Jodie. Now that she’d been able to reveal what had happened to her, perhaps she would begin to get better.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
It was weeks before Jodie felt safe enough to reveal any more, and during that time her behaviour, far from improving, deteriorated still further. She became increasingly violent, not only towards me and the other children, but also towards herself. For some reason, she frequently became distressed at the dinner table. In the middle of a meal, she would suddenly start clawing at her face, or tearing at her hair. At other times, she would scratch and pinch her arms, leaving marks and bruises. I would quickly restrain her, of course, wrapping her in my arms until she’d calmed down.
She was also defecating again. After the first couple of instances, she had calmed down and stopped messing herself, but now it started up again and was worse than before. Now she was simply smearing shit all over herself and then, if I didn’t get to her quickly enough, over the house. There was no apparent pattern or motive, but she did seem to understand that messing up fabrics would lead to a more severe telling-off than smearing impermeable surfaces (such as the walls or banister) and she appeared to make a point of avoiding getting it on the sofa and curtains. As usual, it was impossible to understand Jodie’s motives, or even whether she was really aware of what she was doing.
As a result of her activities, the house constantly smelled of disinfectant. One evening as I prepared for bed, I saw that the skin on my hands had become chapped and red, and my fingertips were puckered from all the detergents. This habit of Jodie’s was unpleasant for everyone in the house, to say the least, even though we probably have an unusually heightened tolerance of poor hygiene, having dealt with a number of foster children with similar problems. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the day I looked round one teenage girl’s bedroom, trying to find the source of a persistent nasty smell. When I peered behind her wardrobe, I found a stash of used sanitary towels, dating back to when she had first arrived six months before.
Despite the violence, the insults, the excrement, the lack of sleep and numerous other traumas, the children were remarkably patient with Jodie, as they now knew the reason for her behaviour.
Shortly after the first disclosures, I sat down with them one evening and told them about the abuse, and warned them about some of the additional difficult behaviour we might expect. It was important to tell them because Jodie was as likely to disclose to them as to me, so they needed to be prepared. Besides, they were already hearing things that she had started saying. Just as she had with Nicola, she was beginning to drop casual references about what had happened to her into conversations. I had to tell them what she was talking about.
With Paula being only thirteen, there were certain physical aspects of the abuse that I had to explain to her in detail: when Jodie mentioned her father weeing in her mouth, for example, they had to know she meant oral sex. Not only was this embarrassing for all of us, but I was once again reminded of the potentially negative effect fostering might be having on my children. How healthy was it for Paula to learn about sex in this context? Was there a risk that it might harm her relationships in the future?
The children were, as I’d expected, shocked and horrified. I wished that I hadn’t had to bring all this into their worlds as well, and it was awful to see them struck dumb as they absorbed the implications of what I was saying. The fact that Jodie’s father had done this to her was clearly a difficult and near impossible concept for them to cope with. They were already used to hearing about the difficult backgrounds of other children I’d fostered – it was often important for their own protection that they knew what had happened – but this was beyond all of that.
‘As you know, this is strictly confidential,’ I reminded them, and they nodded at me, their faces serious. They’d always understood that anything they learned in the house had to stay there and was not to be repeated to anyone. I trusted them completely.
After we had this chat, the children became even more tolerant of Jodie’s behaviour. They tried to spend more time playing with Jodie, and remain sympathetic even when she was screaming at them to ‘Get out of my fucking house!’, or lunging at them with a kick. Nonetheless, their patience had limits, and when Jodie interrupted one meal by graphically describing how blood had dripped from her finger when her mother had purposely cut it, Lucy lost patience. ‘Gross!’ she exclaimed, then she picked up her plate, and took her dinner into the living room.
* * *
One summer’s afternoon, when Jodie had been with us for about four months, Jill came round for one of our regular meetings. Although, being a link worker, she had no statutory obligation to visit us (unlike Jodie’s social worker), good practice dictated that she should come round every four to six weeks to see how things were going, offer a bit of support and check my log notes.
As it was a glorious sunny day, we decided to take Jodie to the park. Despite having been up most of the night with nightmares and general distress, as she often was, Jodie was full of energy, and restless to get out into the sunshine. I, on the other hand, was simply worn out.
‘So, how’s she doing?’ asked Jill, as we walked through the park’s immaculately tended flower garden. Jodie was marching a few metres ahead, anxious to get to the playground, and apparently oblivious to the dazzling array of colours and scents around her.
‘She’s getting worse,’ I replied. ‘She’s having more and more of those hysterical screaming fits, for no apparent reason, and once she recovers she seems barely aware of what’s happened. That’s why Nicola didn’t stay for the tutoring this morning; about once a week Jodie’s simply unmanageable, so we have to give up and cancel the session.’
‘And how’s she sleeping?’
‘Not wonderfully. She wakes up at five, sometimes earlier. She had been learning to stay in her room and play quietly. But over the last few weeks she’s started having dreadful nightmares, which seem to be more like hallucinations. They’re completely real to her, and sometimes they seem to continue after she’s woken up. It’s awful, you wake up to her screaming, and find her writhing on the floor, then she’s like that off and on for the rest of the night. It’s got to the point where I keep a chair outside her room on the landing, so once I’ve settled her the first time I just sit there waiting. If I’m lucky I get to doze for a few minutes, until she starts up again!’
‘You must be absolutely shattered.’
We arrived at the playground, where Jodie jumped on a swing and started working herself higher and higher.
‘Careful, Jodie,’ I warned, then stood with Jill on the grass verge, where Jodie could see me watching. She had no sense of danger or instinct to protect herself, and would swing out of control, then fall off, if allowed to.
‘How did the hearing test go?’ Jill asked. I had taken Jodie for a test the previous week, as there had been occasions when she didn’t seem to hear what was going on around her.
‘I think it’s OK. We’re waiting for the doctor’s letter but the nurse seemed to think there was nothing wrong with her.’
‘So she is shut down?’ asked Jill, referring to the way some badly abused children seem to switch off their senses, as a way of protecting themselves. If you can’t see, hear or feel anything, it might not be happening. When they shut down in this way, these children become less aware of what’s going on around them, and less conscious of things that we usually take for granted, like noticing the pleasant taste of food, or recognizing that the water
