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My dad was a drinker and because there wasn’t any money my mum stole things for us. She was caught so many times that in the end she went to prison, and at that point my brother and I were put into care. I was nine and my brother was three months. I was in care till I was eleven but then my mother sent me to live with an uncle in Redcar. He wasn’t the right person to be my carer: he drank and he would fling me out, so I ended up living in bedsits with people who weren’t good to me. When I was fifteen I started using heroin and I’ve been an addict since then, though there have been periods when I’ve been clean.
I came out of Low Newton last Thursday after serving six weeks. My sentence was for trying to take some subutex in to my boyfriend in Holme House Prison. It was my first sentence though I’ve been locked up over the weekend in the police station before. I think because I was pregnant it was easier for me - the other girls didn’t give me any trouble. I was on a methadone script when I went in and they said I could stay on that if I wanted, but I agreed with the doctor to reduce my dose. I had to go to North Durham hospital for a scan. I sat in the waiting room handcuffed to a prison officer with the other women looking at me. It made me feel like an animal.
The punishment for me wasn’t really being in prison: it was being separated from my four year old boy. I think that’s the case for all mothers. Maybe it’s like that for fathers too but it doesn’t seem to be. I hadn’t been separated from him before, so six weeks was a very long time. He went to my mum’s and I thought the social worker was going to bring him on a visit but that didn’t happen. I felt lonely and I had to reflect on what I’ve made of my life.
I was born and brought up in Paisley in Scotland. My dad was violent to my mum: he broke her jaw, her collar bone and her arm, he gave her black eyes and once, when I was seven, he tried to drown her in the bath. I remember going into the bathroom and seeing my dad holding her head under the water. He didn’t realise I was watching. I remember her hair floating on the surface of the water like weed on the surface of a stream. My dad was shouting at her but I’m not sure she could hear.
