The Little Prisoner_ A Memoir - Jane Elliott [74]
Having got this far I wasn’t going to back out now.
My dad still hadn’t made an appearance. I guess he thought it would be too hard to hear everything that had happened to his daughter being spelled out in detail.
The next day the judge stopped the proceedings and spoke to my barrister. ‘I think we need to stop and change the direction of this case,’ he said.
My heart sank. What did he mean?
‘I don’t think this is actually a case about child abuse,’ he went on.
Not about child abuse? Then what were we all doing there? Hadn’t he been listening to a single word of what I had been saying?
‘I think,’ he continued, ‘it’s about control and fear.’
‘Yes!’ I thought, my spirits soaring. At last the authorities understood what had been going on. That was what it had been about from the first day I came back from the foster home. It wasn’t that Richard was just a paedophile, because he had continued his abuse long after I had turned into a woman; it was about something even more premeditated and cold-blooded than that. He had tried to steal my whole life, and had succeeded in getting away with seventeen years of it before I managed to stop him, although it could have been argued that he had stolen the following years as well by leaving me in such a vulnerable and unhappy state.
After a break in the proceedings I was being led back into the courtroom by a victim liaison officer, an elderly lady. Up till then they had been careful to take me in and out of a different door from Silly Git, or if they hadn’t then they had made sure we didn’t meet, which was making me feel more confident. Hiding behind my hair, I had still been able to avoid seeing him and remembering his face too clearly. As I came back in through the door with my head down I saw a pair of shoes directly ahead of me, blocking my way. I looked up, straight into a face that made me feel sick with fear. The pale snakelike eyes and the ginger hair were the same, although he looked a little stockier than I remembered him.
‘Get me out of here,’ I hissed through gritted teeth, feeling his eyes boring into mine and his thoughts getting back inside my head. ‘Get me out, get me out.’
‘Calm down, for heaven’s sake,’ the lady said, irritated by such a show of emotion. ‘Come through here.’
She led me into a room off the court, which had a glass door. He followed us, but didn’t come in, standing outside the glass, just staring at me with no expression.
‘Get the police!’ I screamed. ‘Get the police!’
‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ she was losing patience now. ‘Who is it you’re worried about? Is it him?’ She gestured towards the immobile figure on the other side of the glass with the dead, staring eyes.
‘Get someone!’ I screamed and she realized there was no way she could calm me down. She walked towards the door. ‘Don’t leave me!’ I screamed, suddenly envisaging him and me in the room alone. The woman was panicking now, aware that she didn’t know how to handle the situation.
At that moment Marie and another police officer arrived. Finding me standing in the corner of the room, hiding my face against the wall like a child in trouble, they came to the rescue, furious with everyone and getting me to safety.
‘He’s going to kill me,’ I moaned as Marie put her arm round me. ‘I’m dead.’
‘No, he won’t, Jane,’ she soothed me. ‘He can’t do anything now. You’re doing fine. It’s nearly over.’
I wanted to be in the courtroom to hear Richard’s testimony once I had said all I had to say. He had been willing to sit there and listen to me as I squirmed with embarrassment relating every detail of my humiliation through the years, so it seemed only fair that I should witness his humiliation.
‘We can’t stop you coming in,’ Marie said, ‘but we really don’t think it would be a good idea. They’re going to tell all sorts of lies to try to make you look bad and to make out that you are a liar and a fantasist. You’ll find it very hard