What Daddy Did

by Ford, Donna

  After a great deal of soul searching, I decided to give my story to the authorities. I gave evidence at Helen Ford's trial and I quietly rejoiced when she was sentenced to imprisonment when found guilty of 'procuring a minor'.

  In the days after the trial, I was approached by many journalists who wanted to write about my story. While many of them seemed supportive and friendly, something didn't quite feel right. Finally, I realised what it was. After years spent in silence, years spent being controlled by others, I was uncomfortable at the thought of someone else – another stranger – taking my words and being able to make the ultimate decision as to how those words would be presented.

  After the trial, I was living with my dear friend, Christine, and her husband at their home in North Berwick. During the trial, I had thought about the possibility of writing a book – I had even mentioned I might do so to my half-brother and his wife over lunch one day. I didn't know how I was going to go about it, but I just knew I had to tell all of my story, every last bit of it, and not just what was likely to be published in a newspaper.

  One day, I was speaking on the phone to a woman who ran a charity for survivors of sexual abuse. This woman and her organisation had been very helpful, and she was someone who sometimes 'filtered' journalists' requests to speak to survivors. That morning, she was passing on details of someone who wanted to do an interview about my story. I was cautious and said this to her, briefly bringing up the point that I really wanted to speak to someone who was in the industry and knew how the media and publishing worked – not for an interview, but to see whether my idea of doing a book was feasible. She said that she knew just the person, a journalist whom she had worked with a lot and seemed to understand the issues rather than just be looking for the next headline.

  A meeting was set up at Christine's house, but I was still very nervous as it is hard for me to trust people. I also tend to go on my gut feelings, however, so as soon as I met the writer, Linda, I knew she was a good person. She was clear and concise when answering the questions I posed, and she didn't patronise me. In fact, she spent as much time warning me of some of the hurdles I might face as she did talking about what I might get from going down the publishing route. I felt that we hit it off really quickly and she didn't see me as some sort of victim.

  The conversation we had about our children was the final push I needed to know that we would make a good team. The way she spoke about her family made me trust her because I knew she was a good mother. That's how I gauge women. If they are good mothers, they are trustworthy. I told her that I needed to explain everything that had happened to me in my own life, both for my own sake and for that of my kids. From that moment, I believed in her because she also believed in me, and she's never let me down. We both found a new friend that day.

  I knew what I had to do.

  I had to tell my story in full, by myself. It was time for me to write my book.

  To do that, I've had to face all of my demons. I've had to look at things from my past that I'd hoped at one time to just bury away. It's been so hard, so painful and truly testing, yet as I write this, I am sitting in my home overlooking the Firth of Forth, with my three children, all happy, content and safe with their worlds. I feel truly blessed.

  When I first told my story I was concerned with the immediate criminal element of it – the abuses committed against me by my stepmother and her friends when I was a little girl. But there is so much more to my story than her, than just Helen Ford.

  I was born in a basement tenement in Edinburgh's Easter Road on 5 June 1959. At the time, my father, Donald Chalmers Ford, was living with my biological mother, Breda Curran Robertson. Breda had two children from two previous relationships, and was a young Irish lass who had come over the sea from Tipperary with her slightly older brother in the early 1950s. Sometime between arriving in Britain and meeting my father, she had given birth to her first child, a daughter, out of wedlock. She then went on to marry a different man and give birth a few years later to a son. Where and how she met my father is one of the many enigmas in my story, as is the question of whether or not they were truly in love before they consummated their relationship and conceived me. The foursome lived together in this flat in Easter Road, where I was born, until I was around a year old. At that point, my mother split from my father, and also left him with three children under six, two of whom were not his biological offspring. Why she left and where she went is a matter for speculation. I haven't seen her since that day and will probably never see her again.

  So, when I was born, I already had this older half-brother and half-sister waiting for me. I have no memories of them in the very early days, although I have seen photographs of the three of us sitting together before we were admitted to Haldane House, the Barnardo's home we finally lived in. My half-brother, Adrian, was two years older than me, and my half-sister, Frances, four years older. When my Dad met my mother, she was still married to Adrian's father. In fact, she never married my Dad, nor was she married to the father of my half-sister.

  It was October 1960 when my mother left. Disappeared. I have had to get a lot of my own story from various files collected from different sources over the years. From one of those files I know that:

  On 6th October 1960, Ford [my father] reported to us [the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children] that he had returned from England where he had been working to find Mrs Robertson [my mother] had been drinking, and having undesirable people in his home, and the children and house neglected. They quarrelled, and Mrs Robertson cleared out with another married woman and two men, and although we have endeavoured to trace her our efforts have been unsuccessful.

  The bald facts are that my mother upped and left and we were alone with my father. I had known only one Dad, but my older half-sister had known three men to take that role by this point, and my half-brother two. It must have been very confusing for the three of us already, and here we now were without a mummy either.

  My father continued to look after us with the help of a young local girl while he went out to work. Sometimes this young girl would take us to, and drop us off at, nursery. An entry in my files from back then states:

  Miss Robertson (from Pilrig Nursery) has great admiration for the father whom she has watched running home in between shifts, doing without breakfast sometimes to take the children to nursery, and who seems devoted to the children. The girl who sometimes brings them did not appeal to Miss Robertson who thought her unsuitable and rather unstable. On one occasion the girl brought the children to the nursery at 7.30am and left them in the charge of the cleaners until opening at 8.30am.

  This extract chills me to the bone as the young girl in question is Helen Gourlay, the woman who was to become my stepmother. This arrangement of her helping out lasted for a while, then my Dad decided he could no longer cope and we were taken into care. For the next four years, the three of us stayed in a Barnardo's home near Alloa in Scotland. At that time, it wasn't only orphans or children whose parents would never want anything to do with them who were put into homes. Barnardo's also 'helped out' in situations where families needed a bit of time to get themselves together before reclaiming their children, before the final, desired act of 'restoration' as they called it.

  I can only guess that my father couldn't do what he needed to do. When Breda left, he presumably thought that he would be able to work and also care for three young children. He probably did try but it wasn't enough, and there must have come a point where he had to admit defeat and send us away. Of course, I can question why he did this, why he didn't even decide to keep me, his only biological child, but – like everything else – I won't get any answers. How much the 'young girl' in the picture, Helen Gourlay, had a hand in our departure, I can't say.

  But given what she was to reveal of herself in the years to come, I can guess . . .

  Chapter Two

  MUMMIES AND DADDY

  IN DECEMBER 1961 MY FATHER married this girl and in November 1
962 they had a son, Gordon, who was another half-brother for me. There really is so much that I'm not aware of and will probably never find out. However, what I do know now is far more than I knew back in 2001, before I made the decision to go ahead and give that statement to the police which would be what they needed to finally press charges against Helen Gourlay Ford. Much of that knowledge came from just remembering and by looking over old documents, then putting all of the pieces together. My own life is a jigsaw to me, and I've had to approach putting it all together with very little 'inside' information.

  My earliest memories are not of Breda, my biological mother – in fact, I have absolutely no memories of her at all, which is hardly surprising since she left my father when I was just a baby. No, my earliest memories are of my time in that Barnardo's children's home, of being one of many kids in the same position – parentless. I remember very clearly the amount of queuing which went on in that place, for everything from meals to baths to pocket money. I remember being hugged. I remember having fun. I remember laughing. I remember playing in big rambling gardens, but, most of all, I remember my Dad visiting me with piles of comics in his arms each time. I can still see the picture in my mind's eye of waiting in a great big sitting room for him to arrive, and feeling so excited that, today, I was one of the lucky ones who had a visitor – and not only that, not just any old visitor, this was my very own Dad!

  Don Ford was quite a small man, around 5 foot 7 inches I would guess. He had, at that time, the blackest hair which was Brylcreemed and combed just so in a very particular way. He always wore a white shirt and a dark suit, and, like many men of his generation, his shoes were polished so that you could see your face in them. He told me when I was older that this was because he had been in the army. He said that a good soldier always paid particular attention to his shoes, and also said I should 'never forget to look behind', referring to making sure I polished the back of my shoes as well as the front.

  There is very little else I remember about those visits from him to me in Barnardo's. I don't recall him hugging me or saying anything like 'I love you'. In fact, he never ever said those words to me at any point of his life. To tell the truth, he said very little about anything that actually mattered in all the years he was my Daddy. But, at that point, he was there on visit days and that was all that mattered.

  My memories of my time in Barnardo's start to have more colour as time went on. A young girl began to accompany Dad on his trips. I know now that she was the one who had helped out and taken us to nursery. However, I didn't have any memories of those days so, to me, she was a stranger. I know now that my Dad was planning to make her his wife. I know now that she was my tormentor. Her presence on those visits is a bit blurry because she never paid any attention to me. She'd sit by my father's side, looking around, never smiling, never interacting with me at all, but, as time went on, I got used to her.

  I was only about four years old when she appeared one day, not only with my Dad, but with a baby in her arms too. It was a little boy, and Helen was a changed woman around him. She laughed and gurgled at him; she blew raspberries and sang him songs. She looked happy. I had been told that this little boy was my baby brother, and I was small enough myself to just accept that. He may have been a link between me and my father, but it was purely biological – that tiny boy would turn out to be my tormentor, just like his mother.

  Apart from noticing Helen and the baby, the next most vivid memory I have of Don Ford is when he came to collect me from Barnardo's and take me home to live with him, his new wife and their son. It was July 1964. I was five years and one month old and I was so excited because I was going home with my Daddy! That time with him is one of the nicest memories I would ever have of us being together. As I waited at the window of the children's home, looking out with my little suitcase at my feet, there was a moment full of hope and unspoken love. My Daddy was coming for me; he was taking me home. We would be a family and everything would be perfect, just like it was in story books.

  I would never feel that pure optimism and brightness again at any point of my childhood. Nothing bad had happened to me at that stage. I lived in a children's home, but I knew no different. I looked forward to my Daddy's visits, but now I was bursting with delight at the thought of having him in my world full time. The people in Barnardo's had looked after me well – as well as they could manage given the circumstances – and I had no reason to expect that my world would be anything other than what I hoped for.

  I'd learn.

  I held my Daddy's hand as we journeyed all the way from Alloa on two trains and a bus to our home in Edinburgh. It would never get better than that trip. I would have stayed on those trains, that bus, for ever, clasping his fingers in mine all the while if I had known even a fraction of what lay in wait for me.

  The Daddy who chatted with me and told me all about the sights on our way home, who told me that I was going home to a new Mummy and baby brother and that everything would be lovely, rarely emerged again in all the years we were together. Since I left home as a teenager, and since I have reflected on my life, I have asked myself the same questions over and over again: where did that man go, and why did he change? As my abuse became worse and worse, why did he let things go on? Did he really see nothing? Did he just ignore it all for an easy life, or was he too under the control of Helen? He never gave me any answers. As I journeyed to womanhood, I was left to piece together a picture of that man, my father, and his role in my childhood. Who was my Daddy?

  Chapter Three

  ONE BIG, HAPPY FAMILY

  MY EARLIEST MEMORIES OF BOTH Adrian and Frances are from when we were in the children's home together. As we were different ages, we slept in separate dorms but we would meet up in the play room, dining room or sitting room. Even then, there were lots of other children around. My recollections of how we interacted then are not strong. I have only fleeting glimpses in my mind of us being together, and that was on the occasions when my Dad and Helen visited us with baby Gordon. It was 1964 when I returned home to live with my Dad and his new wife. A year later, Adrian and Frances returned. These are the memories that are the strongest for me.

  I knew that they were returning because there had been a lot of talk about it during the run-up to them coming 'home'. I was really looking forward to it because I was already feeling quite isolated in the house. Helen only had time for her little boy and there was never a nice word from her. On the contrary, she had already started beating me and sending me to my room for long periods of time. I thought when my big sister and brother came home she would stop. I also believed that I would finally have someone to play with as I wasn't allowed to play with Gordon in case I hurt Helen's precious boy. I certainly wasn't allowed to play with his toys.

  On 5 March 1965, Frances and Adrian were brought home by my Dad. During the first week or so of their return, our Auntie Madge, Uncle Alec, Uncle George, Granny Ford (all from my Dad's family) visited, as did some of Helen's family, and it seemed as if things could be happy. Indeed, things were a little better for a while. I thought that my prayers had been answered and that Helen was really going to change. However, I soon found out that it wasn't for our sakes that she was being nice. I know now that it was all about her. Helen proudly showed us off and received bucketloads of praise for taking us all on.

  I clearly remember walking along Easter Road one day. Helen was pushing the pram with her little boy sitting in it, while Adrian and I held on to the chrome handle on either side of her. Frances was walking along beside me, holding my other hand. As we went from shop to shop, people would stop and talk to Helen and admire us all, telling Helen that she was doing brilliantly and that she was a saint for taking us all on. Little did anyone know what she was really like behind closed doors.

  I don't remember exactly when things started changing but before long it seemed as if there was a turnaround in Helen's attitude to all of us. I expected it, as I knew what she had been like before they came home, but they were
not at all prepared for her cruelty. I have no memories of fun and play; I just remember the beatings and punishments.

  What I find most shocking is that this young woman, who was barely 21 years old and hardly mature herself, had been given responsibility for three vulnerable children. My own daughter is this age now. When I look at Claire, who is a wonderful person, and think about any 21-year-old being given such control in the way that Helen was, I shudder. I know this would be highly unlikely to happen now, but it did to us, and I do have to point the finger at the people who ultimately had control over our fates. We were in the care of the local authority because our needs were not being met, yet we were sent to live with a young woman who had not been properly vetted; to a house that had one small bedroom and a living room with a scullery. We were so vulnerable and this woman played on our vulnerability. I cannot understand her motives for wanting to take us all on, and I cannot help being cynical about what they might have been, given what we were to endure.