Someone to Watch Over Me

This is the true story of a plucky young girl who suffered an extremely traumatic and cruel childhood.  Her name was Shirley Gilfillan and she was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1925 to a mentally disturbed mother and a weak and inadequate father.  She was abandoned by him at three years of age and then permanently blinded in her left eye by her psychotic and alcoholic mother at the tender age of four.  Her neighbours feared for the child's life and reported her mother to the authorities.  Two women police officers appeared at their door and the distressed and terror-stricken child was torn from her mother and placed with her bachelor uncle who had no idea of how to care for a young child.  His sister was taken by the authorities and placed in a mental institution, diagnosed as homicidal and paranoid schizophrenic.  She was never released.  When Shirley was nine her uncle made the gut wrenching decision to place her in a Catholic orphanage.  Abandoned and rejected once again, the young girl was desperately heart broken and inconsolable.  The orphanage sadly brought brutality and cruelty into her already battered life and her days were extremely difficult.  Sent to the country to work for an elderly couple, she hoped for a new and brighter beginning but instead she was sexually abused and ill-treated.  Somehow Shirley found the courage to keep on hoping and praying for the tide to turn.  Working as a live-in maid in houses in Prospect, Adelaide. South Australia finally brought an answer to her prayers for "Someone to Watch Over Me".  Shirley was the author's beloved mother and she told her story to her daughter over many years.