'The story of a weird world I was warned never to tell'

[Steve]

Pauline Dakin's childhood in Canada in the 1970s was full of secrets, disruption and unpleasant surprises. She wasn't allowed to talk about her family life with anyone - and it wasn't until she was 23 that she was told why.

http://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42951788

[Richard W]

I almost posted this after reading it, but didn't get round to it and then forgot - it's a very interesting story. And good that she doesn't seem to have been too badly damaged by it.

[Little Pink Pill]

That we can tell from an article, anyway. Poor thing.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

I wonder whether the lack of damage might actually stem from not being brought into the so-called truth about the 'weird world' until she was an adult.

Seaboe

[DawnStorm]

The ID channel would love to get a hold of this story!

[Sue]

What an utterly bizarre story! As I read it I kept thinking, of course, how could any of this possibly be true, but assumed Pauline herself was delusional. Wow.

[Blatherskite]

I'm dubious about the claim that various people in her family's lives were replaced by doubles who had been given plastic surgery/prosthetics to look just like the people they were replacing.

Plastic surgery is rarely that effective. You would need to find people with the right bone structures to start of with, who also happened to be great actors and spot-on voice mimics. Even somebody you don't know that well can have particular traits or quirks or mannerisms that you can easily spot, and somebody you know very well couldn't be impersonated that perfectly. People who know us can tell me and my identical twin sister apart, after all, and we have a genetic advantage.

Sorry to be morbid, but I also find it hard to believe that people with the time and resources to give a body double a perfect set of prosthetic toes were still unable to harm the family.

Even if this part isn't true, it doesn't immediately disprove the rest of it. But I wonder if a life on the run (understandably) resulted in the parents becoming paranoid to the point where it could verge on delusional.

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by Blatherskite

I'm dubious about the claim that various people in her family's lives were replaced by doubles who had been given plastic surgery/prosthetics to look just like the people they were replacing.

It's been a few days since I read the article, but I didn't get the impression that the writer, now, believes that actually happened. I thought it was something she was told by her mother and stepfather, as part of their delusion.

[Sue]

I gathered that none of the back story was ever true. There were no mob connections and no reason to have ever been on the run. It was all the stepfather. I might have misunderstood the initial real story though. It was a confusing read! Was the writer's father ever connected in anyway with the mob?

[erwins]

Blatherskite, did you read the whole article? Or stop around the point that you found dubious? As you might gather from the other replies, there is a bit of a plot twist at the end of it.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by Sue

I might have misunderstood the initial real story though. It was a confusing read! Was the writer's father ever connected in anyway with the mob?

I suppose even Paula wouldn't know for sure. It could be that Stan was able to manipulate Ruth because she was paranoid about her ex's real ties to organized crime, or (what seems a lot more likely to me) that he just convinced her that her ex was a criminal and that she was therefore a target.

[Blatherskite]

Originally Posted by erwins

Blatherskite, did you read the whole article? Or stop around the point that you found dubious? As you might gather from the other replies, there is a bit of a plot twist at the end of it.

My mistake! Or perhaps also my phone's mistake. I initially thought the article ended at the picture of her wedding day... originally that and the picture above it didn't load and for some reason I must have decided that particular missing image marked the end of the article. Possibly it displayed as a big gap after the end of the previous paragraph or possibly my phone temporarily stopped scrolling at the undisplayed image.

Had I known there was more I would have read it later - I was intrigued and found the article as I'd read it weirdly unsatisfying in its details!

And yes, the complete article makes much more sense now.