Sweat and Tears 18

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CHAPTER 18
I have still not named any of the other boys, nor described them,

but one of them was just wiping his cock after he had finished with me in the day room when the hellbitch came in.

“Ye gods, it can’t even restrain its lust until it’s in private. Alf, Thirlmere, three days.”

No big deal. Along with my ability to cry, I had lost my fear of the darkness down there. I still got no food, nor water, so I always kept a slice of stale bread, if I could, in my pockets, sifting for crumbs as I lay in the dark, and drank as often as I could manage during the day. I had developed my version of a pregnant woman’s labour pack, the bare essentials in one place, in my own case as much in the way of odd scraps in my pockets as I could get and a fully hydrated body.

Three days was pushing it, though, as while I had got used to fasting, it was the thirst that got me. Once, only once, when the witch had sent me there for four days, I tried drinking my own piss from the chamber pot, but it didn’t really help. I suppose most people would have vomited by that stage, but, well..

It wasn’t the first time. I will say no more. Cunningham’s friends….

I went into the darkness almost grateful. Every day I spent in there was a day I wasn’t raped, and while I know the apologists for those things tell stories of ‘learning to like it’, that never fucking happened; every single time was a nightmare, and the nightmare was endless, a horror story in an infinite number of chapters.

I was actually looking at my approaching legal maturity, and what would happen then? Released into society with a thank you, and a story for the papers? Or a spade to the back of the head and a shallow grave somewhere? Or that cunt Mitchell, a needle, and just another teenaged dead junkie found in an alley? I clung to Karen, prayed to my goddess, she couldn’t fail me, because if she did, I was dead.

I had, by now, a technique of sorts, and it was a type of catatonia. I recycled, endlessly, the good times. Almost beating that lad on my first race. Betson and the apple juice. My first kiss with Em. My first sight of Karen’s thighs slipping smoothly together under the tiniest of skirts. Sid getting really, really excited about Niven’s invented universe. Nana screaming at the sky on a wild day on top of the high fells, feeling the world and life hammering through her soul. Racing Iain home. That kiss with Em in the alley when she came on my thigh. I knew all about coming, now, oh yes, but that, that was a small clean thing that I held in my soul to keep the filth of my life from soiling it.

I had lost track of the days when there was a sudden avalanche of light as the door opened. A dark silhouette stood there silent, just for an instant, as I lay on the concrete floor, and I was away in a world of love and life when I heard “Jesus fucking Christ, somebody call an ambulance”

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They brought me out of hell on one of those wheeled stretcher things and Karen was there, sobbing like her heart was being ripped out through her throat. There were flashes going off everywhere; I later found out Dave and Roger’s deal with the Bona Boy in Blue had included immediate access to the raid that had been meticulously assembled by a small team of mid-ranking officers under the Chief Super in question. Teams were assembled, equipment loaded into vans, and nobody, nobody at all, told the location of the raid until they were on their way. This was well before mobile phones were around, so the only way any of Cunningham’s friends or, I suppose, customers could warn her would have been by police radio, which would have been a quick route to a cell in the circumstances.

They formed up on two parallel streets, out of their vans with helmets and short shields, truncheons out, and as they waited either side, the CS rang the bell himself. Dave said that he saw it as a boost to his career, as opposed to what Roger could have done for it. Alf answered.

“Police, we have a warrant to search…”

The slammed door was put in with a sledge hammer and Alf was taken straight off his feet by a police dog, and the CS was into Flogger’s office as she rose in indignation to tell him his career had just gone down in spectacular flames. He showed her the warrant, and had her removed.

It was apparently an hour before they found me, as one of the smallest and newest boys told them of Cunningham’s little holiday home and Charlie locked himself in Esk and tried to hang himself with ‘my’ tie.

The copper who found me was apparently struggling to hold his stomach in check, because..

Because there were other rooms in the cellar, that I hadn’t seen, and although I now know what was there I don’t think I want to spell it our here. I had been wondering what would happen when I hit eighteen, and those rooms were apparently where some boys had graduated from the home.

They began digging the grounds the same day.

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I knew nothing of this, as some well-meaning quack had dosed me to the eyeballs with some seriously good shit while they ran a drip into me to try and boost my fluid levels, and the siren wailed, and the blue lights flashed, and I went away from everything.

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I was lying on clean sheets, and there was sunlight through a window. Someone was holding my hand loosely, and I could hear snoring. I tried to sit up, and nearly threw up as the room span.

“Stevie?”

It was a girl’s voice. A face came into view, flaming curls, beautiful, my beloved Karen, and then another, now even more beautiful to me, all spots cleared, well, nearly….you notice the smallest things, the least important, when your world changes, and it was Emily whose tears fell onto my pillow, and then the snoring stopped as they shook Nana awake and she wailed her pain to the world as she clung to me.

It was a long time before we could have any coherent conversation. I had sort of got out of the habit of talking to people, you see. For a while there had been visitors who wanted me to talk dirty to them, or praise their great prowess as wondrous lovers, but that had been my one successful bit of rebellion. It got me more time in the dark, but, as I have said, there was nobody in there to harm me.

I surprised them all when the first male nurse came in that day, by screaming and trying to get out of the bed, and apparently it was Karen who worked it out. The uniforms…from then on, all my medical visitors were female. I had any number of examinations, and once the antibiotics had done their job, and the lice had been removed, there were a number of...procedures to repair the damage done to me by so many rapes. And not once did I see that other doctor, for which I thanked the god I no longer believed in.

Nana was sleeping with me, on a cot in the room, and Karen, Emily and Sid were running a shift system so that we never, ever had to be alone, and that was something I was terrified of. I was fully aware that that bitch had a lot of friends, and even with the coppers stationed outside my room I could never be sure of anyone except my little group of friends.

One day, I woke from a doze to see two tall men staring at me, and I thought that was it, and then one of them started crying while the second wrapped him in a hug, and I remembered the two toffs from a lifetime ago, and I managed to smile at them. I didn’t know then how much they had done for me, but once I was well, and the full story had been given to me, I realised that they were part of a very select crew.

So many others before me, without that luck. Oh god.

Emily there, every day she could manage, as school still had its call on her, and Nana, prattling on without a pause, always in the most stupidly cheerful voice she could manage, until the day I asked her what was happening with Cunningham, Alf, Don, Charlie….

“Not now, pet, not now. When tha’re stronger, then aye, mebbe.”

Finally I left hospital, and Karen and Brian took us all in while I healed, and the police dug, and the case hit the News of the World first, and then every other paper, as the extent of the corruption and evil was unveiled, despite a very clumsy and partial arson of council records.

Nobody had yet mentioned my bodily changes, but Emily provided me with a number of comfortable items including some much better bras, acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Nobody stressed me, nobody was even the slightest downbeat around me, until I was well into my sessions with a therapist and a police witness statement scribe.

I look back now and I realise that my reaction to the male nurse had disturbed them, and they were all assuming I was as fragile as a snowflake. I had survived three years of hell; couldn’t they see I must have some inner strength, just a little bit?

The façade started to break when I asked the obvious question, the day after Don was found face-down in the Eden. The river, not the cell, of course.

“Where’s Iain?”

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Comments

rescue

I can't blame him for his negative reaction to males, especially ones in uniform. Sometimes, i wonder if those kinds of wounds ever really heal. Mine havent, and i was not subjected to this level of abuse.

"Treat everyone you meet as though they had a sign on them that said "Fragile, under construction"

dorothycolleen

DogSig.png

Well writ.

And that, give or take is exactly how it was. The lock-ups, the beatings, the pretences that you liked it and liked 'them', the starvations,the lies, oh yes the endless lies, and the infinite methods of abuse. Yes, it all happened.
But above all, it is the final loss of all hope!!! That's when you're finally 'lost in care'.

My escape started out as a virtual suicide attempt that failed. It was a happy accident that the River Dee had deep calm pools in the summer and the water wasn't that cold. I crossed to the other bank from Wales, Flintshire into Cheshire, England. It seems strange now thinking back that my second unsuccessful attempt was in the River St Lawrence just as the ice was beginning to form. Maybe it's because I'm a Picese that I am seemingly attracted to water.

http://www.nkmr.org/english/lost_in_care_the_waterhouse_repo...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/child-abuse-scandal--the-b...

Keep writing Steph. It's all true.

Beverly.

Growing old disgracefully.

bev_1.jpg

I hardly breathed through this

I could see the whole thing going to rat-poo. Will Stevie ever trust a male again?

You learn to compartmentalise; You build an effing thick wall around yourself. I still do it after so many years, it gets me through life.

I was one of the lucky ones; "Or a spade to the back of the head and a shallow grave somewhere?"

Yeah, I was one of the lucky ones.

S.

Still awful but ...

... alleviated to a large extent by the fact that Steve is at least physically free but mentally is a different story. Can people recover from the sort of torture meted out to the poor kids in that dreadful place? Probably not completely but time, care and most of all love from friends and relatives must help Steve achieve a degree of normality eventually.

Powerful, shocking stuff.

Robi

It's almost unbelievable.

How can this have happened? Are children so worthless? Is Wales a nation of perverts and pedophiles? It has to have been a well known and accepted practice, or a result of a government so corrupt and disguting that it really needs to be flushed down a drain. It makes me wonder what the hell some people were thinking. I am truly disgusted.
How pervasive is this? Yes, they say that it could never happen again on this scale. So, they are conceding that it still goes on, just not as often?
Well written, Cyclist. A horrific story that keeps me reading. I have never been a fan of the death penalty, but this -almost-makes me want to rethink my position.
Thank you for the rescue. Hopefully we'll get on to a bit more pleasant reading-but I don't know. Stevie has a lot of painful memories to work through, I just hope he can make it through this. He has some strength of will, but is it enough?

Wren

Wales

No, we are not. This is set in NW England, just across the border from Scotland. The links I have provided earlier to abuse in Wales and Northern Ireland are matched by abuse in so many other places around the world that I weep. The one thing that these...individuals are good at is networking. The UK osed to have a charming little thing called PIE, the Paedophile Information Echange. Across the pond there is NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Forget the prejudice that demonises men, too; women are fully represented in the ranks of nonces. It's an equal-opportunity abomination.

I worried about writing the rescue, and then had an image of flashbulbs popping, and decided that that was a better way to show the chaos of the whole thing. I had a mental picture of Nana punching Cunningham in the face, but that was so unrealistic I had to lock her into a small Thirlmere while the rest went on.

People have spoken of the mental scars, but don't forget what Mitchell has done to Steve's body. What awaits you (and me) is his reaction to being mutlated for life, the trial and fall-out, the loss of his brother....and the start of a life in the fresh air. He has true love around him, as well as very powerful enemies.

You are right-

We have much more than our share of weird perverts and sexual predators. I just get so angry, and I have no idea how to deal with my anger. I don't even know who to be angry at! Sorry if I offended!

Wren

Not Wales ...

... in this case, it's the Lake District in the NW of England. However, I don't think this sort of thing is unique to any one country - it could happen anywhere and is probably happening somewhere in the world right now. Similar things have been happening in religious institutions (RC church scandals) and many children, supposedly orphans but not, in fact, always, were sent to Australia to start new lives in a new country right up to the 1960s and often not treated well.

I meant to mention my horror at the use of the name Thirlmere for the punishment room. The real Thirlmere is an artificial lake just south of Keswick and I have a wonderful memory of cycling round the quiet back road one Boxing Day in fresh snow on our tricycles. The contrast between magical beauty and Stygian darkness is remarkable Lets hope Steve gains some therapy from the fells he and Nan love.

Robi

I am laughing

Not in any sense of belittlement, but because several comments landed at once, and the feeling they delivered was exactly the same. Anger at the harm that has been done out in the real world, recognition that it is a universal thing, and best of all the expression of hope. Hope is that thing that, along with the ability to cry, is leeched out of children in these places. I wrote in Uniforms about genocide, and this is part of the same mindset, where another human being is diminished, treated as something expendable.

Pardon me if I get a bit emotional.

Robi

That is why I picked the names for the rooms and the cell. The steep slopes above the lake, through the woods, headng up to Helvellyn, or the walk along either edge to summit wth the view down to the lake....and a dungeon.

Sweat and Tears 18

I know the perfect punishment for the offenders, castration, and hormones, then let them earn their wages on the streets.

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine
    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

This Got To Me More

joannebarbarella's picture

Than the cruelties and obscenities that were inflicted on Steve in previous chapters.

The relief and the fragility of his rescue and the fact that he had to be protected 24/7 even after being taken out of that hellhole because of the network of fellow-travellers that these monsters influenced. The discovery of the bodies of other boys who had been subjected to the same abuse.

Rage,

Joanne