After posting the first few scenes here of the manuscript I have been writing on and off for years, I decided this month to go back to it and take it more seriously. I have signed up and committed to write 52 scenes each of 1200-1500 words per week for 52 weeks by which time I will have completed the first draft of a novel.
So…I’m not going to post any more here, but am happy to take pre orders for signed copies of the book…Haha.
The first of our writing exercises for 2021 required the inclusion of the word (or indeed just the concept) of ‘ freedom’. This story came from an article I read about a young Korean teenager who entirely blamed her parents after she became embroiled in an online child porn site. How does this happen? Possibly like this…
“They called it giving me freedom,” Kerry told the lead investigator when asked about her relationship with her parents. “When what they meant was, they didn’t have time for me, so just left me alone.”
“We tried to treat her with maturity and gave her freedom and privacy,” Carole, her mother wept, when questioned about her daughter by the same inspector from the digital crimes squad.
“We brought Kerry up in a good home. Why did she do this to us?” was all Alan, Kerry’s father, could manage, laying the blame squarely for all this at the door of his 14 year old only child.
The police had seen it all before.
* * *
Carole’s career as a top attorney and Al’s as CEO of a multi-national retail chain were almost all consuming which lead them to the decision early on in their marriage only to have one child, on whom they could lavish what time and attention they had to spare. Now they were reaping the benefits and could afford their lovely home, two overseas holidays a year and private schooling. Life was comfortable for their small family.
But Carole suspected for a while that something was wrong in Kerry’s world. Until a few months ago, they all rubbed along with each other just fine, but then the rows had started and she began to miss her sunny, bright little girl. But Carole had equally long been expecting the onset of the difficult teen years and so chose to put Kerry’s sulky withdrawal with sporadic angry outbursts down to adolescence.
Alan blamed it on the cell phone, Kerry’s friends (faceless and nameless), and social media. Carole didn’t know who to blame.
“My husband was dead against getting Kerry a cell phone, but after he gave in and we got her one for her 12th birthday, communication in the house was reduced to a minimum,” Carole told police.
Carole remembered hers and Alan’s fights, before the ones with Kerry started.
“She doesn’t need a cell phone. What does she need one for?” Alan had demanded.
“It’s a convenience thing, Al. If extra murals change, she can let me know. You don’t spend hours in the car fetching and carrying. Those are billable hours that I’m losing.”
“But that won’t be all she’ll use it for, you can be sure of that,” Al retorted. His last word had been that it was on Carole if the phone became a weapon that Kerry would later wield against her parents. How prophetic his words seemed now.
Carole had taken Al’s capitulation to Kerry.
‘About that cell phone…”
Kerry had immediately assumed her mother was going to adopt her usual anti- cell- phones- for -12 -year -olds stance and had pushed past her into the kitchen. She pulled out bread, peanut butter, jam, and a bottle of milk deliberately provoking Carole, since supper was moments away.
“You and dad are just so out of touch, it’s pathetic…Every single one of my friends already has a phone. Gemma has had one for more than a year. Her mum gets her.” Kerry snarled.
“If you’d just let me finish…” began Carole.
“I wish you’d never started…”
“I was going to say…. dad has agreed and I thought we could go and sort a phone and a contract out after school on Friday.”
Kerry’s response had been a mumbled apology and a discernible smirk of triumph. And so, the journey from present daughter to permanently closeted belligerent teen had begun.
“I was lonely,” Kerry revealed in a family session with the social worker allocated to her case. “My parents were always at work and when mum picked me up from school, she was always on her phone. She hardly had time to ask me how my day was. And after she dropped me at home, she raced back to the office. Dad never got home before supper and his laptop was like an extension of him. And I wasn’t allowed round to friends’ houses on school nights, so I just went online.”
Carole and Alan saw less and less of Kerry in the evenings as she was holed up in her room, gobbling up the wifi. Carole had read all the literature around managing children’s screen time, and cell phone usage. She decided to be a responsible, if unpopular parent and had started by removing the phone as soon as Kerry’s light went out.
“Mom!” Kerry shrieked every night. “What the…I’ll put it on silent, pleeease, just let me keep it.”
“Nope. You think I don’t know that you’ll switch it straight back on… the alerts, beeps, and the messages…”
Carole also tried to argue that by virtue of her being the one that paid for the phone she therefore had the right to access Kerry’s online activities, but Carole was unable to prevent Kerry from changing her password with alarming frequency, shutting them out of her Instagram and TikTok accounts and who knew what other sites. They would find out about those chat rooms soon enough.
After eighteen miserable months, the tension at home had become unbearable. The triangular arguments escalated to breaking point. Carole finally confiscated Kerry’s phone, convinced that it was the source of their collective misery. She told Kerry that if she didn’t reveal her password, she would simply engage the services of an expert and they would access her accounts that way. Carole wasn’t sure such a person existed, but Kerry seemed to take the threat seriously, and broke down.
She told them just enough to convince them they needed to go to the police but for more than a week, they were paralysed by indecision. Carole and Alan blamed each other for creating the circumstances in which Kerry had unwittingly become involved in activities on the dark web, discoverable only by those in the know who were prepared to pay large amounts of money to access images of gullible and vulnerable young girls like Kerry.
Finally, emotionally and physically exhausted, they found themselves at the regional police headquarters being questioned by the inspector from the Digital Sex Crimes Unit. Kerry agreed to her parents being present when she was questioned.
“He said he went to the boys’ school up the road and made friends with me on Insta. Then he invited me to a chat room, with his mates. Some of the girls at school said they were on it, and it was fun.”
“And what did you talk about?” the inspector prodded in a low, gentle voice.
“Just… homework, parents, you know …”
“And when did things change?”
“Last year sometime…He gave me a password to another site and asked me to meet him there…” Carole watched as her daughter pressed her lips together in an effort not to cry, but the tears spilled down her cheeks, then her chest heaved.
“He introduced me to some other guy. He said he could get me stuff.” Kerry managed between gulping sobs.
“What kind of stuff?”
“Clothes, stuff I wanted…”
“How did that work?”
“He sent me vouchers to spend online.”
“And what did you have to do for him to get these things?”
“You’ve SEEN the fucking photos, you KNOW what I did, all right?”
Carole flinched at her daughter’s outburst, but the questions continued. Kerry’s answers were graphic and shocking.
Their nightmare had only just begun.