A baby Whitbread spent months in hospital after the police took the call and steps to rescue her from that London flat. When she was discharged, the court system took responsibility for her young life and Whitbread’s next 14 years were spent in care – “an awful long time to be institutionalised”.
“For me, it was a sea of emotion and constant feeling of abandonment, attachment issues, emotional trauma,” Whitbread, now 62, tells BBC Sport.
“I didn’t know if I had a mummy or daddy, or anyone that came and visited us at special times of birthdays or Christmas. No messages, no cards.
“I can remember playing in the front room in the children’s home. It faced the car park, and everybody that came to the car park that was coming to the home, I would always say: ‘Is that my mummy coming to collect me?'”
When Whitbread was about five years old, it was. Whitbread’s mother – who was Turkish-Cypriot – came to collect her, but only to take her to a new children’s home where her half-brother and sister were living. Until then, Whitbread knew nothing of the existence of her biological parents, never mind siblings.
“When she arrived she never once made eye contact with me,” she says. “I remember crying all the way down, because it was a very frightening thing to do to leave a home which had been there, which was your family.”
The new children’s home, in Essex, was devoid of any love and affection, and short of food and clothing supplies. The children played on a cold, dirty garage floor, banished to the porch step if they misbehaved, denigrated if they wet the bed.
From time to time, Whitbread’s mother arrived to take her half-siblings out for the day, or to her home, but Whitbread was mostly left behind. On only one occasion was she taken too, only for her mother to change her mind and order Whitbread to walk back to the children’s home alone.
As time passed, her biological father – who was Greek-Cypriot – was traced. Whitbread spent a promising week with him, though he never returned to the home to see her again.
“In order to protect myself, I put up walls of security around me,” she says. “I would always protect myself from from being allowed to be loved or liked in any way, shape, or form.”
There was, however, one “bright shining star” in her life. A lady known as Mrs Peat – or ‘Auntie Rae’ – worked at the children’s home, and showered Whitbread with the love and affection she so desperately craved.
It was Auntie Rae who stopped Whitbread from leaving the home when her mother turned up again, this time with three men, wanting to take her to London for the weekend. She feared the men wanted to use her for prostitution.
Those fears were realised when, as an 11-year-old, Whitbread was told by a social worker that, against her wishes, she would be spending time during the summer holidays with her mother. Whitbread was repeatedly beaten and, on one night, was raped by a man staying in her mother’s flat.
After escaping back to the children’s home, Whitbread confided in Auntie Rae, who reported the abuse to the home’s owners. Whitbread says she later learned there was no official inquiry, nor any mention of it on her case notes.
