What Daddy Did: The Shocking True Story of a Little Girl Betrayed

by Donna Ford

  The beating continued for a bit longer. My Dad then told me to get to bed and said he didn't want to come home the next day to find out that I'd caused more trouble for my 'Mummy'. I couldn't speak for crying, and I was hurting inside and out. I did what he said and climbed the ladder and went straight into my room. In bed, I did what I did most times after one of these episodes and curled up into a ball under the covers, hugging myself tightly while sobbing as silently as I could.

  What surprises me now about this incident, looking back, is that my Dad seemed to think it was normal for his young daughter to be standing in the bathroom in her underwear. I can't understand why he didn't seek to question the bruises that covered the tops of my legs from the beating I'd had in the morning. I would so like to ask him about that now. How could he justify it? No child is ever naughty enough to warrant this kind of punishment, this cruelty. Where was the fatherly hug and the 'how was your day?' Where was the bedtime story, and who was this man who thought I was being treated appropriately? What was happening? How could it be getting even worse? Helen kept saying that I was truly bad. Maybe I was. I felt bad, as if I had done something very evil. I just didn't know what.

  I had no Mummy and I was losing my Daddy.

  Chapter Eight

  AN INVITATION TO A PARTY . . .

  HELEN'S PARTIES STARTED a little while after Frances and Adrian came home from Barnardo's. My Dad was working many hours a day by then. I knew about the parties largely because they started during a summer holiday period from school, and continued at that time of year until Helen left. She may well have also hosted them during the day when we were all at school – and I suspect she did – but I can't know for certain. All I do know is that during the holidays there would be a party every other day.

  Every day Helen had one of her parties was another day stolen from my childhood.

  I was usually the only child in the house during these parties. The others would all be out, with my big half-sister in charge, either at the swing park, the play scheme or a holiday club at the Regent cinema on Abbeymount. I was allowed out to these places once or twice but certainly not as a rule. I'd be the only one left behind, as Helen would be punishing me for something.

  I dreaded them all going out the door and it closing behind them – because I knew then what would be coming.

  After I wrote my first book, The Step Child, there were many features and interviews in the national press and magazines. A Scottish newspaper printed a photograph I had never seen before. That photograph chilled me to the bone. It showed my older halfbrother and half-sister with Helen's two boys at the Regent cinema in the late 1960s. It is a publicity shot, where the manager of the cinema is being presented with something by someone else. I've no idea who the two men are, or what this presentation is about, but Helen's youngest boy is sitting on the knee of one of the men, with my older half-sister standing directly behind him, smiling. On the left of the picture is my older half-brother; he, too, is smiling. There are many other children in the picture and they are all happy. They were all there, my half-siblings, but I am not. I know I'm not because I would have remembered such an event. So where was I? It must have been a school holiday, I guess, so that means I would be where I always was. I'd be at home in my usual place, either in the bathroom or my dark boxroom awaiting my fate while Helen entertained her friends. I was part of that entertainment.

  Since Helen's trial I have questioned the motives behind her gruesome abuse of me. I have had to try and make sense of what actually happened to me. I wonder if you will understand when I say that, even at her trial, I was still accepting the abuse. I didn't look beyond the fact that I had been abused. I didn't look for her motives or those of her so-called friends. I suppose in some ways I was still conditioned; I was still fearful of her. Standing in the High Court in Edinburgh that day in October 2003, I was still that frightened little girl inside. When I looked at her, as I was instructed to by Lord Hardie to identify her, she had the power to instil an incredible fear in me, even though I was 45 years old.

  I was perplexed by the charges laid against her: 'procuring a minor'. I stood in that court back then and really, honestly, didn't understand what had gone on in my childhood. I knew it was wrong – that's why I was there, to get some justice at last – but I had no idea of the whole picture. What has come to light since that day is that I was not the only one she abused; it is not my place to say who that other person was, but there definitely was another person who, like me, was a child at the time. I know this because I have heard their story too. I do not know for sure if there were other children who suffered the same fate as we did, but I do have my suspicions. I can recall an instance at one of those parties when I heard a young girl cry out in pain in the room next to me. I don't know who the girl was or what was being done to her, but I could guess because I recognised the painful, pitiful sobs that were the same as mine.

  Helen's parties were really nothing more than a sordid, sick bunch of paedophiles gathering together to exploit a child, a child held captive and provided by Helen to be used and abused by these warped, twisted people. That's what I understand now.

  I love parties in my life today because we have healthy, happy family get-togethers where we enjoy each other's company. We listen to music, eat food and laugh and joke. Any children who are at these parties are respected and protected, an integral part of happy celebrations. It is a far, far cry from the parties I knew as a child where I would be fearful of every sound, where I was far from respected and protected. In complete contrast to a day being stolen, our parties today are days to be treasured, and the memories of them are happy and wholesome. I wonder if Helen Ford can say the same?

  Chapter Nine

  THE DARLING OF ALL

  WHEN I ORIGINALLY DECIDED to tell my story, I didn't know what I wanted from it. This far down the line, however, I can see the huge benefit I have gained from just being able to get everything out. Before I did this, I wanted to bottle everything up. I really didn't think anyone would believe me if I told them; furthermore, it was just too painful to think about.

  During the court case against Helen, she and her 'friends' appeared to be the only guilty ones, but when I look at my father's role in my upbringing I see that he, too, is accountable. I also see that I was badly let down by all the organisations involved in my childhood, from the social workers who visited every four to six weeks – some of whom recognised something was wrong but did nothing – to the schools I attended where teachers saw a steady decline in my behaviour and witnessed my bruises, yet did nothing.

  It seems incredible to me now, as an adult, that I was actually taken to be assessed by doctors after I was caught stealing at school. The files I have report that I was stealing food at home and from children's bags and pockets at school. That was perfectly true – I took food from any source I could. I'd pick halfeaten sweets from the pavements, and eat bread thrown out for the birds. I'd even steal food from bins. I was starving. I needed to eat. I'd go to school hungry having had no breakfast and possibly no tea or half rations the previous night. I was stopped from having school dinners by Helen and made to come home at lunchtime each day so that she could maintain control. It was hardly surprising that I stole food.

  As I pointed out at Helen's trial, the only child who feels the need to do that is a hungry child. It was a cry for help, not naughtiness. So, at one stage, I was referred to a child psychologist because my stepmother said she was at the end of her tether with my behaviour.

  I have since questioned why Helen said there was a problem with my behaviour. She was treating me so badly, so cruelly, that it seems unbelievable that she would be the one to actually draw attention to how I was behaving. I think that, by this stage, she was so confident of two things that she simply didn't think she would be caught. Her first line of defence would have been the impression she gave everyone of being the perfect wife and mother. She was the young woman who had taken on all these kids who weren't her own or ev
en, in the case of my two halfsiblings, her husband's. Even when she had two little ones of her own she kept everything together. The second thing was that she was fully aware of what an arch manipulator she was. She was skilled at getting people to think what she wanted, and she probably would have assumed she could talk her way out of anything. I also think she was probably covering her own back – if she could get me labelled as a problem child, then anything I might say about her wouldn't stick.

  Unlike many of my other memories – where there is nothing on paper to back up that I do remember things accurately, I do know what went on – I have some social work files from this time. In them are various comments relating directly to the reasons for me going to the Children's Psychology Department in Rillbank Terrace (a child and adolescent mental health unit) in Edinburgh in the first place, and what was recorded after my visits there. In the report of 20 December 1968, the files say:

  On the way to the door Mother said that Donna was really the trouble maker because she was 'stealing food at all hours'. Mrs Ford said things would be much better if Donna wasn't there.

  The outcome of this was that it was recommended I see a psychologist. This strikes me as rather odd – my stepmother says that I am stealing food and I'm almost immediately sent to a psychologist? Perhaps things just worked differently in the 1960s, but I doubt that state-funded psychologists were readily on hand to provide support for one comment made about a child. Perhaps there are other files that say other things, but I wonder whether someone, somewhere, had already had their suspicions aroused about Helen, and decided to keep an eye on things by making me attend Rillbank regularly. What I do know is that I was then taken there on a weekly basis by either my Dad or Helen. In a report dated 5 August 1969, a psychiatrist from the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh states:

  Donna is very unhappy and isolated. She suffers from a behaviour disorder which causes her to steal from school and from home.

  She suggests regular psychotherapy. Whether anything was done to delve into why a 10-year-old girl was so unhappy and had feelings of isolation, I have no idea. Given what my life was like, and how it was about to continue, I guess not. Six months later, on 2 February 1970, another comment in the files says:

  Miss H rang Miss B of Rillbank who agreed to visit. Said she found difficulty in making a relationship with Mrs Ford who adopted an aggressive attitude. The father is much more reasonable.

  So, there were concerns. People had noticed what Helen was like, but – even after she left – no-one seemed to see the need to get to the root of it all. In a later visit of 24 April 1972, after Helen had left, the files show that I was truanting a lot and there was concern over this. The social worker, Miss J K, suggested that the school refer me to an educational psychologist. My father's reply was, 'Well, she used to see a psychiatrist, but then Mrs Ford went and stopped that.' I do not know why she stopped the visits but I do know that they stopped as quickly as they started. In one report, which has no date, my father is quoted as saying, 'Mrs Ford felt very embarrassed at having to take her to the psychiatrist.'

  These files are the only means I have of trying to fill in the blank spaces in my memory and explaining the things I missed as a child, because I only saw what Helen and my Dad allowed me to see. I feel in many ways – even other than the obvious – I was made a scapegoat by Helen. By this time, she was pregnant with her third baby, so the question of me seeing a psychologist came at a difficult time when she would have known that the baby was not my father's. Focusing the attention on me may well have deflected it from her.

  At the start of the files I have (from 6 January 1961), I am described as 'a happy child full of life'. At just over 18 months, when I was admitted to the care of Barnardo's, I was described as a responsive, placid child with a happy smile who got on with everyone. To give them credit, they seemed to have kept me that way. When I was 'restored' to the care of my Dad and Helen on 8 July 1964, I was five years, one month and two days old. My character at that time was described as, 'Good. An affectionate child.' Alongside some comments about my half-siblings, the report continues: 'Little Donna is especially charming . . . she has not yet started school but is a bright wee girl . . . the darling of all.' I am further described as clean, healthy, affectionate and polite.

  Once I had been taken back to Edinburgh, the reports do raise a few concerns. Given that these official documents are often full of careful wording, I think that it is still relatively easy to hear the worried phrases which are there. By 8 June 1970 the social worker reports on a home visit:

  I found Mrs Ford and the children all at home. One child G [Helen's eldest] was playing outside all the others were sitting in the kitchen watching television. Mrs F was resplendent in a gold blouse and yellow trousers. Donna is very small for her age and I felt there was a 'cowed' look about her or maybe she is just shy. She was 'cleaning up' another room when I arrived.

  I know that, on this occasion, Helen had forgotten that the social worker was due to visit and, as usual, I had been sent to my room as soon as I returned from school. I was a very frightened, abused little girl and this report in particular is the most poignant because it was at the end of this year that the worst abuse of my life occurred. Why did this social worker not investigate her suspicions further? Other entries in this report point to further concerns such as: 'Neither of the girls [my elder half-sister and I] nor A [my elder half-brother] was dressed nicely. There is a marked difference between the Ford children and the other three.' A marked difference indeed.

  Chapter Ten

  'HAPPY NORMAL CHILDREN'

  AS AN ADULT, READING THROUGH these files makes me so angry. Vital warning signals were not picked up on. I was a little girl who was being abused. My older siblings were also 'at risk'. But although these signs were noted, they were ultimately dismissed and overlooked.

  On 5March 1965, just before they were 'restored' to the care of my Dad and Helen, my elder half-brother and half-sister were both reported as being 'happy normal children'. By December 1966, these children had also changed. The police called at my father's workplace to return the two of them as they had run away from Edina Place during the night. Of this incident the files say, 'They had slipped out of the house during the night after being punished by their father and Mrs Ford.' I recall clearly the events leading up to that incident and what happened afterwards.

  Helen had given birth to another son, Andrew, in November 1966, and it was clear by then that she was unable to cope with all the responsibility she had. We were all unhappy as we were being beaten and punished on a regular basis, so, after all being hit really badly again one night, the three of us hatched a plan to run away together. I soon chickened out – being the youngest I was too scared to go with them – but they decided to go it alone.

  The next morning, Helen came into my bedroom first thing and obviously knew that the others had gone. 'Where are they?' she asked, shaking me into a sitting position and grabbing my arms. 'Where have those other two little bastards gone?' I was bleary-eyed and still sore from the beating of the previous evening. 'I don't know where they are!' I said, and I was telling the truth. The plan we had all concocted was half-baked and, if the others had come up with any detailed escape route, they wouldn't have told me anyway as I was too little in their eyes. 'Don't you lie to me,' Helen shouted. 'You're all in this together, all you little bastards!' She went on and on with her usual tirade, name-calling and hysteria. Naturally, it became physical and she tried to, as she said, 'beat it out of me'. There was no point in her trying, as I didn't know anything, but that didn't stop her.

  Later that day, my Dad came home with the two runaways. The police had gone to the GPO where he worked, after finding the children at St Andrew Square bus station trying – in vain – to get away somewhere. Anywhere, I'd guess. My Dad explained all of this to Helen and then went back to work. He had barely left the house when she started on us. Although most of her physical and verbal anger was concentrated
on the two older children, she hissed to me that, 'You needn't think I've forgotten about you.'

  All of us were set to scrubbing the house, but she dragged me off cleaning duties at one point as she said that I wasn't 'putting my back into it'. Off I was sent to the bathroom and made to stand over the bath, as usual, while she beat me with a belt. I was calling out, 'No, Mummy! No, Mummy! I promise I'll be good, Mummy!' but this seemed to enrage her still further. Whacking at me even more, she shouted, 'I'm not your Mummy! How often do I have to tell you that I'm not your Mummy? You have no Mummy, you little bastard, and you will call me Mrs Ford if you know what's good for you!'