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.The frightened toddler had no idea what was happening.Unfortunately the woman soon returned the child and Betty explained this rejection by telling Mary that she was a bad child.The following year, it’s apparent that Betty gave both Mary and her little brother pills that could have resulted in their deaths.Luckily a relative saw the children eating the tablets – though she didn’t see Betty handing them over – and she made both children sick.A few months later Betty took Mary to visit her grandmother in Glasgow.Betty was holding Mary near the window when she suddenly ‘fell’ out.Her uncle managed to grab the three-year-old by an ankle, seriously straining the ligaments in his back.The following week Betty left Mary with a stranger that she’d met at an adoption agency but her relatives reclaimed her within hours.The woman, who clearly meant well, had already bought the confused little girl some new clothes.One of Billy’s relatives suggested that she and her husband adopt Mary as they were so worried about her being ill-treated and given away to strangers, but for some reason Betty refused to consider this.Instead, she took the sad-faced little girl back to Newcastle.Shortly afterwards Mary had yet another ‘accident’ in which she swallowed some of her mother’s iron tablets and spent three days in hospital, iron tablets being poisonous to a small child.By now she was almost four and was able to tell the doctors that her mother had given her ‘the sweets.’ A neighbourhood child who had been playing with Mary when the pills were handed over verified this.Mary’s relatives made it clear that no child could have this many near-death accidents in four years – but Betty’s response was to sever contact with them.Sadly, they didn’t go to the authorities and Mary’s life now took an even more dangerous path.For some time Betty had been seeing other men and she now began to turn this into her profession.She became a prostitute and often went to Glasgow to pursue this work but at other times, when Billy was away, she had clients come to the house.Billy – who loved Mary and her brother and was always good to them – was away more and more often, sometimes serving time in jail for petty theft.Betty’s own life careered increasingly downhill.She was often admitted to hospital suffering from her nerves.She complained of stomach problems and sometimes imagined that she had cancer.Her digestion had been poor since childhood, again doubtless as a result of stress.A desperately unhappy woman, she attempted suicide several times, sometimes by overdosing and once by preparing to jump off a bridge.Four-year-old Mary watched and listened to her mother’s constant stream of complaints and blamed herself as children do.Her mother contributed to this, telling her that she was no good.Strapped for cashBetty now began to specialise in sado-masochistic prostitution and brought a variety of whips into the home.Usually this speciality is as much about verbal and physical ritual as it is about pain so it tends to be at the higher end of the sex-for-money market.Most dominatrixes don’t engage in intercourse and many clients are forbidden to ejaculate.Instead, the specialist simply binds and whips the submissive client and indulges in clever word-play or enacts a script that the client has previously written.Sophisticated specialists can earn large sums and can afford a flat to ply their trade in, keeping their activities well away from their children.But Betty clearly wasn’t in this upscale category.Her home was poorly furnished and she was earning so little that she told the authorities that Billy had permanently left her.This meant she got more social security money as a single mum.Paedophiliac abuseMeanwhile, Betty brought some of her clients to the house where she whipped them for money.But for reasons that can only be guessed at, she now introduced four-year-old Mary to the sex for sale.She would hold her daughter’s head back whilst the client ejaculated into the little girl’s mouth.Mary would vomit and her mother would then tell her that she’d been a good girl and give her sweets.It may be significant that Betty’s own mother had gone out to work when she was four – the age that Betty introduced her daughter to oral sex.Four-year-old Betty was left with her invalid father who may not have been able to protect her from paedophile activity.By five Betty was refusing to eat with the family and such sudden appetite loss can be one of the symptoms of child sexual abuse.Another sign is trying to be very good – and Betty was constantly drawing religious icons.A third sign is overreacting to criticism and Betty began to believe that she was her mother’s least favourite child.So perhaps Betty felt compelled to abuse her daughter just as she’d been abused.Or maybe the alcoholism that would later cut short her life was already beginning to claim her and she wanted the additional money that paedophiles would pay in order to buy the whisky that she craved.Whatever Betty’s conscious or subconscious motivation, the pre-school Mary paid the price.Mary would later show another sign of child sexual abuse, acting inappropriately by unzipping the trousers of a horrified family friend.And she’d exhibit many of the other symptoms, namely an inability to concentrate, depression, nightmares and several attempts at running away from home.Pleading for attentionIn the autumn of 1961, Mary went to school.Already she was a world removed from the other children.She’d lie on her back under the desk and refuse to come out.At other times she’d sit on the floor and pull hairs out of her teacher’s legs in a desperate effort to be noticed.Misunderstanding, the teacher refused to respond to her bad behaviour.But Mary strived to be noticed by a parent substitute, as being ignored by a parent is devastating for a child.When Betty was at home she’d hit Mary and shout at her and talk about what a sinful girl she was.At other times she’d half choke the child whilst her clients forced their penises into her mouth.Mary began to copy this behaviour, as children often feel compelled to do.She put her hand around another child’s neck and asked her teacher if doing so would make him die
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