Taylor Edison - I Know What You Are: The true story of a lonely little girl abused by those she trusted most

Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the familys privacy.

HarperElement

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First published by HarperElement 2017

FIRST EDITION

Taylor Edison and Jane Smith 2017

Cover layout design HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Cover photograph Mark Owen/Trevillion Images (posed by model)

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Taylor Edison and Jane Smith assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008148027

Ebook Edition February 2017 ISBN: 9780008157388

Version: 2016-12-20

I used to feel angry with my mum because she didnt intervene in what was going on when I was a child. But I realise that shes got problems of her own and I just feel sorry for her now. What made me look at things differently was becoming a mum myself: I try really hard to do whats best for my child its just a natural instinct; so I think my mum must have been trying hard too.

I would have liked to have told my story without mentioning Mum at all, and especially without saying anything negative about her. But because most of it deals with abuse that occurred during my childhood, that would have made it seem as though she wasnt there while I was growing up. And that isnt true. So Im just going to tell it the way it happened.

There are lots of reasons why people fall victim to abusers. In my case, it was partly because I have a type of autism called Asperger syndrome, which means that I have significant difficulties in social interaction and non-verbal communication. In other words, if someone tells me theyre my friend, for example, I believe them, even though the way theyre treating me is anything but friendly.

Friends have been a significant factor in my life because I desperately wanted them as a child, because I didnt know how to make them, and because my social interaction and non-verbal communication problems meant that, for a long time, I wasnt able to distinguish between my friends and my enemies.

I cant change what happened to me from the age of 11. I know that some of it will continue to have an effect on me for the rest of my life. But I do try really hard to remember that I am not the bad person I believed I was when I was a little girl.

Whats crucially important when you have experienced abuse is to try not to define yourself in terms of bad things happened to me as a child because I was a bad child. Thats why I want to tell my story, because I hope it will help other people to realise that what is done to you isnt what you are.

I was two years old when Mum and I moved into the flat that quickly became a doss-house for an assortment of her weed-smoking friends. I didnt have a bedroom of my own in that flat; my bed was wherever I happened to fall asleep each night, which was usually on the sofa or floor in the living room. Fortunately, Mums friends were nice to me and there was always someone who was willing (and able) to feed me when I was hungry or put me in the bath when I needed a wash. So I was perfectly happy, as far as I remember. Until I started school.

Because I had assumed as children tend to do without even thinking about it that what happened in my own home was normal, school came as a complete shock to me, for many reasons. As I hadnt really mixed with other kids before I started school, I didnt know how to make friends or even how to play with other children. And I wasnt used to being shouted at the way my teacher shouted at me on my very first day when I didnt do something she had told me to do.

I wasnt being deliberately disobedient or naughty. I just didnt understand what she meant. I was used to being given simple directions by my mum and her friends Stop it, Eat it, Go to sleep and I was bewildered by the teachers collective instructions to the class, which became even more incomprehensible to me when she said things like, Unfortunately, we wont be able to go outside at playtime today as its still raining cats and dogs.

It didnt matter how hard I tried to understand what I was supposed to be doing, I invariably seemed to get it wrong. So I was always either already in trouble or feeling sick with apprehension, which meant that school was pretty much ruined for me right from the start.

Another thing I hated about school was that it meant being away from my mum, which was something I wasnt used to, although that was true for most of the other children too, I suppose. I dont have many specific memories of my mum when I was a young child, but I know she was almost always there in body, if not in spirit and that I never spent a single night away from home when I was a little girl. In fact, Mum and I had a very close relationship at that time, and even though it might have been odd and dysfunctional in some ways, at least it was familiar and comprehensible to me. I could tell when she was angry, for example, and I usually knew why; while she knew how to talk to me in a way that I could understand and that didnt trigger a meltdown in my weirdly wired brain.

But I didnt understand my teachers, and because the lack of comprehension was mutual, they would often back me into a corner, literally as well as figuratively, so that I felt trapped and panicked. As a result, it wasnt long before a hostile relationship began to develop between me and my teachers, which, far from trying to rectify, Mum sometimes seemed actively to encourage. After being happy to let other people take care of me since wed moved into the flat that was always full of her drunk and drug-addicted friends, I think the time when I started school coincided with a phase when she wanted it to be just her and me against the rest of the world. So maybe she resented the influence she thought my teachers would have on me, or perhaps it simply felt as though she was getting her own back on all the teachers she used to tell me about who she hadnt liked when she was a child.

I didnt want to be in conflict with anyone though, and as well as trying and usually failing not to annoy my teachers, I longed to be like the other kids, who seemed to be able to follow instructions that, to me, seemed impossibly complicated and indecipherable. I hadnt been at school for very long before I realised that there must be something wrong with me, which I assumed was the fact that I was retarded, as Mum often told me I was. And that made me even more anxious to learn to behave the way the other kids did, because I really didnt want to have to go to a special school like the one Mum described to me, where they sent children who werent normal.

Even when I was diagnosed as having Asperger syndrome, which was something that apparently couldnt be cured, I think Mum still preferred to believe I was retarded, because that was something she thought I