Punished: A mother’s cruelty. A daughter’s survival. A secret that couldn’t be told.
‘Punished’ is the inspiring true story of an unusual little girl, Vanessa, whose childhood was devastated by torture and abuse at the hands of her sadistic mother. Vanessa was nearly destroyed until she discovered a secret that ultimately saved her life.From the age of 3, Vanessa lived in daily terror of her mother's unpredictable rage. If she was 'naughty', her mother would lash out at her – with beatings, torture, starvation and making Vanessa sleep in their garden's pigsty, tied up like an animal. Her mother said her punishments were God's revenge on her for being the devil's child. Her father lived in denial of her suffering.When she was 6 years old, Vanessa's grandfather began to sexually abuse her – to her despair, aided and abetted by both her mother and grandmother. At eight years old, she then discovered that the 'mother' who hated her so much had adopted her as a baby and would never love her as her own.At the most horrific times of Vanessa's abuse, she nearly lost all hope that she would escape her prison, until mysterious things started to happen to her that allowed her to fight back.This is the story of how Vanessa survived a childhood that nearly destroyed her and how her secret led her out of the horrors of her past.
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Punished
A mother’s cruelty
A daughter’s survival
A secret that couldn’t be told
Vanessa Steel
with Gill Paul
This is a work of non-fiction. In order to protect privacy,
some names and places have been changed.
Contents
Title PagePrologueChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty OneChapter Twenty TwoChapter Twenty ThreeChapter Twenty FourChapter Twenty FiveChapter Twenty SixChapter Twenty SevenChapter Twenty EightChapter Twenty NineChapter ThirtyChapter Thirty OneChapter Thirty TwoChapter Thirty ThreeChapter Thirty FourChapter Thirty FiveChapter Thirty SixChapter Thirty SevenChapter Thirty EightChapter Thirty NineEpilogueAcknowledgementsCopyrightAbout the Publisher
I turned my key in the lock of Mum’s door and pushed, but it wouldn’t open. Something was stuck behind it, blocking it. I pushed harder but couldn’t shift the obstruction.
What’s she done now? I wondered. Is she deliberately trying to keep me out?
Then I looked through the letterbox and saw a beige- stockinged leg – her leg.
‘Mum!’ I yelled. ‘Mum, are you all right?’
Stupid question. Of course she wasn’t all right. I shouted at the top of my voice – ‘Help me!’ – and the next-door neighbour hurried out to see what was going on.
Stuttering with shock, I called for an ambulance and told the operator we’d probably need the fire brigade as well to break the door down. While we waited for them I sat on the step calling to Mum through the crack of the door but getting no response. Was that her breathing I could hear? I wasn’t sure. My heart was racing like crazy and so many thoughts flooded my head I felt dizzy.
No, she can’t die. Please don’t let her die!
I couldn’t help feeling guilty that I hadn’t been there when she needed me, even though I had been dropping in every day to do her washing and cleaning.
‘Hold on in there, Mum,’ I whispered through the door. ‘You can make it, I know you can.’
Tears filled my eyes as I heard a distinct, low-pitched moan. She was alive.
* * *
One of the ambulance men managed to get his arm through the crack and shift her so that they could get in without breaking the door down. They gave her oxygen and she regained a groggy kind of consciousness. I stood, useless, a huge lump in my throat and sadness engulfing me.
It was at that moment I realized that it was finally time to let loose all the dark childhood memories I had suppressed for decades. The woman lying crumpled on the floor and fighting for every breath had made my childhood a living hell. Now I knew I was in no way ready for her death, because while she was still alive I might be able to force her to answer the questions that had plagued me throughout my adult life.
What had I done to make her hate me so much that she did so many cruel things to me? Did she remember all the times she almost killed me? Why did she allow me to be a victim of terrible abuse? Why didn’t Dad or any other family member protect me from her? Why did I still feel a responsibility towards her and long for her to show me some affection, despite all that she had put me through?
As my mother was lifted into the ambulance, I knew that I didn’t have much time left to find out.
What crime had I committed? Why had she punished me, endlessly and thoroughly and with spite and cruelty, from the day I was born?
Muriel Pittam was never really cut out to be a housewife and mother.
She was the second of Charles and Elsie Pittam’s four daughters, and judging from the photographs in the family albums, she was much prettier than her sisters. From the way she looks at the camera, you can tell that she knows she is cute and is challenging you to acknowledge it. The Pittams were not rich – Grandpa Pittam was a watch and clock repairer – but it’s obvious from the pictures of little Muriel in her pretty dresses and ballet tutus that she didn’t want for anything.
By the time she was in her twenties, Muriel Pittam was an absolute stunner, and she knew it. The photographs in the family album show her as a glamorous young blonde. In one picture she is leaning against a gate in a two-piece suit with a tightly belted waist and high-heeled shoes that must have taken her well over the six-foot mark. In another, she’s wearing a smart floral dress with a fitted bodice and flared skirt. There’s even one of her posed on a rock like a mermaid, wearing a bikini. Bikinis were only invented in 1947, the year after the A-bomb was tested on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. Muriel must be wearing one of the first on the market.
All through my childhood, Mum often harked back to the glory days of her youth, when she worked as a seamstress and part-time model.
‘I used to make ball gowns, you know. Suits, day dresses, coats, wedding dresses, all of them hand sewn,’ she would say. ‘I worked for Isabel’s in Birmingham, where the fashionable ladies shopped. The wife of the head of Woolworths got her clothes there. And Arthur Askey’s wife. And I modelled. I had a perfect figure,’ she boasted. ‘Five foot eleven with a twenty-three-inch waist. My skin was flawless and photographers used to say I had the best profile they’d ever seen. There were photos of me modelling hats in the
