You got a fast car
And I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Yesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon claiming to “hear” survivors while starting up boot camps, was one of my most “liked” newsletters. It’s the emotional pieces I enjoy writing most. The ones that leave me practically shaking with anger, or having sobbed over some of the lines. Yesterday’s one had both.
It also generated many heartfelt comments, once again making me appreciate the compassion, wisdom, and outright decency of the readers of this newsletter. If only other comments sections were more like it, adding to the topic with insights and reflections, rather than the cretinous drooling we see elsewhere.
David Mitchell added his perspective and followed it up with some direct messages. My wife came in this morning after I’d read them and I hugged her with tears in my eyes. I messaged David and asked if it would be ok to share them, which he’s agreed. So at this point the talking stick is passed to him…
Your well written column on the abuse enquiry made me look within myself and think about my young days in the system in Scotland. I’ve already left a comment in your column but I wrote a little more but didn’t know the etiquette or if it would be hijacking your page.
I’m not as confident in publishing personal stuff but always feel it’s good to let those that don’t know how things were back in the day.
In light of the abuse enquiry that just passed and the news boot camps are going ahead I sometimes get the impression that the general public don’t understand what is meant by abuse, about how bad it can be, so thought I’d give my two pennies worth…
1962, Scotland
Age 4….. being sent to Nazareth House because parents had got divorced and it was deemed that a father could not (or would not) raise 3 boys and 1 girl on his own, so off to Nazareth House it was.
Being given a meal as grey as the sky on a winter’s morning in Scotland and refusing to eat it. So getting it for breakfast the next day, then lunch, then dinner. When I finished I vomited onto the floor and then received three whacks with a bamboo cane on the back of my legs for wasting food.
(Age 4)
Every Friday we would be given a spoonful of brown malt and a spoonful of cod liver oil and every time I would vomit at the taste of cod liver oil and every time the nuns/staff would cane me then make me take the “medicine” again. I remember once when older asking why I couldn’t have the cod liver oil first then the malt, which I loved, and got caned for “acting above my station”.
(Age 5 onwards)
The main house of Nazareth Hall had a large hallway stretching along the front facade of the building, tiled floors and wooden walls, dark, deep brown varnished timber that stretched up to a high ceiling. A hallway so big it echoed as you walked along it.
And walk you better, running not allowed. If you got caught running or moving… differently(?) you would be punished, it always seemed so arbitrary. The way you slouched, or glanced at a nun or….
Didn’t matter, there was always a rule you didn’t know, you just quickly learnt who the nuns were that would enforce them. And the prefects. The kids they had deemed to be paragons of virtue, who had got through the system and had one year to go before leaving into the big wide world (you left at age 16, on your birthday). Boys who took their frustration and anger out on those younger and weaker, so basically 99% of the boys there.
One of the punishments meted out that sticks in my mind, if caught in an infraction while walking the hallway, was being made to kneel and face the wall. You had to kneel a certain distance from the wall, kneeling with your back straight as you looked at the grain and whorls of the timber.
How did you know if you were the correct distance from the wall?
You knew because any nun or prefect walking by could shove the back of your head and if your forehead didn’t hit the wall with the right amount of noise, they would make you shuffle back slightly and do it again. This was totally arbitrary as well and there was no time limit. You’d just hear a nun or a prefect telling you to get up and continue with your day. If you were supposed to be in a “class” and arrived late, no excuses, you got either caned or the belt.
We had one teacher who would place his belt in the cold ashes of the fireplace so that when he hit your hand it was like being hit with rough sandpaper and would scrape the skin of your fingertips. Another used to have a wooden carpenter’s mallet (one Jesus himself would have been proud of) he would make you place all your finger tips on the edge of a table then hit each hand up by the fingertips hard. If you moved your fingers then that was another two added to the score.
(Age 5 onwards)
Luckily I was only there for approximately a year and a half when it was decided that me and my brothers should be sent across to the east coast of Scotland, a small town just outside Edinburgh called Tranent, to stay in a foster home ( although we couldn’t be fostered out).
I thought my nightmare was over, but at the tender age of 5 it would only get worse. It was like riding a roller coaster where the peaks were not getting abused, be it physically, mentally or sexually, and the troughs were a combination of the three.
I was at that foster home from the age of 5 until I was 16. In that time many children would come and go and there was never time to bond or form friendships as most, sooner or later, would be adopted. As for foster parents, they would come and go and over the years you learnt those who were doing it for the money and those doing it for the love, those doing it for the love didn’t hit you as much.
Walking downstairs for breakfast, being asked by a foster parent if I had washed myself properly, me replying yes then being grabbed by the scruff of my neck, lifted and my head smashed against the mirror in the hallway making it crack and splinter.
“Does that look like you’ve fucking washed yourself?”
A rhetorical question I now realised because when I answered in the affirmative I was thrown across the hallway while being told not to answer back. My foster mother rushing from the kitchen at the commotion, then cuffing the back of my head, told me to go back upstairs and wash the blood from my face because I looked a mess and how could I be so clumsy. Then when I came back downstairs being informed I’d missed breakfast as I knew it was served between 6.30am and 8am. So off to school I’d go, absolutely starving.
(Age 7, I think)
School was no reprieve. I had the gauntlet of having to walk to the Catholic school in a predominantly Protestant town. The Protestant kids walking in the opposite direction to me as their school was to the north of town, ours the south. Hearing the inevitable question.
“Are you a Billy or a Tim?” (Billy is slang for a Protestant and Tim shorthand for a Catholic).
A question hard to answer as you tried to guess the religion of the person asking, because if you answer wrongly you’re in for a hiding. Once at school the joy of being taught by teachers who thrived on inflicting pain on children for the slightest infraction or mistake. For answering a question in the Doric language (east coast Scottish the language you spoke at home) instead of English.
“You’ll never get anywhere in the world speaking that language, boy!”
The teacher would shout as he hit you with a ruler, his fist or whatever was handy on his desk.
Being taught English history, their Kings and Queens, their famous battles, their Empire. Not knowing your own history because if it was a good thing, like inventing something, or winning a battle against a common enemy, we then became British and woe betide you if you didn’t know those important dates. The Battle of Hastings, Agincourt, Waterloo, Trafalgar, The Crimean War, learning about English heroes and leaders while being told yours are traitors and rebels.
Get any of that wrong and it was “six of the best”, hit across buttocks and thighs with a cane or 6 of the belt across the palms of your hand, extra added if you caused the teacher to miss. Then the gauntlet back home. Finding a longer way home so you don’t bump into any “Billys” getting home later than you should and being hit because you had chores to do.
(Age 5 until 12, then off to high school, which became both a nightmare and a joy)
The foster home.
Regular fights and beatings from older kids, a generational game that continued as I did the exact same thing as I got older.
Wet the bed? Sheets draped over your head, shrouding you like a ghost as the other kids walked by, encouraged to degrade and call you names.
Chores not done to the satisfaction of foster parents? Punched, slapped, scratched, made to do it again and again until they were satisfied or got bored. Belittled at every turn, you’re in a foster home because your parents didn’t want you, the foster parents implying they had gotten a raw deal because you couldn’t be adopted and they were stuck with you.
Visits from social workers once every 6 months. Asked the same questions and always in the presence of the foster parents so you knew not to say anything. But you also knew the social worker didn’t care, just ticking the boxes. Rote questions. Rote answers, answers that were handed down to each child by older kids who knew what everybody wanted to hear.
I wrack my brain even now and can’t remember one birthday or Christmas. You need people who care, who love you, and still to this day I’m slightly suspicious of loving families, it just doesn’t seem natural to me.
But I did learn to hide that side of me, knowing when to smile and nod and say what it is others want to hear.
At 12 deciding enough is enough and deciding to run away with another boy, no plan, just run, it can’t be any worse. We picked a night when it was snowing so that shows we hadn’t thought that through. Got caught before we made it outside but to show how stupid we were to run away on a night like that we were made to stand outside the house, in just our underwear as it snowed, and the the children paraded past us to show the punishment.
How many times did I wake up and an older kid or an adult would be sitting on the edge of my bed or standing over me asking the inevitable question whether I knew what an erection was, had I ever seen one, had one, touched one…
Again no right or wrong answer but just let them hear what they wanted to hear, let them do what they wanted to do because there’s no pain, only that guilty feeling that you are doing something wrong because it’s been drummed into you that it’s a terrible terrible sin but worse of all sometimes it does feel good and it’s the touch of someone you think loves you and that’s a good thing isn’t it?
But that doesn’t stop the shame.
Into my adulthood and even now my family know me as the black sheep of the family for two reasons. I always rebelled, I didn’t follow the rules, I would question and answer back, I would goad sometimes to get a reaction. That was one reason. The other was because at the age of 13, I got into trouble with the law and was send away to Approved School (like Borstal) in Glasgow for a year.
That year taught me a lot about criminality and taking what you wanted by force if necessary, and raised me to the level of untouchable when I returned to Tranent a year later and attended High School.
This is a brief summary of my dealings with the children services and although they didn’t happen in NZ I’m sure the pattern is the exact same, the blueprints used here are the exact same, used all over the world.
Nick here again. Thank you so much for your words David. I’m sure many will be greatly moved reading of your experiences and be feeling much aroha toward you.
Looking for photographs to accompany the newsletter I found article after article with the same stories as David’s. Like this: Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry: Nazareth Houses were 'places of fear'. Conscious of not using a photo that would sensationalise or upset I decided to simply go with the image of a ticket, to anywhere.
Today’s song was suggested by David, an apt choice, and as he said in our messages this morning - a song that’s deeper than people think. Nice choice Mr Mitchell.
Thank you for sharing. You are a brave survivor. I can only imagine that the inquiry into state and religious abuse in this country must have stirred up many memories and feelings. I hope that you have found some peace 💓
I’ve been asked over the years if I hate my abusers and that’s always been a conflict for me. Abusers abuse, it’s what they do. But I definitely hate the enablers, those that turn away, turn a blind eye as if what the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve about.
A wee story from when I got into trouble with the police.
I was sent to an assessment centre before the trial to see if I was competent etc and awaiting reports, i was 13 at the time, I was there for three months and I actually quite enjoyed it as there was less abuse, more regimented.
But there was one very weird situation.
There were two teachers who, if you behaved, did well, would take you somewhere for the weekend, be it a movie, visit to the zoo or a museum, even take you to a football match. All things that the poorer working class kids never did as it was an expensive luxury for most lower income families. Sometimes the teachers would let the kids stay at their house over night as it was too late to bring them back to the assessment centre.
All I know I was informed in my first week by the older residents, DO NOT be the good kid, do not go.
The other workers and staff, the adults, must have known this was happening, they were allowing those teachers to remove kids overnight.
Those two teachers do what they do. The others gave them the tools and permission to do it.