Mother, you <u>did</u> make my childhood a misery

Constance Briscoe is accused of inventing a tale of domestic abuse. But yesterday she stood by her story &ndash; and stunned the High Court with a shocking account of her upbringing. Robert Verkaik reports

Few family legal disputes in recent years can be said to have truly shocked the case-hardened judiciary who impassively preside over the Royal Courts of Justice. But the disturbing details contained in the allegations of child abuse made this week by Constance Briscoe against her mother have raised the hairs on a number of periwigs at the High Court and have become the only talking point in the judges' canteen.

It is not just the graphic nature of Ms Briscoe's accounts of, when a child, being stripped naked, beaten with a stick and her attempted suicide which have captured judicial interest, but the fact that these claims come from one of their own.

Ms Briscoe is not only a successful lawyer but one of the first black women in Britain to be appointed to the rank of recorder, a part-time position on the bench.

In her 2006 memoir, Ugly, Ms Briscoe delivered a warts-and-all account of her early life and in particular, disclosed the abuse she alleges she suffered at the hands of her mother.

Ms Briscoe, 51, who grew up a child of Jamaican immigrants in a poor part of London, alleges that her mother regularly beat and starved her before abandoning her when she was 13.

The book further claims Ms Briscoe's stepfather stubbed out a cigarette on her hand, and says that as a teenager she needed surgery on her breasts because of trauma caused by her mother's assaults.

Her mother, Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, says these and other harrowing incidents are all fiction and has begun legal action for defamation against her daughter and the book's publishers, Hodder and Stoughton. Ms Briscoe-Mitchell is being backed by Ms Briscoe's older sister, Patsy Briscoe, who has testified that the book is a "disgraceful" lie written in revenge for their mother complaining to the Bar Council about Constance Briscoe's "true character".

But far from backing down, Ms Briscoe has stood by her allegations and yesterday took to the witness box to provide further details to support her case.

She claimed that she had plastic surgery to get rid of the ugliness which she says her mother ceaselessly taunted her about. She said that as a student in Newcastle, she used her university grant to pay for operations on the bridge and bottom of her nose, her upper and lower lip and eventually her eyes.

"I had it because my mother had for a very long time called me ugly, and I was conscious of my looks and I wanted to get rid of the ugliness," she told the court.

Ms Briscoe said that she had bad acne when she was young and, by the time she was 14, had to wear a wig to conceal hair loss.

"My mother would call me ugly, call me a dirty little whore, call me potato head, call me Miss Pissabed ... and Scarface." She said that the unmanageable bed-wetting which irritated her mother began "ever since I knew myself" and continued most nights until she was 14.

At first her mother tried to help but then started warning her that she would be beaten if she did not stop, she claims.

It progressed so that if she wet the bed, her mother would pull her out of bed by her knickers and beat her with a shoe, a belt, a cane, or a "split-split stick".

She said that later on, her mother would keep the wet sheets in a sealed plastic bag until bedtime and then put them back on the bed and make her get in. "My mother said 'When are you going to stop pissing my bed? When are you going to stop pissing my bed? When? When?' And she punched me.

"I was stripped naked by her and she grabbed hold of my pubic hairs and pulled me towards her and, because that was quite painful, I had to be on my tip-toes, and then she punched me in the breast and then she poked me, twisted my nipples and punched me again, and on that occasion she left the room and took my mattress with her."

Ms Briscoe said that, when she was nine, her mother had deliberately cut her on the inside of her arm with a knife in a row over the preparation of a chicken.

She also described how her mother had flown a remote control toy plane into her face, leaving wounds on her cheek. She had an operation to remove lumps from her breast in 1972 which, she said, were caused by her mother's attack on them. After that surgery, she added, her mother would shove her and say that Constance hadn't got any "tits", she had, and she was the woman in the house.

Ms Briscoe wiped away tears as she told the court how she drank bleach after trying unsuccessfully to be taken into care. "I decided that the best way to deal with it was to drink some Domestos because my mother spent a lot of time telling me that I was a germ and I thought that if I drank it, that would be OK," she said.

Asked why she wrote the book, Ms Briscoe told the jury: "I wrote the book for a number of reasons. The first reason is I do not believe for a split second that I owe my mother a bond of silence. I don't. I had a story to tell and that story really is that I, someone from dirt poverty, from absolutely nowhere, with no assistance whatever, having faced adversity at every turn, could come through. I wanted to say to whoever read the book ... you can be what you want to be. You just have to believe in yourself.

She added: "It is often said that people at the Bar are posh, privileged. Well, actually, you do not have to be posh or privileged to be at the Bar. You just need to believe in yourself and I truly, truly believe my book has done an enormous amount of good."

She said the allegations of abuse by her mother was just "one tiny part" of the story. "It is about looking forward, never making excuses and having the confidence, no matter what, to succeed, and I think I have done a great deal of good for a lot of people."

The hearing continues.