Wounds That Never Heal... 'Broken'

The events of this story are true. It begins when the author was 11 and first learnt that she had been adopted. At 19, she walked out on a wonderful family, with a husband who loved her deeply and gave her three beautiful babies. She turned her her back on them and climbed on a train to London to find her birth mother. Being innocent, she had no idea that she would soon be homeless and sleeping on park benches in Hyde Park and mixing with drug addicts, eventually working for the Maltese Mafia, who employed her as a striptease dancer in their clubs in Soho. She eventually lived with one of these Mafia men who always carried a gun and she was slowly groomed into that life. She was not allowed to go to work without being followed or watched by this violent man, although she was besotted by him. He would beat her or slap her for no reason and still she stayed. She finally escaped the violence by walking the streets yet again with nothing except the clothes she wore. Terrified, she picked up men for sex to earn money and finally met a man whom she married and who took her back to her hometown. She had witnessed violence and murder and endured violence herself, but now she is in her golden years. She has gone through four husbands, two of whom tried to murder her and almost killed her, but she can now put the truth out there for young women who are thinking of running away to London, believing the streets are paved with gold. She can assure them that they are not. Her experiences were heartbreaking, violent and soul-destroying, but she is still here to tell her story...

A childhood that could hardly be remembered, teenage years that were unforgettable, then came the unknown: fear, physical and mental abuse, pain, terror and beatings, drug abuse and going yet again into the unknown, resulting in rescue and contentment and peace... No one should travel the path I took...

This book is a must-read and should be given to any young person thinking of doing what I did... JUST DON'T, as only heartbreak will follow. It followed me and still does. That's why I remain BROKEN.

Hazel was born in 1947. At the young age of two, she was dumped in a children's home in Nottingham because her birth mother thought that it would ruin her chances of going to America with her soldier boy, whom she had met just after the war. After that, Hazel’s life changed forever. She has been candid with each word she has penned in this book, her first and only, now that she is 73 years old.

She has had more downs than ups, with violence and dangerous situations in her life, and remembers everything like it happened yesterday. She is very open about her life: the words she has written, which sometimes are very crude and to the point, describe every incident throughout her life.

She has still not found peace in her life up until this day and will always, as she puts it, remain broken.