I Think I'm OK Read online
Page 3
The next step of my journey was a visit to a Psychiatrist. I was eleven. The Psychiatrist’s office was at the Child Guidance Clinic on Manningham Lane, Bradford. My mum and Nelson came with me.
After a brief chat the Psychiatrist asked my mum and Nelson to wait outside whilst he and I got down to the nitty gritty. (He didn’t use those exact words but you know what I mean.) He started by asking me if I knew why I was there. I told him I did. I said my mum had explained it to me, saying they wanted to try and find out why a bright lad like me was behaving the way I was. What I didn’t mention was the conversation I’d had with our Paul where he reckoned they were going to find out if I was proper nutter or not.
The Psychiatrist asked me to be honest and open with him and I could tell him anything I wanted. I had already made my mind up that I would only tell him what I wanted, so I figured we were almost singing off the same hymn sheet. I did an IQ test, then some more chatting, then some ink spot questions and I don’t mean who sang Whispering Grass? It was the blobs of ink on paper thing. I have never bothered to try and find out what the point of that was; all I know is they all looked like butterflies and spiders to me.
I remember one particular question about keys in a field, I have even less idea what that test was supposed to determine. He asked how I would find a set of keys if I had lost them in a field. I told him I would just retrace my steps, apparently that was not good enough. I had to draw on a piece of paper how I would go about searching the whole field. I spent a minute or so in thought and it must have looked to the shrink as though I was working out the best route. I was in fact thinking, ‘I’m eleven, I don’t own any keys, they must be someone else’s keys so fuck ‘em, they can stay lost.’ I drew the diagram anyway.
After I don’t know how long with him popping in and out of the room marking papers and chatting some more, he eventually called my mum and Nelson back in. From then on the conversation between the adults went on as though I wasn’t in the room.
Thinking back on it, it puts me in mind of a TV programme where there are three or four characters in a room chatting away. To start with you can hear all the words of each character clearly then the camera focuses on one person. That person’s thoughts then become the main dialogue as the other voices, although you can still hear them, become faded and indistinct.
The Psychiatrist’s opinions and questions were being directed at mum and Nelson. He told them I had a reading age of fifteen and an IQ of 111. That sounded pretty good to me considering I was making sure I didn’t always write or give the answers that I knew were expected of me.
He asked if I had ever blacked out. Did I sometimes appear vacant? Did I wet the bed? Did I sleepwalk?
All of the above I heard clearly, then, as he asks the next question, the camera focuses on me.
“Does he have nightmares?”
Nightmares? Does he have nightmares?
Yes he fucking does.
It’s the middle of the night, he’s in terrible pain and wants to get out of bed but he can’t. He’s paralysed; his body feels as though it’s being crushed. He can’t lift his head which is buried into his pillow and any noise he tries to make is muffled by it. He is desperately trying to force himself to wake up.
Then reality kicks in. He is awake.
Derek Nelson is whispering harshly in his ear telling him to be quiet, telling him not to struggle. He is a nine year old child being raped by a sixteen year old.
Ignoring the threats he continues to struggle and it has the desired effect. Now Derek Nelson is stood over him, one hand over the nine year old’s mouth and another around his throat. More whispered threats are venomously spat out, threats of doing the same thing to the child’s younger brothers. Threats that should a word of what went on ever be spoken of, the child, his brothers and his mother, would all be killed. There is no doubt whatsoever in the nine year old’s mind that Derek Nelson means it. He is convinced the Bastard is crazy enough to do it.
As the pervert leaves the room the young boy gathers his bed sheets and pillow together and then hugs them tightly. With his back to the wall he stares in fear at the closed bedroom door whilst he gently rocks himself to and fro and, as quietly as he can, he sobs himself to sleep.
The next day he is still in pain, still scared, more than a little confused and angry. He runs away from home. He is brought back and then physically punished. More pain, more fear, more confusion, more anger, and so it goes. A vicious, painful, shame filled circle, from which he desperate to escape.
The camera now pulls back and everyone’s voice can be clearly heard
“Nightmares?” asked Nelson, “I don’t know, I don’t think so.
It suddenly occurred to them to ask me.
“No,” I said, “I have some dreams but I don’t have nightmares.
I also omit to tell them that since we have moved back to Bradford I quite often wake in the middle of the night to find myself under my bed. Now I’m no Shrink but I think I could find one or two who would agree with my own layman’s diagnosis as to why I did this.
I hope, I really do hope as you read this you are asking why I didn’t say something. If you are questioning my motives for keeping quiet then it probably means you have never suffered the same kind of abuse. The more there are of you unable to understand the happier I will be. It would be easy to write I was just too scared, it’s more complex than that.
As someone whose mainstream school education finished at the age of eleven, it may be difficult for me to convey to you how I felt. I may not have the necessary vocabulary or the necessary skills. However having finally found the balls to tell the world about something I have kept to myself for over forty years, having a crack at trying to make you understand why I kept quiet, even if I come out of it looking like a right knob-head, doesn’t really hold any fears for me. Besides, I’ve got Spell check, backspace and delete.
The fear I once had of Derek was not like any other I have experienced. As a youngster I did things that scared the shit out of me but after whatever I had done to scare myself was over, the fear left.
At the age of around fourteen I absconded from what they used to call ‘Approved School.’ It was in Aycliffe in County Durham. Another boy, LC, and I had done a runner and to cut a long story short we ended up at his mother’s house in Middlesbrough where, about an hour later, the Police turned up. The house was in one of those Victorian terraces and had about four floors. As the Police knocked on the door I ran up the stairs as quickly as I could. Once at the top of the house I found myself in a bedroom which had a skylight. I climbed out of the skylight and onto the roof. Precariously balanced about half way between the guttering and the top of the roof and I inched my way up the tiles to the very top of the house. I noticed that a couple of houses further along there was a drainpipe sticking up just above the guttering. It was the old cast iron type.
I gingerly shuffled my way along the apex of the roof until I was level with the drainpipe then I slid slowly down the roof tiles on my arse. Once I reached the drainpipe I took a few seconds to try and stop my legs from shaking (a pointless exercise) before beginning to shin down. I couldn’t tell you exactly how high in feet it was from top to bottom but I would estimate it was about, “I’m sorry Mrs Nelson, but there was nothing we could do for your son,” high.
Once at the bottom I hid in an outside toilet. The outside toilet part I guess you didn’t really need to know but for some reason my relating of the tale would have seemed incomplete to me if I hadn’t mentioned it.
Anyway, during the whole of that episode, from the second I climbed out of the window until my feet touched the floor, I was scared, really scared, but it soon disappeared. Though I can remember the incident and I can remember being scared the fear part doesn’t come flooding back and make my stomach tighten up. Strangely enough I got quite an adrenalin rush out of the danger though it didn’t seem to kick in until it was all over.
It has just occurred to me that the fear I had o
f Derek could be compared to when you have a child.
Hang on, hang on, before you kick off and ask, “What are you talking about silly bollocks?” I don’t mean the giving birth part. I mean in the way as soon as they are born you worry about them. You fear for them and the fear doesn’t go away just because they grow up, it stays with you.
At the time of writing this I have a twenty one year old son, he’s built like a brick shit house and I still worry about him. The things that worry me may have changed over the years but the feeling is the same. When he goes out on his motorcycle the fear I have feels no different to when he was a baby and I used to check and double check, whilst he was asleep, to make sure he was still breathing. That’s similar to the way my fear of Derek hung around.
If Derek ever reads this he’s probably got a huge grin on his face right now knowing he scared me so much. Well wipe it off sunshine, I’m no longer afraid.
As I got older, wiser and bigger, the fear changed.
As teenagers we begin to become aware, not just of how we look but how we appear to others. The hair styles, the clothes, the music, the image that we want to create for ourselves and the way we want others to perceive us. It was at such a stage in my life that the fear I had changed. At the age of around fourteen or fifteen I was no longer afraid of anything physical Derek could do to me. He was still probably bigger and stronger than me and it would be true to say that he was well known for his temper and for being an out and out fucking Psycho. I’m sure he would have beaten the crap out of me yet the fear of a kicking had long gone by then.
By that time I was very streetwise and selfish and I didn’t do anything without there being something in it for me. A hiding from him would achieve nothing and Bastards like him give out no credit for trying. I would however have quite happily stabbed him, shot him, or run the fucker over and to be honest I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. In fact I often dreamt of doing all of the above.
My biggest fear now was one of people finding out what he had done and thinking I was in some way to blame. That maybe in the eyes of others I was less of a man. Perhaps they would think it couldn’t have bothered me too much otherwise I would have told someone. These thoughts and others along the same lines filled my head, I was ashamed.
The shame had always been there but it was overshadowed by the fear, now it was the other way around and somewhere mixed in amongst the shame and fear had always been anger, lots of it. The way I see it, you cannot piss a pint into half pint pot without creating a mess. I know there are more eloquent ways of putting it but I hope you get my point.
So there we were, Nelson, mum and I, sat in the shrink’s office. Mum and Nelson seemed to think that when we lived in Barnsley and I ran away to Bradford I was trying to get to my dad’s. I was never the one that came up with this line of thinking however when it was put to me I concurred. Whoever first came up with the theory did me a favour. It seemed to me and apparently everybody else to be a believable reason so I just went along with it.
I once told one of my friends in Bradford I was running away and heading for Barnsley because I missed my girlfriend. I was eleven for fucks’ sake; it was hardly the romance of the decade. (Sorry Julie) They accepted that excuse as well. As I recall I got some stick for that one, there was a bit of piss taking from my family but it was worth it to me, better than telling the truth. Besides, I have just found out why they disbelieved me when I was questioned about my initial delinquent behaviour. I had been telling the powers that be how much I disliked my step father, I didn’t want to be around him, I didn’t want to live with him. Though it may not have been my number one reason it ran a bloody close second. It was after all he who brought the Bastard into our lives.
Nobody would accept that as a reason. They were telling me my bad behaviour had started long before Nelson came on the scene. I didn’t understand why they were saying this and basically calling me a liar. In the end I just clamped up when I was asked about it. Now I understand why they thought I was lying.
I have managed, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, to obtain records which were kept about me from my early years. This is a paragraph from a copy of my personal history dated 18th May, 1973. There are four and a half deleted lines then,
For three years after her separation his mother brought up her three children by herself in her home town of Wombwell near Barnsley. Then she met and later lived with Mr Nelson.
None of that statement is true. Until Nelson was offered a job there I doubt my mother had ever even heard of Wombwell. When the first thing a social worker reads about a child’s history is complete bollocks it doesn’t, in my opinion, bode well for the child. In my case it made no real difference which is probably why when I first read it, I had no feelings of anger or frustration. I was just pleased that it showed I was telling them the truth and someone else was doing the lying. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions as to why they would do that.
On top of my resentment and loathing of Nelson was piled the sack of shit that was his son. I was afraid of them both; I only associated fear and pain with the pair of them. It is fairly obvious to me that my delinquent behaviour was a cry for help and when nobody listened I ran away. I suppose I should rephrase the last part and say nobody listened because I didn’t tell anybody; I had nobody, apart from my younger brother Paul, to tell. I knew all hell would break loose if I spoke to anyone outside the family and I was under no illusions as to whose head all the shit would fall on. I certainly could not speak to my mum, I had seen her face as she stood and watched Nelson giving me a good hiding. I had seen the pain in her eyes and the expression on her face, it looked to me like a mixture of fear and guilt and she was as helpless as I.
I don’t think the Psychiatrist was buying any of my bullshit, in fact I know he wasn’t. Everybody else seemed to be focusing on where I was running to. I reckon the Shrink took his cue from the phrase, running ‘away.’
At the end of the session the Psychiatrist said he may be able to find me a place in a school which specialised in dealing with children such as me. If there was a place available the plan was for me to go there for two weeks, see if thought I wanted to stay, then all parties being agreeable, I could.
Less than a week later I was sat in the headmaster’s office in a place called William Henry Smith School, in Boothroyd, Brighouse. Two weeks after that, mum was sat next to me as I was asked if I wanted to stay there or go back home. I don’t know how she felt but it can’t have been easy listening to your eleven year old son say he would rather stay in an institution than go home to his family. Having said that I had been nothing but trouble to them for a number of years, so I guess a feeling of relief must have crept in as well.
So there it is. That is how I ended up in October 1970 in my first of many homes, I volunteered, though I didn’t volunteer for the ones that followed.
Incidentally, I found out a few days ago that all of the children at William Henry Smith School volunteered to go there. Nobody was sent there as a punishment or ordered there by any court. It was the school’s policy for the kids to choose for themselves whether or not to go there. This begs the question. What the hell was happening to those kids in order to make them want to leave their families and friends and voluntarily place themselves in an institution? I suppose it’s possible that William Henry Smith School was the most fantastic place in England for any young kid to spend their childhood. Possible? yes. Probable?
Every one of us at WHS School had behavioural problems and I firmly believe those behavioural problems were a symptom. Treating the symptoms is one thing but failing to look for the cause is not only a mistake it is downright dangerous.
Chapter 4
William Henry Smith School was a large country home built around 1850 and set in quite a few acres of land surrounded by woodland. With its Yorkshire stone construction weathered black, brown and grey, along with the sharp tower like features, from certain angles it looked to me like the sort of old house you woul
d see in a horror movie. ‘The House on the Hill’ type of film.
To reach it by car you had to drive down a tree lined drive which was about a half a mile in length. Well it may not be that long to be honest. When you are a kid everything seems to be bigger so maybe it just appeared to me to be so long. In fact the School is still there so I might pop up to Yorkshire one day and have a look. To reach it on foot, if you didn’t come down the drive, you had to come either from a local housing estate and across a farmer’s field or from Brighouse you could walk up a footpath which took you through fields and woodland. I remember the last leg of the walk was up a narrow dirt path lined with dry stone walls on either side. Every lad who smoked had a secret spot in the wall where they hid their cigs or tobacco.
The school had three ‘Wings’ as I recall North, South and West. North and South had two dorms each holding about fifteen to twenty beds. West Wing was for the older lads, some of whom attended outside School or College. These lucky souls had their own bedrooms or at most four to a room.
The headmaster of the school was a Mr Beall. He was a strict disciplinarian, not just with the pupils but also with the staff. Before I describe him to you, I will give you an idea of one of his philosophies.
“If you tell a child you are going to do something, then you must do it.” This especially applied when dealing with the ‘Maladjusted’ pupils of the school.
On one occasion we were having a lesson from a relatively new teacher, for some reason one of the lads was having a bad day and got into an argument with the teacher. There was a lot of gesturing, shouting and swearing, then the teacher told the lad that should he not sit down and shut up he would throw him through the window. It was at this point Mr Beall walked in and a silence immediately descended over the room. The teacher explained what had been going on, and then the lad piped up saying the teacher had threatened to throw him through the window. Mr Beall asked if this was true and the teacher spluttered a little through an explanation before admitting it was.