Mummy Told Me Not to Tell (9 page)

When Lucy and Paula returned, I briefly took them aside and, having asked them how their day had gone, told them of Reece’s comment that morning after he’d kissed them goodbye. I didn’t need to say anything more: they knew the implications of having a sexually aware child in the house, and they also knew the guidelines we all had to follow. We followed the ‘safer caring’ guidelines anyway, with any fostered child, but if there were issues over possible sexual abuse or even inappropriate television watching which had made the child sexually aware, we were even more careful. So, for example, bedtime stories were read downstairs, not in the child’s bedroom, and kisses and cuddles were given downstairs, with the child at our side, not on our laps or face to face. It’s sad, really, because we naturally hug and kiss our own children without a second thought, but with a child who has been sexually abused, or has come from a highly sexualized and inappropriate home life, even the most innocent of hugs or kisses (like those the girls had allowed Reece that morning) can be
misinterpreted. Reece would still be having his hugs and kisses — he was after all a little seven-year-old — but there would always be someone else present and we would be just that bit more careful so that nothing could be misconstrued by him.

Jill phoned just after 5.00 p.m. and I updated her, and before I went to bed I wrote up my log notes. That night I lay in bed contemplating and worrying over the day’s events, and I wondered how well I had handled everything that had happened — from Reece’s hyperactive behaviour, to the stealing, and of course his comments about giving the girls one. Foster carers are plagued by analysing and self-doubt, even more so than when raising one’s own children; for when all is said and done what greater responsibility is there than bringing up someone else’s child?

O
n Sunday evening, as we were approaching the end of our first weekend together, I was feeling quite positive. Although it had been hard work, with Lucy and Paula home for the weekend the three of us had been working together and continually reinforcing the expected standards of behaviour. Perhaps it was my imagination, but Reece now seemed to be cooperating more readily than he had done during the first couple of days. I was still having to resettle him regularly in the morning, but it was taking only half an hour rather than the hour and a half when he’d first arrived. He slept well each night and because Lucy and Paula had helped, the task of caring for Reece’s many needs had been split three ways and hadn’t been so draining on me. We’d had only a couple of incidents over the weekend when he’d tried to head-butt and none of him biting.

It was seven o’clock. Reece had had his bath and hair wash and was downstairs in the living room in his pyjamas, dressing gown and shark-shaped slippers.
Paula was reading him some bedtime stories. We had all been sitting together in the living room to begin with; then Lucy left to watch a television programme in her bedroom and I slipped into the kitchen to clear up. I had purposely left the living-room door open — this was one of our safer caring policies — and I was standing in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil.

Suddenly I heard Paula squeal, and then shout: ‘No, Reece! That’s naughty! Don’t do that!’

Paula is the most quietly spoken and placid of my three children and it was so unlike her to raise her voice, let alone cry out in alarm, that I was instantly out of the kitchen and into the living room. Reece was still sitting on the sofa, now grinning from ear to ear. Paula was on her feet and looked flustered and alarmed.

‘What is it?’ I asked her.

‘Don’t know,’ Reece said.

I looked at Paula, who, while not crying, was quite clearly upset and embarrassed.

‘I’m talking to Paula,’ I said to Reece. I looked again at Paula.

She came up close to me and, with her back to Reece, said quietly: ‘Mum, he grabbed my breast and tried to put his hand up my skirt.’

‘Reece!’ I said, turning and glaring at him.

‘So?’ he said and shrugged, clearly seeing absolutely nothing wrong in his behaviour.

‘Stay there,’ I said to him. I drew Paula out of the living room and into the hall so we couldn’t be overheard. I wanted to speak to Paula first and find out exactly what had happened before I spoke to Reece.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked. It was an unpleasant thing for a grown woman to have to deal with, let alone a self-conscious teenager.

‘Yes,’ she said, still acutely embarrassed. ‘I was just reading him a story and he suddenly grabbed my breast. Then he tried to put his hand up my skirt and kiss me on the lips.’

‘Dear me!’ I said, appalled. I’ll talk to him now.’ Paula knew it was no good me simply telling off Reece, because he had seen nothing wrong in his lewd behaviour and therefore wouldn’t know what he was being told off for. If he had come from a home environment where it had been the norm for people to grope each other, then he was probably copying what he had seen without any moral judgement or principle.

I desperately needed more information on Reece’s background to know what exactly I was dealing with in terms of the level of abuse at home. No one had phoned from the social services on Friday and when Jill had phoned she didn’t have any more information. I would phone her first thing on Monday and ask her to find out more. I wasn’t having my family abused because of simple lack of information. It is a sad fact that foster families are abused by the children they look after — physically, mentally and, even as had just happened to Paula, sexually. However, I could minimize the risk by knowing more, and it was a sign of how mature my family had become with fostering and having to deal with this type of behaviour that Paula wasn’t more distressed by the incident.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said to her, blaming myself for not being more vigilant. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ I gave her a hug.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know it’s difficult. He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong, Mum.’

‘I know, but he is going to start to learn, and now.’

Paula went upstairs to her room while I returned to the living room. Reece was still sitting on the sofa and looking at the book, not zooming around as he normally did if we left him alone for a minute, so that I wondered if he was subdued because part of him knew what he had done was wrong and he was expecting to be told off. How naive I was!

‘Isn’t she gonna read the story?’ Reece asked as I went over and sat beside him on the sofa.

‘No, Paula isn’t going to read. She is upset and I have to tell you why.’

He didn’t look up but turned the page of the book. I took it from him and, closing it, set it to one side. I wanted his full attention.

‘Reece,’ I said, searching for eye contact. ‘I need to talk to you about how you just touched Paula. It wasn’t nice and little boys don’t do that.’

He glanced up at me and shrugged. ‘I wanted to feel her cunt. Ain’t nothing wrong in that.’

I looked at him, and felt sickened to the core. Whatever had he been party to at home to acquire that type of language? He said it so easily and matter-of-factly that he clearly believed there was absolutely nothing wrong in it. As foster carers we become used to hearing all types of crude language but never before had I heard it so blatant and in one so young.

‘Reece,’ I said, deathly serious. ‘What you did to Paula was very wrong. You touched her private parts, and they are private. We don’t touch anyone there. You have private parts which are different from a girl’s, and they are private too. Private means they are only ours. We can touch or look at our own private parts but no one else can. Do you understand?’

He shrugged again. It was a difficult conversation to have with a child of seven, even one with an average IQ, but it was so much harder to explain to a child who had learning difficulties, so I tried to explain further.

‘Reece, do you know where your private parts are? The places that only you can touch?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, grinning.

‘OK, point to them.’ He jabbed a finger towards his crotch. ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘But it’s a wider area, all round here.’ Without actually touching him I ran an imaginary band round him, below his waist. ‘It includes your willy and your bottom,’ I said. ‘Those are a boy’s private parts. Now a girl’s private parts are down here too’ — I drew my hand across the lower part of my stomach — ‘and round here.’ I patted my bottom. ‘But girls have another area that is private, here.’ I ran my hand round my bust line. ‘This is also private and you never touch a girl in either of these places. Do you understand?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, grinning. But I wondered how much he was actively taking in, and how much of what he had seen and learned at home could now be corrected by my lecture. I paused.

‘Why did you do it, Reece?’ I asked after a moment. ‘Why did you touch Paula there?’

He shrugged. ‘Dunno. Felt like it. Felt like touching her up.’

‘Well, don’t,’ I said firmly. ‘Ever again. Do you understand me?’

His language and attitude suggested he had assumed his behaviour was completely acceptable, the most natural thing in the world, and that I was making a fuss over nothing. I shuddered at the possibilities of what exactly had been going on at home and what he had seen and heard. I was also somewhat angered that when Reece had been placed with me the social services hadn’t told me more. The family had been ‘known’ to them for years, so someone in the offices must have a good idea of what had been going on.

It is a continual and justifiable complaint of foster carers that we aren’t given enough information when it is available and known to the social services. We are told things about the foster child (or children) on a ‘need to know’ basis, and sometimes the social services’ interpretation of what we ‘need to know’ is very different from the foster carer’s. Not only does this mean that we can’t cater for the child’s needs as best we might, but in the worst-case scenario foster families have been put at risk, and even had their own children abused because vital information has been withheld. There have been cases brought by foster carers against the social services where the judge has found in favour of the foster carers and awarded damages against social services, so attitudes should have changed.

Without wishing to labour the point, a friend of mine who fosters recently had a two-year-old boy placed with her whose parents were intravenous drug users and were known to be HIV positive. The child had been given a test for the HIV virus the year before, and although the test result was known to the social services, they refused to pass it on to the carer. They said if she was practising good hygiene then she and her family wouldn’t be at risk and so she didn’t need to know if the child was HIV positive.

I repeated to Reece what I had already told him about private parts meaning exactly that. Then, without finishing the book Paula had been reading, I took him upstairs to get ready for bed. He was still unrepentant, which was understandable, as he appeared to genuinely not know that he had done anything wrong, but as with all his unacceptable behaviour we had to try to help him unlearn it, and change what he was used to; otherwise his future was mapped out, and it wasn’t good.

After I’d settled Reece in bed and said goodnight, I checked on Paula in her bedroom. With years of experience as the daughter of a foster carer, she showed resilience and understanding.

‘It’s OK,’ she said, raising a smile. ‘It was more a shock than anything.’

‘All right, love,’ I said, kissing her cheek. ‘But I want you to put some distance between you and Reece for the next few days. It will help him to understand what is acceptable if he feels your disapproval.’

First thing on Monday morning, with Reece settled in the living room in front of a DVD of the Walt Disney
Aladdin,
I telephoned Jill and updated her. She appreciated the seriousness of what I was saying and said she’d phone the social services, try to get some more information and then get back to me asap.

True to her word, half an hour later Jill phoned, having spoken to Karen, who was standing in for Jamey Hogg while he was on leave. Disappointingly Karen hadn’t been able to add much beyond what she’d already told me, but had said again that she’d seen Reece watching a sexually explicit adult video when she’d visited the family, and that there were concerns about Reece’s father’s sexual behaviour towards Susie, Reece’s half-sister. This, together with neglect, had been the basis for bringing Reece and Susie into care. Karen had said that as soon as Jamey Hogg returned he would contact me.

I thanked Jill and asked if she could find out what was happening about contact arrangements, and also Reece’s schooling, as I hadn’t heard anything about either. She said she would and that she would visit us the following morning. I spent the rest of the day keeping Reece constructively occupied, reinforcing the boundaries for good behaviour and praising him at every opportunity. By the time the girls returned from school I was exhausted and dinner was late, but I felt I was making some progress.

When Jill visited us the following morning she was able to witness all aspects of Reece’s behaviour first hand, from flying around in a prehistoric bird or shark
attack (when she first arrived), to sitting quietly absorbed in a book which Jill read to him while I made us coffee. She also heard his defensiveness about anything connected to home.

‘That’s a smart sweatshirt,’ Jill complimented him. ‘Did mum buy it?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Susie sends her love. You’ll be seeing her before too long.’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Secrets,’ Jill said quietly to me when I saw her out. ‘He’s been sworn to secrecy.’ And I agreed, but the worrying thing was about what?

On Wednesday at lunchtime as Reece and I were having some soup and a roll, the phone rang. I answered the extension in the kitchen, where I could keep an eye on Reece, although he was absorbed in eating. It was a social worker called Melissa, who said she was trying to arrange contact between Reece and his mother, and as many of the siblings as possible. She said Reece’s mother, Tracey, had been into the council offices threatening them with legal action because she hadn’t seen Reece since he’d been moved to me the week before, and the court order said that she was supposed to see him twice a week. Whatever Tracey may or may not have done, she was right about this. Melissa was in a panic now, trying to arrange contact and comply with the judge’s court order.