Hell in Paradise

The small village I called home

When I was ten I moved to Italy with my mother, her new Italian husband, my two brothers and a sister. We lived a simple life, living off the land with olive groves and vineyards and we raised chickens and rabbits. We also had a goat for fresh milk. We lived in a small village most ways up a mountain, so small that we were the only children who lived there. It was a basic living, but so fulfilling. When not at school we would be working the land or gathering wood for heating and cooking - we just about had electricity ... most of the time.

We were enrolled in an Italian school in the next village over - a one hour walk each way. Nobody spoke English, so we picked up the language very quickly and were fluent within six months. By the second year, I was top of the class in the Italian language, besting my Italian classmates. This wasn't because I was particularly gifted in languages: myself and my two brothers were physically abused by our stepfather. If he heard the feintest of rumors that we spoke with each other in English, we would have beatings or worse. We would rise at 6am to get ready and walk to school by 8 am. School was Monday to Saturday, lasting until midday.

Next village over where I went to school

Unlike our school friends, as soon as we were done at school we would have to rush home and do our chores. From toiling the soil, weeding, fruit picking, vegetable gathering, firewood fetching, gathering grass and herbs for the rabbits to feeding the chickens. Rarely did we finish before sundown.

If any little job was not completed to the satisfaction of our stepfather, we were punished. This started off with slaps across the face, whipping across the back with a belt, having stones thrown at us, being strangled until we passed out and more. One of his favourite punishments was for us to stand with hands behind our backs leaning at an angle against a wall, back straight supporting our entire weights on just the bridge of our noses. This would last for hours until we literally collapsed from exhaustion. Then we would get a kick to get up and continue. Another favourite was to grab our head between his hands and to push his thumbs hard into our eye sockets. Let me tell you, that is a pain I would not wish on my worst enemy. For around an hour afterward, we would struggle to see clearly.

Home village seen from school

Things came to a head one night when I was woken roughly from blessed sleep. My stepfather convinced himself I had not washed and brushed my teeth before bed and therefore got dragged downstairs, forced to strip and marched outside in the moonlight to a plot of land to the side of the house. There waiting for me was a shovel and I was instructed to dig my own grave. I was thirteen at the time and calmly did as I was told. All the while I was told what worthless English scum I was and that when I was done, he would bury me. I was broken and finally told him 'at least I will no longer have to suffer you'. He knew that by now, nothing he did to me could top this night, and he knew that I knew this too. Pit dug, I threw the shovel at his feet and said 'go ahead', knelt down in my own grave and calmly waited. Sure, I'd miss my family, but maybe this would make the authorities finally step in and save my family from this monster. Obviously, death didn't come that night.

The only saving grace was that my sister - his daughter - was spared from these punishments. My brothers, myself and my mother were mercilessly beaten almost from day one of our arrival in the country.

One of our vineyards

A staunchly Catholic country, the man was head of the house, a woman's voice worth less than his, and a foreign woman's worth even less. Neighbours knew what was going on, they couldn't have not. They tried in their own ways to help, such as when I was put on a starvation diet until I was deemed worthy enough to eat - they would sneak me something to keep me going.

Not long after the night I had to dig my own grave, I was woken up softly by my mother. From my first look at her I knew something was very wrong. She struggled to stand straight and I later learned she'd had a chair broken across her back. She quickly got us children dressed and out of the house while my stepfather was in another drunken stupor. In the deep of night, we struggled through darkest woods to a waiting car, driven by an old English gent who had retired to the next village years previously. On rare days off, usually a Sunday, I would visit George and he would give me painting lessons - he was a still life artist.

Netting under Olive groves, to catch the falling fruit

We were quickly bundled into the car and he drove for hours down winding unlit mountain roads with no headlights on, in case our stepfather saw the car in the distance and knew which way we had gone. After what felt like an eternity we hit the main town, us kids blinking to adjust to the lights, the coastal roads lit up like a Christmas tree. He pressed on across the French border - luckily in her rush to get us away my mother had remembered our passports. We were taken directly to Nice airport, we said tearful goodbyes to George and he thrust handfuls of Italian notes into my mother's hands. 'Just get them safe' he replied to her protestations.

Two days later we landed in the UK, finally safe from the waking nightmare. I would be lying if I said that thirty-five years later I am over it. I still have scars on my back, my nose looks broken and my eyes have never been right since. Worse than this are the mental scars. Rarely a week goes by that I don't wake up in a cold sweat having relived the nightmare in my sleep. The physical cruelty was bad enough, but the mental aspects of it are what last. I look at my own children now and cannot fathom how anybody can act like he did - nor get away with it for so long. But I truly believe in karma, and when it finally catches up with him, it'll be a bitch.

All photos courtesy of Google Maps

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