The following contains graphic information, if it distresses you please seek help:
Kids helpline 1800 55 1800 or Lifeline 13 11 14.
This Information would not be part of my history had the systems put in place to protect children had done so successfully. That was not the case in the 1990’s for me and this is a snapshot into the lasting effects of a child who is failed by the system.
I’m gripping the pencil in my hand so hard my fingers are turning white. Go on, colour in they tell me, just sit and play, I nod compliantly, I don’t want to make these giant adults mad too.
I am four & a half years old, I count on my fingers, one, two, three, four, and a bit, bending my pinky finger in half. I catch them watching me, I must look silly so I stop, I worry about what they think of me, I worry all the time.
I feel surrounded, they are vultures circling me, like the birds from the jungle book movie I watch sometimes. I get cold shivers down my spine and my tummy churns again. They’re doing that fake adult thing where they try act relaxed and friendly but I know they want something from me, all adults want something in return for being nice to me.
They watch me, from the corners of their eyes, scrutinising my drawing, jotting notes down about the way I sit, slumped and sad at the little colourful kids table. Notes on how I am disinterested in playing with their pre-loved toys. Toys which only make the hole in my stomach bigger.
These toys make me wonder what other kids are forced to play and colour in, are there more like me, more sad, angry and lonely kids who feel that they ruined their family’s lives and now have to sit and be watched, measured and calculated on how bad they are. It’s my fault my family don’t love each other, if daddy didn’t hurt me then mummy wouldn’t cry and break things and my heart wouldn’t hurt and feel like it was falling out.
I don’t know why it feels exciting the days before we go to the lawyers. The letter comes in the mail and tells us when we must be there. I am always walking on egg shells, but even more so when the letter comes. We get dressed up and go into the city and we see the divorce people. It is never as exciting as the build up to coming here, we are always so sad afterwards. It is like a roller coaster, all exciting and then you get dropped deeper and deeper down into the sick feeling.
I can hear the grown ups talking, the court counsellor lady and mummy their big words don’t make sense. I don’t like the lady watching me, she asks questions that make me want to rip my hair out. She doesn’t listen, she just looks down at me from her chair and talks at me. I do have a voice I always think as I stare at the floor near my toes, but I am so scared of saying anything. When I have said things the world falls apart below me and my heart dies a little more.
When she’s done with her big words with mummy and thinks I have warmed up to her, she asks me the probing questions, the ones that make me want to throw up.
Do you understand why you’re here? How would you feel about living with mummy? You’ll want to see daddy again won’t you?
My brain neurones explode, why do these big people keep turning the button on to the blender that is inside me.
I think hard, face screwed up and feeling sweaty, I want to be able to say how I feel…
I want to say I am here because it is my fault I am a girl and daddy loves his little girls this way that makes my body go hard like a rock, makes the burning sick feeling go into my throat and makes me go to the other places in my head.
I am scared of mummy but I love her, so yes I want to live with mummy.. where are you going to take me if I’m not with her? I’m already so lonely, am I going to be given away like a doggie no one wants any more because it is old and dirty and used and not pretty any more, is that what you big people will do?
NO I do not want to see daddy ever again, he makes my skin crawl, my crying is unstoppable until I can’t breathe when I am alone with him.
I manage to say a few things that fall out of my mouth and end up making things worse….
"The secrets feel like a big heavy ball with a chain on my leg and all the presents daddy gives me makes it heavier.
Mummy is sad a lot. She has to always work to feed us and then she needs to cry alone.
No one touches me how I like, I miss hugs. When mummy is ok I hug her and it is ok until she can’t bare the sight of me any more. I never want to hug daddy or granny or pop.
Mummy doesn’t want my favourite stuffed toys when she’s sad because she says stuffed toys WON’T fix this.
Daddy has dirty porn magazines and is a bad man. I still love him even though he makes me very sad and this make me wrong, mummy read my diary with me and got very angry that I said I loved him."
My mother is blamed for coaching and allowing the word porn into my language, she gets deeper into her darkness and I am blamed for saying it.
I remember seeing her feeling helpless, suffering and fighting for us to be protected and it is always one step forward ten steps back. I remember being so angry that I hurt her but also angry at her for telling me things the legal lady said I shouldn’t know about. I hated that I had trusted any one and answered the questions.
I wish they just listened to me and been patient enough to let me trust them. I wish the system would have served us and protected us. I wish that medical records and the grooming would have been alarm bells loud enough to stop the abuse that the legal system let slip through the cracks.
I am nine and a half. I spin and fidget in the chair, I am still shaking.
We were in the waiting room of the court appointment counselling office. I’m wearing my favourite special black dress with little pink flowers on. He left gifts for us with reception, grooming us still, blatantly in front of the law system. Mum refused them saying we did not want them, three little gift bags of guilt, abandoned behind the counter without a second thought. He comes in, kneels down to my sisters touching them asking them about their gifts, they burst into tears, he walks past mum to get to me and the tension between them is so thick you would choke. He kneels down at me, puts his sweaty palm on my bare knee.
For the first time, I speak up. I say loudly so the whole waiting room can hear, "DON’T TOUCH ME". He is shocked and as if in slow motion he walks backwards and sulks off to a seat across the room and breaks into sobs. I’m called into the counsellors room, shaking from the confrontation which my elder siblings or mum where not willing or able to do.
As I spin and fidget she asks me the fatal question, "when you grow up don’t you think you’ll want to see you father?"
Adrenaline accelerates to rage and I rip the items off her desk.
"NO, I will not, No, No, No, NO. WHY HAVEN’T YOU EVER LISTENED????"
After an additional 5 years of being exposed to sexual abuse because the courts sentenced me and my siblings to weekend and school holiday access after the divorce. It is now not only at the hands of my father that I had continued to be abused but from others in he had groomed in the community.
At this point I am so internalised from trauma the world just spins with out feeling. I have severe deterioration of my sense of self and extreme lack of faith in the people bound to protect me.
This fight for a new life interstate sees us finally winning. Granted full custody after 5 years of being dragged through the courts, hundreds and thousands of dollars being poured into the fat hungry legal system all it takes is photo albums of us naked to set us free. Photo albums brought into the court room by our father, proving how much he loved us. Yes, he loved us, in a pedophilic way. Perhaps this could have been followed up when I was 4, before my mind had been completely reworked into a pedophiles dream.
After being abused from birth to 10 years old, we move far away from the nightmare into the arms of the Sunshine State, Queensland. But the legal system allows contact. I loathe school photos and report cards, he gets to see them. He gets to know all about me, my home address. I sleep in fear and I dread every day. I am 10 years old, shy, stressed, confused, my friends dads never loved them the way mine did, I feel outcast.
There are lasting effects of decisions made when I was 4 years old, by responsible adults in and out of the system built to protect children.
All I know is that men and boys do things that make you feel yucky but that is what love is.
Out of parental guilt, my older siblings who are perceived to have experienced the most sexual abuse is allowed no boundaries. Violent, abusive boyfriends are allowed to live with us for 2 traumatic years, until he tries to put my siblings head through a car window.
It’s my 12th birthday, me and my few close friends have been playing in the swimming pool and I really like spending time with them. In front of my little group of friends before I blow the candles out, my siblings abusive boyfriend asks if I have hair on my pussy yet. This is also in front of my siblings and my mother, who do nothing to protect me.
There is no faith left to lose, I am ashamed of my family. I am mortified from embarrassment. The cycle repeats again. Happy 12th birthday.
He throws our pet cat into the pool hoping it would drown. I rescue Mickey our cat and promise him I will keep him safe from this monster who is allowed to live with us.
He has loud, obnoxious degrading sex with my sibling when my mother works night shift as a nurse. He fingers my sibling in front of me and my other sibling. My older sibling attacks my other sibling gouging her face with their nails in front of their friends, because they dared standing up and speaking out about the inappropriate sexual behaviour.
Simple things within my mothers control get left unresolved, too tired, defeated and drained to face another brutal truth.
There are countless scars and stories beyond comprehension in my memory bank, I have a voice now, and the world will know… that there are lasting effects of decisions made by responsible adults in and out of the system built to protect children.