by Lily O'Brien
But I was sick of praying. The nuns at school had me praying all day and the nuns at our house had me praying every day after school and again on weekends, and the only thing that I would pray for was to die; so the last thing I needed was more unanswered prayers. I got up out of the bed, had breakfast and went to school. Then in the evening, Sister Ann told me that the following morning I would be going away for the summer holidays. I told her that I was sick of going away with bad people and I said that I wasn’t going and that she couldn’t do a thing about it, ‘I’m seven years old now and I don’t need to go away anymore.’ She looked at me and, saying nothing, she walked off and I went to my room. I knelt down at the end of my bed and I prayed for God to let me die, but nothing happened. So that night, when everyone was sleeping, I went down into the kitchen and I took a packet of Anadin painkillers out of the first aid box and I hid them down my knickers, and then I went back to my bed.
The next morning, I got up early while everyone was still sleeping and crept out of the house. I was going to kill myself before anyone got up. I ran off to the fields at the back of the house and I ran down to the stream that ran along the bottom of the fields. I knelt down by the stream and I opened the packet of tablets, then I put some of them into my mouth and I cupped my hands together to drink some water from the stream. But as I lifted the water to my mouth, some of the tablets fell out of my mouth and into my hands, and then they fell into the water. I quickly grabbed as many of them as I could and I pulled them out of the water; but as I lifted them up, they melted away and slipped through my fingers and then they were gone. I remembered that from my bedroom window I could see an old carven in the field next to our home, so I headed for it; I had decided that I was going to hide there from Sister Ann.
When I reached the caravan, the door was unlocked, so I stepped inside and I lay down on the floor, and it felt cold. I wanted to die. I shut my eyes and, within a couple of seconds, my head began to feel dizzy and strange, and I began to feel sick, so I lifted my head and vomited onto the floor next to me. My belly felt strange and I began to get pains inside my body that I hadn’t had before. I thought I was dying and I wanted Simon and Daisy with me. I wanted to get up, but whenever I moved, my belly got worse, so I stayed on the caravan floor and shut my eyes again. I don’t know how long I was in the caravan for, but it felt like hours and eventually I drifted off to sleep.
And the next thing I can remember fuzzily was being woken by someone lifting me up and talking to me. I don’t know who it was, but they must have brought me back to the house and put me into bed. When I woke up, my whole body felt stiff and weak and tingly and I had to stay in bed for the next two days. I was glad that I didn’t die, but at the same time I still wanted to, because my life had always been horrible and nothing was worth living for. While I was ill, the nuns tried to feed me, but I refused to eat and I tried to starve myself to death, so the nuns sent for a psychiatrist to find out what was wrong with me.
When he arrived, the nuns told him that I had gone mad, that I had run away and I had tried to kill myself, and now I wouldn’t eat anything. But after the psychiatrist had a chat with me without the nuns in the room, he knew that I was fine. And he told the nuns that there was nothing wrong with me, and then he left. The nuns were disappointed, and once he had gone, they told me that if I did not start eating, they would send me away to a mental hospital and I would never see my sisters or Simon again. I didn’t want them to send me away, so I began to eat again and the nuns left me alone for a few days until I got better. They still had plans to send me away for the summer holidays and they were only waiting for me to get strong enough before they did so; and a few days later, two nuns walked into my bedroom and grabbed me by my arms. I didn’t stand a chance, they grabbed hold of me and they dragged me down the stairs, slapping me into my back on the way.
And once downstairs, they dressed me and then marched me out of the house and into the back of a waiting car. I shouted at them to let me go, but they slammed the car door shut and the car drove off; they had locked the car door, so I lay across the seat and I kicked at the windows as hard as I could, but my plimsolls just made a thudding noise as they thumped against the glass. I tried again, but nothing; it was no use, so I shouted at the driver to stop and then I screamed as loud as I could, but the driver took no notice of me and she continued driving.
Then a couple of seconds later, she turned around and I could see that it was Sister Ann and she was smiling at me with excitement. ‘You wait’, she said, ‘you just wait.’ I leaned forward and I tried to hit her in the face, but as I moved to the edge of the seat, she swung her arm around and she knocked me back against the car window. My head hit the glass and the pain I got was so bad that I had to hold my head with both hands, as my head felt like it was going to explode. She continued driving and, as the hours passed, I still felt sick; and when she finally stopped the car at our destination, I was still holding my head. ‘Get out. Get out now before I hit you again’, shouted Sister Ann, as she opened the car door.
I got out of the car and I looked around. I could see an old house sitting in the middle of a farm. ‘This is where you’re going to be staying’, she said as she slammed the car door. I felt sad, I was missing Simon and Daisy terribly. Suddenly, a group of children ran past me and up towards the car and they were shouting; and as they got to the car, they climbed all over it. Then a scruffily clothed woman, with a fag hanging out of her mouth, walked up to us and she shook hands with Sister Ann. I could tell that they had known each other for some time; and after shaking hands, they both walked off, leaving me on my own and the children to play with the car.
I looked over at the children and I counted them; there were five children, all acting as if they were mad animals. The oldest, a boy, opened the car door and he sat in the driver’s seat. He then began pulling at the steering wheel and moving it from side to side as if he was driving the car, then he got out and he slammed the car door shut as hard as he could. Then he walked over to the car aerial and snapped it clean off and, as he looked around, he began to walk towards me. And then he asked me, ‘Who are you?’ ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Because I’m going to hit you with this.’ I looked at the piece of car Ariel in his hand and then I ran off after Sister Ann and I ran in front of her. ‘He’s going to hit me’, I shouted. ‘Go away before I hit you’, she replied. The boy soon forgot about me and he ran off after one of the other children.
I walked back to the car and I got inside, but Sister Ann came back and she told me to get out. ‘You’re going to be staying with this woman for the next two weeks and you had better be good for her,’ she said. Then she got into the car and drove off, leaving me standing next to the woman. ‘Don’t worry’, she said, ‘come with me and we can make the dinner together.’ And we walked into the kitchen together and I sat and watched her as she boiled cabbage and potatoes for dinner. While I sat with her, she told me that I was going to be sleeping with all her girls in the big bedroom; then she told me to go and play, so I got up and went outside to look for her children, but they had all gone off out of sight. So I wandered off and I began to look around the farm. Everything lying around the farm was very old and most of the things I looked at were broken, and in a barn was an old tractor. The wheels were all rusty and the seat was lying on the ground, broken.
I looked around, then I left the barn and I headed back to the house. But on the way back, one of the boys came up behind me and he shouted at me, making me jump. ‘You’re stupid’, he said. ‘No, I’m not.’ ‘You come from a nuns’ home and you’re stupid.’ I felt like crying, but instead I walked away and I went back into the house. The woman came over to me and she gave me my dinner. ‘It’s only me and my children’, she said. ‘I have no husband, he’s dead, so tomorrow I have to go to work and the children will look after you and feed you.’ All the children soon came back into the house and after dinner we played around for a while and then we all went to bed. I lay down on the bed and thought to
myself that this was not that bad and then I fell to sleep.
The next morning, I got up and I went into the living room, but no one was around; so I went outside, it was very quiet and I could not see anyone. I walked around for a while, then I went into the barn and one of the woman’s sons was standing next to the tractor. It was dark in the barn and, as I stood at the entrance, I could see the boy looking over at me, then he walked over to the barn door and closed it, locking himself and me inside. ‘I want to go outside’, I told him. ‘Shut up. You can’t’, he said. ‘I will tell your mum’, I said. ‘No, you won’t, she’s gone to work. Now get on the floor.’ ‘What?’ ‘Get on the floor.’ ‘Why should I?’
Then he pushed me hard into my chest, ‘Stop it’, I said, then he hit me into my face with his fist and I started to cry. ‘Kneel down on the hay’, he said. I did what he said as I didn’t want to get hit in the face again, and then he stood in front of me. He looked down at me and he began to undo his trousers. I looked up at him and he had no pants on. ‘Touch it’, he said. ‘No.’ ‘Do it or I will kill you and feed you to the pigs. I’ve done that before you know.’ I tried to get up, but he grabbed me by my shoulders and he pushed me back down, then he grabbed one of my hands and put it on his dick. I didn’t want to touch it and I tried to pull away, but he pulled my arm even harder and then he moved my hand along his dick, moving my hand up and down it until it went hard. Then it made a mess all over me. ‘Now get up and get out, and if you tell anyone, I will kill you and feed you to the pigs.’ I got up, he walked over and opened the barn doors and I ran outside and back up to the house. When I got back, I went straight into the bedroom and I never told anyone, not even his mum about what he had done to me.
The next day, I tried to stay away from him, but eventually he came looking for me; and when he found me, he grabbed me by my neck and then he forced me back into the barn again. I was frightened and I began to shake at the thought of what he might do to me, then he pushed me into the corner of the barn and he told me to take my clothes off and to lay down on the floor; but I said ‘No, I won’t.’ ‘Do it or I will kill you’, he said. I had no choice, I started to cry and then I lay down on the hay next to the tractor.
He walked over to me and he started to touch me, he moved his hands all over my body, moving his hand over my clothes and around the top part of my legs, then he made me take all my clothes off and open my legs in front of him. I felt cold and sick and I was shaking with fright, but it did not bother him and he began rubbing his hands all over my body. I started to cry because of what he was doing to me, but he kept touching me, while at the same time telling me to be quiet. Then he stood up, undid his trousers and wanked himself off in front of me, and he kept doing it until he had finished and I had to lie there, covered in his mess. I was too scared to move an inch until he said I could, and then he told me to get dressed and to go play with his brothers and sisters. I got up, but I felt sick and I wanted to go home; but I knew no one could help me, so I just walked away and I said nothing to anyone.
Every day, I would try to hide from the boy, but he would still come looking for me and, when he found me, he would do the same things to me. Day after day, it went on for the whole of the holiday and all of the time I was too afraid to tell his mum, just in case he killed me and fed me to the pigs. He said that the pigs would eat every bit of my body and my hair and no one would ever know what happened to me. All I wanted was to go home and eventually one of the nuns came back to pick me up. I knew it wasn’t worth telling her about what had happened because she would just hit me for telling lies, so I said nothing and I went home with her in the car.
However, about a week later, I told my sister Karen about what had happened to me while on holiday and she went and told Sister Ann. I was frightened that Sister Ann was going to beat me to death. But instead, she asked me about what had happened to me, and she made me tell her every single thing that the boy had done to me; making me repeat it to her again and again, until I got so upset that I couldn’t tell her anymore.
Then she left it at that and I thought no more of it until later in the year, when the nuns decided to send me back to the same family again, for another holiday with them. And the same things happened to me all over again, with the boy making me touch him and do things to him that made me feel sick; and at the end of the holiday, I left the farm saying nothing to no one. And the following year, the nuns sent me off to them again, but this time it was for the whole of the six-week summer holidays and by the end of the holiday I felt like I wanted to die. The boy had abused me every day for six weeks and sometimes he had done things to me that still upset me today. He treated me as if I was nothing, worthless, and as if I had no feelings at all; the boy treated the animals on the farm better than he treated me, and all the time his mother never once asked me if I was ok. Her son was happy, and what he was doing to me was keeping him out of her way for hours, so she was happy too.
When Sister Ann came to pick me up, she could tell that I was unhappy and that something had happened to me, but she said nothing to the woman or me. On the way home, she looked at me and she promised me that I would never have to go back to the family again and that made me happy. Later that evening, one of the staff came to my room and told me that one of the nuns had spoken to the woman and her son over the phone, and they all knew about the abuse I had suffered, and now that would be the end of it; then I realised they had known all along.
A year passed and I forgot all about the boy and the things he had done to me. I was nine now and Simon was seven. The summer holiday had started again and the nuns began to send all the children off on their holidays, and they split Simon and me up again, sending Simon away with my sisters to a place by the sea and then it was my turn. Sister Ann told me to get in the car; she said that I was going back to the same family that I went to last year and the year before that.
I could not believe it and I went crazy. I told her that I could not go back to them anymore, but she said that she had no other place or people that she could send me to and I had to go. I began shouting at her, telling her that she had promised me that I would never have to go back there again. But she shouted back at me and then she pulled me over to the car, ‘You’re going and that’s that’, she said. I was frantic and I began shaking from the shock of the thought of going back, she opened the car door and she pushed me inside, locking the door so that I couldn’t get out. Then she stood against the car with her back against the window; she was breathing heavily from struggling with me, with her body moving up and down until she got her breath back.
After a few seconds, she moved around to the other side of the car and she got in the front seat. ‘What’s your problem’, she shouted. ‘I hate them. Don’t you remember?’ I said. Then she turned to me and said, ‘You should have been good the first time you were at the house and none of this would have happened.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t have touched the boys.’ ‘I didn’t’, they did it to me. The big boy touched me. He touched me bad, all over my body.’ She looked at me in shocked amazement, and for a moment I thought she was going to let me out of the car, but then she said, ‘You’re still going anyway’ and then she drove off. I sat back in the seat and I stayed quiet. I knew that nothing would stop her from taking me to the house, so I just sat back and waited for my fate.
When we arrived, Sister Ann got out of the car first and then she walked around and opened the car door for me, as if I was royalty. I got out and I looked up at her and she said sorry, and we both looked over at the house. ‘Go on then’, she said. But, instead of shouting at me, she spoke to me in a soft and gentle voice, and as I walked towards the house, the oldest son, the boy who had been abusing me for the last few years, walked out of the barn and towards me, with the woman, his mum, following close behind him. As they approached us, the boy said, ‘I’m going shooting in the fields and you’re coming with me.’ Sister Ann gently pushed me towards him and said, ‘That’s
a good idea. Go with him, it will be fun.’ I looked at him and he had a shotgun slung across one of his arms. I had no choice and I followed him off into the fields, leaving Sister Ann talking to the woman.
The boy walked into the middle of the biggest field on the farm, with me following behind him, and then he stopped, turned around and faced me. The grass in the field was tall and thick and he had made sure that no one could see us. Then he looked at me and said, ‘You told them, didn’t you?’ and then he pointed the gun at me and again he said, ‘You told them what I’ve done to you.’ I took a step back, I brushed my hands against the tall grass to make myself some space and then I said, ‘No.’ ‘I’m going to shoot you and feed you to the pigs’, he said. ‘I’ve done it before and I know how to do it and no one will ever find you.’
He then poked me in the ribs with the shotgun and he told me to walk back towards the barn. I was shaking and I had no choice as I didn’t want to die, so I turned around and I slowly walked in front of him and I headed towards the barn. I looked around for help, but there was no one around; the nun and the woman had vanished. I continued towards the barn and, when we got to the barn, I walked inside and he closed the door behind us. ‘Lie down’, he said. ‘No, I won’t’, I said. ‘Lie down.’ ‘No, I won’t and I’m going to tell everyone what you’re doing to me’, I said.
