Dylan my son had always been a bright, unassuming boy in school. He did well in lessons and enjoyed learning. He excelled in history and science, he dad many friends.
When he turned 8 his behavior began to change. He would talk back, flip out over stupid things and be violent with me. It was like he had been replaced with Damien at times. We talked to him and were told to shut up. Nothing was wrong. Lots of times we talked to him but he shut us down. So I turned to his school. I was assured he was being monitored and in school he was quiet and hardly spoke. He was not being bullied.
Over the course of a few months I went back and forth insisting something was going on. I felt it. Dylan always denied everything to everyone and his behavior got worse. It was frustrating.
One day he tried to hang his five year old sister. He put a dressing gown cord around her neck. I was furious, and shocked. I took him straight to the school and insisted he was being bullied. But nobody had seen anything.
Walking home, I didn’t know what to do. Should we take him to the doctors? Would he have tried to kill Kate if I hadn’t of been there? Why? But Dylan wouldn’t answer. He stayed with me that day. My gut told me to keep him so I did. School understood.
In the playground I watched him as he played, I saw him with three of his mates but then a lad walked through them and he stopped. I saw him turn white and my friends and I all raced over to him as he sat on the floor. The lad walked out of the playground with his mom. Then I realised I knew them. They lived directly across the road from us. They were an African family and had very strange practices they did in the street and house. All the neighbours saw and heard them.
Helping Dylan up I sat on the bench with him. He was clinging onto me. I asked what was said but he shook his head. I asked his friends. They looked terrified. One told me Dylan had just been told that later that night I would be killed in my bed, all because he was naughty. I was incandescent with rage. Dylan was inconsolable crying. He had been told if I was told then Kate would be taken. I asked one of my friends to stay with him, another to get the head teacher and the third to ring an ambulance.
Then I stormed over to the mother chatting out by the school gate. I was wild with anger. I told her exactly what I had been told and she came and stood up in my face, and laughed. Told me it was all lies and her son would not do it. He was stood there smiling. The head came over and I told her what was going on. The mom said I was attacking her for being a different color. The head knew me, and knew I would never do that and stuck up for me.
The head teacher asked me to go in the next day for a meeting.
I took Dylan home with him sobbing. He was begging me not to do anything he didn’t want me to die. No amount of consoling him would stop him.
Later that night I laid next to him in bed, stroking his arm, reassuring him and told him if the kid had been bullying him he could tell me. I wouldn’t tell a soul but I knew I couldn’t do my job as a mom and protect him, if I didn’t know what was happening. Reluctantly out of sheer fright slowly he began to tell me a story. The story of a kid with the evil eye tattoo on his hand. The eye watched him and his chosen ones and saw their wicked thoughts and deeds, and punished them. How Dylan had beaten him in a test at school and that meant he was evil.
Dylan had to be punished and so he was told at some point in the coming nights two men would break in and take his sister. His five year old sister and take her, and bury her in a coffin in the ground while she was alive. Nobody would know she was there and she would die. Slowly. – unless Dylan stopped being good at school.
So Dylan began to fail tests etc. to keep his sister safe. One day we had taken them to the fair and come back. The kid had seen Dylan laughing as he got out of the car and in school told him that the evil eye would punish him. Two days later our beloved German Shepherd Tessa died. It was a shock and we were devastated but Dylan was told he caused it.
Then he was told to dig up Tess so the mother could use her bones. He refused. He was pushed down in school and cursed. My son lived in fear of this kid for months. The mother helped the kid make his life hell. Dylan stayed silent when he was told they would burn him alive, when they told him he should be burned, when they told him to hang his sister.
There are no words to describe how I felt.
I stayed with him that night and the next morning I went to the head. I told her everything. She needed Dylan to confirm it but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. His fear was paralysing. She cried. She had failed to protect him. I cried. I had too. The parents were dragged in. The mother played the race card. The father was horrified. He told his son it all stopped. We agreed Dylan would be taught away from him and monitored at lunch and break.
That afternoon after picking the kids up I was in the playground while they ran around. His mom walked past me and went to my son, who was on the climbing frame. She picked him up by his neck and shouted in his face. I ran over and she wouldn’t put him down. My friend rang the police and got the teachers. Parents were screaming at her to put him down and holding me back. I was ready to kill. Dylan was screaming!
They wouldn’t let me near her. Eventually after she saw seven teachers come running out she dropped him and said something to him that made my blood run cold. She told him that for his sins the blood of his mother would run over him. Then she turned to me and asked me if I had fingernails as I would need them to claw my way out of hell. It was a threat. I went for her. It took 9 people to get hold of me.
The police came just as she was walking out of the playground. The cop wasn’t White. She told him it was a race issue. Three of her mates backed her up. The head explained, as did I, as did other parents and my poor son was shaking, crying and clinging to me. The police warned me if I touched her it was assault. They told the head she might want to look into different classes, and he told me I would be done for racial abuse if I attacked her.
I was gobsmacked. They left.
The head took us in so I could calm down.
We took my son out of school for a week while the head rearranged for the kid to be taught elsewhere.
Living across the road from them meant we saw them daily. The mom would shout curses at me in African, would try to intimidate Dylan. We had to move and quick. Once out in the street she tried to grab him. She had been behind me but I hadn’t seen her and she grabbed his arm. I pushed her. She fell on the road and I moved Dylan away. I was disgusted at myself as she was pregnant too but it was a instinct thing. I had done it before I realised I had done it. She got the police and I was cautioned, I didn’t deny it. I had been wrong. But that meant she had the power. She was now the victim.
Then it all changed. I don’t know why or how but all of a sudden she took her lad out of school permanently. She apologised to my son, asking my permission to talk to him first and she tried to make amends and explain her actions. I didn’t want to know but Dylan listened to her and forgave her. We moved six months after and Dylan saw a child psychologist for 12 sessions after. They helped him to understand those bad things were not going to happen and it wasn’t his fault.
By accepting the caution he also saw my actions were wrong. She had it coming, but yes it was wrong. We did solo sessions and joint so he could see me play my part in it all.
His behavior was different after that. He didn’t like the school, wouldn’t participate in class.
When we moved he breathed a sigh of relief. He’s never looked back; we don’t talk of those times now. A lot of it Dylan has blocked out, it’s too traumatic for him. His next school he was happy and settled.
I would happily cop a caution or charge for protecting my children, and I hope one day that witch gets what she gives out.
This inspirational post was written anonymously by a mom who is a member of my Facebook mums group. I have full permission to share her story. If you can relate to this post and would like to share your own anonymous post please contact me.
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