Damaged – The Heartbreaking True Story of a Forgotten Child

Damaged – Cathy Glass

බිඳුණු බිලින්දා – Dileepa Jayakodi

It is an unbelievable and heartwarming story. Can the petals be broken, even before a little bud bloom..? 😔 This book was written by British author, Cathy Glass based on a true incident that she experienced.

When Cathy was met Jodie, she was 8 years old and a rejected kid from five foster families within four months. Can it happen or believe..? So much of rejections within four months..?

Although, it was unbelievable, the situation of Jodie had in the worst case, when she comes to Cathy’s place. She was always violent and provocative and could not keep the attention on one thing for a moment. Even though she was only 8 years old, she had the mind of a preschool child. She didn’t know how to draw or paint and even failed to do her own things. Her mental level was so low and tried to do self-harm. The first day that came to Cathy’s place, she wounded her hand with a small knife and covered her face with blood. But she felt no pain.

She hated not only adults or children, but also pets. Also, hated to anything that comes in front of her and was with angry enough to destroy everything. At the same time, she was alone in her own world, talking to herself and mentioning strange persons’ names. Though Cathy had 20 years of experiences as a foster- mother, all these Jodie’s weird behaviors were unthinkable to her. But she had compassion and love for this helpless girl and tried to get close. Cathy kept a close watch on her behavior and reported it all. In here, she could identify a pattern of Jodie’s behaviors and started to read her old reports to find out the relationship of all these. Since then, Cathy had to read unbelievable things about Jodie.

As a reader, by the time I finished reading this story, I was feeling in a lot of pain and sadness. Is society so cruel..? We should think deeply, how Jodie copes her the life when adults select suicide as the only solution to unbearable problems. I recommend you to read this Cathy’s book, “Damaged”. Also, Dileepa Jayakodi has done the translation into Sinhala by doing justice to the original book.

G A Y A N I J A Y A B A H U ✍

---