Joseph’s story
'Joseph’s story' by Joseph Leese
We lived in what I can best describe as fictional wealth. On the outside my childhood home was a picture-book country house, on the inside it was a place of violence and crippling psychological repression. My father controlled everything and everyone. My mother and I were both beaten regularly: she for protecting me and I for misbehaving. My father considered me to be a burden, an idiot and a delinquent child. He doted, instead, on my younger sister (although there were four children), who he considered to be promising and bright.
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