Stuart Howarth - I Just Wanted to Be Loved: A boy eager to please. The man who destroyed his childhood. The love that overcame it.

I don't remember a time before Dad came to live with us although I was three when he moved in. He was a colourful, larger-than-life character who worked as a dustbin man in the smarter areas of Ashton-under-Lyne, and on his rounds he would pick up all sorts of cast-off items to bring home. We were proud to be the first family in the street to have a television, even though it only worked intermittently when you banged the sides, the first to have a washing machine, and the only ones to have a PVC sofa and ornaments and paintings on the walls.

All the neighbours used to come round to admire our newest possessions, do their laundry in our machine and drink beer and smoke in the sitting room, but there was an undercurrent of jealousy as well. There was definitely a feeling that we thought we were a bit above ourselves, which didn't go down well. I got bullied by some local boys, who used to play tricks on me like getting me to swallow a spoonful of margarine by pretending it was ice cream.

I had two big sisters: Christina, who was two years older than me, and Shirley, who was a year older than her. Poor old Shirl the Whirl, as I called her, was born with spina bifida that meant she was confined to a wheelchair, paralysed and without feeling from the waist down. She also had hydrocephalus, or fluid on the brain, and epilepsy and a hunchback, and she was always having to go into hospital for operations and coming back covered in bandages. There was nothing wrong with her mind, though. I loved Shirley because she was the one who looked out for me when she could and tried to make sure I was OK. Christina was tougher and more independent when we were little.

Mum had been married to a man called George Heywood whom she'd met when she was just sixteen, but he turned out to be a drinker and a womanizer. He couldn't handle the pressure of having a disabled child so he soon disappeared from the scene. It must have been really tough for Mum being on her own with no money and with kids to raise, so when David Howarth came along with his jet-black hair and moustache and his ready charm, she was easily swept off her feet.

David is your real dad, she whispered to me, and George was the girls. But don't tell them or they'll be jealous that you're the only one whose real dad lives with us. Let's keep it to ourselves.

None of the other kids in our street had their real dad living with them, although there might be stepdads or boyfriends in the house. I was chuffed to bits that I had my real dad and, what's more, he had a proper job and he brought home lots of presents for us. I used to be his favourite, and that made me feel very special. I hero-worshipped him and strove to do whatever I could to please him, although I was always a bit scared of him as well.

Dad had a smallholding, which we called the Pen, where he kept pigs, chickens, geese and ducks. His father lived in one of the sheds up there, amongst heaps of scrap from the dustbin rounds, an old rusting car we kids used to play in and litter strewn everywhere. It was up there that Dad started his campaign to make a man of me, as he put it. He'd make me collect the eggs from the hens, although their flapping wings terrified me, and he'd put ferrets down my trousers, where they scratched and wriggled. I was especially scared of the big black boar and the sows that snuffled around in the mud, but I was learning to keep this from Dad because if he sensed I was scared of something he would push me right into it as part of his campaign to toughen me up.

If I annoyed him I'd get a cuff round the ear or a pinch on my legs, but nothing prepared me for the day he laid into me on a beach in Wales when we were on holiday. I was only four years old but the event sticks vividly in my memory. I'd wandered off from the family, and when Dad caught up with me he punched me repeatedly, forcing my face down into the sand and screaming abuse at me. I couldn't breathe and struggled wildly in panic.

Do you want me to tell your mum that you have spoilt the fucking holiday? he hissed. Do you?

It wasn't the pain of his blows; it was the ferocity of the attack and the shock of the betrayal. I thought I was his much-loved son, but here he was saying, Get up, you little cunt, and stop fucking crying. It was a devastating moment.

He warned me not to say anything to Mum Put a smile on yer fucking face and when I obeyed, he knew he had me where he wanted me. From then on, he would get away with increasing levels of violence and brutality and I would lie to everyone about where all the bruises and welts came from. I told teachers at school I'd been messing around climbing trees or that I'd fallen downstairs. I don't think Mum ever asked. I had been a bad boy and I deserved it, I thought. I just had to do better in future.