A few pictures, as a way of introduction

I have a few photos of my childhood, collected long after it was over. These photos speak volumes about the circumstances of my youth and family life.

Here I am, between 2 & 3 years old, with my mother around 22 years of age.  I’m holding her gun in my two tiny fists.  The strange thing is, I don’t remember the gun.  When I was old enough to know what a gun was, her gun of choice was the German Luger that always travelled with us.  And, if her criminal charges were any indication, knives were here first weapon of choice.  She was once charged with attempted murder, for stabbing a man.

This picture was taken on the special occasion of my rescue from the Children’s Aid Society.  My mother kidnapped me from a playground behind a CAS children’s shelter on Huntley Street in Toronto.  I was there because the night before the police found me sleeping in a boozecan where someone was stabbed.  The next day, my mother took me back.  I remember the day, it is my first memory.  She waited on the street outside the shelter until I was let out into the playground.  She called me to the fence, helped me climb over and we jumped into a car and squealed away.  She was charged with kidnapping.  But, the CAS couldn’t prove anything because they couldn’t find me for several years, long after the charges lapsed.  This picture was taken the day I was being delivered to a new home with my first new name and biography.  I was taught from a very early age to keep my real identity a secret, to protect us both from apprehension.

Few men were equal to my mother when it came to criminal activities.  She was the leader of the “Cleaver Gang”, so named by the Toronto press because one of her crew brandished a meat cleaver during a robbery.  Their specialty was armed robbery and banks were the ultimate score.  However, that didn’t limit her criminal activities.  Almost every home we had doubled as a boozecan, brothel and gambling house, mostly for criminals.  She did some modelling, mostly for catalogs and some porn.  She was once implicated in a massive fraud scheme that netted about $80,000.  I watched her bury the cheque signing machine they used.  It had been stolen from the Department of Transportation.  Her undoing came when she was caught shortly after robbing the Toronto Dominion Bank at the corner of Broadview and Queen in 1961.  The take was $10,000, according to the papers. The money was never recovered.  She was seven months pregnant at the time and my first sibling, a sister, was born in prison.

I have three sisters, born in a batch starting when I was 7.  We all have the same mother with different fathers.  The list of our fathers reads like a “Who’s Who” of the criminal world of the time.  One was a famous Toronto fence.  Another was a master counterfeiter.  I often think of my mother and her lovers as “Bonnie and Clydes”.

This is my biological father.  I’m told that he is Italian.  Like most criminals, he would do anything, but he was best known as a Montreal safecracker.  I have heard a story that he once arrived in Toronto to do a job.  The police caught wind of the job and his arrival.  The met him at the airport, broke both of his legs and gave him a free ticket back to Montreal.

I met him once, for 48 hours, when I was 21.  I searched for him, found him and arrived unannounced on his doorstep on a Friday evening.  I left on Sunday evening and never saw him again.

During most of my youth he was in prison.  His most serious conviction was attempted murder.  He was opening a safe when a security guard caught him.  He shot the guard but did not kill him.  As he described it, at the moment of his conviction he was “born again”.  It was his last criminal act.  After his release, several years before I tracked him down, he “went straight” and was working as a foreman for a construction company.  He was married to my mother’s ex-best friend, which might explain to explain why my mother never talked about him.

Here I am, trying to behave like the adults around me with my cousin who was actually one of two daughters of my mother’s best friend who eventually became my step sisters.  We both spent a lot of time living in brothels, which might explain why we were sexually intimate by the time I was 7.  Shortly after this picture was taken, I was accidently stabbed during a domestic dispute.  I have no recollection of the incident.  I only have the circular scare in the center of my abdomen.  It is like a small crater the size of a golf ball.  I am told by doctors that the circular shape is an indication that it was never stitched up, meaning that I probably did not receive medical treatment for the wound.  That makes sense.  Who wants to explain to doctors or police how a 4 year old boy got stabbed in the stomach.

Here I am on the occasion of my 7th birthday.  The seated girl sipping her drink is the same girl I was kissing in the previous photo.  The baby in the front is my first sibling.

A few hours after this picture was taken, I would be stepping over dead bodies on the highway, the sole, uninjured survivor of a multi car crash that killed two people and critically injured everyone else.  Shortly after the accident, I was abandoned in a rooming house in Toronto’s Cabbagetown district.  I was a “missing child, presumed not to be with a family member” for three years, when the authorities found me and dramatically “snatched” me off the street and arrested the very nice people who had bought me from the rooming house.

Here I am, 11 years old, reunited with my sisters.  We all have the same mother.  We all have different fathers.

This picture was taken on the occasion of my mother’s marriage to the father of the little girl on my knee.

Exactly one week later, our mother would die in a car accident on a residential street; hit by a drunk driver who happened to be a police cadet.

Those were the days when drunk driving was more acceptable, meaning that the driver was not charged with manslaughter.  However, killing the 32 year old mother of four children did put an end to his law enforcement career.

Here I am at 17, with my final new name, birthday, birthplace and related ID, rewired and returned to Canada by the Americans.  I had such as extensive criminal record by age 15 that the Canadian authorities took the unusual step of rendering me to the Americans for rehabiliation.  Shortly before my 16th birthday, while I was sitting in solitary confinement in a maximum security, adult prison in the US, I decided to retire from crime on my 16th birthday, at the “top of my game” so to speak.  It was the end of an era for me and the start of the free me.  I had succeeded in escaping from everyone related to me, including people claiming to be related to me.  I can only explain the clothes by saying that I was just released from two years of reformatory dress.

These photos should provide some clues regarding the nature of my family and the reason that the authorities were so intent on capturing me.  Unwittingly, I became a measure of my mother’s reputation.  The story of her kidnapping me from the CAS (at least twice) were a part of her prestige, something her family and friends took pride in.  In that regard, she was a hero to people who couldn’t or wouldn’t do the same things as her, such as kidnap and successfully hide their own children from the authorities.

Calling All Crown Wards

I am looking for people, like myself, who experienced severe childhood trauma, but did not succumb to the stereotype of the “child from a broken home”.

If you read the newspapers, you know that broken homes are the source of the world’s worst serial killers and rapists.  I don’t believe it.  By that logic, I should be worse than Charles Manson.

I believe there are lots of psychos from “normal” well educated, middle or upper class families.  My theory is this:  many people from toxic families are doing well for themselves.  We don’t hear about them because that is not “news”.  Who wants to read stories about the state providing better parenting than families?

I am seeking “bad starts with happy endings” stories from people are the exception to the mythic that deviance is not the inevitable outcome of neglectful or abusive parenting.

To that end, I will offer my own story, which I describe as “the never ending train wreck” of my childhood.

You will notice that I have set up this blog to be anonymous.  I think this is appropriate, for the sake of the stories.  There is nothing about my childhood that shames or embarrasses me.  I’ve never “blamed myself” for what happened to me.  I’ve never been secretive about these things, sometimes I share them with people I hardly know.  But, I have noticed that some people’s attitudes towards me shift, as if my stories inspire fear or anxiety or pity.  I have a professional life.  I don’t want potential clients to search my name on the internet and read about my childhood.

If you had a bad start with a happy ending, I encourage you to share your story here.  I can imagine a few  benefits that might ensue.

First, we don’t get much opportunity to speak with other people who had similar experiences.

Second, we might be able to chip away at the stereotype of demon children from broken homes.

Third, we might better understand why some children emerge from hell to lead fruitful, fulfilling lives.