by Casey Watson
‘It’s because of the car being blown up,’ Ashton explained to me. Mike was carrying Olivia, who was still terrified of all the noise, as we tramped the few streets back to home.
‘Your car?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘Yes, it was torched outside our house one day. Livs was only little and it really scared her, didn’t it, Livs?’
Olivia merely whimpered, and burrowed her head into Mike’s scarf.
Then she pulled her head back again and spoke. ‘It was the bad mens!’ she said. ‘They didn’ like our daddy, so they burned it!’
I wanted to dig further but I knew it needed to be very gently. ‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Why’d they want to do such a thing, d’you think?’
‘We don’t know,’ Ashton said. ‘But they were definitely the same ones who wrote the bad stuff on our front door.’
‘What bad stuff?’ Mike asked.
‘Kev the perv,’ he said. ‘Swear words.’
‘That’s not very nice.’
‘No it wasn’t,’ Ashton answered. ‘And when they done it, we kept getting picked on, too – at school.’
‘That must have been hard,’ I said. ‘Was anything done about it? Did the police come?’
Ashton shook his head. ‘Nah.’
‘They tooked the car away,’ Olivia said. ‘Didn’ they, Ash? Cos it was broken. They put it on this lorry and they tooked it away. We never had a car no more, after.’
Kev the perv, I thought. The family were clearly well known around the neighbourhood. Once again it seemed incredible that they’d hung on to the kids so long. And once again, I got the sense that there was so much more to know. I really felt we were just scratching the surface.
But for our own family, at least, it was a time of happiness. Riley was six months’ pregnant now, so our next grandchild would soon be with us, a thought that, whenever I found myself bogged down in worries, would always bring a smile back to my face. Riley and David knew by now that they were going to have another boy, and they announced that they were going to call him Jackson. The kids seemed genuinely excited to share in this news, and even more so when Riley told them she was going to throw a party to celebrate Levi’s second birthday. They positively beamed when she also told them that, because they’d been so good lately, they would have the special honour of being her official party helpers, choosing party food and helping with the decorating. They couldn’t have been more excited about it all, and I sensed that we had really turned a corner.
But my bubble of happiness was destined to be popped. It was a couple of days before the party, and a regular Sunday evening. Because the children were both still frightened of the shower, and because their hygiene, even now, was somewhat haphazard, Mike and I still had to oversee bath-times. We’d got a routine now. Mike would invariably keep an eye on Ashton, while I would take charge of Olivia.
This particular Sunday, however, Mike was busy giving his car a bit of a valet; he’d washed it earlier and now wanted to give it a polish, so had relocated it back into the warmth of the garage so he could do it in the warm. Knowing how much time he could spend out there, if left alone with it, I decided to get on and bathe the kids without him. I did Ashton first, though, because he was keen to go back down and help Mike, as he’d been promised he could use the mini-vacuum.
Next up was Olivia, plus her favourite baby doll Polly, who’d been patiently waiting for her turn.
‘Come on, sweetie,’ I said, peeling off her sweater and joggers, while she busied herself removing Polly’s babygro. She laughed as she usually did as I swung her into the bathtub, but I noticed her wince as I sat her in the water.
‘Oh, love, is it too hot?’ I asked, dipping my arm in to check. Though I knew, because I’d already checked, it wouldn’t be hot – only warm. She shook her head to confirm this, yet still she winced. ‘A graze, then? A cut?’ I asked.
Now she nodded. ‘It was Ashton.’
‘Ashton?’ I asked her, not sure I’d heard right. ‘What d’you mean?’
Olivia looked up at me, then turned her doll over and pointed. ‘He been bummin’ me,’ she said, with a world-weary air.
It took a moment for what she said to properly sink in. Yet still it didn’t. Did I really hear that right?
‘Been bumming you?’ I repeated.
She nodded. ‘Yes. An it hurts a bit now it’s in the water.’
I knelt beside the bath. ‘Olivia, can you explain what you mean?’ I asked her gently.
‘You know,’ she said. ‘Lied on me. Like wot the growdups do. And hurt my bum.’
The picture she described to me felt all too believable. I’d seen them play-act a version of such things myself. But fully clothed, not naked. But from what she was saying … I wasn’t stupid. I knew these kids, left unsupervised, would fiddle with each other’s genitals. But this – if true – was a whole different board game. Ashton was growing up. He’d be eleven soon. Starting puberty. And if he was already forcing himself on Olivia … It didn’t bear thinking about. I needed to act on this. Now.
I passed Olivia a flannel and suggested she wash Polly. ‘I’ll just be a minute,’ I said, rising to my feet again. ‘Got to go and have a quick word with Mike about something. Be back in no time, okay?’
I hurried downstairs and into the garage, where Mike was. Ashton was in the driver’s seat of the car now, busy polishing the dashboard.
‘Ash?’ I said. ‘Could you pop into the kitchen for a minute, love? There’s something I need to talk to you about, okay?’
Ashton obediently did as I asked him, and when he’d gone back in I told Mike what Olivia had said. ‘So maybe you could go up and wash her hair for her,’ I suggested, ‘while I deal with Ashton? I really need to speak to him about this.’
Mike shook his head as he wrung out his chamois. ‘Lord,’ he said, frowning, ‘here we go again …’
Back inside, I crossed the hall and entered the kitchen. God, I thought. Where do I even start?’
It might have been my imagination playing tricks on me, but as soon as our eyes met, I thought I could sense guilt. Which told me one positive thing at least, I thought, as I sat down with Ashton. If he did know what was coming and was feeling guilty, then that was progress. Easy to forget that a few short months ago none of these kids even knew sexual touching between them was wrong. Not that it made this any less unpalatable.
Ashton lowered his eyes as I sat down with him at the kitchen table. ‘Ash, love,’ I said, deciding to come straight to the point. ‘What have you done to your sister? She says she’s hurting.’
His eyes met mine again. ‘I ain’t done nothing,’ he said quietly. ‘Nothing at all. She’s a liar.’
I kept my own voice low and level, to match his. ‘Olivia is just a little girl, Ashton. Why d’you think she would lie about something like that?’
‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘But she is lying. I done nothing.’
‘Ashton,’ I continued, ‘I need you to tell me the truth. We will have to take Olivia to see a doctor, you see, so he can look at her bottom – which is where she says she’s hurting. And we will have to tell the doctor what happened to cause it, and what Olivia has told me is that you hurt her bottom.’ I held his gaze. ‘Playing sex games. Is that true?’
‘Not sex,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It wasn’t sex. She’s a liar, saying sex. I didn’t hurt her nowhere!’
Ashton put his head in his hands then, and refused to speak further, and I knew it would be pointless trying to make him. This shut-down, this closing off seemed very much a learned behaviour. Had they been taught that if they ignored something it would simply melt away? Well, this wouldn’t. This couldn’t. I needed to take this further. However grim a prospect it might be, and however it harmed our fragile relationship, I would be failing in my duty if I didn’t take this further.
I’d heard Mike bringing Olivia back downstairs now, so I explained to Ashton that he had to go sit in the living room, as I had to go and phone the doctor. I ma
de it clear I wasn’t happy about whatever he had done. ‘So why don’t you think hard,’ I told him quietly, as I ushered him out of the kitchen, ‘about telling me the truth about this, Ashton?’ Still not looking at me, he went into the living room. If he understood the implications of what I’d told him would now happen, he didn’t show any outward signs that he was bothered.
Ashton dealt with, I then went into the hall and called EDT. EDT stood for the Emergency Duty Team – a team of mainly social workers, who were the first point of contact if anything happened to a child in our care out of hours. This was in order to get advice on what to do, obviously, but also to ensure that any incidents were reported and logged.
In this case the on-duty social worker advised me that I should call the local hospital right away. She told me that I should ask to be put through to the duty paediatrician and to explain that Olivia was a looked-after child, together with the nature of the incident and alleged injury. This was to ensure, I was told, they’d act promptly.
I was shocked but pleased that she’d been right; it was quick. Within minutes we were talking to the on-call paediatrician, who told Mike and I to bring Olivia around to the hospital right away. I was keen to have Mike along, as I felt sure that what was going to happen, examination-wise, would probably distress Olivia (who was probably used to her brother’s ‘attentions’) a whole lot more than the original incident.
Riley, bless her, stepped in, and was around at ours in minutes, so within the hour we were clustered, beneath the bright lights of the A&E department, while the paediatrician examined a very agitated Olivia.
As I’d expected, she was terribly traumatised. And I was hardly less so, as I fought against her writhing so that the doctor could examine the area properly.
‘Stop it!’ she was sobbing. ‘Stop the bad man, please, Casey! I don’t want my bum touched! Go away!’
Thankfully, the paediatrician decided that, in this case, he wouldn’t need to do anything internal. ‘There don’t seem to be any signs of actual penetration,’ he reassured us. ‘What I suspect we might have had here is just an act of simulation, which might have caused some bruising and soreness. But that’s all, in my opinion. You say the brother’s 10?’
We confirmed that he was – just – over the cacophony of Olivia’s protests, and the doctor confirmed that that would be in keeping with what he’d seen; that it would be unusual and unlikely that a boy of that age would be physically able to do any more than that. ‘Though I’ll obviously liaise with social services where required,’ the doctor finished. ‘And well done you,’ he said warmly, to a very shaky Olivia. ‘Here –’ he reached across us to a small plastic pot in a side shelf. ‘Here’s a sticker for being such a brave girl.’
It was mid-evening by the time we left the hospital, bitingly cold and dark now, and it occurred to me again that for Olivia – still clinging to me like a limpet, still trembling and tearful – this would be the bad part, the traumatising memory. Not Ashton ‘bumming’ her: that might have hurt, but who knew? The grim truth was that it might be all par for the course for her, whereas, sticker or no sticker, the prodding and poking by a scary stranger in a white coat was clearly a very frightening experience.
We stopped at McDonald’s on the way home, to get her an ice-cream, to cheer her up. We must have looked a sorry sight, the three of us, huddled around out little table. Two fraught-looking parents, and a tot in her pyjamas, even if she did brighten somewhat. And, even so, it was still the proverbial Band-Aid on a big, gaping wound. Dare we even now let the two of them out of our sight?
No. What a mess. What a horrible, ugly mess. And not a single sign of light on the horizon.
Chapter 14
I didn’t have a clue how to turn things around with Ashton. He seemed to hate us now. Why wouldn’t he? Didn’t matter how much we told him the thing he’d done was wrong, unless he understood that himself it would essentially just cast us in the role of horrible foster carers, intent on making his life even more of a misery than it already was.
I kept going back to what he’d told me about what his grandfather had done to him, and how he’d been made to do the same to his little cousin. Should I really have been shocked that he’d tried to do the same to Olivia? Perhaps not, but it was still a measure of how much his life experience had warped his mind that he was clearly unhappy at the sexual abuse that had been done to him, distressed about the things he’d been made to do to his little cousin, but at the same time thought nothing of trying to do that very thing with his own sister. This was why sexual abuse of the young was such a canker. Prior to their own sexual awakening they would soak it up as ‘normal’ every bit as readily as they would the art of using cutlery. And he was ten. So while there might be a good chance for his younger siblings, time – time in which to re-programme that troubled mind of his – was a commodity in very short supply.
The day after the hospital visit Ashton didn’t speak to me at all. If I spoke to him, he snarled, and otherwise, he ignored me. It was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to break through to him any time soon. Olivia, on the other hand, seemed fine. By the following morning, the trauma of the hospital done with, she was back to her usual happy self. And, bar the sore bottom, why would she be concerned about what had happened? It was becoming depressingly clear that it had probably been happening – or some version of it anyway – for much of her tragic young life.
But for me, it was just all so depressing. And not just me, either, Kieron too. I’d filled him in the previous day and his expression had said it all. But it felt wrong to hide this sort of stuff from him. The day I kept secrets from my nearest and dearest would be the day I must hang up my fostering hat. Predictably, of course, he was distraught. But then, perhaps he should be. This was the reality we were living through. No point in sugaring the pill about kids like these two, and if Kieron was serious about wanting to work with damaged and dispossessed youngsters, he needed to go in with his eyes open.
‘You know, Mum,’ he said now, ‘I just keep going over and over it. How could he?’
Kieron had just returned from Lauren’s, where he’d stayed over, as he often did now, and was keen to hear if anything had been done.
‘I know,’ I said, shaking my head sadly.
‘So what will happen?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ve still got to speak to John and Anna.’
‘It’s bad, though, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, love. It’s bad. We just have to work out what’s the best way to deal with it. But I’m sure once I’ve spoken to John, we’ll be able to form a plan.’
Kieron looked completely unconvinced as I said this. I hoped the reality didn’t match his cynical expression. I hoped he could witness some sort of happy outcome for these little ones, particularly after the trauma of Sophia. That had been tough for him. Still continued to be, really. Though she was making good progress in the adolescent unit where she lived now, happy families might never be an outcome for her.
Kieron went up to his bedroom to get changed, and I went to make myself a cup of coffee. It was automatic with me; it was my miracle cure for everything. Where others administered sweet tea for shock, I dosed myself up on coffee when down.
Coffee and a cigarette, ideally, and even though it was perishing, I dutifully took both into the garden. I’d always smoked in the conservatory – the one place the rest of the family allowed it – but since the little ones had come, I’d stopped. It just didn’t seem right. But now winter was setting in with a vengeance, I reflected, shivering, I might just have to come good on the promise I’d made Mike to quit as soon as it got too cold to smoke outside.
But today wasn’t that cold. Or at least, that was what I told myself. I’d just have this cigarette and call John.
But Anna beat me to it. I came inside to hear the phone already ringing.
‘I just read your email,’ she told me. ‘And saw the EDT report flagged up, too. How are you? How is everything there now?’
/> ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Ashton’s not speaking – he’s very angry, I can tell. Olivia’s fine, though. It’s like she’s forgotten all about it.’
‘And did the hospital say they intended to follow things up?’
‘I don’t think so. I think they’re just going to notify social services.’ Another report in another file, to be stashed in a drawer.
‘They’re not involving the police, then?’
‘Not as far as I know. Are they meant to?’
Only if they believe an actual abuse took place. But from what you said in your email, it sounds to me like they must have decided to just put it down as horseplay.’
‘I bloody hope not!’ I said. How could this all be normalised so readily? To my mind the only reason for there being no penetration was that with Ashton being so young, it wasn’t physically possible. But it soon would be. It was what was in his head that mattered, surely?
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know it wasn’t actually that, but still. It could have been. That certainly seemed to be the intention. He needs help, Anna. Counselling … to stop this rot before it –’
‘I know,’ she interrupted. ‘And it’s awful. Really awful. We need to put more strategies in place for you, Casey. I know you’re sort of out on a limb over there, and we need to give you more in the way of help. I’ve already spoken to John Fulshaw this morning and if it’s alright with you, we’ll both come to visit you next Wednesday, and see what we can come up with between us.’
More talk, I thought irritably, as I agreed to her arrangements. It’s action I want, not bloody words!
