Tortured: Abused and neglected by Britain’s most sadistic mum. This is my story of survival.

Author:Victoria Spry [Spry, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473503533
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2015-04-09T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

‘Please can we go, Mother, please, please, please, please, please!’

Adam’s loud, whiny voice begged my mum to allow him to attend a Jehovah’s Witness meeting on his own – well, with his nanny/chaperone too, of course. She would never have let him have complete independence.

What Adam wanted, Adam always got.

And so the two of us found ourselves out one afternoon – out without Mother – in the spring of 2004, with Adam pushing my wheelchair to the bus stop for our first taste of freedom. We had to get a bus to the Kingdom Hall. It was only a short journey – maybe ten to fifteen minutes – but it was a hugely daunting prospect for two teenagers who had never been schooled. I had just turned eighteen, but I had no clue how to read the bus timetable, or sort out our money for the fare. Mum was no help at all; she’d just say, ‘You’re eighteen, you’re an adult, you should know how.’ But I’d never been shown, I’d never had any money of my own, and it was tough to figure it out. I felt a real sense of achievement when we got on the right blue, orange and white bus, and the driver gave me the tickets and my change, and we arrived safe and sound at the hall, having navigated the confusing maze of streets with signs that I could barely read.

Adam and I went to the meetings every week. When we got home, Mum would have returned from her renovations at the farmhouse to grill us as usual. ‘What did you say? What did they say? Who did you see? How long were you there? Tell me exactly what happened.’

To begin with, I never said a word at the meetings. I rarely spoke anyway, and there seemed no point; not when Adam was there to do the talking for both of us. People would ask me a question, and he would answer for me. It was so normal to the pair of us that Adam’s opinion would be the only one worth hearing, and I was just to shut up and sit there.

But then a strange thing happened: people said they wanted to know what I thought. Some of the Witnesses would even tell Adam off for talking for me. They would say, ‘Will you let your sister talk now, please?’ Or, ‘No, I asked your sister first.’ And they spoke to me with respect.

It was the oddest thing I had ever experienced.

Over time, I started to get to know some of the Witnesses a bit better. There were some young girls my age at the meeting, and also some older women to whom I was drawn, including one of the elders’ wives, Jackie. The girls and the women would talk to me and, eventually, I started to talk to them too, very hesitantly. Without Mother around to remind me constantly, ‘Look down, look down,’ I dared to meet their eyes, and even venture a phrase here and there.

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