I Know What You Are: Part 2 of 3: The true story of a lonely little girl abused by those she trusted most. Jane Smith
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school to get me off the truancy register at the secondary school I should have gone to.
I was very sexually aware by that time and I would sometimes go behind the bike sheds with the boys. Apparently it’s not uncommon for children with autism to be sexually precocious, not least because they don’t understand that certain types of behaviour are inappropriate in a normal social setting. And as they were boys of my age, it was only really what I suppose you would call ‘normal’ sexual exploration. So although I did get into trouble for it with the teachers, they didn’t seem to be too bothered about it. Which was unfortunate, in a way, because it meant that my behaviour didn’t raise any particular red flags that might have led to a discussion about why I was acting the way I was. Even so, I’m sure everyone heaved a huge collective sigh of relief when I decided, after a couple of months, that even being sent to the sort of care home described by Mum would be better than being at that school, and I simply stopped going.
Outside of school, I was continuing my ‘adult’ relationship with Rajan. I was still living at home, but I was independent in many ways by that time and was coming and going more or less as I wanted. I always borrowed Mum’s phone whenever I was going into town on my own, and with a phone in my backpack, a boyfriend who was more than twice my age, and a mum who didn’t set any boundaries for me, I thought I was all grown-up. I think that was another reason why I couldn’t get my head around going to school, particularly a school for children with problems!
Mum met Rajan quite early on in our ‘relationship’. Her only comment after I had introduced her to the 27-year-old man I was spending all my time with was, ‘Aahh. I’m really glad you’ve got a friend.’ She needed her own space, I suppose. And, to be fair, Mum had problems of her own.
She didn’t really know how to look after me and, without any family members other than her cousin Cora to support her, she wasn’t coping very well. I used to think it was just me she couldn’t cope with – I’m sure it isn’t easy trying to look after a child with Asperger syndrome, particularly when you’re a single parent on your own. But I realised when I was older that there were many other aspects of life she struggled to deal with. So I can understand how she might have welcomed the opportunity to get a break from me. Perhaps, though, being relieved that her 12-year-old daughter had an adult boyfriend was a step too far, even if that daughter hadn’t had the communication and interaction disabilities that handicapped me.
I know Mum felt very guilty about it all. She has always been quick to criticise anyone with children who goes away even for a weekend without them. So she did try to be present in body, if not in spirit. I think she consoled herself, too, with the thought that although I was difficult to deal with, she was doing her job as a mother by not asking anyone else for help. In retrospect, it might have been better if she had.
Mum always told people – including me, on many occasions – that she really was doing her best for me and that I had always ‘sabotaged’ her relationships with my difficult behaviour. I think it was her use of the word sabotaged that particularly upset me, because of its implication of deliberate acts on my behalf. She was certainly very convincing though. I know Cora had looked up Asperger syndrome when I was first diagnosed with it and that she understood the effects it had on me. But even Cora believed that her first loyalty should be to Mum, and she did try to support her in any way she could, despite her own mental-health issues. The result of it all was that, by the time I was 12, I had accepted that I was a badly behaved, inconsiderate and very difficult child who fully deserved to be branded the black sheep of the family.
As I got older, I realised that Mum wasn’t really to blame for her rapid mood swings – which I found incredibly stressful – or for any of the other manifestations of the bad experiences she must have had when she was a child. When Mum was about the same age I was when I started seeing Rajan, she was taken into care when her mother got a new partner. She must have felt as though she had been abandoned by the one person in the world who should have put her needs above those of anyone else. It probably also explained what made her think she was doing her best for me, because whatever else Mum did or didn’t get right, she didn’t ever abandon me, which, in her eyes, was the single worst thing that could possibly happen to a child.
Obviously, because of what had been going on with Tom, I did need the intervention of social services, and Mum needed help too. But, to Mum, asking anyone for help would have meant she had failed. And she couldn’t have coped with that. So we stumbled on with our lives, making a terrible mess of it all in our own, individual ways.
Even after I stopped going to school, I wasn’t happy. I decided it must be because I was in the wrong relationship. So I decided to drop Rajan and go out with another guy, called Naseer. I think Rajan was relieved when I told him I didn’t want to be with him anymore. I had begun to sense that he was getting tired of me, which is what gave me the confidence to start chatting to Naseer and then to break things off with Rajan. I’m pretty sure he would have ditched me before too long. So I saved him the trouble and, coincidentally, made his disapproving friends happy too.
Naseer worked in a local kebab shop. He was a bit closer to my age, at 18, good-looking, much taller than most of the other Afghan boys, and quite fair-skinned. He had come to England, from a refugee camp in Afghanistan, as an unaccompanied 14-year-old asylum seeker, hidden in the back of a lorry on a long, arduous and very frightening journey through Iran and Turkey into Europe. When he finally reached the UK, he was looked after for the next four years by a foster family. As a result of coming over at such a relatively young age and going to school here, he spoke good English and had more of an English sense of humour than many of his friends. I was impressed by the stories he told me about his adventures, and by the fact that he had his own car.
We went for a drive on our first date. It was my time of the month and I was wearing a sanitary towel, so I refused to have sex with him in the car as he wanted me to do, although I didn’t tell him why. The embarrassment I had felt about having my periods at primary school had left its mark and I would have found it very uncomfortable trying to explain it to him. It didn’t require me to have fully functioning emotional radar to be able to pick up on the fact that he was annoyed about it. Afterwards, he told his friends and everyone at the park that I wasn’t a girl at all, and for a while they all called me ‘Boy’ and made fun of me.
Naseer’s friends often went with him in his car when he did deliveries for the kebab shop and, after a while, I started to go too. The first time I slid on to the front seat to sit beside him, one of the other men asked me coldly, ‘Who do you think you are? Where are you getting these ideas from? Move!’ Apparently, I had failed to pick up on the unspoken rule that only girls who were the established girlfriends of specific men were allowed to sit in the front of the car. The girls at the bottom of the pecking order – the younger ones, of 15 and 16, who were passed around amongst Naseer’s friends – always sat in the back. I was somewhere between the two, but still definitely a back-seat girl.
Most of the other girls who hung out with Naseer and his friends had grown up on council estates in the area, and although I had a regional accent that wasn’t very different from theirs, it was different enough for them to notice. Which meant that, as usual, I didn’t fit into any category: to the front-seat girls, I was beneath their contempt and they completely ignored me; to the back-seat girls, I was a snob. I was a bit more popular with the boys, however, I think because I was younger than all the others and they thought I was ‘cute’.
One evening, a couple of weeks after our first date, we were all crammed into Naseer’s car while he was making his deliveries when he suddenly called over his shoulder to me, ‘We’re going to stop off at my flat. I want to fuck you.’ I was very embarrassed because he had said it so openly, but I was used to being humiliated. So when he pulled up outside his flat, we left the others in the car, smoking weed and listening to music, while we went upstairs.
Naseer was quite gentle and didn’t hurt me when we had sex. As soon as he had zipped up his trousers, however, he became irritable and impatient. ‘I have deliveries to make,’ he snapped at me when I told him I was going to have a quick wash. ‘There isn’t time for you to wash. Or do that.’ He scowled at me as I sat on the edge of his bed trying to re-thread the shoelace that had come loose from