The Bad Room
Douglas Wight, Jade Kelly

The shocking story of how a ten-year-old girl endured a foster mother from hell – but found the courage to win justice.

When Jade Kelly met her new foster mother she thought her prayers had been answered. Kindly Linda Black  was everything her violent, drug addicted mother was not. Loving and nurturing, she fed and clothed ten-year-old Jade and offered a life free of fear from near constant abuse. Or so Jade thought. As soon as social workers in Lancashire stopped their regular checks on Jade’s progress, Linda turned. Over the next six years Jade and three other girls were effectively kept prisoner in a bedroom she called the ‘bad room’ and subjected to unrelenting physical and mental abuse that included being:

·      Shut in the room for 16 hours at a time, forbidden from speaking and beaten if they made the slightest sound

·      Banned from using the toilet, making them wet the bed and having to go to school the following day still reeking of urine

·      Routinely humiliated and persecuted, leaving her feeling suicidal

·      Starved of food, forcing them to steal titbits from the school

·      Branded ‘lesbian’, ‘dyke’, ‘fat’ and ‘slag’, creating such a negative body image that Jade became the youngest girl in Britain to undergo breast reduction surgery on the NHS.

Despite being aware of Jade’s problems, social services left her with Linda, leaving her emotionally and physically scarred. It was only years later, when she had access to her files that she saw how badly she was let down.