The Girl Without a Voice: The true story of a terrified child whose silence spoke volumes
Bestselling author and foster carer Casey Watson tells the shocking and deeply moving true story of a young girl with severe behavioural problems.This is the first of several stories about ‘difficult’ children Casey helped during her time as a behaviour manager at her local comprehensive.Casey has been in the post for six months when thirteen-year-old Imogen joins her class. One of six children Casey is teaching, Imogen has selective mutism. She’s a bright girl, but her speech problems have been making mainstream lessons difficult.Life at home is also hard for Imogen. Her mum walked out on her a few years earlier and she’s never got on with her dad’s new girlfriend. She’s now living with her grandparents. There’s no physical explanation for Imogen’s condition, and her family insist she’s never had troubles like this before.Everyone thinks Imogen is just playing up – except the member of staff closest to her, her teacher Casey Watson. It is the deadpan expression she constantly has on her face that is most disturbing to Casey. Determined there must be more to it, Casey starts digging and it’s not long before she starts to discover a very different side to Imogen’s character.A visit to her grandparents’ reveals that Imogen is anything but silent at home. In fact she’s prone to violent outbursts; her elderly grandparents are terrified of her.Eventually Casey’s hard work starts to pay off. After months of silence, Imogen utters her first, terrified, words to Casey: ‘I thought she was going to burn me.’Dark, shocking and deeply disturbing, Casey begins to uncover the reality of what Imogen has been subjected to for years.
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This book is a work of non-fiction based on the author’s experiences. In order to protect privacy, names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed or reconstructed.
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First published by HarperElement 2014
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© Casey Watson 2014
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Source ISBN: 9780007510696
Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007518159
Version 2016-10-19
Contents
This book is dedicated to all those who work with children in any capacity. I am filled with admiration for those who strive to make a difference in the lives of those who need someone to listen.
I would like to thank my wonderful agent, Andrew, and Vicky and her team of super beings at HarperCollins who work tirelessly to ensure my words make it out there. As ever, special thanks to my friend and mentor Lynne, who is there, always, to get me back on track no matter what dramas life bestows.
There are jobs and there are jobs, and my perfect kind of job has always been the kind where you wake up Monday morning with no idea what the week might have in store.
Which was exactly the kind of job I did have, so it was definitely a blessing that my home life was, in contrast, so predictable.
‘Mu-um!’ came my daughter’s plaintive voice from upstairs. ‘I can’t find my other black shoe! I have five minutes to get out of the door and I can’t find it anywhere! Have you seen it? Someone’s obviously moved it!’
I shook my head and sighed. That was typical of Riley. She was 18 now and we were so alike, in so many ways. Same black hair, same laugh, same taste in music and fashion. But in one important respect we were different. Where it was my life’s mission to try and make the world a tidier place, Riley was the opposite: she was just about the most disorganised person I knew. I knew where her shoe would be. It would, same as ever, be in exactly the same place as it landed when she last flung it off.
I headed upstairs anyway, however, because I had the luxury of an hour till I needed to leave for work, whereas she really did only have five – no, four – minutes. She’d secured a great job after leaving college, and she was really enjoying it. She worked in a travel agents, which she said gave her ‘that holiday feeling every day’. But it wasn’t a holiday – there was an end time and, more pertinently, a start time. Just as well she had such an understanding boss.
I was halfway up the stairs when she appeared on the landing. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, hopping as she pulled the errant shoe on to her foot. ‘Panic over. Someone must have kicked it under my bed.’
‘Er, excuse me?’ I chided, as she came down to join me. ‘Someone? Which someone might that be?’
In answer she planted a quick kiss on my cheek, then she was out of the door to catch her bus with only seconds to spare. I waved her off, thinking wistfully of how it might feel to be 18 again, off to work without a care in the world.
The children in my own world were different. Well, the ones I spent my weekdays with, at any rate. I worked as a behaviour manager in a big inner-city comprehensive school, so the kids that came my way were the opposite of carefree. They came to spend time with me for a variety of different reasons, but what they had in common was that they couldn’t cope in a mainstream school setting. My job, as well as providing a safe space in which they could work, was to assess them and decide upon the best course of action, which could involve counselling them, teaching them coping techniques and/or, in some cases, referral to outside agencies that could help them, such as professional counsellors and clinical psychologists. Sometimes it could be as simple as formulating a temporary alternative curriculum, and other times it could end up being protracted and complex – where a child’s difficulties were too severe to be dealt with using mainstream school facilities, for example, it might mean a transfer to a live-in establishment that had the staff and facilities appropriate to their needs. And in extreme cases, where the children were deemed to be at risk at home, social services might be brought in and the child placed in care.
