owner’s were called Jack
and Tammy, and they were very kind to Pamela and the kids.

I spent another night in the pavilion and met with them again
the next day. Pamela had got some money and she bought me a slap
up breakfast in a café close by. We came up with a plan for me to
arrive at the Sea View that day, pretending to be on holiday. It was
vital that the kids did not call me dad, or let on that they knew me.
Bribes of sweeties and telling them it was a game secured their silent
cooperation.

I got a job on a fairground for a while, and also worked in a

caravan park, tending the lawns. I paid my hotel bill and kept up the
pretence that Pamela and I did not know each other prior to staying
at the hotel. Pamela usually sneaked into my room at night. Jack and
Tammy thought it was wonderful when we finally told them that we
had started seeing each other. They put us on the same breakfast
table and gave us a bigger room to share. They promised not to tell
social services, who were still paying to house Pamela and her kids
each month.

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 Pamela was later offered a caravan on the same site where I
was working and I secretly moved in with her. She was claiming
benefits and I was earning cash in hand. It seemed that we were back
on track, but throughout this period, the relationship started to
deteriorate and I was beginning to wish I had never met her. The age
difference was starting to become an issue, and I guess I was growing
up and realising the real responsibilities of caring for a family.

I was seeing a girl who worked in the caravan club bar. She
and I had sex in the female toilets and even in Pamela’s caravan
when she was out shopping. That girl was very daring and loved sex
when it was risky. When I was just seventeen, a chance meeting with
someone she had told me about led me to enquire about the
possibility of working on deep sea trawlers. Crew members were
being sought in the next town of Fleetlea. Yet another dramatic
change to my life was just around the corner.

After a short course in a Royal Navy Nautical College, I became

a deep sea trawler man, and quite naively signed up for a trip to
Iceland. I originally thought it would be with fishing rods. I did this
job for quite a few years and I became fully embroiled in the
fisherman’s way of life. I started as a ‘Brassy’ and worked up to being
a fully qualified Deckhand. Being away for long periods was a great
way of escaping a life with Pamela that had become boring and
continually filled with arguments and mistrust. Despite our

95
differences, we did however get married in a local registry office,
where Jack and Tammy from the hotel were the witnesses. We also
had two children together; my sons Kevin and Nathan were born
while I was a trawler man. My wages were good, but they were soon
eaten up after each trip to sea. I was feeding, housing, and clothing
five dependents, in addition to regular heavy drinking sessions with
the crew when we were ashore. I had my life at sea and Pamela had
her life ashore. We met on a monthly basis for sex and an argument
in between trips to sea.

We had rented a council house and settled to life amongst the

fishing community. I was slowly burying my past deeper and deeper
in my mind, although I did try to cut my wrists on one occasion
while I was at sea. Like many times in my life, something would
spark a memory of the past and this would lead to a period of self-
doubt and manic depression. When I cut my wrists, I was drunk and
later told everyone I was just fed up of life. I did not want to discuss
the past with anyone. My condition is now called Bipolar Disorder.

My life as a trawler man may be the subject of another book in

the future. I had a separate and very exciting life while at sea. It was
very dangerous and the crew were like brothers. We worked hard,
played hard, and operated like a ‘family’. I have many yarns to tell
about that experience.

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 During that period of time with Pamela and the kids, I was
always trying money-making ideas. I did mobile DJ work with a guy
who now has his own radio show on local radio. I started a sign
writing business, a small printing business and I published my own
children’s book. It was called the adventures of Joe Boe. When the
Cod War was taking place, it became very hard to get signed on to a
ship so I subsidised my income with these ideas, none of which made
any substantial money. I had a shipmate called Ivan who was a bit of
a ‘nut’ by any standard, but was also a real buddy. Together we did
garden work and school ground work when we were not on board
ship. We had each bought motorbikes, and spent most of our time
racing each other across the fields when we should have been
working.

We eventually lost a contract with a local public school when

we sank their tractor in a bog. We signed on the same ships and
spent a lot of time together. We often shared sex with girls we knew.
I was the confident one who would persuade girls to have a
threesome with us. On one occasion, when we had arranged to meet
two girls on a day we were heading off to Iceland, we pretended that
Ivan had fallen into the bay as the ship was leaving. He made me
punch him while he was standing on the back of the boat deck,
outside the railings. I then raised the alarm and jumped in to ‘rescue’
him and we were subsequently returned home. Ivan had failed to
mention that he could not swim, so I did actually rescue him for real

97
as he very nearly drowned in the ships turbulence. The ‘rescue’ was
featured in the local press, and I was hailed as a hero for saving him
from drowning. The girls never did turn up for the date.

I can’t say I was a good husband or father whilst I was a trawler

man, because I was not. I did not know how to be. I was just a hard
working teenager and I always supplied just enough money to get
by. Pamela was sinking into her old ways, with her Martini
addiction, and we were both having sex with other people. My
exploits with chance meetings that led to instant sex were just part of
my life. I can recall five particular women who I met with secretly
over that period. It was when I caught Pamela in bed with a guy that
things got really bad. I guess that incident would have been the end,
but an unexpected letter in the post changed the future in an instant.

My mother had married Robert and moved abroad, but sadly

he had died and my mother and sister had returned to Havenhead
while I was living in Fleetlea. I spoke to her on the telephone
immediately and arranged to visit her the same day. She was back at
Nan’s guesthouse, so I jumped on the train and went to see her in
Havenhead.

Nana Dora subsequently died a few weeks later and my mother

suggested that I move back to Havenhead with Pamela and the four
kids. We grabbed this opportunity. We did not say it to each other at

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the time, but I believe we both saw the opportunity as a last chance to
make things work out, back in our home town. We had a rented
house in Fleetlea so we simply repeated the exercise of selling up and
disappearing, almost overnight. The guesthouse was subsequently
converted into two large flats and we all moved in. I then got a job
selling antique collectors’ books on the Isle of Man and Pamela tried
to re-settle, in what was a very nice home, back in Havenhead.

It did not last for long. Whilst I was away, Pamela and my
mother just argued and fought with each other over all sorts of
things. My mother would call me and complain about the mess and
the noise, whilst Pamela would call me and complain about my
mother’s constant nagging and interfering with the kids. I was glad
to be on the road with a group of sales girls, living it up selling books
and having even more sexual encounters.

Eventually this bubble burst and everything began tumbling

down again. Firstly, I was arrested in Leeds with the girls I was
travelling with. It turned out that the company we were working for
was owned by an Australian con man that was taking the customer’s
money for the books we sold, but never shipping them. We were
released after hours of questioning. Secondly, I returned home
unexpectedly to find Pamela having a relationship with an old school
friend of mine called Terry. She then left after a big argument, taking
her two kids with her, and I was left with Kevin and Nathan on my

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own. They were both toddlers. Gordon and Teresa did not want to
leave them behind.

My mother promised to help me look after Kevin and Nathan

so I could get a new job. However, after a few weeks, I realised that
she was not looking after them. They needed their real mum and
siblings. Pamela had been to see them a few times and she had
begged me to let them go with her. I reluctantly agreed and helped
her move in to her new council flat. We had agreed that I could visit
anytime and I agreed to give her money for the kids without telling
the social security.

I guess this is when I sat up and took notice of my life and

circumstances. I was now twenty years old and my life, my head and
my finances were in a mess. I had to do something to turn things
around. I had to re-invent myself and make a new start. I was now a
weekend dad and had time to work. Pamela and I eventually
divorced on the grounds of irretrievable breakdown of marriage
because of adultery. This is something we agreed to do because it
was the quickest and cheapest route. We did see each other regularly
when I visited the kids at weekends. We even slept together on one
occasion.

Pamela’s new flat was a terrible place on a small estate in the

worse part of Havenhead. She had to put chairs against the front

100
door at night to protect her and the kids from drunken men knocking
on the door. I hated seeing my kids live like that, but it was what
Pamela wanted. I can honestly say that although she lived in what I
considered squalor, she did her best with limited resources and a
limited understanding of parental responsibilities. She loved her kids
and would do anything to protect them. Her heart was in the right
place. I did my best to visit regularly with money and gifts, but to be
honest I did not do as much as I should have done.

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 8
Four Girls and a Baby

After Pamela was settled into her new life with the kids, I
decided to try my hand at graphic design. I had always been artistic
and I had completed a visual design course at the Brayburn College
of Technology and Design whilst living in Norpool. Coupled with
this, I had always had an interest in advertising. I initially got a job
with a printer that my mother knew, and this was just the start that I
needed. I moved up the ladder quite quickly and I soon managed to
secure a position with a major advertising and marketing company.
However, during the same period, I had also met a new woman and
had started a new business of my own.

I met Bernadette in very unusual circumstances. She had been

having an affair with one of my married bosses. He was supposed to
meet her secretly one particular day, when his lungs collapsed, and I
was subsequently sent by him to tell her what had happened. This
led to me not only having tea at her house, but also to helping myself
to his ‘supper’! Bernadette was a very loving and caring woman who

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I really enjoyed being with. We told my boss that we were now an
item and we started to see each other openly. He wasn’t very pleased,
but he couldn’t really say anything, being a married man himself. I
soon moved into Bernadette’s house and got my feet under her table.
She had a young daughter who I got on very well with, and things
seemed really great. My kids would come and stay at weekends and
we had many happy times together as one big family. Bernadette was
always supportive and often gave me the money to set up new
business ideas.

The problem with the relationship was that she was twelve
years older than me and although sex was great with her, I hated
being considered her toy boy. When we went out, people often
thought she was my mother. To be honest, I was very embarrassed
whenever we were with her older friends. She always treated me
well, but it was like being her son, not her man. I can’t say anything
horrible about Bernadette because she smothered me with her love
and affection, as indeed did the rest of her family.

Whilst with Bernadette, I suffered a minor breakdown. We had

been invited to her brother’s house for an evening meal. He was a
very successful businessman who lived on a private estate near
Chadster. The other guests were all professionals and much older
than I was. One of the female guests turned out to be a social worker,

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and I took an immediate interest in her. During the evening, I had
started to rub her leg under the table and she had reciprocated. This
went on for most of the evening and we all got very drunk. The
woman then started to speak about her experiences in social work,
and began talking about the home in north Wales that I had been in.
Her opinions about young people in care started to annoy me and by
the early hours I started to argue with her. It ended with a very
embarrassing showdown and I stormed out of the room. The next
day, back at Bernadette’s, I fell into a very unhappy mood and
remained very depressed for many weeks. I drank a lot and was not
easy to live with for quite sometime.

After this event I started a new business, with Bernadette’s help

and money, and we enjoyed a level of success for a while running a
busy shop in Havenhead. I had met my real dad again, who was a
businessman, and he had also helped me to make contacts and start a
shop similar to his. Later, after making some money, Bernadette and I
joined an American company called Amway, and I became fully
absorbed in the training seminars that they held. It was like a religion
and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was almost as if I had found
another ‘family’ to belong to. We did not make a lot of money but I
really learned a lot from that company, particularly with regards to
marketing and selling.

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 We met another couple at one of the meetings who lived close
by and this led to another secret affair between me and the female.
She would come to the house while Bernadette was at work and we
would have sex on the stairs.

We sold the shop business, and then sold Bernadette’s house to

fund a new project. We purchased a derelict building in Waverly,
and set up accommodation for ourselves with a general grocery store
below it. This proved very profitable at first and everything was
going very well. My mother had also got involved as an investor with
this venture along with her new chap Arnold, who was her fourth
husband. He was the builder who had converted the guesthouse into
two flats. He did most of the renovation work on the new building,
for a reasonable price, and I helped. Amelia invested her money, and
Arnold took it back for his labour and materials.

After the shop opened, my mother lost interest and my

relationship with Bernadette was starting to crumble. I just could not
trust her after I had found out that she had lied to me about another
relationship she had been having when I first met her. I was no angel,
but this was the root of my further withdrawal from the relationship
with her.

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 Looking back, I realise the double standards that operated
within my life. I always felt that I was loyal to my partner as far as
‘love’ was concerned when I was in a relationship, and I would
separate my sexual activity with others by compartmentalising it as
just sex. However, I required that the people I ‘loved’ would have to
be absolutely honest and loyal to me in every way. This was a crazy
mind-set that obviously would not work in any relationship. I guess
my problems with relationships may have had their origins in my
experiences with Mr Shush when I was a child. On one hand he was
my saviour and protector who looked after me, and on the other
hand he was the monster who had secret sexual activity with me,
against my will.

I took on a Saturday girl to help in the shop, her name was

April and I fell in ‘lust’ with her the moment I saw her. She was just
sixteen, slim, gorgeous and shy. At first she was very quiet with me,
but as we worked together more and more, we developed a
relationship and ended up having sex. She was young but sexually
experienced, and I was infatuated with her. We shared our troubles
and worries about our past lives. She had troubles with her family
and school, and I was happy to be her saviour and soul mate. We had
some good times together, and I gradually became increasingly
obsessed with her and spent all my time and money on the
relationship. I purchased an American car from a friend and started

106
to collect April from school in it. I always had a fag lit and ready for
her when she got into the car. We went to clubs, danced, drank, and
spent as much time together as we could. Inevitably the shop
suffered and Bernadette, who knew about the relationship, was not
happy.

April became pregnant, just as we were forced to liquidate the

business. Bernadette, my mother, and I, all lost our investment and I
lost my only source of income. However, with a baby on the way, it
was important that I was quick to get re-established. I rented a house
and started a new business with a mate called Tommy. I married
April and my son David was born. We lived as husband and wife for
twelve weeks.

Almost as soon as David was in my arms, things went very

wrong between me and April. I can say now, with my aged wisdom
and hindsight, that she was too young to settle down and my
obsession with her must have been overbearing. Things went from
bad to worse, and at one point I took an overdose when she had left
the house with David, vowing that I would never see them again. It
was a worried friend who broke the door to my house down, and
found me unconscious and close to death. After this I managed to get
my act together again. I had managed to get custody of David, but I
really wanted to get back with April. This simply was not possible
and I had to deal with losing her. We both made mistakes whilst we

107
were together, and I will not write about them here. I will say that
she was a great person who has since proven to be a good mum to
her other kids and she has now developed a relationship with David.
Our relationship was not based on anything real and I should have
realised this at the time. However, we produced a fantastic son
together and we both now have him to love.

My new business took off very quickly. We were in the second-

hand trade and the money was rolling in. I bought a Jaguar and
enjoyed living it up in the clubs and pubs. One day, in the late
afternoon, just before closing one of the shops, a girl walked into the
showroom carrying a baby on her hip. I remember the scene as if it
was yesterday. She was wearing a thin dress and with the light from
the street behind, I could clearly see the silhouette of her body. Both
she and the baby were crying and the girl looked desperate. I gave
her a chair to sit on, and after she calmed down, she explained that all
of her furniture and many of her personal belongings were in my
shop. It turned out that I had purchased them in a house clearance
the day before. Her boyfriend, who was a junkie, had sold them to
me when she was not there.

I agreed to return her goods and I took some back to her house
straight away. After unloading her stuff she told me she had no
money for the baby or herself, so I bought fish and chips, and had tea

108
with her. We had sex that night in her flat. Her name was Laura and
her daughter was called Veronica. Laura had a tanned body and was
very passionate. A few days later her boyfriend was found dead in a
house in Denton, having overdosed on heroin. I gave Laura money to
go to the funeral and looked after her daughter Veronica for the day.

The business grew bigger and I opened five more shops. Money
was easy to make, and having a good time was always on the
agenda. I gave Laura a job in one of the shops and we started seeing
each other. She was stunning looking and I liked being with her. She
helped me to get legal custody of my son David by her agreeing to
say that she was looking after him for me, and this led to us living
together in a flat that I rented.

Eventually we bought a house and lived there with her little

girl and my son David. She also helped me look after my eldest son
Kevin when he returned to live with me. He had turned up in a taxi,
having come all the way from Rochester after his mother and sister
had had a fight that had frightened him. It was later agreed that he
could stay with me and Laura. He was riddled with fleas and scabies,
his clothes stank of urine and he was generally dishevelled and thin.
Laura bought him new clothes and invested a lot of time and love
into his life. He started a new school and settled with us. My only
regret is that I did not get hold of my other son, Nathan, who wanted

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to stay with his mum, and I had to accept that.

Whilst setting up home with Laura, I had started a secret affair

with her sister Madeline. This was a purely sexual affair. We first met
when Laura had introduced us, a few weeks after she had come into
my shop. I really cared about Laura and her daughter, but I knew I
did not love her. I still had feelings for April and secretly wanted to
be with her and no one else. Laura was easy to live with and she was
very loyal to me. She was also a great mum to my son David and I
have no bad feelings toward her at all. I know I hurt her feelings
when we separated and I regret that.

Madeline was an addiction that I could not shake, and we saw

each other as often as we could. I helped her to get a flat of her own
which became our love nest. I also gave her a job in another of my
shops. With Madeline, it was pure lust on both our parts and the sex,
which we had at every opportunity, was always fantastic. On one
occasion we had sex in the back of a van we were painting, whilst
Laura and her mother were less than twenty feet away in the house.
On another occasion we had sex behind the counter in the shop, with
customers on the next floor up. We had sex hundreds of times; the
more daring it was, the more we enjoyed it. We literally ravished
each other daily, sometimes hourly.

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 Later, Madeline turned up in my life with a vengeance in an
attempt to get me back. She turned into a ‘bunny boiler’ and caused
us a lot of trouble. Apart from sending a stream of taxis and the fire
brigade on many occasions to annoy us, she once called to say she
would kill herself if I did not go to her. I did not go and she took an
overdose. She gave my name as her next of kin and the hospital
called and interrupted me in a business meeting. I told them I had
nothing to do with her. When she left hospital she tried again to
contact me on several occasions. Eventually, Laura gave her a
warning and we never heard from her again for a long time.

Business started to fall and I was tired of my business partner

Tommy. I did not trust him after I had discovered that he was selling
washing machines on the side and keeping the money for himself.
On principle, I forced the closure of the business. I then set up a new
business with a friend named Andy, a single parent, who was to
become a life long friend. We set up a dating agency in his house and
it took off straight away.

It was called Dial-a-Date and we advertised in the local press.

The problem we faced was that hundreds of men paid to join our
service but we had very few female members join. In order to get the
£25 joining fee, we had to supply at least five potential dates to those
who had registered. Because we were severely lacking in female

111
members, we simply made them up! We literally sat and wrote out
details for a hundred or so ‘make believe’ women for our members to
write to. It was risky but it worked. We sat for hours answering
letters, pretending to be the women on our membership list.
Everyday we rushed to the mailbox to collect the money from lonely
men seeking companionship. Little did they know that they would
get letters from make believe women. To add insult to injury, we
also charged them 25p for every letter they received.

We met a few of the ‘real’ women ourselves and pretended to

be members from the Dial-a-Date service. I had few close escapes, but
we did get lucky on the odd occasion. Needless to say, the business
soon dried up when people did not get any real dates. As this
business started to fail, Andy mentioned that he had heard that
British Telecom was being forced to give premium rate services to
private entrepreneurs to run as businesses. This was to be our next
venture, and life was about to take yet another big turn.

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 9
Sex on the phone, money in the bank

During March 1987, while I was still living with Laura and
Veronica, I set up a Limited Company with my friend Andy. We had
managed to convince a woman we knew to invest £5,000 into a new
venture. Our business plan was to set up a premium rate dial-and-
listen service locally, in the Ferryside area. It enabled people to dial a
special 0077 number to listen to dating advice and single parent
advice. The cost per call was 25p per minute and British Telecom
took half of this as their commission.

With the investors’ money in our bank account, we managed to

convince British Telecom that we were fully funded and we were
subsequently licensed and had five unique premium numbers, to
which we added recorded messages. We were told that we were the
first people in the United Kingdom to have such a licence and that we
could expect to make a considerable profit from the service. Excited
at the prospect of cash, we eagerly launched the business through

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local advertising. We lied to just about every newspaper in the area to
get credit for our advertising, and we were soon up and running
without spending a penny of the investor’s cash. The first month was
slow, but it was better than the original Dial-a-Date service. I had
signed on as unemployed to create extra income, and I subsequently
convinced the unemployment exchange to give me a grant of £2,000
to start a new business. Andy and Laura did the same and together
we raised a further £6,000 pounds.

The service was gaining customers slowly in the first few

weeks. I had a moment of inspiration one evening when discussing
things through with Andy, and suggested that we put real people on
the end of the telephones to talk with the callers, instead of the
recorded messages. We looked carefully at the idea and decided to
give it a try. We told British Telecom what we were planning and
they were not convinced that it would work. I designed new
advertisements and we begged a few girls we knew to come and
answer the telephones. We just told them to talk and keep talking for
as long as possible. We told them it was a helpline for single parents,
but really, we had advertised the services in the personal sections as
‘Kitten Call 0077700700 - Call for a private chat between 6pm and
8pm any night.’ The first call came in. Then another, and then
another. Before we knew it, all five lines were busy and it did not
stop at 8pm. It carried on all through the night and over into the next

114
morning. Responding quickly to this, we placed a recruitment
advertisement in the job centre, for helpline telephonists, and we
ordered more lines from British Telecom, who could not believe the
amount of calls we were generating, and the revenue continued
clocking up.

One problem we had was that BT only paid out to us every

three months in arrears. We borrowed money from everywhere we
could to pay staff and to place advertisements and we convinced the
bank to give us a hefty overdraft. It helped that the bank manager
was a friend of my dad’s. The crest of this wave just kept growing
and growing, and by September we had made £17,154 profit and had
moved into new premises. By December it was £37,510 and after a
further fourteen months, the figure had grown to more than £618,000.
By that time, I had bought out Andy and the original investor and I
had appointed a new business partner named Hank. He had a
building and a recording studio that was very helpful to the business.
The company grew to around 300 fulltime staff working across five
cities in the United Kingdom.

Andy set up another service on his own and went on to be very

successful. Looking back, I realise now that this was one of the
biggest mistakes I made. Andy was a good friend and very astute
with money and I would have gained more from the business than I

115
did if I had stayed in partnership with him. My company expanded
like a wild horse in a fast gallop. Somewhere along the way I lost the
plot and became entangled in a business that was bigger than I could
handle. The service was getting slated in the national press and I was
constantly either on television or radio trying to defend the services
we were offering. The so called ‘Sex Chatlines’ industry had become
a multimillion pound business for British Telecom who had
subsequently licensed many other operators who were in direct
competition with my service. I won’t bore you with the details of the
business. However, I will tell you of its effect on me and my life.

As Managing Director and Chairman of the company, I was

responsible for every detail of the business. To put this in context, we
were making £200,000 per month at the peak and had around 600
staff working in numerous offices around the country. I had a team of
ten managers and a sub-level of around twenty more managers
below them. My job had become an impossible task that was beyond
my capabilities and experience. I was drinking hard, spending money
hand over fist, and I was acting like some sort of tycoon millionaire. I
had purchased several Mercedes and a Rolls Royce and had started
living mostly in expensive hotels. Some people started referring to
me as a “Champagne Charlie”.

My sex life had gone ballistic. I got involved in sexual

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threesomes, foursomes, more-somes, and anything goes-somes! It
was girls, girls, and more girls. One particular girl, who I will call
Barbara, became my regular secret sex partner for a while. With her I
explored the world of girl-on-girl sex sessions and we had a lot of fun
together. I shared her with my brother Mike on many occasions. He
had also invested in the business, but I had paid him back.

While all this was going on, Laura had settled for a life living
at home looking after the children while I was ‘out to play’. She
wanted more than I was offering in the love department. She loved
me and put up with a lot. She was looked after very well, financially,
as were the children, but that was all I gave them. I was lost in a haze
of success, money, cars, girls, sex, booze, and high living. Looking
back, I would say I was as a ‘Jerk-in-a-Merc’, with more money than
sense.

Towards the end of the business, when I was fighting with just
about everybody from the media to the government, I hired a
personal secretary who was to travel with me. Her name was Alicia,
or at least that was her name on the Chatlines. She was bright and
efficient. She was not my usual type and I gave her the job in an
attempt to organise my business activities and responsibilities. She
and I became good friends very quickly. As my world collapsed
around me, with the drink, the stress, and the bizarre lifestyle, it was

117
Alicia who stood by me and remained loyal. We travelled together
many times, often staying in the same hotel. Alicia was able to cover
my incompetence by keeping me on track with the important
business issues. She was also acting as a go between when I wanted
to arrange dates with any girls I had seen in the offices we were
visiting regularly. Eventually, I realised that I was falling in love with
this new girl in my life. It was something very powerful and I was
frightened at first of how I felt about her. I slept with many more girls
before I finally told Alicia my true feelings.

It was on a trip to Halecastle, travelling with Hank and another

girl that I really fancied, that I approached Alicia. That night she
accompanied me to a floating casino in Halecastle, and we sat and
talked at the bar for most of the night. We returned to our hotel and I
asked her to sit and talk with me in my suite. It sounds like a tall
story, but I had been having palpitations for a few days and I was
actually frightened of being on my own in case I died of a heart
attack. Alicia knew this was not a ruse to get her in my bed. That
night I disclosed to her all my life’s worries, and I even told her that I
was an abuse victim. She loyally sat and listened until daylight came
up. I was subsequently diagnosed with Wolfe Parkinson White
Syndrome, which is a congenital heart condition.

It was not long before Alicia spent the night with me. We held

118
each other all night, lying awake and talking about life. I felt like my
whole body and mind was at rest when I was with her. I was falling
in love for the first time in my life, and I liked it. Her warm embrace
and her gentle kisses made me feel whole. Just touching her hand
would send shivers down my spine. To this day, her gentle touch and
very presence makes me fall deeper and deeper in love with her.

The business soon became my enemy as it began to take much

of my attention away from my new relationship with Alicia. After a
while I sat with Laura and told her what was happening with me and
Alicia. She reluctantly agreed to be our confidante. She even allowed
us to meet and stay the night at the home Laura and I shared. This
sounds bizarre now, even to me, but at the time, I was trying to
appease everyone, whilst maintaining a good home for my kids with
Laura, and also trying to experience this brand new type of
relationship with Alicia.

I later rented a second home in an exclusive part of town which

became a real love nest. We furnished it together and spent many
times talking late into the night. I unloaded years of my most deeply
held fears, and Alicia listened and comforted me throughout. I think I
had some sort of breakdown, which was not the first time or the last,
and I finally collapsed in her arms like a child and cried.

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 The business was by now hundreds of thousands of pounds in
debt and I did not care a hoot. I hated the business and I just wanted
a new life with Alicia. I had got involved with people who were
known criminals, would-be Mafia types, who were ‘helping’ me to
rescue the business. This led to me becoming very paranoid when I
was told that another group of ‘businessmen’ wanted me out of the
premium rate business.

On one occasion I was summoned by telephone to meet a

stranger in Overpool. He claimed to represent a ‘Mafioso’ style
family that was going to use my business as a filter for drug money.
During his call he was able to tell me a lot of things about me and my
family, and he threatened to kill the children if I did not meet him.
Alicia and I met with this person and after his threats were repeated,
I agreed that I would allow the arrangement for cash to be deposited
in one of our company accounts. The same evening of that meeting,
Alicia and I were attending a manager’s meal in my friend’s club, and
I was told by someone there that the person I had met was in fact
someone who worked in our Overpool office. I drank several bottles
of wine and then decided to deal with this situation in the only way I
knew how.

The Home from Hell had taught me that sometimes you had to
go beyond fear and face up to the bully. With my drunken courage, I

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called the man whom I had met and told him I needed to see him
urgently, straight away. I then drove through the Overpool tunnel in
my big flash red Mercedes and skidded up at high speed outside an
office in Overpool city centre. The guy came down to meet me from
the office building. As he stepped out of the lift, I leaped on him. The
lift doors remained open and I set about kicking him and punching
him as hard and as fast as I could. My adrenaline was high, as was
my fear, and this turned me into a madman. As I was kicking him in
the face his teeth were coming out and blood was spurting onto the
side of the lift.

After this initial frenzied attack, I dragged him back in the lift
and took him to the top floor of the building. I literally pulled him by
his hair to one of the windows and tried to lift him out of it, in order
to throw him down several levels. I was in such a frenzy that I did
not realise that this was all being recorded on video tape via the
internal security cameras of the building. Although I did not kill him,
I was now in a terrible state of fear, having realised what I had just
done. I telephoned one of the people I knew who were helping me
with the business, and he came to help me. He put the lad in the boot
of his Mercedes and told him he was going to be dumped in the river.
In fact, he dumped him outside a local hospital. I was told to go
home and forget it ever happed. The next day the security guard in
the building was paid a cash sum in exchange for the video evidence.

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The lad recovered after having a metal cage on his face because of a
broken jaw and fractured cheek bones.

The attempt to blackmail me was over and I never heard from

them again. The people who were helping me were a known family
in Overpool and I was now under their protection. All I can tell you
is that they claimed to be connected to the infamous twins who once
terrorised the streets of London.

Eventually, holding onto the last strands of sanity, I liquidated

the business and went away with Alicia to the Canary Islands for a
long break, leaving a big mess behind me. That holiday was like a
dream come true. I felt loved by Alicia and we became best friends,
lovers, business partners, and we were falling deeply in love, despite
my messy world that was hanging over me like the plague.

We knew even then that we would spend the rest of our lives
together. How we would be rid of my messy life back home did not
seem important as together, we were a force to be reckoned with.
Every second of my time on holiday was spent with Alicia. I had
found my soul mate.

For me, meeting Alicia was like waking from a long nightmare,

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and I realised that I was not who I thought I was. My life felt like it
had been a façade and I had become an enigma. I was a tortured soul
who had been seeking solace in a fabricated life, and now all I
wanted was Alicia, my predestined soul mate.

The business did not end with a simple liquidation. I was being
chased by the Department of Trade and Industry who had alleged
that I was in breach of my fiduciary duties as a Managing Director
and was therefore being held personally responsible for over one
millions pounds of company debt. At the liquidators meeting I
arrogantly tossed a single pound coin over the desk and said that this
was my £1 share of responsibility. We had answered “no comment”
to the creditor’s questions and we were accompanied by one of the
people who were ‘helping’ us. This had annoyed the liquidator and it
set off a two-year fight with him and the Department of Trade and
Industry. I paid over £20,000 for a lawyer friend and a barrister to
prove I was not guilty as charged. I won my case when I presented a
114 page affidavit and fifty supporting pieces of evidence. I was
given a one year ban from becoming a Director of a limited company.
I remember saying as I left the court “No problem, my next company
will be in Alicia’s name”.

My cocky attitude was merely covering over my self-

destructive mind set, and I desperately wanted out of the world I was

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in. I just wanted to escape and rub it all away as if it was not real.

Laura, who was still living in the house she and I had
purchased, had accepted the arrangements for me to pay all her
expenses for looking after the children while I lived with Alicia. I
spent less and less time with her and the children as I became more
involved with the business liquidation and my life with Alicia. Laura
subsequently met someone and she left with her daughter in the
middle of the night, leaving her brother to look after my two boys,
Kevin and David. Alicia and I collected them from the house and
they came to live with us in our love nest.

Alicia immediately became a ‘mum’, and without complaint,

adjusted her entire life to caring for both of my boys. She had lost a
boy of her own before I met her. Wayne had died at birth and I guess
that Alicia had a lot of unused motherly love stored in her heart, and
my boys benefited from this immediately.

Laura had literally vanished overnight, so I set about looking

for her and engaged a private detective to find her. Letting her go
was something I found hard. I was a control-freak who always liked
to have the last word. I did not want Laura, but I did want control of
the situation. I sent threats out on the grapevine, saying that I had to

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talk to her. We owned the house together and I could not sell it
without her signature. This all came to a head when I was visited by
a few ‘thugs’ who her new boyfriend had sent to warn me off. I
invited one of them into my house and, with a rifle at my side I
confidently told him he was mixing with the wrong man. I
mentioned the names of my ‘Mafioso’ friends in Overpool and it was
agreed that both sides would back off. Truth is, I had no bullets for
my rifle and I was seriously worried about being beaten up. This
event shook me out of my obsession of finding Laura. Later, I did
meet her in a café by arrangement, and it was agreed that I would
stay away. I told Laura that I did have a form of love for her and her
daughter, and that I was sorry for not staying with her but she knew I
loved Alicia. I realise now that Laura had to escape my control in
order to get a life of her own. She was a lovely person and I was
lucky to have had time with her. I had loved her little girl, as much as
I was able to, and I did find myself pining for her affections for
sometime after she had gone out of my life.

The split from Laura had a very negative effect on David, who
considered her to be his mum and he also missed his ‘sister’,
Veronica. It is to the credit of Alicia, who persevered with David for
many years, he turned into a very well adjusted young man who she
has loved as her own son.

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 On my return from Spain, Alicia and I realised that we would
need another business income if we wanted to maintain the lifestyle
we had become accustomed too. Alicia would have been happy with
the basics in life, but she was now caught up in my world of sex,
money, and high living.

I was continuing to live the life I had been financing with my

very high salary and expense account, but I did not have any money
left. The credit cards were bashed to the max, and I was personally in
£250,000 of credit debt at this time.

We had to move from the love nest quickly, when the cash
dried up. It was at this time that Alicia’s dad sold the family home
and Alicia and her brother and sister were given cash from the sale.
We utilised this cash to set up a new home and a business. We
formed a limited company and Alicia and her brother and sister
invested the cash. It created a job for me, a home for us, and
employment for members of the family.

It was 1990 and we decided to set up another business on our

own. We returned firstly to the dating game and launched an
upmarket introduction agency which we called Alicia Jane
Countryside Introductions. We also set up a furniture business with

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Andy, and I ran the three businesses. At this time I also went to see
my real father and asked if he could help me in any way. His help
came in an obscure way. He was selling his self-built home that was a
Spanish-style complex known as Villa Amour. It was a big place with
its own 156 feet driveway. My father arranged a mortgage through a
friend of his. We set up a situation that involved an inflated property
evaluation. Alicia and I then borrowed around £152,000 and paid
£120,000 to my father as payment for Villa Armour. This gave us
£32,000 to play with. The mortgage payments were around £1,500 per
month, so we immediately re-mortgaged for an even higher amount
and borrowed a further £15,000 to help pay the mortgage payments
in the initial months.

The furniture business collapsed and the family sold the other
business when it started to get into financial difficulties. We moved
to our new home, taking the dating business with us.

We had the double garage converted into an office suite

attached to the house. It was a great feeling when I engaged Haynes
Builders to do the work as they were my first employers, and now I
was employing them. When the work had been completed, the
property market boomed and the value increased to £250,000.

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 We went on to start a few more limited companies offering
business management services and we also set up a new telephone
premium rate service in partnership with my friend Andy. We
engaged a London-based advertising agent, and ordered fifty or so
telephone lines on which we now offered sex advice and flirtatious
messages from imaginary models and strip-tease dancers. This made
about £50,000 profit. The dating game had changed and the real
money was in swingers clubs rather than traditional dating. I guess
this was a sign of liberated times, promoted by national press such as
the ‘Sport’ newspaper, in which we advertised our dial-and-listen
services.

We launched a new service named XTC international and

purchased the very latest computer equipment. We were one of the
first companies to utilise computer technology in this way. We re-
employed some of the more loyal staff from the Chatlines, and the
business boomed from our home office.

The singles and couples market was a seedy place to make

money, but I was beyond caring, I was simply making money in the
only way I knew how. Alicia had become pregnant while we were in
the shop flat and our first child, Anthony, was born while we were
there. We were the happiest couple on the planet. Our day job was to
make money, the rest of the time we doted on Anthony and lived a

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happy life with David and Kevin at our sides. Alicia’s brother Jim
came to live with us in Villa Amour, and he helped look after the kids
while we worked. We all enjoyed holidays together and we furnished
our home luxuriously. I felt that I was back on track and I was being
successful. Everything was a bed of roses. And then something
happened that would change life yet again.

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 10
Jesus in the Shower

I have always spent more money than I have earned, even

though, over the years, I have earned a lot. I have never given wealth
any respect and my tastes in clothing, cars, hotels, and food have
always been at the top end of the price scale. I have often been over-
generous to others, including complete strangers. I think I have used
money and the trappings of success like an overcoat that was hiding
a frail body; with it on, I felt secure and untouchable, without it, I felt
vulnerable. The root cause of this probably stemmed from the time I
spent in The Home from Hell. Having possessions and cash had been
a way of surviving whilst I was incarcerated. My abuser, Mr Shush,
was a powerful man with a lot of possessions and a lot of money and
his high life, empowered by wealth, had undoubtedly influenced me
deeply. However, I realise now that it was just a façade. I had never
really dealt with the baggage of my past. I was a man running away
from himself with no clear direction or realistic understanding of
people and life in general. I was a sex addict with a distorted view of
reality.

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 Alicia, who’s real name is Jane by the way, was the only
constant in my life at that time. We both now realise that she had also
become embroiled in my life of hedonism and self-delusion. She was
her own person but always remained willing to support me through
any event. Her love was unconditional. It is true love that she
continues giving me everyday.

It was not long before things began to crack again, only this
time it was me that was falling at a fast pace, not the businesses. Even
my life with Jane and the kids, plus the money and the house was not
enough. I was living with deep-rooted nightmares and feelings of
inadequacy. I was still a manufactured person, I was not me.

Drinking heavily and smoking around fifty cigarettes a day

was beginning to have an adverse effect on my health. I had been
running at a hundred miles an hour through thirty three years of life.
It was catching up with me when I was diagnosed with double
pleurisy on my lungs. I became bedridden, depressed and suicidal.
Jane kept the businesses and the family going, while I lay in my bed,
still smoking and still drinking. I was popping very strong pain
killers like sweets, and hiding under the covers, away from reality for
months on end. God only knows how Jane kept things together
because I was mentally up and down like a yo-yo. The pain from the
pleurisy was so overpowering that even my self-will and insane

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determination were losing the battle. I was dreaming vivid
memories, reliving events of my childhood and I was tearful without
any obvious cause to the onlooker. The room I was in was getting
smaller and smaller by the day and I felt like I was disappearing
down a big black hole.

Jane was not only caring for me and trying to keep the
businesses going, but also caring for the children. Andy was helping
as much as he could but as a polio sufferer, he was limited with what
he could do. Subsequently, the businesses started to fail and the cash
was running out again. I had been in my slumber, nursing illness and
possibly madness for many months and we were almost broke again.
The property market plummeted and we were in negative equity and
falling behind with the mortgage repayments. Jane, as you may have
gathered, was a rock, but unfortunately for her, a rock in the hard
place that I had created. She quietly, and without complaint, held on
to all the strings of life, making sure that the kids were looked after.
Her hand of help and love was the only thing I could see in my big
black hole of confusion. Then along came change again.

Through the curtains of my dark room, I could see it was a

bright sunny day outside. The door opened and Jane walked in
saying that I had a visitor. It was a psychiatrist that she had contacted
because she was so worried about me. He sat and talked to me for

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quite some time and I tried to convince him that Jane was worrying
unnecessarily. I had no faith in doctors. They had tried to analyse me
when I was a child and I did not trust them. He left and prescribed
more drugs, which I gladly added to my daily cocktail.

Not along after this, my cousin Charlie, who was Nathan’s

older brother, turned up out of the blue to visit me. Jane let him in
and he told me he was a Christian. He talked for hours about his life
with my Auntie Anne and his strict father, my uncle Jim. He was
convinced that he was a born again person and that God was real and
Jesus was alive. He told me that Jesus had sent him to me, to rescue
me from myself. My first response was to tell him to fuck off. I told
him he was a nut case who had lost the plot. He responded without
anger and simply repeated that Jesus loved me and then he left. He
came back the next day, but I had told Jane not to let him in.

A few days passed, and then my mother Amelia turned up

unexpectedly, wanting to see me. She had become a Jehovah Witness
and tried to persuade me to go with her to a Kingdom Hall meeting. I
told her to fuck off as well. I remember thinking that the world had
gone mad with all these Jesus freaks coming to my house. The very
next day, two Mormon preachers turned up at the door wanting to
talk about God. I was so fed up of this, I told Jane to let them in and
leave them with me in the room. I listened to what they said,

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presented them with my counter-arguments, and they eventually
gave up and left. That same evening my cousin Charlie arrived again,
this time with his wife, and he told me that Jesus was still waiting for
me to call him. I thought he was a bloody nut case and my patience
was rapidly running out. It was just as well I was ill or I would have
thrown him out of the house. When they left, they invited Jane’s
brother to go with them to a meeting in a local church and he
subsequently went with them.

They left me a leaflet about Jesus. It basically said that he had

died for me on the cross, and that I could call him in prayer and he
would come to me and heal me and forgive me. It sounded daft, but
it was also a very tempting offer. I discussed things with Jane, who
was raised as a catholic and she did not want to get involved. That
night was 3rd April 1991. I had got very drunk and decided to have it
out with God. I started talking to him, even though I could not see
him. I told him he must be a complete bastard if he was real. I spent
the night literally talking with God, out loud. I was venomous in my
accusations against him. If he was real, then he could have stopped
all the pain and anguish in my heart. If he was real, he could have
helped me when I was being abused. If he was real, he could have…
and so I went on until the early hours of the morning.

I woke up on the 4th April and for the first time in months I had

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no pain in my chest. Without thinking, I opened the curtains and
stood looking at the garden. This is going to sound like I had finally
gone mad, but as real as the day is a day; a bird landed on the wall
and looked at me. It was a crane and it was huge. As I looked at it, it
seemed to look deep into my eyes. I heard nothing. Total silence had
befallen my ears. I felt a breath of fresh air in my lungs as it flew off. I
then showered.

While in the shower, I realised that I felt somehow different,

and my first instinct was to tell myself I must be going mad. Then as I
was washing my face, I was convinced that I felt a third hand on my
face. In an instant moment of shock, I slumped to the floor of the
shower, speechless and unable to move. No one else was in the
shower with me and I lay there, perplexed by the event. I did not
understand what was going on. The shower continued bouncing
water off my body and I sat quietly for what seemed like hours.

Jane called me to ask if I was alright and I got out and sat on the
bed in a towel and explained to her what had happened. I think she
was now seriously worried about me and I realise it must have been
terrible for her. She then called the psychiatrist again.

Jane’s brother had come back from the meeting with Charlie

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excitedly explaining that he had found Jesus in his heart at the
meeting. Jane must have thought that my illness was contagious. He
and I spent hours talking about our experiences and we invited
Charlie back to the house. He subsequently explained that we had
both been ‘saved’ and that it was Jesus who had come to me in the
shower.

I met the psychiatrist in his office with Jane and I told him he
needed Jesus in his life and that I did not need him in mine. I was
rude to him and left.

The businesses finally closed and we became almost destitute.

It was Andy who, having heard about my ‘madness’, came to the
house and gave Jane a bundle of cash. It was £3,000. He was worried
about me and the family, and his act of kindness came with no
strings attached. My cousin Charlie said it was Jesus supplying our
needs through a human hand.

The first time I walked into the Havenhead Christian Centre,

accompanied by Charlie and his wife, I felt very awkward. It was big,
it was plush, and there was no sign of Jesus. In fact, it looked to me
just like many of the hotel seminar rooms that I had been in.

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 Music started and everyone stood up and they sang together
for a long time. They looked like insane people with their hands in
the air and big smiles, and some where singing in a very strange
language. There were about three hundred people in that room and
they all seemed very happy. A preacher finally got on the stage and
started talking about Jesus. He was charismatic and a very good
communicator. He reminded me of some of the Amway sales
promoters that I had seen from America. He made a lot of sense as he
talked about the World and the horrible events of war and famine.
Eventually, everyone bowed their heads and he started to pray. As he
prayed, he spoke to God as if He was his father.

At the end of the meeting the preacher asked that people who
wanted to be ‘saved’ should repeat a prayer after him and then put
up their hands. I was in a place I had never been before. It was
mesmerising and peaceful. I said the prayer and then raised my
hand.

After the meeting everyone had tea and biscuits and people
came up to me, complete strangers, and they hugged me. Some
kissed me on the cheek. They seemed absolutely ecstatic that I had
joined their family. The apparent love and happiness in that room
was overwhelming and I was speechless. I sat deep in my thoughts
watching Charlie greeting his friends when I suddenly realised that

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the room I was in, was the same room I had gone to when I got off
the bus as a child and had checked into the hospital. The children’s
hospital had been converted to a Church.

Looking back now, I do wonder if this fact contributed to my

willingness to get sucked in to this hysteria of God and the born
again family of believers.

I had returned home to Jane in an exuberant state of mind. We

sat up all night while she listened to my new-found blithering about
God and Jesus and our salvation from hell. God only knows what
was going on in her mind. She was taken aback by the apparent
miraculous change in me. I was happy and I was out of bed with all
the enthusiasm for life that I had shown before.

I became totally immersed in that church. I listened carefully

and totally believed every utterance from the pulpit. I studied
everything and eventually began a formal study course of the entire
Bible. I did degree and diploma levels of study. I converted my home
office into a shrine to Jesus and I spent at least ten hours a day with
my head in theological, expositional, and exegesis text books.

As this journey was unfolding, our personal finances were

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spinning out of control and debt collectors were queuing at the door.
I was tithing ten percent of our remaining income to the church while
Jane was trying to feed us all on about £25 per week. I was also
inviting the debt collectors in to the house, rather than hiding from
them. I was telling them about Jesus and how they should repent
from their sin and ask Him for forgiveness. I was praying for them
and even offering to heal them of any ailments they may have.
Needless to say, not many returned for more God bashing from me.

As I became well known in the church I was asked repeatedly

to go on to the stage and tell people about the miracles in my life.
They were now using me to entice others into the church. I was
studying the Bible, preaching the gospel, praying constantly, and
living in a heavenly guarded place of blissful security. Meanwhile,
Jane was packing our belongings in preparation for our imminent
eviction. My answer to everything was that Jesus would take care if
it.

My independent thought and thinking power were being

eradicated by the church way of life and my entire being was
absorbent of every gospel ‘fact’ ever written.

After two years with the church I was selected to be a Pastor of

one of the satellite churches. I had been through the gospel college
and had come out the other end as a typical Pentecostal preacher and

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pastor. I was genuine in my belief. We had lost our home, but ‘God’
had provided a new one, close to where I ran the satellite church. I
packed a lot into my time with the church. I did missions across the
country and in Ireland. I travelled with the charismatic leader of the
church, acting as a sort of ‘first act’, before the main event. I was
being paid as a church administrator during the day, as well as
working with the team that was producing a national Christian
magazine. I did the paste-up of the artwork, and also handled the
sales and marketing side.

My satellite church grew and we were helping many people

from a poor area in Overpool. As the Pastor, I found myself involved
with people’s lives. I had to be an advisor and confidante in their
times of marital or financial trouble, while also being their appointed
spiritual father. I took to this new life like a duck to water.

Our new home was small but comfortable and Jane was now
getting involved with my church activities. As always, she was fully
supportive. I had my head literally in the clouds, while she had her
feet firmly in the reality of daily childcare and home maintenance. I
became involved with national evangelistic missions and also in
street preaching in very rough areas. I was a good communicator
who truly believed in Jesus, and I had no fear of anything or anybody
whilst under his perceived heavenly protection. I went to Romania to

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help starving children in a destitute hospital. I was asked to
photograph children in their desperate situations. The photos were
going to be used to bring their plight to the attention of the churches
back home. I will never forget the stench of infantile death and the
squalid conditions that those little babies were suffering in their
caged cots. I watched through the lens of a camera as one baby, as
thin as a rake and with a body twisted with malnutrition, vomited
and then proceeded to eat the vomit.

I found Romania to be a pleasant place of green hills and fresh

air with hidden places of hell and human waste that were secretly
occupied with hundreds of orphans. The team I was with did great
work in Romania. The leader was a guy who had been the manager
at the home I stayed in when I returned to The Home from Hell. He
had become a Christian and was doing good work in Romania with
his wife. He raised money for them, firstly by singing country and
western songs and later, by raising hundreds of thousands of pounds
from hospitals and churches across the country. I was honoured to
have been a part of the beginning of his mission. It raised over a
million pounds and he had the hospital in Romania re-built to our
national health standards.

It was around the time that I returned from Romania that I

started to attend meetings with the senior Pastor at the main church.

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He liked to gather his first line troops each week for an update on the
battle against the devil. I became increasingly uncomfortable in these
meetings. He appeared to be more interested in the money collected
each week, than in the well-being of the people who gave it. I was
naturally suspicious of men in suits claiming to be the helpers of the
poor. I ignored my feelings for quite some time. I guess I was guilty
of enjoying my status within the church, along with my income and
security attained through the church. Many, many incidents
happened that increased my dislike of these so called ‘fathers of
faith’.

On one occasion, whilst in Ireland, I watched the senior Pastor

reading the Times Stock Exchange details with avid interest, while
someone tried to gain his attention about a poor family in the local
community. I witnessed that preacher build his own financial empire
through the contributions of the church. He dressed it up as ‘God’s
work. He opened businesses involved with the care for the elderly,
care for children, and workshops for the unemployed. I watched him
build and sell houses for a vast profit. I also watched him manipulate
his audience each week while raising more money for ‘God’. This is
of course, just my opinion of him.

Here was a charismatic man, again, charming all around him

with his eloquence. This was something I had witnessed before. I

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eventually started to challenge some of the issues I was concerned
about and this took me out of his favour. I had a challenging time in
church life, and what was originally a salvation through the arms of
Jesus for me, was becoming a personal dilemma of conscience.

Jane became pregnant with our second child and we were

elated with the news. The pregnancy was full term and we had been
told we were having a little girl. I was over the moon and we
prepared for this new little life. The boys were excited and Jane was
looking forward to having a girl in the family. We decided on the
name of Natalie, and we had her room ready and her first clothes
were purchased. My relationship with the church was waning, and
their support of me was diminishing. Only two senior Pastors were
true to their Christian faith in offering me and my family their
genuine and continued support for many years, unconditionally.
They were Pastor Rufus and Pastor Dirk.

It was the 18 June 1995, on father’s day, that Natalie was

stillborn. The midwife placed her in my arms, wrapped in a white
towel and she was lifeless. We had been told two days before that she
had died in the womb. We were devastated. Jane was at an all-time
low. This was the fourth pregnancy that had failed and the second
stillbirth she had endured. As Natalie was placed in my arms I
started to call out to Jesus. I had faith in him. It was genuine faith and

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I believed he could bring her back to life. I pleaded with him, through
floods of tears, to let Natalie live. Time passed and there was no
response. I had told Jane that she would be brought back to life if we
truly believed. We prayed and I continued to call out to Jesus. I
waited for his response, looking at her little chest, expecting a sign of
life. But nothing happened. By this time the midwives were looking
awkward. One of them was crying. They wanted to take Natalie
away and I would not let go of her. Jane was heartbroken and
exhausted. I tried again, I pleaded to Jesus to bring her back to life.
She remained void of life.

The funeral was in our home town. I invited everyone I knew,

even my mother. Natalie’s white coffin was covered with flowers that
spelt her name. Her funeral was an opportunity for us to demonstrate
our faith in Jesus. I gave a sermon through my tears and my friends
spoke generously of our faith. We buried her and that was that. Her
little life was over before it had started.

My mother had turned up, last minute at the graveside, and

had thrown her arms around me. I was cold and emotionless and
very nearly pushed her in the hole. I told her to get away from me.

Just before Natalie had died, I had been summoned to the main

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church to see the elders. On arrival I discovered my friend Pastor
Rufus waiting for me outside the office. He got hold of my arm and
quietly told me to remain calm and led me into the office. The senior
Pastor was sitting at his big desk, with an array of elders sitting either
side. I looked at them, they were my ‘family’ of friends, and none
looked me in the eye. I sat down at the end of the table. The senior
Pastor commenced his attack. His line of questioning was accusatory
and sermon-like. I was being questioned about my relationship with
a young female member of my church. She was eighteen and had
been involved with one of my team leaders. I was asked directly if I
had committed adultery with her. I knew my Bible inside out. So I
said yes, in the eyes of Jesus I had committed adultery with her.
Before I had time to explain what I meant, the jury found me guilty
and I was excommunicated from the church and they asked me to
leave the room with Pastor Rufus. It was a kangaroo court, devised
by the senior Pastor to remove me. I believe this was in response to
my continued questioning about his business affairs within the
church. I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights; I did not defend
myself and I just froze and said no more.

The Bible has a verse in it that’s reads:

‘But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already
committed adultery with her in his heart’ Mathew’5:28

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 I had looked at this girl lustfully, and many others also, if I am
honest. I was a ‘recovering’ sex addict. However, I was never
unfaithful to my wife or to my Jesus.

Pastor Rufus became my Christian father and helped me

through the difficult times that lay ahead. The so-called family turned
its back on me and my real family. They were influenced by several
Sunday sermons that were given after my disappearance from
church. Hypocrisy is rife amongst those who have a plank in their
own eye while judging those of us who have a splinter. The senior
Pastor was an experienced manipulator of the people mass. I was
devastated by these events and when none of them came to Natalie’s
funeral, with the exception of a Nigerian couple who were always
faithful to me and to Jane, I had decided to cut myself off from them
completely.

Like a miracle, after the funeral, I was contacted by another

church who wanted me to join them, and a millionaire Christian also
made contact and asked me to meet him with view to employment
with a new Christian project. Pastor Rufus was convinced that God
was vindicating me and encouraged me to follow this new pathway.

We moved on from the funeral and I accepted my new position

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as the manager of the National Christian Helpline. I was paid a large
salary and given an executive car. This led to other opportunities and
I became the Managing Editor of a Christian Magazine. We were now
going to church as members, but not involved in the ‘management
and politics’ of church government. My face was on advertisements
in every Christian magazine available, and even the Salvation Army
‘War Cry’ newspaper published a three page story about my faith
and my achievements. I did many interviews on Christian radio and
was also employed by a Christian magazine to help sell their
advertising. I used to think about the meetings that would have gone
on in the old church, with the senior Pastor being told about my high
profile within the Pentecostal churches. He would have huffed and
puffed until he burst a blood vessel.

We eventually moved house and went to live in a beautiful part

of North Wales. I continued a very busy life as a ‘Christian’, but to be
honest I felt that Jesus had deserted me. I realise now that I was
awakening from my ‘born-again coma’.

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 11
The Rise and fall of Faith

When I told people that I believed in Jesus as my personal Lord

and Saviour, I was telling the truth. Every fibre of my being was at
that time imbedded in the belief that Jesus was alive and the Holy
Spirit was living within me. I believed without any doubt that I was
empowered by God. This was the message of the church, and the
Bible had confirmed it to me.

I had been through a metamorphic experience; I had been

spiritually ‘Born Again’. The power of that belief was astounding. It
caused a change to my mind-set, a need to overcome addictions, and
it filled me with an extraordinary passion and empathy for other
people. I began to ‘see’ with a new found wisdom, into lives and
situations as if I possessed all the knowledge of the world. I was able
to study complex expositions about the Bible and grasp the meaning
and exegesis of the ancient texts. I lost all fear of men and of dogs in
an instant. I was filled to the brim with enthusiasm, energy, and love

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for my fellow man. I was void of any realism of life, and walking as if
I was on a holy cloud. The Christians around me were sometimes
perplexed by my apparent spiritual aura, and many told me that they
felt like they were missing the anointing of God on their life when
they compared their faith with mine.

It took only two years to the day to be appointed as a Pastor of

a Church and I took the responsibility very seriously. Although
naïve, I was dedicated and had such faith in Jesus that I knew I could
accomplish anything I believed he wanted me to do. Life with Jesus
was a constant experience that had no ‘downtime’. People could not
keep up with my ideas for the promotion of the gospel and the
salvation of the lost. For me, time was running out for those who did
not know Jesus. They were all going to die and go to hell. It was my
ordained mission to take the word of God to everyone, no matter
how much I was ridiculed for it.

No one I knew at that time escaped my constant attack on their

unbelief. Andy, for example, sat for hours, patiently putting up with
me in his office whilst I bible-bashed him. I wanted his soul and I was
relentless. Friends, family and anyone I met in the street were
proselytised with my constant narrative about Jesus and his love for
them. This ended in a few arguments with people like my mother
Amelia, who was a Jehovah’s Witness and many of my ‘Mafioso’

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friends just listened in amazement. One of them said he would join
me, but wanted to know how much money could be made each
Sunday and how much ‘investment’ did he need to get into the ‘God
Business’.

On missions I would volunteer to go the roughest places and

speak to gangs on street corners. I visited prisons and gave testimony
in their Church services. On one occasion in Shrewsbury men’s
prison, I spoke about Jesus healing the damage in my life caused by
sexual abuse. At the end of that service a few men were crying. I was
later told that these men were known as ‘beasts’, which was the
prison name for paedophiles.

I considered everything that happened to me during that first

two years as a Christian, good and bad, to be the will of God. I was
lost to reality and drunk on this new-found faith.

I watched video films of famous American preachers and was

so inspired by them that I was beginning to sound like them. This
was similar to when I was in Amway, and I would spread to gospel
of ‘multi-level’ marketing, otherwise known as ‘pyramid selling’. I
realise now, that this type of evangelistic life is actually contagious,
and I convinced many people to become born again Christians. Even

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my wife Jane, who is as sane as anyone could be, became a ‘tongue
talking’ Christian who would regularly sing her heart out to God
with her hands in the air.

This tsunami of new life in the Christian fast lane started to

crumble however. Firstly, when the church accused me of adultery,
and then when Natalie did not take a breath, despite my pleading
with God, the seeds of doubt started to grow.

The job with the National Christian helpline came to an end

when the owner’s donations for its upkeep ran out. My employment
as Managing Editor for the Christian millionaire also came to an end
when his idea for a Christian Credit Card failed to attract any
support. It was time for change and I was ready for it.

The truth is that I was, at that time, already falling away from
the faith I had been so ecstatic about. I was suffering post-death
anxiety and sadness at losing Natalie and my church family had
wounded me with their excommunication and sentence to the outer
perimeters of no-mans land. I could not forgive God for taking
Natalie from us, and he had committed the unforgivable sin of
hurting the only true love of my life, my wife Jane.

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 We had another baby on the way whilst all this was going on,
and I am pleased to say that Tim was born successfully and was
settling in at home with his brothers.

During the last days of my time in Wales, and with the church,
I had started to think deeply about my childhood. This had been
ignited by a picture of my abuser appearing on the national news. He
had been arrested and accused of abusing children. This was
followed by an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph on the
24/10/96 which was an invitation from the Chairman of the North
Wales Tribunal of Inquiry into child abuse. I had made contact with
the enquiry and was subsequently interviewed by the police who
took a statement from me. I then contacted the media and offered
them information about my experiences in care. Subsequently, media
frenzy took place in the national and local press and I was
approached by as many as twenty media agencies who wanted my
story. I made the decision not to accept any payments, and I offered
myself as a credible witness to the events of the past. I saw this as a
quicker route to expose what had happened than what was to prove
a very long and convoluted inquiry by Sir Ronald Waterhouse.

I held on to my ‘Ordained Minister’ status a little longer as it

opened doors in the press and on television and radio. I have many
clippings of my press interviews and radio broadcasts in my safe.

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Wales Today subsequently made a documentary about The Home
from Hell and I was featured in it. In addition to this, my story was
also featured on the national news. The London Evening Standard
ran a five page feature after interviewing me and other’s, and it
purported findings of child sex abuse, blackmail, and even murder of
witnesses. Many of my fellow care siblings feared for their very lives
after boys who we all knew had died in very suspicious
circumstances. I was fed up of the exposure on my life and I decided
that a new start, away from North Wales and the press was needed
fast, so I moved my family to a village in the Epsom Valley.

We had been to a particular village many times, firstly passing

through on business and subsequently as holiday makers, when
renting a cottage. Jane and I had found this village accidentally when
I had taken a wrong turning on the way to Hardcastle. This was
when Jane was travelling as my personal secretary, prior to our
marriage. The village had a quaint pub and shop with a picturesque
green and brook running through it. We had stopped at the pub for
many meals after discovering this village and it became our secret
getaway in the early days of our relationship. We fell in love in this
village and we had said that we would live there one day.

That day had arrived.

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 12
A Born Again Atheist

We packed up all our belongings in North Wales and moved to

our new home in Mortonley village. We had secured a new home
and had meticulously planned for the big move. It was April 1998
and Tim was now eighteen months old.

It took three trips in a hired van to get our belongings moved,

and we did it all in a single day. Our new home was a small three-
bedroom rustic croft house on the edge of the village. I was very
excited about this move and it felt like I was going home, even
though I had never lived in the area before. Jane was not so keen. Our
home in Wales was nice but it was not as isolated as Mortonley
village. However, as always, Jane followed the plan and got stuck
into making the new house a home.

When we arrived, we had no fixed employment, little money

left, and we were leaving Jane’s family behind. She is very close to
them and leaving them was a big wrench for her.

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 We spent a few weeks enjoying the new country way of life,
and sorted out schools for David and Anthony. I then received a
telephone call out of the blue from a Christian guy who had been
advised to contact me by a Christian friend of mine. This call
drastically changed things yet again. The chap that called had been
hired by a Christian millionaire from Hong Kong. The story he told
me was that the millionaire, Mr Chung, had arrived in the UK with
twenty million dollars to invest in a new dotcom business idea. The
internet-based business industry was just taking off on its initial
wave of interest in this country.

I arranged to meet this chap and a deal was done very quickly.
I was offered the position as the National Recruitment Director for
the new project. It involved a very high salary, a Mercedes car, and
an expense account. My job was to travel the country holding
recruitment seminars that were designed to entice network
marketing individuals to pay a fee to join this new dotcom venture.
The basic idea was to build a network of recruiters who would, in
turn, sign up individual shoppers who would spend at least £50 per
month on their general grocery shopping via a new internet shopping
site named suparmarkit.com. I could see that this could be a
workable business, and like most people in 1998, I was intrigued at
the possibilities of on-line shopping.

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 I set up an office at home and initially spent a few weeks in
London with Mr Chung. It quickly became obvious to me that the
appointed Managing Director was out of his depth, and Mr Chung
was soon turning to me for ideas. I proceeded to spend twelve
months on the road travelling from city to city organising and
presenting business opportunity seminars. I also worked with the
head office team in London designing promotional material and I
was commissioned to author a new multi-level business system that
could be used to build the network of recruiters. I copied the Amway
business model and added changes to create a plan that was legally
acceptable and unique in its bonus payment structure.

This job took me away from Jane and the kids and yet again she
was left to manage the family affairs. I was staying in the best hotels
but desperately missing my family. However, we had both agreed
that this opportunity may be the one that would finally help us to
clear debt from the past, and set us up with a secure future.

Fifteen months later, after helping Mr Chung spend more than

two million pounds, I received a call from the London office to say
that Mr Chung had gone bankrupt and had returned to Hong Kong
in shame. He had apparently lost all his money in a stock market
crash. He had left me a sum of money to pay for the dismantling of
the London and Edinburgh offices, plus a few months salary and a

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letter saying that I could keep the Mercedes.

Although this was a blow to our plan for future security, it was
welcome news to me, as I did not like being away from home all the
time. Jane and I had a long talk about what to do next.

I contacted a few old business chums and put the idea to them
that we may be able to rescue Mr Chung’s business model. I raised
forty thousand pounds in a few days and set up a new office in
Mortonley village. We installed computers and telephones and I
spent several days contacting all the people I had recruited for Mr
Chung. It was a hard sell trying to gain their confidence again, but I
managed to secure more than one hundred agents. I set up a few
meetings with suppliers and engaged a website builder to create the
new selling site. I named it Essentialgoods.com

One of the investors that I had contacted had promised a

further one hundred thousand pounds if I managed to secure
suppliers and agents. After a lot of hard work and late nights
travelling from city to city, the launch date was soon on the horizon
and I was chasing the extra investment.

It was never to be.

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 My main investor was an American friend who I trusted and
had done business with in the past, however, it turned out that he
was penniless and his investment was never to arrive. This was yet
another blow to the plan of our future security that ended abruptly. I
took a week off and thought things through. I decided I needed a
new plan.

While these businesses were unfolding and folding, I had been

maintaining the illusion of being a Christian. I had kept my
ordination title and also the façade of being a born again believer. I
had learned that it opened doors for me.

I was about to look for a job in sales and marketing when I was
yet again contacted by someone who had been referred to me by an
old business contact. The Christian millionaire who had funded the
National Christian Helpline had given my name to an Iranian
businessman he knew, who was not a Christian but was employed by
an investment broker in the city of London. This group wanted to set
up a dotcom website that was going to be the very latest thing in on-
line shopping. They had sixty five million pounds to invest. You can
imagine my scepticism when I heard all this over the telephone and I
initially said no. However, the Iranian was persistent and I agreed to
meet him. He came from London to meet me in a local hotel and
basically asked me to name my price. He seemed desperate to get

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started. He wanted me to recruit and manage a team of internal and
external sales people who would have the job of securing at least
fifteen thousands products that could be drop-shipped by suppliers
direct to this new dotcom’s customers.

I named my price and conditions and we shook hands. I could

not believe my luck. I called a few of my business friends who I
trusted, and gave them employment with this new business. I set up
another office in a nearby town and set to work on the fifteen
thousand product mission. I had been given six months by the
Iranian to complete this first task.

Whilst I was doing this, I set up another on-line business with

my friend Andy. We both subsequently lost two thousand pounds
each on our sellingservice.com idea. We had launched it just as eBay
hit the market with a far superior version of the same idea.

Jane and I were enjoying our new life along with our children,
plus the money was coming in. We had moved to a bigger house in
the same village and Jane had settled to the countryside lifestyle.
Whilst I had been away most of the time on business, she and the
children were putting down roots and making friends in the village.

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 I had a few setbacks during these years with my health, and I
know now that I was suffering badly from stress.

After six months the Iranian turned up from London

unexpectedly and thanked me for achieving the goal that had been
set. However, he then asked me to wrap up the office and sack the
staff. He explained that the investment broker was taking his money
and business to the Isle of Man and had decided to wait for the
dotcom boom to flourish further before they launched the site. They
had been given a big tax holiday incentive to move the operation. I
was offered a new job but told I would have to move to the Isle of
Man. It took me about two seconds to make the decision not to
accept. I had met the people involved at the top end of the company
during the previous six months and I was not impressed with them
at all. They were out of my league and seemed to be obsessed with
greed and power. I had a feeling I would have been eaten alive by
these people so I declined what looked like a great opportunity on
paper. In addition, I was also feeling exhausted and did not have the
mental capacity to try again, I was burned out.

I was again back home and enjoying time with Jane and the
boys, but I had to earn an income. I set up a new Limited company
and set to work from my home office again. I made a few telephone
calls and quickly secured a contract to sell Christian advertising

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space in several national Christian magazines. I was acting as an
agent and it was Pastor Rufus and Pastor Dirk who helped me
achieve this. They had no idea that I was no longer going to church.

The new business was easy to run and I only had to work a few
hours each day to make a reasonable living. I enjoyed this for a few
months and then secured a big contract in London to help produce a
brand new Christian business magazine. I had the production and
printing contract for this new publication and also the contract for the
selling of the advertising. I engaged an old friend to do the computer
artwork and I secured a line of credit at one of the largest magazine
printers in the UK. I gave a friend from the village a job helping to
sell the advertising.

This lasted for quite some time, and I was good at this type of
business, enjoying the mix of art, design and selling. Family life was
plodding along and all seemed settled again.

My atheist label was new to me and I was fighting a personal

battle with depression and the loss of my Christian ‘faith’. All things
aside, I must be honest and tell you that I was very happy in the
illusion of ‘walking’ with Jesus and having my Christian family to
turn to. It was a very nice feeling. However, deep down I knew I was

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unsettled and the past was still buried, but not dealt with. Things
with me were never what they seemed. My past was always buried
under my busy life and when I was not busy, I was manically
depressed and often suicidal without anyone realising it. I started to
meet with a psychologist who had experience with adults who had
been abused. My sessions with her were hard. I talked at length and
often broke down with the burden of recalled memory. Only Jane
knew that I was in counselling. The sessions became too mentally
exhausting for me to cope with and I stopped going. I was advised to
read a few books and I had been told that writing my story would
help me win my battle with the past.

My born again atheism was something that I struggled to fully

understand. I told people I was a ‘Born Again’ atheist. This is an
ambiguous title. People are never sure if I mean I am an atheist that’s
been ‘Born Again’ as a Christian, or a ‘Christian’ who is born again as
an atheist. I like this enigma. I think it is my business what I am and
what I believe, and no one else’s. Just like the apostle Paul, I have a
freedom that is not understood by those infected by man made
religion.

On Christmas Eve 2002 I received a telephone call from my

biggest client in London. It was not good news. The group funding
the Christian business magazine had run out of cash and were not

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proceeding any further. This left me with a huge production and
printing bill. I had already lost my other advertising client to a
competitor in the previous month and to top it off, a bad investment
in a mobile steam therapy business had left me around forty five
thousand pounds in personal debt. In spite of this, we had a good
Christmas and I hit the credit cards to the max. I also hit the bottle.

On the third of January 2003 I declared personal bankruptcy, as

did Jane. We rid ourselves of more than one hundred and fifty
thousands pounds of personal and business debt. We walked out of
the Bankruptcy offices as penniless people with no known assets. We
had a cup of coffee in a café close by and made a new plan.
Afterwards we set up a new bank account and returned home, free of
the worry of debt.

The new plan was for me to get a ‘proper’ job and never to do
business ever again. Jane was fed up, understandably, and my health
was not good. I looked for work for three months and found nothing.
I was either too old, over qualified, or plain unemployable. I lived in
a farming community and I could not even get a job shovelling cow
shit!

I was at an all time low and ready to give up on life. I was tired,

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disillusioned, and heading back to my bed to hide from life.

In April 2003 yet another change to my life arrived. A friend

from the village, who knew of my past experiences, came to me and
asked if I would help her employer to rescue his failing company.
The company was a childcare service in the private sector. With
nothing to lose I met her boss and subsequently accepted a contract.

This was something very different for me. I had a lot of

personal issues concerning childcare, as you may expect. The guy
who owned the company had built a service that was offering special
care to young people who had come to the end of the line with other
types of childcare. The company, I will call it ‘Conical’, had received
a threat from their bankers of forced closure. The boss I met was
stressed, worried, and buried under a mountain of threatening
letters. The Bank was pulling the plug in one month’s time. We
chatted openly and I was very honest with him about my situation.
However, he was desperate, and he offered me a job as Business
Development Manger and wanted me to start immediately. I had
nothing to lose so I jumped in feet first.

I am not going to bore you with the details, but I will say that
we turned the company around. It took three years of hard work,

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ducking and diving, and boat loads of marketing creativity on my
part. The company prospered and I became a major shareholder and
the company secretary. Life was good again. I had a company car, an
expense account, and an even higher salary. I loved this new
business. It combined all my past business experiences with a service
that changed lives. It was providing the very best in a specialist area
of childcare. I felt like I was making a real difference to the young
people who had similar troubles to those that I had experienced.

Here comes the ‘However’.

Three years into this business, the tide of a united team turned.
This time it was a break up of partnership. There were three of us
who were all equal partners and shareholders. All I can say here, is
that I could not continue working with them when, in my opinion,
the agenda of the company became exclusively motivated by profit
gain and personal wealth, which I felt was being achieved at the
expense of the loyal staff and the children in our care. This was not
something I could square with myself and my conscience, not for any
amount of cash.

I did try to challenge my partners but they turned on me with

their combined power of ownership. I subsequently got out and after

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an expensive battle through lawyers I received a cash sum in
exchange for my shares. They then revealed their personal sexual
relationship that they had been hiding and they subsequently got
married. The company is still trading.

I made many friends while I was with Conical, and many have
remained close friends to this day. Our daughter Annabel was born
while I was with the company and I was a very happy dad. I had
previously accepted that I would never have a daughter, after Natalie
had died, so Annabel was very special surprise to Jane and me.

As always, I had to continue to earn a living. I was in a state of

happiness with the arrival of my daughter, whilst also going through
a big depression caused by the loss of yet another business. I am the
type of person who invests my heart and soul into anything I do.
Losing money was not so bad, but losing the investment of time and
belief in whatever I applied myself to, was never easy. I had to deal
with the loss of face, loss of confidence, and the loss of identity.

This caused me to fall again into a private world of manic

depression and suicidal thoughts. Back came the nightmares and the
feelings of inadequacy. Back came the loss of confidence. Back came
the feelings of guilt and the feelings of the shame of my childhood.

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 I broke down and fell off the cliff of life. Jane held me up with
her love, and my children gave me a reason to carry on. I slumbered
for a while and then gathered the last remnant of energy that was
needed to try again.

A ‘proper’ job landed on my doorstep, literally. The village had

lost its shop and post office and a group of residents had formed a
Social Enterprise with a view to raising funds and starting a village
shop and post office. I applied for the Managers job and got it.

The project was pre-launch, and on paper looked feasible. The

original group were mainly retired folk with no ‘shop’ management
experience. They were well-meaning people and genuinely believed
that a shop was possible.

I helped to raise further funds and became a jack-of-all-trades

in the few months prior to opening, as we had to convert an existing
building into a suitable shop premises. The business was being
managed through a committee and planning meetings were
laborious. It was obvious to me that this was going to be an uphill
struggle. The funding was obscure in its make-up, and the location of
the shop was out of the main thoroughfare of the village. Also, the
committee had become primarily focused on the politics of

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ownership rather than the essentials of basic good business practice.
There were too many cooks in the kitchen, too many egos, and a few
hidden agendas. However, I had little to lose, apart from my sanity,
so I jumped in feet first.

I still live in the village; so I will refrain from using this

opportunity to vent my anger and disappointment with some of the
people I had to deal with; especially those who carried clipboards
and wanted to teach me how to suck eggs. The shop was opened and
soon hailed by many as a big success. I again found myself in the
press and even on live TV and radio, propagating the values of
community ownership. I also found myself in the middle of the
division within the village, between those who wanted it run in one
particular way, and those who wanted it run in another. Behind the
scenes, I was also at battle with some of the committee for nearly
twelve months, trying to get agreement and trying to get funding.
On top of this, I was sinking into depression and having anxiety
attacks, which I kept hidden from most people. The past was raising
its ugly head like an overpowering monster who wanted to be set
free from the confines of my mind.

I finally resigned in 2007 and left them to it. I had called a

meeting of the shareholders in an attempt to bring their attention to
the problems I was having with the committee. The meeting was

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bushwhacked and my concerns were lost in the arguments that
followed. Sadly the shop and post office closed six months after I had
left, and it remains closed at the time of writing. A few rumours have
circulated that accuse me of being to blame. I have also been accused
of theft of money. This makes me annoyed; however, I let those who
are responsible stew in their own hidden guilt.

I received a question, just after I resigned, from someone in

the village. They asked if I was going to leave the village. I answered
them with an emphatic ‘no’; I was going nowhere. The village was
my family’s home. Two of my children were born here. Why the hell
would I move? I have a clear conscience. If others don’t like this, it’s
tough. I don’t do running away anymore. This is our home.

Richard Devos, who was the founder of The Amway

Corporation, was quoted as saying something like this;

“When you are faced with a seemingly impassable mountain,

do not quit and turn away, just walk around it, tunnel through it, or
blow it up, whatever you do, do not quit”

I have always held on to this, and still do. It is what has

dragged me back from the depths of despair and depression on many
occasions.

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 13
The third quarter of life

This is the thirteenth and final chapter. Some may say that the
number is unlucky, but I have always managed my own luck and I
have no superstitions about anything. However, I did remove a
chapter after months of consideration and deep thought about
including it. So it was going to be a fourteen chapter book. The
missing chapter will be written on another occasion. I just could not
bring myself to write it, let alone include it here. So thirteen chapters
it is.

After the shop closed Jane insisted that I took time out to
recuperate. I was very tired and mentally fatigued. My fiftieth
birthday was coming up and I used this as a focal point to bring
about some radical changes in my life. Jane and I agreed that enough
was enough. The time had come for me to hang up my file-o-fax and
my calculator.

Jane organised a party for my fiftieth birthday. I was surprised

to see many of my friends from Conical and others who had become

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close friends. Andy had come across the country to surprise me and
other friends travelled down from Scotland. I really enjoyed myself
and the time spent with them helped me rebuild my confidence. I
was reassured by their friendship that all was not lost.

I spent a lot of time with Jane and the kids in the early part of
the year. I had time to carefully review my past life experiences and
to consider the future and what I wanted to do with it. This was a
process of detailed consideration and meaningful reflection. Together
Jane and I firstly examined the practical requirements. We wanted to
complete our original mission of raising our children in the Epsom
valley. We wanted to maintain their way of life. This was paramount
to our collective desire for them and any future plan. We also
considered ourselves and what it was we truly wanted for our own
conjoined life. Jane and I are two sides of the same coin and our love
for each other has never waned. To be honest, no matter what has
happened in the past seventeen years since I married Jane, she and
the children have been my only real reason for living. Without them,
I would not have had the determination to carry on with life.

Jane made the point that I needed to firstly deal with my own
demons and to realise my own worth as a human being. She said that
I needed to find a reason for living ‘for me’ and not for them.
Basically, she said that I had to find the real me, the person she loved,

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who was under the layers of lives that I had lived in my one and only
ageing body. I was like an onion that needed peeling back to the
heart.

I followed Jane’s advice and took time out to write a list of the
things I would like to do and achieve if I had a magic wand. My list
was not long or extravagant. I had come to the junction in life when
you begin to appreciate your own mortality. I realised that I was in
my third quarter of life’s cycle, and that reality came as a shock when
it suddenly crept up on me.

The one goal in life that I had achieved was having a family
built on true love and a foundation of trust. Jane is responsible for
maintaining this for us all. She has invested her love and trust in me,
despite the rollercoaster ride I have taken her on. I believe she would
go to hell and back for me and her kids. This is enough wealth for
anyone, and I am again truly rich. However, wheels do need
greasing, and I needed to be involved in a project that would give me
satisfaction as well as an income.

I sat down and worked out our needs, not our wants. This
analysis made me realise that we were living beyond our income
level. We agreed to first deal with the practical issues of finding a

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new smaller home that would also give the children long term
security in our village while also drastically reducing the burden on
my required income level. I then wrote down a list of the talents and
experience that I had acquired over the years. I then considered the
sort of occupations that I would really, really, like to have.

I wanted to be a writer. I had always written short stories for

the children and I had enjoyed writing and researching numerous
business assessments and business plans over the years. I also really
enjoyed advertising, marketing and illustrating. In addition to this,
my involvements with the internet and magazine publications had
always given me great pleasure and artistic satisfaction. I can
honestly say that I have also really enjoyed the times when I have
been able to help or mentor others. I took this jumble of facts and
went on a job hunt. It was seven months ago when I first sat with
Jane and devised the plan. That plan looked something like this;

1 Find employment that I would enjoy

2 Reduce our fixed overheads
3 Secure long-term accommodation
4 Spend more time as a family
5 Remove unhealthy stress from our lives
6 Make time for Jane’s career development
7 Come to terms with the past, once and for all

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 Today, I am enjoying life to the full. I have a new vocation in
life working as part of an acquired brain injury (ABI) rehabilitation
team. I am learning about the brain and how it functions. I am
working with a Trust that really appreciates its staff and I enjoy the
luxury of a reasonably paid job and I work only twenty four hours
per week. I work with people who have had an accident that has
caused a brain injury that subsequently seriously disabled their
everyday functionality. I get the chance, everyday, to help someone
re-learn how to communicate. I use the computer and the internet,
along with all my visual communication experience as a way to help
the clients I am working with. My professional colleagues are great
people who have become my friends. For the first time in my life I
have a ‘proper’ job, and I love it. I go to work with joy in my mind,
peace in my heart and a spring in my step. Well, most days I do!

We have moved home to a brand new, smaller house and we

are very happy. We live in a beautiful place surrounded by the
countryside. Jane is aiming to become a child psychologist, and is
planning to start her studies very soon. Anthony is about to set off for
his Royal Marine training, David now runs his own specialist
engineering company and Tim, Lawrence and Annabelle are very
settled and enjoying their childhoods. I have no contact with my sons
Kevin and Nathan, but I never lose hope of seeing them again in the
future. I have not seen Gordon or Teresa for many years. I can only

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hope that they are happy and content in their lives.

After reading a few books and speaking with a few colleagues,

I feel I have now got my concerns for the past well under control. I
am not sure if anyone ever really gets over child abuse, however, I
now understand the root causes of my dysfunctional way of life. I
now ‘love’ myself and do not blame the ‘child Nigel’ for what
happened. I am not going to say that it’s all over and forgotten, as
life can change very quickly, however, I will say that I feel more
settled and content than ever before in my entire life.

My children keep me grounded with the important things in

life. Annabelle sits on my knee and tells me that she loves me
everyday. My boys are all doing well in life and I have a mountain of
love and respect for them. Jane is the person I will spend the rest of
my life with. We have a future together that no doubt will bring
challenges, but we will face them together, united in our love. We are
resourceful and very fortunate to have each other in addition to our
family and friends.

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 Epilogue

My writing career commenced a few weeks ago when an

investor purchased a percentage of the copyright of this book. I
auctioned it on eBay and had over 900 hits and 63 bidders. This was
very encouraging to me and it catapulted my confidence. Through
eBay I have met someone who is now helping me to edit the book
ready for publication. I am going to publish this book as an eBook
initially, and use the internet as a marketing and delivery system. If
you are reading this, then I guess it has worked at least once!

Since completing the book I have been contacted by many ‘care

siblings’ and I have now set up a website at www.brynalyn.co.uk
which is a place to make contact and get help if it is needed. I am
considering a few more books, one of which may be specifically
about the home we all shared as youngsters. This will be a book of
various short stories, based on the shared experiences of the residents
of Bryn Alyn. I have learned that many of my ‘care’ siblings consider
the home as a great place. I guess we all had different experiences
over the many years that it operated. My friend Andy, who has polio,

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is now also writing his life story. He is one of the most determined
people I have ever met. He has climbed many mountains, despite his
callipers. We are going to work together in developing a small eBook
publication business.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my book and if so, I would be

very grateful if you would recommend it to others. Please encourage
them to purchase their own copy from www.clickaread.com

This is my new career and every sale will count. Thank you.

If you have read this far, I must thank you for staying with me
through my story. I hope it has been informative, entertaining,
challenging, and in some way helpful to you. Please contact me
through my website if you have any comments. I am now off to the
pub for a pint and then, tomorrow, I will make a start on my next
book.

Thank you again for buying my book.

Nigel King 2008

www.nigelking.info

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 What is bipolar disorder?

Bipolar disorder, or manic depression, is a medical illness that causes

extreme shifts in mood, energy, and functioning. These changes may
be subtle or dramatic and typically vary greatly over the course of a
person’s life as well as among individuals.

Bipolar disorder is a chronic and generally life-long condition with

recurring episodes of mania and depression that can last from days to
months that often begin in adolescence or early adulthood, and
occasionally even in children. Most people generally require some
sort of lifelong treatment. While medication is one key element in
successful treatment of bipolar disorder, psychotherapy, support, and
education about the illness are also essential components of the
treatment process.

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 What are the symptoms of mania?

Mania is the word that describes the activated phase of bipolar

disorder. The symptoms of mania may include:

• either an elated, happy mood or an irritable, angry, unpleasant

mood

• increased physical and mental activity and energy

• racing thoughts and flight of ideas

• increased talking, more rapid speech than normal

• ambitious, often grandiose plans

• risk taking

• impulsive activity such as spending sprees, sexual

indiscretion, and alcohol abuse

• decreased sleep without experiencing fatigue

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What are the symptoms of depression?

Depression is the other phase of bipolar disorder. The symptoms of

depression may include:

• loss of energy

• prolonged sadness

• decreased activity and energy

• restlessness and irritability

• inability to concentrate or make decisions

• increased feelings of worry and anxiety

• less interest or participation in, and less enjoyment of

activities normally enjoyed

• feelings of guilt and hopelessness

• thoughts of suicide

• change in appetite (either eating more or eating less)

• change in sleep patterns (either sleeping more or sleeping less)

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 What is a "mixed" state?

A mixed state is when symptoms of mania and depression occur at

the same time. During a mixed state depressed mood accompanies
manic activation.

What is rapid cycling?

Sometimes individuals may experience an increased frequency of

episodes. When four or more episodes of illness occur within a 12-
month period, the individual is said to have bipolar disorder with
rapid cycling. Rapid cycling is more common in women.

What are the causes of bipolar disorder?

While the exact cause of bipolar disorder is not known, most

scientists believe that bipolar disorder is likely caused by multiple
factors that interact with each other to produce a chemical imbalance
affecting certain parts of the brain. Bipolar disorder often runs in
families, and studies suggest a genetic component to the illness. A
stressful environment or negative life events, such as child abuse,
violence, or neglect, may interact with an underlying genetic or
biological vulnerability to produce the disorder. There are other
possible "triggers" of bipolar episodes: the treatment of depression
with an antidepressant medication may trigger a switch into mania,
sleep deprivation may trigger mania, or hypothyroidism may

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produce depression or mood instability, situations that trigger old
memories of traumatic events can also induce the disorder.

It is important to note that bipolar episodes can and often do occur

without any obvious trigger.

How is bipolar disorder treated?

While there is no cure for bipolar disorder, it is a treatable and

manageable illness. After an accurate diagnosis, most people can
achieve an optimal level of wellness. Medication is an essential
element of successful treatment for people with bipolar disorder. In
addition, psychosocial therapies including cognitive-behavioural
therapy, interpersonal therapy, family therapy, and psycho education
are important to help people understand the illness and to internalize
skills to cope with the stresses that can trigger episodes. Changes in
medications or doses may be necessary, as well as changes in
treatment plans during different stages of the illness.

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