Dawn Taylor

I know that my dad was violent to my mum, but because he moved out when I was five I can’t be sure of what exactly happened, or what I myself witnessed. I do remember seeing him burn my mum with boiling water: we children were all made to sit on the settee whilst he poured boiling water on my mum’s neck. She still has scars from the burns. I also remember seeing him holding my younger brother by his feet out of one of the upstairs windows. He was holding him by his feet with one hand and in his other he had a knife. I stood below in a small crowd of people while a policeman tried to calm him down. I must have been about three. I don’t know what effect seeing these things has had on me but in a way I’m more frightened of what I witnessed but can’t remember because I feel that I have no power over those lost memories. When I was twelve I started harming myself by cutting my wrists and taking overdoses and when I was fourteen I was diagnosed as suffering from depression and I’ve taken medication since then. I still go through phases of harming myself and I’m not sure I’ll ever be free of it. I wonder if there are things that I can’t remember which make it impossible for me to gain control over what I do to myself.

My dad didn’t move far away: he was round the corner all the time I was growing up. Nevertheless I had no contact with him. He had a new family and he made no effort to keep in touch with us. It was only when I was eighteen that I made contact with him. I was in the pub and someone pointed out a man at one of the tables and told me he was my dad, so I went and introduced myself. I wanted some kind of revenge or perhaps just explanation, but it wasn’t like that.

I’m married to Wally. We’ve been together since I was seventeen. Our youngest child is Ben, who’s now fourteen. He’s never really gone to school. He was thrown out when he was nine after he spat at a lady teacher and he was never allowed back. He has a problem with women telling him what to do - including me, perhaps most of all me. It took us until he was twelve to sort out some home tutoring. I was on at the authorities to provide some sort of schooling at home, and the authorities threatened me with fines for his non-attendance. Meanwhile the school refused to have him. Now he goes to Schools on Wheels; it’s a mini-bus which comes and picks him up each day. He does his learning on the bus and then as a reward they go off and do other activities in the afternoons.

My daughter, Charlotte, is sixteen. She had a baby earlier in the year which Wally and I look after because Charlotte moved out and left the baby with us. She’s meant to come and visit regularly but she doesn’t often turn up.