The Bad Room

After years of physical and mental abuse, Jade thought her kindly foster mother would be the answer to her prayers. She was wrong … this is her staggering true story.

‘This must be what prison is like,’ I thought as another hour crawled by. In fact, prison would be better … at least you knew your sentence. You could tick off the days until you got out. In the Bad Room we had no idea how long we’d serve.

After years of constant abuse, Jade thought her foster mother Linda Black would be the answer to her prayers. Loving and nurturing, she offered ten-year-old Jade a life free of fear.

But once the regular social-worker checks stopped, Linda turned and over the next six years Jade and three other girls were kept prisoner in a bedroom they called the ‘bad room’.

Shut away for 16 hours at a time, they were starved, violently beaten, forbidden from speaking or using the toilet and routinely humiliated. Jade was left feeling broken and suicidal.

This is the powerful true story of how one woman banished the ghosts of her past by taking dramatic action to protect the life of every vulnerable child in care.

• Jade has never spoken publicly but is writing under her own name and significant national media and social media coverage is guaranteed

• Historic abuse in foster care is a hot topic and Jade’s story highlights failings ran far longer than previously thought

• The book that inspired Jade to write her story, Unforgivable by Collette Elliott, sold 24K TCM in PB and received widespread coverage

• Potential to tap into the hugely successful fostering market, demonstrated by Cathy Glass, by showing the darker side of foster care

• Jade’s ghostwriter, Douglas Wight, has a proven track record in this market and at securing publicity

Competition: Room;Innocent;Too Scared to Tell;Trapped;Not to Blame;The Forgotten Child;Unforgiveable;Please Let Me Go;Letters to Sarah;My Sister Milly. by Emma Donoghue;Cathy Glass;Rosie Lewis;Maggie Hartley;Richard Gallear;Collette Elliott;Caitlin Spencer;Sara Payne;Gemma Dowler