Joe Peters (26 page)

‘So can I have my pocket money?’

‘No, you can’t.’

That evening I found myself outside on the doorstep, with my rucksack thrown after me. I knew Mum and the others had gone away that afternoon to stay in a caravan for a few days and that the house was empty, so I went back and slept in the garden shed for the night. It was cold and I had trouble getting to sleep, which gave me plenty of time to think over my position and what I really wanted to do.

I knew there was no point in staying at home any longer. I had tried and tried to get on with Mum and the others and it was never going to work. I had even fallen out with Thomas now. I knew that if I wanted to make anything of my life at all I had to make a new start somewhere else, somewhere Mum wouldn’t be able to find me to persuade me to go back. But where? And how?

The next morning I broke into the house and went through it collecting every bit of small change I could scrounge, as well as all the food and clothing I could find in the cupboards. As I went I left a trail of devastation
through all the neat, shiny rooms, smashing everything that came within reach. I turned Larry and Barry’s room upside down. I was releasing some of my pent-up anger and deliberately making it impossible ever to return, burning the last of my bridges. Mum would know that I had done this to her precious house and if she ever got her hands on me she would beat me up again. Maybe next time she would actually kill me, as she had threatened she would do so many times before.

Like tens of thousands of young people before me I decided to head for London, a city that would be big enough for me to disappear in and where Mum would never be able to find me, even if she wanted to. I had virtually no money in my pocket, no friends or even acquaintances anywhere that I could turn to, but I still thought the capital city would be my best bet for survival. Once I had done all the damage I could to the rooms, I walked out of the house for the last time. I knew it was going to be tough. I’d heard that the place the homeless kids went to was Charing Cross, but I had no idea beyond that of what might happen in my search for a new life.

As I stood by the roadside with my thumb out, I felt this great burst of happiness. I was free at last. No more living in fear of Mum’s temper. I could do whatever I wanted with my life. I didn’t yet know what that would be but I knew there was a world out there a lot better
than the one I’d experienced so far. The emotion that filled me was an unfamiliar one. I’d never really thought about the future much – just about getting through one day at a time. Now, for the first time, I felt a strong sense of hope, and it was an amazing feeling.

I
had a hard time finding my feet in London and there were moments when I thought I wasn’t going to make it, but I suppose there must be a strong core in me somewhere. I’d survived three years of solitary confinement in a cellar, starvation, beatings, rapes and all kinds of abuse, and then almost four years servicing clients in Uncle Douglas’s revolting porn factory. If you can survive that, I reckon you can survive virtually anything.

Whenever I read in the papers about some celebrity or other being taken to court for ‘downloading images of child abuse’ or about yet another ‘paedophile ring’ being exposed by the police, or a ringleader being tracked down and arrested in some deceptively ordinary-looking house somewhere, I think about how little the average person understands that kind of world. What happens to
some of the most abused children in our society is much darker and more disturbing than the common misper-ceptions most of us carry around. Children in Western countries are very seldom snatched from the streets by strangers. (It is a different story in other parts of the world where poverty is more intense and the trafficking of vulnerable people is more widespread.) When it does happen and a child vanishes on the way to the local shops or, worse still, from the safety of their own home, it is headline news for weeks or months on end, but this is partly because of the rarity of such events.

When we read about the children who are filmed being abused and the images being sold over the Internet, we are all naturally terrified that such a fate could befall someone in our own families. But in most cases our fears are unfounded because the children who appear in those films, that are downloaded by people who are unable to overcome their curiosity or their own urges to watch scenes of torture and inhumanity, have nearly always been introduced to that world by their parents or by guardians or by someone else in their close family. They have usually been ‘sold’ and dehumanised just as surely and cold-bloodedly as any other slaves in history. The abusers of children like me never see us as human beings, never consider our feelings, never ask us about ourselves, never even use our names. I wish the press and social services and the police would get their heads round
this and learn to listen and be patient when children seem disturbed but can’t explain why.

I never saw my mother again after the day I left Norwich, or Larry or Barry, or my sister. I never heard again from Wally or Marie or Aunt Melissa, and I only see Thomas occasionally. For a long time, I didn’t want to look backwards in my life; I just wanted to move on. Then, when I was twenty-five, the most incredible thing happened. I met a girl who was beautiful and kind and what was amazing was that she seemed to like me as well. She must have done, because she agreed to marry me and we’ve been together ever since.

I hadn’t thought I’d ever be able to have a normal relationship after everything I’d been through. We had problems in the early days as I struggled with my hang-ups from the past, but she stuck by me and became my true soulmate. I plucked up the courage to tell her, bit by bit, what had happened to me, and she was horrified and sickened by it, but it helped her to understand me more and together we got through our problems. We talked at length about whether I should go to the police and press charges. It would have been good to see Uncle Douglas and Joe and all the members of his paedophile ring sent to jail, but I didn’t do it. I still had my strong distrust of the police and people in positions of authority. They’d never believed me in the past, so why would they do so now?

My wife and I have five children now, and I’ve worked hard at being the kind of parent I wish I had had – the kind I think my Dad would have been if he’d lived. You hear about some men who come from backgrounds like mine becoming psychopaths when they’re older because they’re so full of anger, but I went in the opposite direction. I just made up my mind that I was going to be the best parent and the best husband I could possibly be. It still feels like a miracle, but I’ve got a very happy, tight-knit family – something I never ever thought would happen.

Now I’ve found happiness in my family life, it’s given me the strength to tell my story in this book. I know it’s not an easy read, but I hope it will help those of you who have made it to this last page understand the evil that still exists in our society. The more people who understand, the more chance there is of getting help for any other child who finds himself in a similar position in future.

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