Children Who Kill: Profiles of Pre-Teen and Teenage Killers by Carol Anne Davis Page B

nothing of the sexual abuse so thought that she was protecting her. And Katherine was still trying to pretend that nothing was wrong. Moreover, Shirley had been beaten severely for simply getting her clothes dusty. Surely her father would kill her if she told strangers that he was having full sex with her every time Katherine left the house?

Changes
    At last, as she turned twelve, Shirley began to pass on the violence that she’d suffered. She started vicious fights in the playground, fights that were terrifying to observers. She told another group of girls about being sexually abused and they could see her pain and her hate. She started to menstruate and immediately her father put her on the pill.
    One day he attacked his wife more brutally thanusual, then slammed out of the house. Shirley rushed to her mother’s side where a fearful Katherine admitted that she couldn’t take any more and feared for her life. Taking on the role of the adult, Shirley now comforted her mother by saying she’d tell of the abuse so that her father would be locked away for a very long time.
    Katherine phoned the local police – who had long suspected that Shirley was being sexually abused – and Shirley made a statement. Katherine added that for years she’d been ‘worried that something funny was going on.’ (Yet she had gone away for days at a time to visit her family, leaving Shirley – who pleaded with her not to go – alone with Lou.)
    Lou was brought in for questioning and immediately went in for some serious victim-blaming, saying that from the age of three his daughter had been a sex maniac who led him on.
    The police searched his home and found numerous child pornography mags and articles which tried to legitimise incestuous sex within the family. Katherine admitted that her husband’s demands were relentless and that she was so worn out that she’d persuaded a friend to sleep with him.

Shirley is ostracised
    In the months leading up to his trial, Lou was ordered to keep away from Shirley. But Katherine missed him and soon wanted him back home. She realised thathe’d be able to live with her again if Shirley was living elsewhere.
    To the child’s consternation, her mother now put her in a foster home. Shirley had never been able to make friends with other children – yet now she was living with lots of them, all strangers. She desperately wanted to be back with her brothers and her mum.
    Katherine said that everything might go back to normal if Shirley withdrew the charges. Shirley did just that. As a result, Lou only got three months in jail after pleading no contest to child abuse.
    Shirley’s mood deteriorated further and she continued to be sent from one foster home to the next. Her self-esteem was so low that she was convinced her foster parents couldn’t love her so she went all out to make herself unlovable. She refused to speak and got into vicious fights with the neighbourhood children. She ran away and was soon returned to residential care.
    By now, like many sexually abused children, she was very promiscuous. By age thirteen she was writing in her diary about boys she’d slept with and wondering if she was pregnant. Thankfully the answer was no.
    Shirley was bored and lost. The days stretched ahead with very little to look forward to until her room-mate introduced her to Cindy Collier, who wanted someone to run away with. Shirley volunteered to run away with her and the two girls sloped off into the night.
    The next day they tinted their hair and hung around by an outdoor pool and traded their desperatelyunhappy life stories. Within hours, fourteen-year-old Shirley was thinking of Cindy (who’d turned fifteen just two months before) as her best friend. Both girls had hitched lifts before, but now talked about how brilliant it would be to have a car of their own. They could go wherever they wanted, keep moving around the country. They could sleep in the car and seek shelter there whenever they wished. Each