Cries Unheard by Gitta Sereny Read Free Book Online Page A

out of work, and Mary herself, who has had many jobs since her release, has had to give them up after a few months or even weeks, either because the Probation Service considered the job inappropriate for her, or because she had been, or was afraid of being, recognized.
    Her partner, Jim, is an interesting man. When I knew him first I found myself faintly irritated by some of his rather esoteric “New Age’ philosophies. But there are other aspects of his personality, such as his total rejection of racism of any kind, his opposition to hard drugs and alcohol and his deep belief in tolerance and family values, which are admirable. Above all, one has to recognize his steadfastness to Mary, whose neediness, lack of self-confidence and profound feelings of guilt are no doubt exhausting to live with. He is, too, I’m told by those who know, an excellent father.
    But there was from the start a radical difference in their attitudes towards the money she would receive. He felt, and would tell me so quite often, that notwithstanding the crimes she had committed as a child, she was now, and had been for years, quite a ‘different person’. Given what she had suffered at the hands of ‘this crappy system’, which, he claimed, had stood still in antiquity as far as the understanding of children was concerned, whatever money she could get was neither a gift nor charity: he felt she ‘deserved’ it Mary did not feel that (nor, of course, did I) and for a long time Jim was very sceptical when she or I tried to explain the priorities for the book project which had nothing to do with money.
    “Cut the crap,” was his automatic reaction, and it was an attitude to which, I realized, Mary would have been exposed and would have had to argue against almost throughout. In the course of time, though, Jim came to understand entirely the real importance of this undertaking. Furthermore, in the two years since Mary and I started this project, he has established himself in a satisfying and secure job, and is now supporting the family.
    When we talked on this first occasion, what she said about the money did not seem unreasonable to me.
    “I’m not going to say that I don’t want money,” she said.
    “That would be dishonest: everybody wants money. But what I want most of all is a normal life. I want to get off the treadmill of social security and do work I enjoy. I want roots and a normal settled life for my child,” she repeated.
    Much more than money, she said, she had come to feel she needed to talk yes, about what she had done, but also (she shook her head, slowly, another gesture, of bewilderment and often despair, that would become very familiar to me) about what had happened to her. When I suggested,
    and I was to repeat this suggestion many times over the subsequent months, that a psychiatrist might be a better solution for this than talking to me for a book, I was taken aback by the vehemence of her reaction.
    “No,” she said.
    “No. I won’t talk to psychiatrists, I won’t. I won’t, ever.” Her voice had grown almost strident with tension.
    “If you don’t want to do it, I’ll find somebody else.” She got up, brusquely.
    “I’m going out to have a cigarette,” she said, and left.
    Earlier that morning, I had talked at length with Pat Royston. Rather surprisingly, she had been in favour of the book project from the start. Given that her own experiences with the media on Mary’s behalf had been largely unfavorable, what was it, I asked, that made her agree with Mary’s decision to co-operate with me on this book?
    “It is because I think somebody needs to find out and explain how terrible crimes such as Mary’s, the two ten-year-olds who killed James Bulger, and quite a number of other young children’s serious of fences come about,” she said. There could not be any question of excusing, or through understanding them, legitimizing such acts, she said.
    “But in the public’s justified horror about these