Child Abuse

I have finally reconciled myself to having to write about this part of my life before moving forward.  There are so many things in my life that just won’t make sense unless this is ‘out there’.   It helps to understand some of the gaps and other issues that impact on my life.

So yes, I am a survivor of child abuse.  Not within an institutional context, but by my mother.   You could say that this is the ultimate betrayal of trust, the one relationship that is meant to be absolute and unshakable in human terms, that of a mother’s love for her child.   But for my sister and I, this was not the case.    I won’t be writing of how this impacted on my sister – that is her story and she has documented that for herself.   This is highly personal, and just my story, although my sister did play a major part.

There have been times when following the Royal Commission into Sexual Abuse of Children that I wanted to scream, “What about me?  Who listens to my abuse?  Where do I get redress?”  But this falls under that hidden world under the umbrella of ‘family violence’.

My sister left home when I was 16 and by my mid-50s I still had no contact with her since that time. While working with Kinhill in its International division in Melbourne, I came across a file that showed that my sister had actually worked for Kinhill overseas as a consultant.  This was a shock!  This is a consequence of women changing their names on marriage.  I’m sure if we both had retained our maiden names that someone may have asked the question, “Are you related?”   

The file contained her contact details and so I decided without any further delay to ring her.  I got a recorded message that she was overseas at that time.

Unfortunately, as so often happens, as time went on it became harder and harder to make that call.  I had told my aunt and uncle that I had found her and they made me promise that I would ring her before that Christmas.  

I was sitting in my study one evening and decided this was it – I would now ring.  And then the phone rang, and I had a brief sense of reprieve.  However, the caller was my sister – she was ringing me.  She had tracked me down through Lutheran church circles. Coincidence?

She was coming to Adelaide and we arranged to meet.  She wanted to know whether my memories of my childhood aligned with hers.  I had no idea what she was talking about.  

We met at a café on Norwood Parade and she started to speak of her experience of abuse by our mother.  I couldn’t understand this, but gradually I started to have visions and then started to just sweat profusely.  I was convinced that if I stood up I would leave a puddle on that wooden chair.  I knew the abuse was real, I could see it, feel it and it terrified me.   

My biggest fear was whether I as an abused child had managed to repress this memory of abuse only to have then abused my own child and repressed that memory also.  I rushed home.  Lisa was in the kitchen preparing herself some tea and I asked her, “Have I ever, ever abused you in any way?”  Her response, “Get real!”.   At which point I just sank to the floor and wept.

I then endured days and days of memories returning.  Of the beatings with the toaster electrical cord on the back of my upper legs and butgtocks.  High enough that the marks wouldn’t show beneath my skirts.   Of the dreaded enema, when my mother would come into my bedroom at night, turn me over and then ‘cleanse me from within’ as I was evil.

It became imperative that I did not tell my mother of any of my successes – at sport, school, anything. This was always a reason to be ‘cleansed’.  My most viscous abuse was the night I told her was Dux of the school.

I recalled an occasion when two teachers from my school turned up at home to speak with my mother.  I can see them standing at the back door and my mother refusing to let them in or to talk with them.  Earlier that day at school I had played basketball and was, of course, wearing my sports uniform.  I think the teachers must have seen the welt marks on the back of my legs.

Sometimes that beating was so bad that it drew blood, and I would have to wet my pyjamas to release them as the dried blood had stuck them to my legs.

Once I realised that I had endured this abuse for years during my young life, I contacted a friend who had also undergone abuse and obtained from her the counsellor she went to.   I attended two sessions with her, but we decided that I had really been cushioned from the greatest impact of this abuse by the repressed memory.   Also, she said that I was fortunate to have faith, and I was to draw on that to sustain me.

For me, that was God at work, as the beginning of that shedding and distancing from my past commenced when I went to Adelaide to study.   One friend from my study days in Adelaide, when I told her of this abuse, said, “That makes sense.  You never spoke about your family or background. It was as if you just dropped from the sky and started a new life”.  

There is no doubt that I wasn’t that pleased about having that past revealed to me.  I wished it had been kept hidden, particularly from me.  What I wasn’t to know was that within 10 years of that revelation, I would find myself at the negotiation table with survivors of child abuse within the Lutheran Church in Victoria as a consequence of the Royal Commission into the Sexual Abuse of Children in Institutions.

I was Chairman of the Board of the Lutheran Church of Victoria at the time and the culprit of these historical cases had been, not a clergy or employee of the church, but a young volunteer who came to the church’s children’s home to run a sport/activity program for boys. (Many years after these events he was imprisoned for 27 years.)

I am convinced that both the experience itself and the timing of the revelation led to me being able to enter into these negotiations with compassion and understanding that would otherwise have been lacking around the table.  However, I don’t deny the trauma, anger, despair and heartache that I still carry today as a consequence of having to endeavour to do the best for the victim while protecting the church – it has left its mark on me.  My emotions always seem to be just simmering under the surface and I am more sensitive to hurt – not just myself, but others – than is probably healthy.

At one negotiation conference, there was a representative from the Salvation Army present.  He asked me how many such cases I had negotiated.  I told him that this was my eleventh.  “Oh,” he said, “this is my 232!”.    All I can say is – one is too many!

               “Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”  He took a little child whom he placed among them.  Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.” Mark 9:36-37.