Many of the pad brats I spoke to for this investigation remember life on the patch as a time of freedom, fun and mischief. Far from the terror of a nuclear winter, they recalled endless summer days spent on bikes, exploring orchards and rivers, pausing for a packed lunch of sandwiches and crisps.
"My childhood was amazing," one pad brat told me, reminiscing about lifelong friendships forged in the unique shared experience of growing up as a forces kid. Another shared how she and a fellow pad brat remained "best friends" their whole lives, until her friend sadly passed away.
They described having "heaps of freedom", the kind that seems unimaginable in today's world of helicopter parenting.
And while the patches were in the heart of mainland Europe, families lived in an "English bubble", cheering the national team in the World Cup and waving Union Jacks in celebration of the Royal Wedding.
It's easy to look back on the image of children wandering into the woods, playing hide and seek in fields that backed onto a Nazi-era concentration camp, a football under one arm and a pocket stuffed with Riesen chocolates, and feel nostalgic for a lost era of childhood freedom and endless curiosity.
The reality of patch life, however, was much darker.
Pad brats told openDemocracy of being subject to horrific bullying, including physical attacks by their peers. One woman described how aged 11, she was so terrified to get on the school bus, where she faced daily beatings and harassment, that she wet herself with fear. There was no authority to appeal to for help – if anything, teachers joined in.
Domestic abuse was described to me as "rife". Men, including those struggling with conflict-induced post-traumatic stress disorder, often took their aggression out on their family as the military turned a blind eye to terror in the home. Some men "bullied and hit their wives", said one former army wife.
Pad brat Angela*, speaking out about her experience for the first time, described how her father "tried to murder me when I was a teenager".
"With regards to his trauma, he definitely took that out on me," Angela told me. "What he did, it would now be categorised as abuse. He got away with trying to kill me."
Despite the violence she endured, Angela still has a relationship with her dad. "It took a lot of understanding on my part," she said, "but there were reasons behind his behaviour and that was linked to his trauma."
Other former pad brats spoke of friends whose dads took their own lives or were lost in conflict zones. Death, trauma and violence were all part of patch life, where the army was employer, landlord, school teacher and doctor. Military dentists treated childhood toothache, while military doctors offered treatment with a trademark army brutality that required even mothers giving birth in army hospitals to stand to attention. "There was no gesture of care or kindness, even for children struggling in pain," said Angela.
It was in this world of freedom, bike rides, big open spaces, tight-knit community, military hierarchies, hidden violence, trauma and conflict, family isolation and deliberate silences, where Jessica grew up and Martin Roberts came of age.
And it was in this world, when Jessica was seven years old and Roberts 16, that he began his months-long campaign of sexual abuse against her.
Read the full investigation
here
*Names have been changed
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