Deborah Curtis on writing Holding Hands.

What do you do when your life is turned upside down? What do you do when your family comes under attack? You go to War! This is what Ely-based writer Deborah Curtis did when her elderly father fell under the influence of dangerous and manipulative individuals.

‘I never thought of myself as a particularly  privileged  person. But I realise that I was. I had a comfortable home life. I had a job that I loved. I had plenty of good friends and colleagues (Deborah is also the director of The Field Theatre Group, as well as a playwright and author). My life was busy enough to be interesting and settled enough to be comfortable.

I was approaching that time in life when many of the struggles of early family life were done with. And I was looking forward to enjoying the relative peace that is one of the bonuses of middle age!

All this changed dramatically when my father (who was in the early stages of dementia) fell victim to callous and predatory individuals. Among the many devastating effects of dementia is the impairment in the sufferer’s judgment. Dementia sufferers can lose the ability to distinguish between fact and reality, as opposed to fiction and fantasy. This makes them especially susceptible to manipulation and coercion. 

When we intervened to protect him, my family and I became the focus of a sustained campaign of threats, intimidation and harassment. This included physical attacks on me, masked men besieging our home and attempts to discredit us with medical and care agencies. I also had a series of false allegations made against me, including several unfounded assault allegations.

We endured an orchestrated social-media hate-campaign directed at us by the perpetrators.

Hard as this was, the most painful aspect of this situation was to see that my beloved Dad had put his total trust in these people. He thought of them as his ‘friends’, and as his grasp on reality crumbled, he refused to believe that they were not as they seemed.

I am very fortunate, in that I am an educated and confident person, who was well able to advocate on my father’s behalf, and deal with agencies such as the police, social services and medical practitioners. Even so, rescuing my father from this situation was a long-drawn-out, all-consuming and at times, desperate struggle. It was a terrifying period in our family’s life. It felt at times as though we were living through a war!

I am happy to say that the situation was finally resolved. I learned a great deal during this time. In particular, how vulnerable the elderly are to these kinds of deceptions.

I wanted to share our family’s experiences. And as a writer, the obvious course for me was to write about it.

The result is a brand-new play, Holding Hands, based on our experiences. Since beginning work on this play I have encountered numerous other people with similar stories to tell of elderly relatives being manipulated or exploited. The play carries a stark message… ‘for every vulnerable person there is a predator … out there.’

I hope that audiences will find Holding Hands  funny as well as frightening. There are certainly moments of absurd comedy amid the drama. More importantly, I hope that Holding Hands will provoke debate about the on-going and ever-increasing problem of how to safeguard our vulnerable loved-ones.