November 1996 Sisters See Abuser Jailed Two sisters embraced each other yesterday as the man who abused them 30 years ago began a two-year sentence. The women, now 35 and 40 years old, waived their right to anonymity after their uncle, David Percy, was jailed. They said: `We are both just delighted that justice has been done and one more pervert has been taken off the streets. Child abuse is an illness. She was raped as a child and suffered physical violence as a wife, but Janey Godley, 44, has finally found happiness by entertaining others… Staring at the wallpaper, my body shook uncontrollably as I blurted my terrible secret out to my mum. “Uncle David tickles me down there,” I said, and told her that when I was alone with her brother, he’d pull down my knickers and touch me. I looked at my mum, longing for her to tell me it wouldn’t happen again. But there was a cold look in her eyes. “If you ever tell your dad, he’ll kill my brother and go to jail, and you’ll have no daddy!” she hissed, staring into my eyes. “Is that what you want?” I was crushed. I was just six years old, but even my own mother thought that I was a bad little girl… The two-bedroomed flat in Glasgow where I grew up was cold and smelly. I shared a room with my sister Ann and our elder brothers Mij and Vid. Our mum would watch old movies on our black-and-white TV. “Look at me, I’m Judy Garland,” she’d laugh, trying to escape her demons. Dad was an alcoholic, but he held down a job at a local steelworks. He worked hard, but we were still poor. Our clothes were ragged and our plastic shoes were no barrier against the cold. We were infested with fleas and head lice. Like a lot of the women where we lived, Mum took Valium. Her life was full of turmoil. We had to keep everything a secret from Dad. “Don’t tell him I’ve been to the pawn shop,” she’d beg us But from the age of five, I kept the biggest secret locked inside me – my
uncle David Percy was abusing me. After Mum’s reaction, the only way I could protect myself was to keep out of his way. But he always found me. “What’s up?”Ann asked one day when she heard me crying in the toilet. “Uncle David tickles me there and l hate it,” I sobbed. “Oh, Janey, no!” she cried, wrapping her arms around me. “I thought if I let him touch me, he wouldn’t touch you.” Ann was just 12 years old, but she promised to protect me. “We’ll make sure neither of us is ever alone with him,” she said. But it wasn’t long before he progressed to rape. His abuse went on until I was 11 or 12. I don’t know why it stopped. Maybe I got better at hiding. Even though Dad was drunk every weekend, I was heartbroken when he left. He knew how unstable Mum was,yet he’d left us to deal with it. I muddled through the following years, studying hard at school. My teachers said I showed promise. But, aged 16, I marched into school and announced I wouldn’t be coming back. “I need to earn money,” I told the teachers They tried to get me to stay. but I’d made my mind up. I got a job working as a carer in an old people’s home. But life was
still miserable. Mum started seeing a bully who regularly beat her up. “He’ll kill you one day,” I shouted at her, but she wouldn’t listen. I was 18 and working as a barmaid in a nightclub when I met Sean
Storrie, who was 16. His father George, a well-known villain, owned the club and Sean worked there as a bouncer. I couldn’t stand him – he was so moody. But when he asked me out, I said yes out of curiosity. ‘Wow, so this is what it’s meant to feel like,’ I thought when he kissed
me. Within weeks, we were in love. When I told him about being abused, he listened patiently. Sean didn’t pressurise me to sleep with him, and 1f when it happened it was wonderful. Three weeks after our first date, he slipped a diamond ring on my finger and asked me to marry him. The two of us had never been happier. We married on 27 September 1980, and moved into a pub George
owned in one of the roughest areas of Glasgow – he wanted it run by family. “I wouldn’t trust a stranger to look after my business,” he said. But the pub was barely paying its way, and most of our regulars were gangsters. Sean and I worked hard at turning the place around. Behind the bar, we seemed happy, but upstairs I endured Sean’s moods. We’d been married less than a year when he first slapped me. I learned when he was about to I explode, and would run from the pub. “Janey, I’m so sorry,” he’d say sadly when I dared to return. My world came crashing down in 1982 when my mum disappeared after going on a trip with her boyfriend. A few days later, her body was found in the River Clyde. The police said it was an accident. I remembered my words to her: “He’ll kill you one day…” I had no doubt her death wasn’t an accident. I was devastated. She hadn’t shown me much love,but I loved her. When our daughter Ashley was born in April 1986, we both adored her. Sean was more confident with her than me. She seemed so tiny and I was terrified something would happen to her. She was a real daddy’s girl. I knew he’d never lay a finger on her, but that didn’t stop him attacking me. When he slapped me I’d promise myself I’d leave him. But, as I watched Ashley grow, I realised I could never take her away from Sean. I found myself wishing away her childhood. ‘Hurry up and get to 16, then I can leave,’ I thought. Despite our problems,Sean and I made a success of the pub. I loved working behind the bar, cracking jokes and telling funny stories. But the nightmares I’d been having since childhood continued to plague me, and I knew I had to come to terms with what had happened. But I couldn’t do it without Ann. We were close, but neither of us had talked about Uncle David’s abuse since that day when she was 12 and I was just seven years old. One day I picked up the phone and dialled her number. She became hysterical when I started talking about our past but,eventually, we talked about everything. “We’ll have to tell Dad,” I said. He had given up drink by then, and we’d forged a close relationship. Sean,despite his faults,wanted to help me deal with what had happened all those years ago. He asked Dad to come over to the pub. As we sat upstairs I forced myself to tell him what had happened, but I couldn’t look him in the eyes I was terrified that he’d think I’d made it up. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. He was heartbroken. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could go back and fix it,” he said time after time when I’d finished talking. It took a long time but, as I faced my uncle, then 47, in court in 1996, I realised he no longer had any power over me, and I pitied him. He denied the truth,but he was found guilty of sexually assaulting us and sentenced to two years in jail. “What’s important is that everyone knows what he did,” I said to Ann. Sean’s dad died that year and we both decided it was the right time for a new start. We knew that to find peace~we had to leave the pub, and the arguments that blew up all the time with his brothers We bought a two-bedroom flat in Glasgow’s West End. Overnight, Sean seemed to change as we left the stresses of the pub behind. Then one of my old customers suggested I audition at a local comedy night. “Go on, Janey, you were always entertaining us when you were behind the bar,”he said. The first time I looked out at the sea of faces looking back at me from the stage, I felt like I’d escaped into another world. I even laughed about some of the awful things that had happened to me. By making a joke out of them, I was taking control. Since winning that audition, my career’s gone from strength to strength. I changed my name to Janey Godley, too. It was a symbolic way of shrugging off the old, abused Janey. I’ve done some acting,written a play and a book, too, Handstands In The Dark about my experiences. I was so excited when I saw a copy of it in a bookshop that I took a photo of it using my mobile phone! Sean and I will celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary in September. We’ve never been closer. Sean is tormented by the violence he subjected me to and we talk about it openly. We even discuss it with Ashley,who’s 19 now and at university. “I’m so ashamed of what I’ve done,” Sean says Looking back, I made my decisions based on my circumstances at the time. If we hadn’t had Ashley, I wouldn’t have tolerated his behaviour. But he was a great dad We’re lucky we’ve had a happy ending – I’ve known many women who lost their lives at the hands of their bullying husbands. My life’s had more than its fair share of ups and downs,but as I stand onstage and hear the laughter, I know I’ve dealt with the ghosts of the past. Who’d have thought that Janey Currie from the slums would become a successful playwright and actor, an award-winning stand-up comedian and have a book published?