I told the psychologist that I really do hate seeing homeless people. I have heard people say that not all of them are genuine. When I was fifteen years old I became homeless because my grandmother who had brought me up from a baby had died and my grandfather had made it clear that he didn’t want me in his house.
I was taken to live with the Salvation Army. I lived with Captain Graham Harding and his wife Ann. I lived with them from fifteen years old until I was just seventeen years old. I found myself homeless again when they left St. Helena. At the time I was taken in by a Mrs Gladys Joshua, unfortunately she threw me out after about two days. She probably saw me as a troublesome teenager.
When young people become homeless they tend to end up with the wrong people. I think that it might be worse for young girls as they very often end up with not very nice men. I was seventeen years old when I met a man in his thirties. He offered me a place to live and I was desperate, so I took up the offer.
I knew that it meant that I had to sleep with him, and shortly after I moved in with him I came home from work early and found him in bed sexually abusing his vulnerable sister. I told the psychologist that I could not forget what I had seen. I found it very distressing that he had been sexually abusing his vulnerable sister if I hadn’t seen what he was doing I would never had known. He was always insanely jealous of me even looking at another man. I moved out straight away, but had fallen pregnant.
I felt so ashamed of myself for having a baby by a man that I did not love, that I hid the pregnancy for almost eight months. I didn’t have any doctors care at all. I gave birth to a tiny healthy baby girl weighing just four pounds.
I was staying with an older couple at the time, but they too abused me. She mentally abused me and he sexually abused me. This abuse lasted for four years.
Every morning at five o’clock this evil so called foster father would come into my bedroom, he would pull my clothes off, and he would bite my face. My baby girl lived with me. At least my foster mum was kind to my baby.
I told the psychologist that the foster father always abused me in front of my baby. My daughter would be screaming from her cot. He always said to my baby don’t cry baby you to will be a slut just like your mum one day.
That evil foster father would slap me around my face while I was holding my baby, he really was a nasty spiteful man. I told the psychologist that the foster father was over twenty stone, six ft tall while I was just eight stone. His fists were strong too, my baby was terrified when he hit me.
I was so happy the day that he dropped dead. The Corkers were a very abusive couple indeed. In my day sex crimes weren’t reported. The police were not trained to deal with sex crimes against woman and children, besides I wouldn’t have anywhere to live and the Corkers knew that.
All through my childhood and teenage years all I ever knew was sexual abuse and domestic violence. I had watched my grandfather physical and mentally abuse my grandmother and now I was being abused again. The first abusive man in my life was my grandfather Fred.
Fred hated me with a passion he mentally and physically abused me from a very young age. On top of that there were the two evil teenage rapists. Then there was my foster father who physically and mentally abused me for over three years. Next was my older boyfriend who abused me and stalked me even though he was sexually abusing his vulnable sister.
Then in 1978 I met and married Bob. He had come to St. Helena for a holiday. He was such a lovely person. He told me jokes and I found myself laughing for the first time for a very long time.
Shortly after I met Bob he asked me to marry him. I was absolutely flattered and I said to him “But I hardly know you.” to which he replied “You will get to know me, if you marry me.” Four weeks after we met we were married in the tiny baptist church in Jamestown in St. Helena.
It was the happiest day of my life. I felt so proud to be Bobs wife I knew that I was never going to leave him.
I always thought that I owed him something for taking my daughter and I away from the misery that we were living in. Bob was a very good hard working husband our marriage lasted for over thirty seven years. The psychologist asked what were the best things in my life so I told her that I love seeing my grandmother looking happy, she was most happy when the big ships called to Saint Helena.
She called them steamers, there were always letters, presents and money from her children in England and Ascension Island. I was happy too because my mum would send me lovely toys and beautiful dresses. I was happy when my grandmother took me to Jamestown it was so different from living in Deadwood. I now know that the police are much better trained to deal with sex crimes.
I hope that single mother’s like myself are given a safe place to live. Because it isn’t nice for a baby to see their mother being abused, my daughter suffers from clinical depression which I think is a direct result from watching Johnny Corker hitting me and sexually abusing me when she was a baby.