No More Silence
David had everything. No-one knew the London businessman was born into a world beyond poverty, the son of a rapist father and disturbed mother. Abandoned as a baby, he spent most of his childhood in care and suffered appalling sexual abuse. But no-one knew. But a call from the abuser's wife, 30 years on, proved he was living in a house of cards.The youngest of five children, David was the son of a drunkard rapist father and a mentally unhinged mother. His father was jailed and his mother deserted the family, leaving five urchins to battle to survive in an inner city Glaswegian slum. Rescued, but separated, David grows up with vague memories of Ma, but no memory of his siblings.For the next years of his young life David was shipped from pillar to post, until the authorities decided the best place for him and his youngest sister was Quarriers Children's village, where he was delivered into the hands of a paedophile.Helpless, powerless and alone, it was beaten into David that no-one cared for him and no-one loved him.Finally David escapes and goes on to build a life of success, determined to bury his secret and never tell anyone what happened to him. Then he receives a phone call from his abuser's wife, and all that he has built comes tumbling down. She asks David to be a character witness on behalf of the man who stole his childhood. Instead David chooses to tell the truth, turning the tide for detectives involved in a massive investigation and changing his own life forever. This is his remarkable story.
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DAVID WHELAN
WITH MARION SCOTT AND JIM MCBETH
No MoreSilence
He thought he’d got away with it. But one day
little David would find the strength to speak out.
To ‘Robbie’ for unswerving commitment, and to my
brothers and sisters, Johnny, Jeanette, Jimmy and Irene.
You are always in my heart.
Contents
Prologue
CHAPTER 1: Born Into a World Beyond Poverty
CHAPTER 2: Paradise Found
CHAPTER 3: Of Long Summer Days and Billy the Ram
CHAPTER 4: Paradise Lost
CHAPTER 5: ‘Give Your Ma a Kiss’
CHAPTER 6: ‘Where’s Yer Whore of a Mother?’
CHAPTER 7: A Very Special Place
CHAPTER 8: Who Was William Quarrier?
CHAPTER 9: The Intimate Stranger
CHAPTER 10: I Lose My Shield
CHAPTER 11: ‘Are You Clean, David?’
CHAPTER 12: The Strange World of the Beast
CHAPTER 13: The Beast of the Bell Tower
CHAPTER 14: Public Applause, Private Degradation
CHAPTER 15: Hope and Awakening
CHAPTER 16: Escape
CHAPTER 17: Climbing the Ladder
CHAPTER 18: A Family of Strangers
CHAPTER 19: Return to the Lair of the Beast
CHAPTER 20: The First Cracks
CHAPTER 21: A Single Tear for Ma
CHAPTER 22: Finding Morag
CHAPTER 23: Dining With Diana
CHAPTER 24: Success on a Plate
CHAPTER 25: Three Phone Calls Change My Life
CHAPTER 26: Pandora’s Box
CHAPTER 27: Telling Irene
CHAPTER 28: The Others
CHAPTER 29: Accused
CHAPTER 30: The Yellow Bird Café
CHAPTER 31: Witness for the Prosecution
CHAPTER 32: Roll of Shame
CHAPTER 33: Falling Apart
CHAPTER 34: Finding Da
CHAPTER 35: Fighting Back
CHAPTER 36: No More Silence
Help and Support for Victims of Abuse
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Prologue
We had arrived. I had fallen asleep on the journey to a new life that promised peace, security and safety. I awoke with a start, in time to see the words spelled out in flowers – ‘Suffer the little children.’ My first sight of and welcome to Quarriers Children’s Village. I did not realise then that the ancient words, spoken by Jesus in the New Testament, which were displayed so beautifully in a floral arrangement by the entrance, would be corrupted before I was much older. Nestling in the Renfrewshire countryside, this was a place far from the grime and unpredictability of life in an inner-city slum.
My sister Irene sat next to me in the back of the social worker’s car, her eyes luminous with uncertainty. I shrugged off sleep and wiped moisture from the car window. My first sight of the bell tower. It rose high above what I would later learn was known as the Children’s Cathedral. I had never seen anything so breathtaking. My world had been the drab, monotonous, utilitarian architecture of a sink housing estate, where no one looked up. Heaven was such a hard place to find. Structures such as the Children’s Cathedral dominated only places where there was hope. The soaring steeple pointed to Heaven, but I would soon find it was pointing the way to Hell. He would see to that. The bell tower was where he took me, its impenetrable walls stifling my screams as he stole my innocence and planted the seeds of my own destruction, which would come many years later, when I was an adult and believed that I had left the past behind.
His name was John Porteous. He is at the heart of this story, but there will be few mentions of his given name. I once called him ‘Uncle John’, but I was a child then and trusting. I had yet to be betrayed by the man whose duty it was to protect me, to keep me safe. Therefore he is for ever the Beast – it is how I have referred to him in my mind ever since. For three decades it took all of my strength to block out the unspeakable things he did to me over my time at the children’s home. A single phone call, 30 years after I escaped his clutches, proved to me that my entire existence was an edifice built on sand. In a matter of a few seconds, the façade that masked the pain of a lost childhood and a misguided sense of shame was torn away. I was forced to stop running in a race that I could not win, a race away from my past. This time, this time justice had to prevail and I had to play my part. The phone call placed me at the centre of Operation Orbona, the biggest police investigation into systematic sexual and physical abuse at a children’s home. Eight of the abusers would be convicted, and I would witness the Beast going to jail.
I thought then it was over. I was wrong. It was just the beginning. Before I could reach the light, everything in my life would be taken from me. I would lose my successful career, the millionaire lifestyle and everything I had so carefully created as a shield against my secret pain. This is the story of how I fought back.
CHAPTER 1
Born Into a World Beyond Poverty
I am searching for memories. I am four years old. I think I am alone. I am still hungry, but I force myself to save some food, the remains of lunch. Mother, a tall, fragrant woman with a kind face and a ready smile, is in another room. Father, big, bluff, reassuring, is out of the house, but I don’t know where. He left with a cheery wave, ruffling my hair with large, clean hands.
I am in the drawing room, a generously proportioned space that is little used. The ceiling, with its ornate, elaborate cornicing, seems very high above me. Light floods in through the tall window, which looks out onto a broad expanse of lawn, running into the distance towards a destination that is as yet unknown to me. Mother’s dog – a Cairn terrier? Misty? – is trying desperately to attract my attention, begging for what I have in my hand. The dog dances at my feet, but I reject the animal’s overture. This is about survival.
