Trapped: The Terrifying True Story of a Secret World of Abuse

Copyright

HarperElement

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First published by HarperElement 2014

FIRST EDITION

© Rosie Lewis 2014

Rosie Lewis asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014

Cover photographs © Plainpicture/Souslesarbres (posed by model)

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available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007541782

Ebook Edition © February 2014 ISBN: 9780007541799

Version 2016-11-11

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Epilogue

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Prologue

With small, stumbling fingers Phoebe set her torch on the bedside cabinet, then rolled around her bed until her whole body became swaddled by her sheet, all the way up to her ears. Her cheeks burned with heat but determinedly, she began the awkward process again, this time with her duvet. By the time she had finished breathing was difficult but she felt safe, cocooned from the world outside.

She held herself still for a long time, partly to listen out for danger but mainly because her mummified state wouldn’t allow for much movement. The whishing came soon afterwards. At first it was gentle, a bit like the sound she heard when Mummy held a seashell to her ear but then the rustling began, filling her head until she worried that there would be no room left for her brain. The air around her came alive with the patter, drowning everything else out: the loud tick of the big clock in the hall, the muted conversations drifting up through the floorboards, even the whistle of the wind.

Everything in her room remained in the same place; the three-storey doll’s house with lifting roof, her white dressing table with the heart-shaped mirror and all the tiny glass perfume bottles lined across the top, and yet in an instant all became unfamiliar. The weak shaft of light from her torch no longer chased shadows into the corners of the room.

She began making funny groans like some of the children at school. The louder she hummed, the more muffled the horrible noise became. And she found that if she spun her eyes around as fast as she could, the pictures in her head got fuzzy too. The hand now pressing on her mouth no longer pinched her cheeks as painfully and the strange words hanging in the air transformed into the fairies that cling to dandelion stems, so light that if she blew hard enough they might float away on the breeze.

As the man dragged her out of her cocoon in one swift movement, chuckling at her attempts to protect herself, she sank deeper into her brain and pictured her father. In her mind he was dressed in his smart suit for work, tall and strong. She longed to call out to him, imagining that he would rush in to pick her up and keep her safe, but sensing that to yell would be dangerous, she bit down hard on her lower lip instead. She told the man that he could chose something from her room, anything he wanted, if only he would go back downstairs and rejoin the party. Her pleading made him laugh again.

In the morning it hurt to walk to the bathroom. She moved slowly because her pyjamas were wet and clinging to her legs. As she peeled off her night-clothes she smelt urine and her face grew hot with shame. Mummy would be sure to remove a star from her chart.

The thought brought hot tears to her eyes.

Chapter 1

It was a dreary, overcast day in March 2009 when I first met Phoebe. As I sat in the local authority training centre, I shook my lifeless mobile phone several times, hoping that news of a fostering referral would drift across the airwaves. Between placements I was filled with a restless yearning; an itch I couldn’t scratch. How blissfully ignorant I was back then, unaware of the far-reaching impact she would have on our family.

‘It would be wise to keep a collection of pebbles in your kitchen drawer,’ our lively tutor was drilling us on the latest techniques for safeguarding drug-addicted teenagers. ‘That way you’ll remember to drop one in if they trust you enough to ask for a bag.’

Ellie was a recent recruit to the local authority team of trainers and a registered nurse by profession. The tall blonde was proving popular with foster carers, her courses particularly well attended by other halves – I had never seen as many men on a training day before. It seemed word of her sultry tones, shiny lip gloss and stiletto heels had worked its way quickly around the fostering network of the north of England.

A flurry of blank looks travelled around the semi-circle of foster carers in front of her.

‘We lost one of our teenagers earlier this year,’ Ellie went on to explain. ‘She passed out with a bag of solvent still fixed to her ears. With a heavy object inside, the plastic would have been far more likely to fall from her face as she collapsed. A little forethought from her carer might just have saved her life.’

‘I take it we’re expected to provide ’em with a WH Smith voucher as well,’ the black foster carer sitting opposite me offered in a Brummie accent, daring a touch of sarcasm, ‘to save ’em forkin’ out for t’own glue.’

Sniggers swept around the room.

Ellie held out one manicured hand, tucking a stray tendril of shiny blonde hair behind her ear with the other. ‘I take it that some of you feel uncomfortable with what I’ve just said?’

Glancing around, I noticed several of the women nodding their heads. Most of the men sat with their legs sprawled wide, one or two with dreamy expressions on their faces.

‘Surely it’s our job to discourage risky behaviour?’ I ventured. Social workers were keen to encourage foster carers to show Looked After Children the same quality of care as their own families. I was certain that I wouldn’t provide bags with rocks inside for my own children, Emily and Jamie, freeing them to get high in the knowledge that Health & Safety procedures had been adhered to by their attentive mother.

Ellie smiled, shaking her head. ‘I know it’s not easy to stomach but it’s our responsibility to safeguard these children. They’re damaged – most of them need something just to get through the day. Showing disapproval will simply drive their behaviour underground. Having to hide their addiction,’ she tilted her dainty hand in mid-air, rocking it slightly from side to side, ‘might just be enough to tip them over the edge.’

After a buffet lunch courtesy of the local authority, Ellie moved on to drug classifications and how to recognise paraphernalia among seemingly innocent everyday objects such as empty fizzy drink cans. It was fascinating but her comment about damaged children needing a prop to survive kept playing over in my mind. I felt a longing to soothe the turmoil a child must feel to treat their body with such disregard. The uncomfortable feeling reminded me of why I had decided to register as a foster carer. Like many of my fellow carers, I was drawn to it.

For the rest of the afternoon the class was held rapt, not only by Ellie’s dynamic teaching style but also the shocking nature of the facts she was imparting. Between the 20 or so carers present we had chalked up a collective experience of over 200 years of fostering, yet most of us were unaware that the latest trend for self-harmers was to insert diazepam capsules into the cuts in their skin for rapid absorption, or that wheelie bins often went missing because they offered an ideal confined space for solvent abuse.

Most of the training days I had attended in the past fortnight held my attention as efficiently as a pile of wet nappies and so it was refreshing to be presented with such thought-provoking information. It was only towards the end of the day that my concentration began to waver and I idly poked my mobile phone again, willing it to spring into action. My last placement had ended three weeks earlier – a sibling group of two who stayed with me for almost three years. The wounds of separation after they moved on to adoption were still raw, an unfortunate occupational hazard. I was eager to jump back into the saddle of caring again, knowing it was the best way to recover from my loss and so, after taking a break of two weeks, I agreed for my name to reappear on the vacancy register. Recovery time between placements is recommended to restore energy levels; fostering can be a physical and emotional drain. Carers often make use of the time by catching up on training; we are obliged to attend at least six training sessions each year, a tricky task with young ones in placement.

I kept busy during my first week off, getting the house straight, tidying up the garden and attending a round of courses – anything to distract my mind from worrying about how the siblings were coping in their new home. It was such an upheaval for them, leaving all that was familiar behind. When children move on to adoption, it is recommended that their foster carer takes on the role of ‘auntie’, so remaining part of their lives but in a more distant way. I couldn’t help worrying that they might feel abandoned by me and our reunion wasn’t to take place for another three weeks, to allow time for their bond with me to weaken. The idea that I would see them again, hopefully happy and settled with their ‘forever’ parents, gave me something positive to hold on to in the meantime.

For the past week I had been on the out-of-hours list, making myself available to the local authority at any time, day or night, to take on an emergency. So far all had been quiet but I kept my phone close by at all times, just in case.

The timing of the call about Phoebe, when it came, couldn’t have been more perfect. I had just completed my course evaluation sheet, giving Ellie top marks in all ten categories, and was wandering out of the training centre into the misty gloom when my mobile phone coughed itself awake.

‘Hi, Desmond.’ My heart was already beginning to race in anticipation as I climbed into my car with the handset clamped to my ear, wondering whether my supervising social worker had news of an emergency or was simply calling for a chat. We had built up a close friendship since I was first assigned to him when I registered with Bright Heights Fostering Agency seven years earlier and he often popped in to check how our family was, even though he was only strictly obliged to visit once every four weeks.

As I listened to his voice, intermittently thick with a Scottish accent despite having left the Highlands as a teenager, I found myself holding my breath and hoping for a newborn, recklessly forgetting my vow never to take on another baby after my most recent, difficult separation. Reaching to grab a notebook and pen from the dashboard, I jotted down notes as Desmond spoke.

‘She’s been taken straight from school into police protection. They should be with you in the next half an hour or so. Will you be home by then?’

Slipping the key into the ignition, I switched the Nokia to loudspeaker mode then dropped it into my lap. ‘Yes, should be. I’ll just have enough time to let Emily and Jamie know what’s going on.’

My own children were keen to welcome new little ones into our home but I preferred to seek their approval before someone new arrived on the doorstep, to make sure they felt consulted.

‘I won’t be able to make it, I’m afraid – sorry, Rosie, I’m up to my neck in it over here. I’ll come and see you some time in the next few days, though.’

Saying goodbye to Des, I stopped at the next set of traffic lights, holding my notebook up at eye level. The page was still blank but for my scribbled notes: girl, age eight; warm and friendly. Without noticing the lights as they turned to amber, I sat staring at the words on the page. Overstretched social workers were sometimes so keen to place a child that they stretched the facts, I mused, moulding them into a mishmash of half-truths and downright fabrications. Experience had taught me to treat the initial information they provided on a child with as much caution as estate agents’ patter. Just as a house located at the side of a busy motorway could be listed as ‘close to all transport links’, social workers might describe a difficult, confrontational teenager with a penchant for injecting heroin as ‘lively and inquisitive’.

A hoot from the driver behind caused me to start. Lifting my hand in apology, I nudged the accelerator and caught up with the rusting white van ahead, catching sight of myself in the rear-view mirror. Often I felt that my blonde, naturally curly hair offered a cheery distraction from the lines that were beginning to appear under my eyes, giving people the impression that I was bubbly even when I felt nothing of the sort. Today, though, the damp air had taken its toll, making it look like a pile of dried hay and dragging the rest of my face down with it. Grimacing, I tucked the frizz behind my ears, hoping to fit in a hair wash before Phoebe’s arrival.

Driving under an arched railway bridge and along a tree-lined, residential side road I noticed a few drops of rain appearing on the windscreen. A grimly portentous grey sky stretched into the distance and a bubble of apprehension rose in my stomach as I flicked the wipers on, knotting itself stubbornly in my throat. ‘Warm and friendly’ were hardly forbidding adjectives, so what was I reading between the lines?

Chapter 2

My 11-year-old son Jamie arrived home a few minutes after me. On hearing the news he dashed into the kitchen, armed himself with some biscuits then took up a position leaning over the back of the sofa, staring out of the living-room window. With Jamie as self-appointed lookout I fussed around the spare room, trying to make it look as welcoming as possible for the new arrival. With the police involved, and Phoebe being taken without the consent of her parents, it was likely she would arrive in a highly distressed state.

Planned placements were much easier to prepare for than emergencies, with time to find out the child’s interests. With so little warning, it was difficult to tailor the bedroom to appeal especially to Phoebe. The airing cupboard was full of duvet covers and curtains I had collected over the years, with everything from Fireman Sam to Peppa Pig, but what would a warm and friendly eight-year-old like? I wondered, finally settling on a cover featuring Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

Tense with anticipation, I jumped at the sound of a key in the door.

‘Mum?’

It was my 14-year-old daughter Emily, just home from school.

‘Guess what, Em?’ I called out.

She darted up the stairs and arrived on the landing, rain-soaked blonde hair flattened against her flushed cheeks, rucksack still half-slung over her shoulder.

‘We got a call?’

I nodded, smiling. It was lovely to see her so excited. ‘She’s eight years old and friendly, that’s about all I know at the moment.’

‘Great!’ Throwing a soggy arm around my neck, she dropped her rucksack on the carpet, draped her damp blazer over the bannister and dashed past me into the spare room.

Flitting in and out of the space, she arranged soft toys on every available surface. Twisting a set of lights around the struts at the foot of the bed, she announced a sudden brainwave. ‘I still have my old stick-arounds, pink butterflies and stuff. We could decorate the walls to make it look more girlie in here.’

‘Lovely idea,’ I said as she rushed past me en route to her own bedroom. I was grateful that she and Jamie remained as committed to fostering as I was. In any fostering family, birth children sometimes get overlooked. Foster children can demand a high level of attention but Emily and Jamie never seemed to resent having to share my time – they just seemed to want to make life better for whoever stayed with us, particularly the most troubled youngsters. I regularly reminded them that by being friendly and welcoming, they helped to do just that.

‘Did they say how long she’d be staying?’ Emily asked, breathlessly separating sticky butterflies from the dusty packet she had retrieved from her room.

I pictured my scribbled notes and shook my head. Actually I knew very little about Phoebe and certainly had no idea how long the placement would last, but that was often the way. When children arrive as an emergency, the on-call foster carer is obliged to keep them for 72 hours, but as I had a vacancy it made sense for Phoebe to stay with us for as long as necessary.

As I was a short-term foster carer, the placement could last anything from one night to four or five years. The aim of short-term or ‘task-based’ fostering is to support the child through the uncertain stage when their birth family is being assessed by the local authority; if a Care Order is secured through the courts, the child needs to be primed for permanency with long-term carers.

With the room ready, Emily followed me downstairs and into the living room. I sank into the sofa and she flopped beside me. ‘I wish they’d hurry up,’ she said, laying her head on my shoulder.

My whirlwind son, Jamie, was far less effusive in his excitement. ‘Why couldn’t it have been a boy?’ he asked from his position on the two-seater sofa, though he still tapped out a rhythm on the window sill with restless fingers, eager to catch a first sight of his new housemate. ‘Girls are boring.’

I smiled to myself. While Emily was a sensitive soul, contemplative and always receptive to the feelings of others, my son says what he sees. ‘You know where you are with Jamie,’ was a comment made by several of his teachers. I presume it was a compliment.

‘Right, so we all remember the safe caring rules, don’t we?’

Jamie clapped a hand to his forehead. ‘Oh, heck, here we go,’ he groaned. ‘We’re not stupid, Mum!’

‘It’s important that we protect ourselves, Jamie, as well as Phoebe.’ I knew that they both tired of being reminded to stay out of all bedrooms except their own and to avoid physical ‘horseplay’ with the foster children but it was so easy to forget, especially once the children have settled and everyone adjusts to the new dynamics of having an extra person around.

An exhilarated excitement buzzed through my veins, as it did at the beginning of every placement. Everything to come would be new and mysterious, offering our family a whole new set of challenges. Before the year was out we would encounter an extreme range of disturbing behaviours and Phoebe would be one of the most extraordinary, heartbreaking placements we had ever taken on.

But in the companionable peace of our cosy living room, I had no sense of the enormity of what we were about to face.

Chapter 3

It was Jamie who first spotted something was amiss.

He was standing excitedly at the window to watch for her arrival, and I could tell by the quiver in his voice that the young girl walking up the path wasn’t at all what he was expecting.

‘Mum, she’s … er, Phoebe’s here.’

With the sound of my own heartbeat rushing in my ears I reached the door as the bell rang, giving me just enough time to smooth down my unruly, unwashed hair. ‘Hello, Phoebe,’ I said, the friendly smile on my face stiffening as I caught sight of the 120 centimetres of disgruntlement standing on the doorstep. One glance told me that the description ‘warm and friendly’ might have been a tad overgenerous.

‘Hello, Phoebe,’ she mimicked with a sneer before barging past me into the hall.

‘Goodness, well, come in,’ I said, with false brightness. All of the children I have looked after have exhibited some level of ‘challenging’ behaviour but on first arriving in a new placement, most were withdrawn; only once they felt safe enough to test the boundaries did the difficult behaviour begin to emerge, signalling the end of the honeymoon period.

It was the first sign that Phoebe would turn everything I thought I knew about childcare completely on its head.

Lenke, Phoebe’s social worker, hovered on the path. She was a rotund, bosomy woman, and I groaned inwardly as I stepped aside and welcomed her in. The previous year the Hungarian social worker had been responsible for a child I had accepted for a fortnight’s respite and though I’d got on fine with her, I formed the strong impression that her heart really wasn’t in the job. Besides a laissez-faire attitude, she didn’t seem to have a clue what she was doing.

Whatever I had asked for, whether it was GP details or a contact schedule, a blank expression would cross her face, followed by a futile search through the dog-eared contents of her overlarge leather bag. A sketchy command of the English language on top of her air of disinterest was one complication too many and in short, communication had been a trifle frustrating.

A loud chanting from the living room quickened my step along the hall.

‘Jamie, Jamie, Jamie! Wet willy, wet willy!’

‘Lovely it is to see you again, Rosie,’ Lenke said breezily to my back, as though the walls of the hallway were not vibrating with the sound of piercing screeches coming from the living room.

The first thing I noticed when I stood in the doorway was the horrified expression on my son’s face. He was arching over the back of the sofa, fending Phoebe off with his arms as she fought to stick her wet finger in his ear.