Hindley's father had served with the Parachute Regiment and had been stationed in North Africa, Cyprus and Italy during the Second World War. He had been known in the army as a "hard man" and he expected his daughter to be equally tough; he taught her to fight and insisted that she "stick up for herself". When Hindley was 8, a local boy scratched her cheeks, drawing blood. She burst into tears and ran to her father, who threatened to "leather" her if she did not retaliate; Hindley found the boy and knocked him down with a series of punches. As she wrote later, "at eight years old I'd scored my first victory". Malcolm MacCulloch, professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, has written that Hindley's "relationship with her father brutalised her ... She was not only used to violence in the home but rewarded for it outside. When this happens at a young age, it can distort a person's reaction to such situations for life."