Story of a Life – Part 1

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When K asked us if we could help him tell his story now that his family are all gone, we were intrigued.

He explained that now he is in his seventies, he feels it is time to give voice to his history…to share the trauma of his early years and the way he has managed his life to deal with all that has gone before

Pembrokeshire.Online isn’t really the place for the whole history, but we  sat down together and K shared some of the past in the hope that someone out there will be able to support him to get his story out into the world.

K said: “I was born in August 1951 in the Rhonda valley. I was the third child and the first boy. Four more children came after me, but I was the focus of my father’s rage.

“Home was terrible from as far back as I can remember. I loved my mam and always wanted to protect her. My father was a miner and was well thought of in the community but at home he was a brute.”

K described growing up and going to school in the shadow of the coal works and the gasworks. School was safer than home but this didn’t mean much. In the Fifties and Sixties, school was not a place where children had a voice. However, it offered a chance to be out of the house where his father ruled with violence and fear, controlling everything that happened there with a savagery that seemed to focus mainly on K himself.

K describes as a very young and terrified child, going to the police station a number of times and being told to go home. In those days, violence in the home was a domestic issue and the law had little power. Desperate, the little boy attempted to take his own life but was urged by his mother to accept the situation.

“I loved my mam but she was powerless too. I still sometimes find it hard to accept but she knew what was

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happening to me and had no way to stop it without him hurting her more than he already did.”

It was here that Keith revealed more of the extent of the violence. As if it wasn’t enough that he was beaten, kicked and terrorised on a daily basis, he was also being sexually abused and there was no one who would listen or help.

This went on until K was 15. One day his father told him he had to leave. K remembers it vividly. It was a Wednesday and he had until the Friday.

Terrified and very alone he found refuge with his mother’s family in Bracknell. The journey there is etched in his memory. The steam trains had no corridors in those days and he says he can still feel every lonely moment he was on that journey.

“It seemed to go on forever.” he said, “but I kept telling myself this was the start of my new life.”

To be continued soon.