Violated: A Shocking and Harrowing Survival Story From the Notorious Rotherham Abuse Scandal. Sarah Wilson
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been feeding me – I just couldn’t keep anything down!
Eventually, doctors found two holes and a leaking valve in my heart. Mum was beside herself when they told her I’d have to have heart surgery. She came with me in the ambulance to Leeds Killingbeck Hospital, where I ended up staying for a month. Not only was Mum worried sick about me, she had the boys to think of. Leeds was at least a 45-minute drive away from Rotherham, and that was only when you didn’t hit traffic. Thankfully, family mucked in to help, but Granddad was really ill at this point. He was in hospital with heart problems too, so Mum was really having a terrible time. She stayed at the hospital with me while Dad went back to Rotherham to fetch me some of my toys. Just when things seemed like they couldn’t get any worse, our car was broken into in the hospital car park and lots of my toys were stolen. Mum was gutted, as she’d really scrimped and saved to buy me them.
I had my operation in the middle of March, and thankfully it all went fine. Mum and Dad were both there when I was taken from theatre to intensive care, but Dad disappeared shortly afterwards. He told Mum he was popping back to Rotherham to sort some fresh clothes and get some money, but he didn’t reappear. No one had a mobile phone back then, so Mum couldn’t even ring him to check up on him. We didn’t see him for days, and Mum was absolutely raging, but eventually he turned up again and charmed her out of her bad mood, without really explaining what he’d been up to. That was just how it was with Dad.
A week after my surgery, I was transferred back to the hospital in Rotherham. This suited Mum, as Granddad was being treated there too. She’d often wheel him down the corridor to see me, and by all accounts I was the apple of his eye. But as I started to get stronger, Granddad got weaker. Not only did he have heart problems, but he also had diabetes and asthma. Barely a month after my operation, he passed away. He was only fifty-seven and Mum was heartbroken, but to this day we believe he wanted to give all of the life he had left in him to me.
A few weeks after Granddad’s funeral, Dad was arrested. Mum discovered he’d broken into an insurance brokers’ and stolen a safe. He’d only been caught because some police officers stopped him when they noticed one of the lights on the back of the van wasn’t working. He was sent to jail for six months. Mum was at breaking point. But still he somehow managed to worm his way back into our lives when he got out. Mark and Robert never had much contact with their dad, and Mum didn’t want the same thing to happen to me, so she let him move back in. A few months later, my sister Laura was conceived.
If Dad had been flaky and unreliable before, he was even worse when he got out of jail. I don’t know what happened to him in there, and I probably never will, but Mum knew he’d changed the second he walked through the door, back into our council house with its green-and-white walls.
My earliest memory of him is a little sketchy, but it has stayed with me my whole life. I mustn’t have been two yet, as Mum was heavily pregnant with Laura, but I can vaguely remember her tumbling down the stairs with her huge baby bump, tears streaking her face, and Dad standing on the landing above with a face like thunder. I think I was sitting in my pushchair at the time, watching it all happen in slow motion in front of me, frightened and confused. I’m not sure if that was the first time Dad hit Mum, but it certainly wasn’t the last, and I vividly remember the other occasions as I got older and more aware of what was happening.
Laura was born in August 1993 and we were close from the start, playing little games and doing all of the things that sisters like to do. Of course, we had our squabbles, too. One of my aunties had a video camera and there is some really funny footage from when we were little of me going in a massive huff when I catch Laura riding my bike!
Laura and I never spoke about what was going on with Mum and Dad – we were too young – but we were both scared by all the fights and the shouting. I wanted to protect her, but I didn’t know how. We’d hear them rowing loads, at all different times of the day and night. When we were really little, we loved watching the cartoon Pingu, which was all about the life of a little penguin. I remember sitting in front of the television, hearing crashing sounds coming from upstairs. We’d just keep watching the TV, so it could drown out the noise and we could pretend that everything was okay.
At night, we’d huddle together in our room and play with our dolls, trying to block out the shouting and screaming downstairs, but sometimes, when we heard Mum begging Dad to calm down as he threw things around the room, it was all too much.
One time, I heard Mum cry out in pain and I just knew that Dad had hit her. I was so frightened I crept downstairs – my knuckles white with fear as I clutched my favourite Barbie doll – and called 999. I only knew that was how to get hold of the police because I’d seen it on TV. I didn’t really think about what I was doing, and I could barely speak when the operator answered. I just whispered that my daddy had hit my mummy and told them what I thought was our address before hanging up and darting back up to my room, terrified that Dad would catch me and know what I’d done. I know the coppers turned up, but I can’t remember what happened when they arrived. All I can recall is that horrible, sick feeling I would get in the pit of my stomach when I heard Dad raise his voice. I wasn’t sure if he knew it was me who’d called them, or what he might do if he did find out. I was terrified he’d do something to really hurt Mum, or maybe start on one of us as a punishment. I worried about what I would be able to do to stop him. What could I do? A five-year-old child against a fully grown man?
Mum chucked Dad out a few times, but he always came back. I think she was scared to say no when he wanted to give their relationship another try. Who wouldn’t be? Who would want to be left on their own with four kids? Still, every time Dad left I prayed we’d finally seen the back of him. Living with him was like being in a war zone, and Mum was on eggshells all the time. We never knew when Dad was going to explode in a fit of fury. The smallest thing would set him off and he’d tear round the house like a tornado.
For some kids in my position, school might have seemed like a refuge from everything that was going on at home, but not for me. From the moment I walked through the doors of Ferham Primary School for the first time, I knew I wouldn’t fit in. My home life had made me feel vulnerable and lost, and the bullies picked up on that, which made me an easy target. The school was a real mix of Asian and white kids, and almost everyone taunted me in their own way. There were a few ringleaders, though, mainly girls who pulled my hair and called me names – normal kid stuff, you’d think, but it just never seemed to stop. The three really mean girls were Jenny, Anna and Carolyn. They picked on me for all sorts of things, for anything they could think of – from the gap in my teeth to the fact that Mum couldn’t afford to buy me the latest trainers. As they played their little games in the playground, giggling with the other girls in my class, I’d stand at the side and watch, trying to swallow the lump in my throat and wondering why they didn’t want me to join in with them.
They made me feel bad and ugly. Like most five-year-olds, I hadn’t really thought about how I looked before I started school, but Jenny, Carolyn and Anna noticed everything. They constantly told me I looked horrible and that my clothes were stupid.
‘Look at Sarah’s jumper,’ Carolyn sniggered one afternoon. ‘Where did you buy that, Wilko?’
I might have been among the poorer kids in the class, but back in the nineties no one in Ferham really had much money and none of us was in a position to turn our noses up at anything. But this hardly mattered to these girls.
‘Wilko for Wilson!’ Anna giggled. ‘No wonder you look so shit. Your mum can’t afford to shop anywhere else.’
I’d sometimes see the other girls in my class playing in the street after school or in town with their parents in pretty tops or girlie little dresses. I stuck out like a sore thumb in my black, shapeless shellsuits, hand-me-downs from my big brothers. The more the bullies taunted me, the less I thought about what I wore or how I looked because I simply couldn’t win. Even when Mum had enough money to treat Laura and me to some new clothes, I always begged her to buy me another pair of trackie bottoms. At least that way no one could accuse me of trying to look pretty.
I never felt like I fitted in there, and so I didn’t listen much in class. I was far from stupid but I was never top of the class or the teacher’s