Mikey
had learnt he was adopted by accident – and in a most
hurtful way. Now, Social Services had become involved, Mikey
had been taken into care and he had been abused by Jim, the
head of the Assessment Centre
For
the first part of this article, see the November issue - click
here
For the second part of this article, see the December issue
- click
here
For the third part of this article, see the January issue -
click
here
For the fourth part of this article, see the February issue
- click
here
They
had lots of other secrets over the following months. Jim told
Mikey that he had to keep the secrets, because if not he would
be sent away to a lock-up for boys. Jim need not have worried
really because who on earth would Mikey have told anyway? Mum
? He only saw glimpses of her now and then and she was mostly
in her own little tranquillised world. If she had not been,
she would no doubt have smacked him across the face and washed
his mouth out with soap for talking dirty.
Grandma?
She could only hiss her breath through her teeth and get out
of the room as fast as possible if she ever happened to be around
when Mikey was allowed to visit home. Wise move really, because
Mikey always blamed her for the way he found out about being
adopted.
Although
he did turn up for her funeral. “To make sure she had
really gone at last,” he joked to me. He seemed to be
OK that day, until I happened to see that he had no socks on
and that there were holes in the soles of his shoes. A few years
later he admitted that he had been living rough at the time
and could not beg borrow or steal socks and shoes, although
the rest of him was quite neat. I never found out how he had
got to hear about the funeral, but I suppose Dad must have had
a way to get in touch with him. Pity he didn’t make sure
about his gear, although in fairness to Dad, I think maybe he
had tried to help Mikey before and found out that he spent any
money he could get on a different kind of gear, the kind that
brought comfort and oblivion fast, and in the end permanently.
Could
he have told Dad about Jim? If he did, or if he had, what could
Dad have done? Because undoubtedly, his own abuse of Mikey would
have come out and that would have finished Mum off straight
away. Anyway a man like Dad would never have survived five minutes
inside. Mikey never wanted him punished like that. He said it
was too late to make a difference once it had happened and punishing
Dad would not have helped Mikey.
Punishing
Jim was a different thing altogether, but Mikey could not tell
anybody for years, even after he stopped believing the boys’
lock-up story and worked out that it was Jim who would be locked
up, not him. Mikey wanted Jim punished all right, not only for
what he did to him, but because of all the ones before him and
after him. But most of all because he hid his evil behind “taking
care of troubled children”. They were troubled all right,
but certainly more after they had had the benefit of his attentions,
when some of them were in the home as ‘a place of safety’,
or ‘for their own protection’. Some had even been
removed from home because it was known they were being abused.
It
was a real home from home that good old Jim provided. The Council
thought he was wonderful because he never said “No”
when the bosses wanted him to take more kids than the home should
have, or when a really messed-up kid like Mikey came along.
Of course he said “Yes”. For one thing, it kept
the bosses sweet and nobody questioned him too closely. For
another, the more the merrier for Jim to work with therapeutically
and to share with his good friends.
Being
taken to see friends by Jim was one of the special treats which
the other kids and staff resented Mikey for. Pity no-one ever
noticed how he behaved or looked after they had been on these
trips. But even if they had, Jim would have had a plausible
excuse and Mikey had to keep the secrets, or else.
If
Mikey felt bad about being abused by Jim, he said it was nothing
by comparison to being in a room full of strangers, who were
smoking and drinking, feeling him, pinching him, separately
or together, videoing him, themselves, each other. Then sometimes
they showed videos of other kids and things so bad that even
after he had been everywhere and seen it all, Mikey could still
not speak aloud about it.
Things
took a turn for the worse in his life when one day Mikey let
slip that he recognised one of the other kids in one of the
videos. He was now a young man, who hung around the Home waiting
for ‘Uncle Jim’ to finish his shift. Jim told the
other staff that ‘his nephew’ was being vetted to
act as a volunteer for a bit, before applying for a permanent
job in one of the homes in the next county.
Ages
after it came out that he had been one of ‘Jim’s
boys’ in some other place where he had worked and that
they had a flat together in London. In my later career as a
policeman I used to think it would have been interesting to
make an unannounced visit there. But by then I knew a lot that
I didn’t know when it was all happening to my big brother.
After
his unconscious slip about the ‘nephew’ Jim probably
thought Mikey was potentially too big a threat and started to
make arrangements to move him on from the Assessment Centre.
Whether it was by chance, or part of the plan I don’t
know, but a new younger boy arrived about this time and he became
Jim’s special one.
He
was small, neat, solemn and very well-behaved. Mikey said he
looked like an angel. I remember seeing him once when I visited
Mikey, before he got moved on. He was a lot like Mikey had been
at that age. But by now Mikey was getting to be a gawky teenager.
Because he stopped being Jim’s pet, his clothes did not
get replaced when they got scruffy and he was less likely to
be well received by anybody, least of all Mum and Grandma. So
I started to visit him, although he was always on edge when
I was there and especially when Jim came anywhere near and tried
to make a fuss of me. Mikey said later that he thought I was
in great danger then. He was probably right.
The
thing which Mikey and the new kid Carl had in common, apart
from Jim, was the look in their eyes. They were haunted and
sad, wary and longing, even before Jim got them in his clutches.
What a pity none of the do-gooders around them noticed and what
a pity I was too little to understand at the time. But it was
time for Mikey to move.
See
what happened to Mikey next in the next issue.
