I just posted a long blog about the uncanny parrallels between Steph's (Cyclist) story called Sweat and tears and the many abuses I suffered in care from aged six to fourteen.
The blog disappeared into the ether when I pressed submit so it's lost forever.

I'll try again.

In 1975 just after I got married, my wife, (to whom I'm still married)persuaded me to write a faction about my early life.

I scratched away for several months with pencil and several thick notebooks and then the story sat around in my attic for nearly 30 years.
I finally posted it to Fictionmania in 2005 or thereabouts.
The novel Mindful was essentially a Sci Fi fiction that described a child's hellish progress through care and his abuse caused by his violent misbehaviour caused by the 'voices' that had been invading his head since aged four. The voices were diagnosed as Schitzophrenia when they were infact rudimetary telepathic messages that would not begin to make sense until puberty.

In my novel in those early days, 1975 I ascribed the abuse to his supposed schitzophrenia when in truth the abuse stemmed fom instituionalised homophobia today more accurately described as transphobia. This is because I was still seriously uptight about my transvestism and I could not allude to it in sufficient detail to attatch cause and effect of my abuse accurately.

Consequently the novel 'Mindful' only describes the abuse in the first two chapters and even then although it simply lists the many abuses accurately without passion or rage. It does not describe the abuses with the same passion and accuracy that Steph does in Sweat and Tears. However in Midful the abuses are documented and run desperately parrallel to those that Steph described.
The rapes, the beatings, the incarcerations, the starvations, the identifiable clothing, the lies, oh yes the endless lies, the cover ups,the weekend trips that turned out to be nothing less than paedophile orgies

The football and rugby 'games' that degenerated into nothing less than common assault and grevious bodily harm as older children took out their hates and frustrations on the smaller weaker kids.

Many kids did not make it but there is no evidence to suggest murder, God alone knows what happened to them but I for one remain convinced many were killed.

Mindful is only a 'faction' but it dwells upon the murders and the graves, just as Steph does.

It DID HAPPEN!!!

That's why I post this blog.

Do not listen to the apologists and excusers who believe the stories or facts were exaggerated. You canot exaggerate a murder the fact is absolute to the law. All the other abuses no matter how much the apologists try to rubbish them are still very real and distressing to the victims 50, 60 and 70 years later.

Every one of us victims deals with these abuses in their own way. We are never 'cured' or made free of them, we just get through life every which way we can.

Beverly.

On behalf of 'Survivors of Abuse' and in support of Steph's story.

Believe me.

It happened!!