'The abuse I endured was indelibly damaging'

As a child, Jude Palmer survived neglect and abandonment by her parents and years of sexual abuse from her mother’s boyfriend. Last summer, four decades on, her evidence helped to convict her abuser of indecent assault, gross indecency and child cruelty. Here, Jude, now a successful documentary photographer, reveals how unravelling terrible memories has enabled her, at 50, to thrive and embrace the future. As told to Catherine O’Brien

It started with a voicemail – a message from a kindly but official-sounding woman from Melksham CID. I didn’t really register her name, but I did the place. Melksham in Wiltshire was a town I had left behind almost 40 years ago – and one to which I had vowed I would never return. Today, I live 250 miles away in Harrogate, Yorkshire, and the Georgian terraced house that I have made a home for my three daughters is a world apart from the council estate where I grew up.

My mother was 18 and a receptionist in a local hospital when she became pregnant with me. She had a fling with one of the doctors, but he played no part in my upbringing. Three years after I was born, she had my half-brother David* – the product of another short-lived relationship – and three years after that, all three of us moved in with the latest love of her life – a lorry driver called Clive Thwaite*.

To outsiders, we probably looked like a normal family. I attended the local school and played with our dog Sandy. Thwaite went to work during the day and Mum had a night-time job as a telephonist. When she left the house after tea, Thwaite looked after us, and that was when stuff would happen. I’m not going to say too much about what he did, but he was perverted and cruel and both David and I lived in fear of him. He molested David and had a thing about humiliating me to ‘take my pride away’. We told our mother what he was doing and begged her not to leave us with him. I can’t say whether she believed us or not, but she didn’t stop him. Mum was pretty but weak and easily led – the men in her life always took priority over her children.

When I was nine, I arrived home from school one day to discover that my mother had gone. Every item of clothing had been taken from her wardrobe and she’d left a note on my bed saying, ‘Don’t call Nana.’ Mum knew that my maternal grandmother would be furious if she found out that she had upped and disappeared – my nana and I had always been close and I thought of her as the true mother figure in my life.

Shortly afterwards, Thwaite’s van screeched into the driveway – it turned out Mum had moved on to her next man and Thwaite was livid. He made David and I put our belongings into bin bags and then left us at the end of the road where Mum’s new man lived. Despite my mother’s instructions, I did call Nana, as my mother knew I would. But although Nana would have liked to rescue me, she couldn’t fight that battle – she lived a long way away in Worcestershire and didn’t have room for me in her house.

So, while David stayed with our mother – he was always closer to her than I was and, as far as I was concerned, he was her favourite – I began a nomadic existence. I went to live with my Auntie Linda, Mum’s sister, for a while and later the mother of my best friend took me in. There was even a period when, out of desperation as I had nowhere else to go, I briefly went back to Thwaite’s house. But I had almost zero contact with my mother and never lived with her again.

By 14, I had stopped going to school. I used to hang out in a local café and it was there that I met Geoff, who was 22 and had just been medically discharged from the Army after losing a finger in an accident. We started going out and when he moved to South Yorkshire to be closer to his parents, I went with him. For several years, we were blissfully happy. Geoff was a bit of a lad, but he had a good heart and took care of me. I’ve often thought since how I could so easily have been drawn down a different route – into drink and drugs maybe – and Geoff saved me from that.

I had no qualifications, but I was streetwise and quick-witted. I worked as a waitress and a dental nurse and, when I was 20, I got a job selling classified advertising for the local newspaper. I loved it, and I was good. The advertising manageress took me under her wing and promoted me to field sales, which meant I was given a company car. Even though I still loved Geoff, I left him then – I felt I was finally growing up and tasting independence and I wanted more of it.

At 21, I moved to Birmingham to be nearer my grandmother. I got a new job, still in advertising sales, and bought my first home. I never saw my mother; she had moved to Northumberland and had become deeply religious, apparently attending church every day. As far as I was concerned, she didn’t exist. And the same went for Thwaite, who was by then a distant memory. I had, though, begun to think about my birth father. My mother was pale-skinned with blue eyes while I have brown eyes and black hair, and I wanted to know where that half of me had come from.

The biggest clue turned out to be on my birth certificate. Although my mother had always called me Julie (I changed my name to Jude by deed poll in my early 20s), I knew from my grandmother that the name with which I was officially registered was Indian. After a little detective work, I tracked down the father I had never known to Staffordshire, where he was working as a GP.

We arranged to meet at a service station on the M6 and he arrived dressed in a Sikh turban with a beautiful woman in a sari at his side. We sat down and he explained that 1963 – the year I was born – had been a traumatic time for him and that he could not answer any of my questions. He placed a small box on the table, said that he was sorry, and left. Once he’d gone, I unwrapped his gift – inside was a piece of pottery. I don’t have it because I smashed it against the cafeteria wall. The service station manager took me into his office where I sobbed for two hours, after which I drove home and that was that.

Throughout my 20s, work was everything to me. My driven personality was ideal for the tough sales environment in which I operated, but I don’t think anyone would have described me as pleasant. I could be aggressive and brusque and I found relationships hard. I would make extraordinary demands of both friends and boyfriends and nine times out of ten I would be disappointed because they could not possibly fulfil my needy expectations. You either had to be there for me 24/7, or you were abandoning me, just as my mother and father had done.

My first husband, James*, had more stamina than some because he stuck with me for six years. We met through work – he was a management consultant – and we married after I became pregnant with our daughter Caitlin, now 20. I became a full-time mum but found life at home with a baby tough and isolating – and it was at that point, while at a low ebb, that I allowed my mother back into my life. I had this fantasy that she would be a doting grandmother and that we would be a proper family at last.

But my illusions were quickly shattered when she came to visit for the day. It was far too late to build bridges and although she made an effort to get involved with Caitlin – I can remember her trying to help me bathe her – I could muster no warmth for her, just disdain. The only time I saw her after that was at my nana’s funeral a couple of years later, but I kept my distance and we didn’t speak.

By my mid-30s my marriage was over. I went back to work, this time finding a niche looking after intellectual property for an independent television company. The job took me to Yorkshire and I moved to Harrogate with Caitlin. Within six months, I had met my second husband Anthony*, a lawyer. I realised I had never really loved James – my marriage to him had been all about security – but I loved Anthony with a passion. We had two daughters, Sofia, now aged ten, and Sienna, six. We should have been a perfectly happy family, but the severe postnatal depression I developed following both pregnancies prevented that.

When you have been abandoned by your parents, you find it hard to trust anyone – and that becomes doubly hard when you have been sexually abused by someone who is supposed to have taken care of you. People who meet me casually often assume I am from a middle-class background and that I’ve been to university – not that I was homeless at 15. I’m well-spoken and well-read, but I often feel uncomfortable in social situations. At the school gate, I’m the mum who stands in the corner in a mac and dark glasses – and my friends are those who have been brave enough to approach me regardless.

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The counselling I had alongside medication to treat the postnatal depression has helped me understand my emotional triggers and manage the way I deal with situations better. I used to get angry and close down when I felt stressed; now I am more likely to get upset, although I am at least more open. But I am a work in progress. A big thing for me is honesty – and sometimes I am too brutally honest. Anthony bore the brunt of that. Although he has been the love of my life, I made it hard for him to love me.

We separated three and a half years ago, after eight years together, and I was in the midst of our acrimonious divorce in the summer of 2012 when I received that voicemail from Melksham CID. It was a shock, but it was also slightly surreal – so much was going on in my life and this felt like just one more tornado to add to the maelstrom. I returned the call and the female detective explained what had happened.

A woman who, as a child, used to live in the same street as us had made allegations of sexual abuse against Thwaite. She had given them David’s name and he said he, too, wanted to testify. I hadn’t seen David since we were children – we had never been that close and lost contact once I left home. But I had remained in loose touch with an uncle – one of my mother’s brothers – and he had helped the police to track me down. The question was, was I also prepared to give evidence?

Part of me was tempted to have nothing to do with the case. But a bigger part of me realised that if I didn’t put myself forward, I would be letting everyone else down. I had always assumed David and I were Thwaite’s only victims; discovering that there was at least one other tipped the balance. Two weeks later, I gave a video interview from the safety of a police house in Harrogate and a couple of months after that, I was summoned to Swindon Crown Court for Thwaite’s trial. Court officials told me that I could speak from behind a screen to avoid coming face to face with him – they warned me that another woman had fainted in the witness box during a similar case. But I decided I was going to confront him directly – the last thing I wanted to be seen as was a cowering victim.

I made eye contact with him across the courtroom as I walked in and he looked at me deadpan. I was struck by how old and frail he was – and how small. As a child, I had seen him as a towering monster. It was tough giving evidence – the barristers want you to be precise, but you are recalling distressing events from long ago. The biggest accusation against David and me was that we had colluded with each other before the trial, but no one could prove that because we hadn’t.

There was, however, an insurmountable complication – the other woman in the case had had hypnotherapy to help her recall events, and after much legal argument, her evidence was declared inadmissible. It meant a retrial – so, a year later, David and I had to do the whole thing again.

In between the first and second trials, I became seriously ill with meningitis, septicaemia and pneumonia – doctors later told me I was close to death when I was taken into intensive care. Having spent my life moving forward like a shark that is constantly swimming, I was at last forced to stop. It was frightening, but the four weeks I spent in hospital also gave me some time for profound reflection.

For the first trial against Thwaite, I had turned up in court wearing a huge cardigan that I wrapped around myself like a protective blanket. The second time, I wore a smart dress and jacket – I felt business-like rather than vulnerable. My self-worth had shifted.

Finally, in August 2013, Thwaite – now a 68-year-old grandfather – was convicted. I wasn’t in court as he was sentenced to four years in prison, but David sent me a text saying ‘we did it’. It was a watershed moment. All my life, there had been this tangled ball inside me – a mixture of confusion, guilt and disgust. The fact that Thwaite was being held to account for what he did unravelled that ball. I wasn’t to blame; justice had prevailed.

David and I didn’t celebrate together – in fact, although we have exchanged emails and texts, we have not met; we gave evidence separately during the court cases and our paths did not cross. He would like a reunion and I am thinking about that. To be honest, I am reluctant. The other day I found myself looking at a photograph of us as small children – I know nothing about his life, but I still very much associate him with a traumatic time and I am not sure how wise it would be to rekindle those memories.

I find photos hugely emotional because all I have from my childhood is a handful of snaps that I grabbed amid the upheaval my mother created when she left us. With my own children, I have been obsessive about taking pictures – whether visiting a theme park or having a picnic at home, I want them to have great memories.

Four and a half years ago – realising how important photography was to me – Anthony bought me a Nikon camera. I decided to use it in a more professional way and started documenting some community projects. I went backstage at a local theatre production and created a series of images for a charity that supports the homeless – a cause close to my heart. I also applied for a photojournalism course run by the legendary picture agency Magnum, and, despite stiff competition, I won a place. A tutor said: ‘You are good at photographing a thought’ – and those words inspired me.

I have thrown myself into a new career as a documentary photographer by winning several commissions and opening my own photographic gallery in Harrogate. Earlier this year, I was appointed the official behind-the-scenes photographer for the Tour de France Yorkshire Grand Départ which took place at the beginning of this month. The Tour de France is about endurance and grit – characteristics which resonate massively with me. And capturing behind-the-scenes images is my forte because I know through my own life experiences that nothing is ever quite as it seems on the surface.

I work instinctively – other photographers have commented that I ‘don’t play by the rules’. And I am also a self-starter. To win the Tour de France gig, I had to convince the organisers both in Yorkshire and Paris that I could provide a valid legacy. I secured sponsorship from Irwin Mitchell, the law firm that handled my divorce, and am now creating a book as well as launching exhibitions in Harrogate, Sheffield and London. Ahead of me is a project with Help for Heroes which may involve a trip to Afghanistan. As a single mother, it’s hard juggling home and work commitments, but I’m setting an example to my daughters that you can follow your dream.

I am totally fierce about my girls. Caitlin is at university and planning to join the RAF police service. She is hardworking and focused and I am immensely proud of her. Sofia and Sienna are roughly the ages David and I were when our mother walked out on us. I look at them and wonder afresh, how could she have done that? I recognise that something must have happened in her past to make her fragile and wayward but, even so, in my mind, there can never be any excuse for abandoning your children. She was asked by the prosecution if she would give evidence against Thwaite and she declined, which was her final insult to David and me and one that I cannot forgive. The sexual abuse we endured was indelibly damaging, but her neglect of us was equally so.

I used to fantasise about revisiting my birth father, who is married with a family, and asking him: ‘What kind of human being are you?’ But I long ago realised that would be a waste of my energy. I am now resigned to the fact that my mother and I will never be reconciled either. But I’m in a good place – probably the best I have ever been. Whatever challenges lie ahead, I know I can survive them. My life used to be all about endurance – today it’s about embracing the adventure.

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Life consists not in holding good cards, but in playing well those you hold. keep your friends close,but your enemies closer.