THE TIP OF THE BRIMSTONE - PART 6
TIMELINE OF ABUSE – PART SIX
1986
My Year Eight homeroom teacher was Miss ‘Appropriate’ (not sure of the
spelling). She wore inappropriately short netball skirts and low-cut tops that
got the attention of the older male students. Not me. I was a late bloomer.
Real late. That kind of thing as well as the cigarettes, alcohol and drugs
available in various places out of sight behind school buildings never interested
me. At all. I just didn’t fit-in with the other kids. They were all very
socially active with a lot of free time, and those from the wealthier families
also had access to money. Most of the other kids treated me like some kind of
mental deficient. A lot of them would get angry when my classroom test results
outshone theirs. I started to make deliberate mistakes just so they’d leave me
be or maybe even let me be in one of their groups. It didn’t work, but they
didn’t hassle me as much. I started Year Eight a week late. I’d been admitted
to hospital with extreme stomach pain. At first the doctors thought it was
appendicitis. It wasn’t. They never found out what it was but kept me there the
whole week to run tests. Then it was gone, so they discharged me. The pain
would come and go over the years, crippling me for hours at a time. I’d break
out in cold sweats, suffer vertigo and violent headaches that sometimes lasted
for days and sometimes only passed when I vomited. I had suffered from these
for years before then, but that time the doc admitted me to hospital.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-10/mason-lee-caboolture-toddler-child-safety-review-death/7584286
I remember one of the docs commenting that my stomach was “very rigid”
and that I seemed “overly tense” and a “little malnourished”. He had asked
‘Lilith’ about all the bruises. “He’s very accident prone,” ‘Lilith’ had said,
“he bruises easily, won’t eat properly and has been bullied a lot at school.”
She had smiled at the doctor and rolled her eyes. When he looked down to make
notes on the file, ‘Lilith’ glared death stares at me. I knew to keep my mouth
shut. Three decades later I’d be told that I needed “documented evidence” of
the abuse I suffered to prove that I wasn’t lying. This is a perfect example of
how and why that doesn’t happen. Predators do not allow their victims to
document what they do to their victims. ‘Lilith’ was a nurse. She knew her way
around the system of checks and balances. This Timeline of Abuse is another
example of the mindless bureaucracy of the whole thing. I must write down what
happened, reliving every horror as best I can share it. It can in no way convey
the suffering, misery, helplessness and horror endured. It is merely another
hurdle, another bar set for people like me to overcome before yet another is
placed before the victim, a little higher, until the victim cannot jump it.
What I write down will be filed away, nice, neat, and forgotten. Buried.
Another frustration and further injustice for someone seeking justice on the
initial matter. The true extent of what was done and continues never revealed.
How many other victims, I often wonder, go through this insensitivity and
additional cruel injustice? How many others could corroborate what someone else
has tried to report? How many hundreds, thousands of victims are treated like
this? The Royal Commission into the Churches and Salvation Army would suggest a
lot, and now – only now – is the testimony of those victims considered of any
value; they do not need documented evidence, only their word. Why is this
process allowed for the prosecution of the Churches and Salvation Army, but not
the victims of other predators?
There was a day that year when ‘Lilith’ had sent me into the TAB to get
‘Lara A’. ‘Lilith’ was shopping and I’d been tasked with carrying her bags
while ‘Micha’ went to the toy store. I’d wanted to go to the Newsagents. I
liked the books section. I use to go there, years earlier, when ‘Lilith’ took
‘Micha’ in to see the doctor in the surgery next door. But I hadn’t been in
years. I’d been reading since the age of four. ‘Sharleen’ had, in a sense,
taught me. She read to me every day when I visited. The Christmas before my
fourth birthday she’d given me The Little Red Hen. I memorised what she said
and read it each day I went to kindergarten. One day it just made sense and the
teachers gave me other books to read. They were pretty impressed. I never
thought anything of it until almost three decades later. ‘Lara A’ had cried and
‘Bull’ offered to wait with her in the car. But when ‘Lilith’ came out, ‘Bull’
wasn’t there. She said “I’ll bet he’s in the bloody TAB again!” Then she said
to me, “Go in there and if you find him, tell him you’re taking ‘Lara A’ to
wait in the car.” So I did and there he was. He was staring at the screens
through all the smoke in the air while ‘Lara A’ played at his feet. I got
‘Bull’s’ attention and told him what ‘Lilith’ had sent me to do. He just glared
at me and said, “Fine, take her and get out, you gutless little woman.” Then he
went back to checking his guide and yelling at the televisions. He never won
anything. The weird thing was, there should have been some wins given how much
he gambled, but he just couldn’t seem to win at all. It was weird.
So I sat in the car with ‘Lara A’. The doors were unlocked and the
windows down. ‘Bull’ often parked his car or utility across two or three
spaces, then left the keys in the ignition, boot or door. Sometimes he even
left the door swinging open. His desire to be in the TAB seemed to circumvent
his brain regarding what needed to be done. He was a terrible driver. He’d use
a round-about as a u-turn and drive against traffic, turn-left from the right
lane, reverse out of parking spaces into traffic without looking and run red
lights. I lost count of the times he ran into other cars. One time he got out
of the ute to chase a sheep while he was driving up-hill. I was in the back
throwing out hay and had to jump out and into the driver’s seat to put the
brakes on. Another time, after changing a tyre and the getting back on the road
at speed, he laughed at the misfortune of whoever owned the wheel that bounded
past the car into traffic before the vehicle lurched and came to a grinding
halt; it was his own, he hadn’t bothered to put the nuts back on. That day
though, he came out of the TAB and stormed up and down the street in what
looked like panic. ‘Lilith’ was at the car with ‘Micha’, having extracted him
from Toyworld. She watched ‘Bull’ and asked what he was doing. He came over and
said “someone’s taken ‘Lara A’! I can’t find her!” People had stopped to watch
the commotion. “I have her,” I said, “I told you when I got sent in to get her
that I was taking her to the car.” He had forgotten. ‘Bull’s’ face turned
purple with rage and he leaned into the car and smashed his fist into my upper
right arm. The pain was excruciating. For weeks after it ached, and I couldn’t
use my hand without it hurting. ‘Bull’ screamed unfounded accusations, insults
and threats at me, but nobody that stood around watching made any effort to
intervene. ‘Lilith’ had yelled his name and glared at him, then inclined her
head at the crowd. He settled down until they got back to the house, then I got
sent to the room I got to use at their house and stayed there until after they
all finished dinner, then I got to do the dishes. I was surprised ‘Bull’ didn’t
lay into me again, but I think ‘Lilith’ was worried someone might have reported
what happened so she told him to leave me be.
Sometime around that year, there was a little respite. I do not remember
the exact day or even month, but I remember, vividly, that phone call. I was
standing in the rumpus room of the house in [DELETED] Street. The phone hung on
the wall opposite the entrance to the hall leading to the bedrooms, bathroom
and laundry. It was about five or six in the afternoon. I was doing dishes at
the sink and preparing dinner. ‘Lilith’ was out. It was ‘Bull’. He was calling
to tell ‘Lilith’ he had finished his job collecting blood samples from cattle
early and was on his way back. I could hear glass clinking together and assumed
it was the vials, but they were stored in polystyrene and there was the noise
of people talking all at once in the background. There were no mobile phones
back then. Well, nobody I knew had one anyway. He often rushed his jobs. He’d
do a three day job in one so he could go fishing for the rest. When I answered
the phone, ‘Bull’ was breathing heavily. I didn’t know who it was until his
said “Isz yor motha there?” ‘Bull’ was slurring his words. When I said she was
out, he said “Tell her I’ll be home early.” Then he added, “And I’ve bin
looking forward to what I’m gonna do ta ya when I get there.” Then he laughed,
a real ugly sound, and started telling me how ungrateful, lazy and selfish I
was, and how “ya need puttin’ in the army!” I hung up on him. He never came
back. Two cops knocked on the door a couple of hours later. It was dark. He’d
been in an accident.
Apparently the rescue teams assumed he was dead. The driver’s seat of
his government car, a Nissan Bluebird, had been shunted into the back left
seat. The engine block was in the front seat. Someone said ‘Bull’ had no pulse
and they took one look at him and went to work on the other car. The driver, a
pregnant woman, was dead. Her passenger lived. Then they realised ‘Bull’ was
alive. Shame they didn’t just bag and tag the bastard. He was in hospital for
months. Multiple broken bones and massive blood loss. They suspected brain
damage but if they’d known him before then, the real question would be “how can
you tell?” There was no Blood Alcohol Test conducted on ‘Bull’ and he claimed
the sunlight had hit dust on the windscreen and turned it golden. The passenger
in the other car had apparently thought the driver in her car may have taken
her eyes off the road to adjust the radio. As a result, the finding of the
investigator was that both had crossed the lines in the middle of the road in
the head-on, but the dead pregnant woman was at fault. ‘Lilith’ had made it
quite clear what would happen to me if I ever told anyone about that phone
call, and when ‘Bull’ got out of hospital, his hatred and violence toward me
only increased. Maybe me knowing his secret was enough to trigger his mindless
rage. I often wonder about that poor woman’s family and relatives all believing
she was responsible for that incident. Her child would be thirty this year.
1987
My Year Nine home room teacher was Miss ‘Appropriate’ again. ‘Lilith’
had another daughter, and the labour once again came early and involved
complications. It was due to her excessive consumption of cigarettes, coffee
and alcohol. Once again, she blamed me, as if I had any way of actually causing
those problems. ‘Lilith’s’ grip on reality was never very good. She never
learned from her mistakes because she never took responsibility for anything
she did that went wrong. Instead, she created her own, warped little reality
and projected her faults onto me and others, and all the hate that came with it
allowed her to justify the violence, food deprivation and vindictive
psychological abuse she inflicted on me. ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’ began
inflicting similar mistreatment on their two daughters within days of their
birth, but ‘Micha’ seemed immune. ‘Lilith’ rarely struck, insulted or bullied
him, and he never went without food. Instead, she continued to enable and
reward his worst personality traits. ‘Bull’ had been leashed as far as ‘Micha’
was concerned.
During meals, the two girls had spent their first eighteen months in
high-chairs that had been designed and approved by an idiot. They were the kind
that attach to the table by a pair of C-shaped metal sides with a plastic seat
and back linking the two, the weight of the child strapped inside meant to hold
the seat in place. ‘Bull’ would graze from his plate, mine and theirs.
Sometimes he would knock over drinks as he reached across the table. Sometimes
the girls would. ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’ never once considered purchasing cups with
lids for them. Instead, ‘Bull’ would roar unintelligible gibberish when a drink
spilled, spraying food all over the child, then smash his fist into the top of
their head. The force of the strike would drive the child through that stupid
seat and send them crashing onto the floor where they’d scream in pain. When
they were older, the attack would come in sideways, across the back of the head
to send the child sprawling from their chair. This occurred once every couple
of days, sometimes multiple days in a row. If I ever tried to stop his grazing
so I had some food to feed the children, I’d get the same but, most of the
time, kept my seat. After these attacks, ‘Bull’ would just continue grazing
while the child cried on the floor. ‘Bull’, ‘Lilith’ and ‘Micha’ were all
extremely overweight. They ate before meals and then had seconds afterwards. I
found it difficult to save enough food for the girls.
My life had purpose that prevented me from leaving, one way or another.
I had to protect the girls. Without me they would probably have starved. I
played the role of rodeo-clown. Whenever I got the feeling ‘Lilith’ or ‘Bull’
was about to do something vicious, I’d have to distract them in the hope they’d
take out their frustrations and vile desires on me. Sometimes it worked,
sometimes it didn’t. ‘Lara A’ spent most of her time with me when I was around.
I was a safe zone and she knew it. ‘Micha’, not so much. ‘Micha’ started
bullying them almost as soon as they could talk. He had a malicious, nasty
streak in him. Who knows, maybe he might have been a better person if he hadn’t
been raised by ‘Lilith’, or if his intellect wasn’t so limited. He had no
reason to be a better person. He got everything he wanted by behaving as he
did. One day ‘Lilith’ made ‘Bull’ take ‘Lara A’ with him down to the 8 acres
below the houses backing on to [DELETED] Street. It had been left to him by his
father. ‘Lilith’ hadn’t been pleased. The majority of ‘Bull’s’ father’s estates
had been passed on to his mother and that led to arguments. ‘Lilith’ believed
everything should have gone to ‘Bull’. His father knew ‘Bull’ wasn’t that smart
and had a problem with gambling; if he was left anything more than the 8 acres,
he would have lost it all at the TAB. In response, ‘Lilith’ escalated the feud
she had started with ‘Bull’s’ mother.
That day, though, ‘Lilith’ wanted a “break”. She decided she was
“exhausted” from all her hard work around the house. ‘Bull’ had been using
‘Micha’ and me as unpaid labour for years, working in the fields picking beans,
gherkins or whatever other crop his father had been growing. The 8 acres and
other property he rented was no different. My spare hours were spent in the
sun, harvesting crops by hand alongside the other labourers, although they got
paid. ‘Micha’ wasn’t much for the work. He’d just empty my bucket into his and
take credit. ‘Bull’ was well aware of what was going on but he couldn’t have
done anything anyway because ‘Lilith’ had given instructions to leave ‘Micha’
alone. ‘Bull’ did what ‘Lilith’ did, and encouraged ‘Micha’ to be like him.
After the first year, his personality was a nasty blend of ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’.
‘Bull’ had left ‘Lara A’ to play on the tractor while we worked that day
though. It was an old clunker with no role cage. ‘Bull’ told ‘Micha’ to take
charge while I worked so he could drive into town and go to the TAB. I heard
the tractor start and turned to see ‘Lara A’ at the wheel and the thing
lurching forward. She was almost three. She had watched ‘Bull’ start it and did
the same. She could easily have easily fallen from the seat and under the
wheels. I didn’t hesitate. I ran over and climbed onto the thing, dodging the
huge rear wheel to turn it off. ‘Bull’ didn’t even stop. He just glared at me
and kept walking to his utility, then left. Looking out for ‘Lara A’ and then
her sister ‘Sue B’ was a constant source of stress. God knows what
happened to them while I was at school or working in the fields.
Not all of the abuse was physical. A lot of it was. Never a day went by
without some kind of brutality; a punch in the side of the head, being shoved
into walls, kneed in the thighs, being grabbed by the back of the neck and
shoved into the floors. ‘Bull’ and ‘Lilith’ liked me on my knees, to beg for
forgiveness for whatever sin they believed I’d committed, or just for mercy. I
never gave them the satisfaction. I’d remain silent. They could hit me all they
wanted. ‘Bull’ used his fists, and ‘Lilith’ used whatever was close at hand
that would hurt. I never cried anymore, or screamed in pain. The best they got
was a grunt as I tried to hold it in. But like I said, not all the abuse was
physical. The spiteful name calling. “Yer only fit fa women’s work,” ‘Bull’
would say, “coz yer a woman.” Or “bookwork hands”. Or he’d watch you doing
something you did every day that he himself never did, and when it didn’t go
right, or I made a mistake, he’d say “How stupid are ya?! Here, watch and learn
how to do it right.” If I didn’t seem grateful or like I was paying enough
attention, he’d grab me by the back of the neck and shove my face into the wall
or floor and scream at point-blank range into my ear “Listen!!” ‘Lilith’ was
more creative. She escalated the name calling, blame and hate she dumped on me
because her life wasn’t working out the way she wanted to a whole new level.
I’ve recorded this here because it is important, something that should be
noted. Not all abuse is physical.
‘Lilith’ had spent my entire life to date tearing me down even as she
built ‘Micha’ up. I have spent my entire life trying to figure out why. It
didn’t stop there. While I was required to serve as an unpaid domestic, ‘Micha’
never had to do anything to help around the house. “That’s women’s work,” he’d
say, “only women do that.” ‘Lilith’ celebrated his birthday with a cake,
parties and gifts. There was never any of that for me. The Christmas of 1986 he
got a motorcycle, a dirt-bike. I got a cheap table tennis table but was never
allowed to use it. ‘Lilith’ had ‘Bull’ set it up in his mother’s garage so his
sister’s kids could use it. While ‘Micha’ was allowed to socialise, I was not.
As the years went by, other parents would invite kids from my class to parties
or their homes to spend time with their kids, but not me. Nobody wanted to have
to deal with ‘Lilith’. Only kids from a similar socio-economic background would
spend time with me at school, but on weekends and after school I was subject to
a curfew, limited to the house or wherever I’d been assigned a task to
complete. I was, despite my small size and malnourished, battered frame, good
at sports. The sports teachers asked ‘Lilith’ if I could play for the school
hockey team, lacrosse team, run in the cross country and relay and track
events. I was listed for the relay and overtook two of the three other runners
to help my relay team win first place in that year’s sports days. It was the
first of only two awards I ever had a chance to win. But ‘Lilith’ said no. She
demanded they add ‘Micha’ to those teams, insisting he was better than me in
every way. She was furious when they told her he was one of the worst in the
class, someone who was too idle and arrogant to even get to a point where he
might be even half as good as I was. It was just one of a series of events that
was building to something particularly vindictive.
‘Lilith’ started telling my grandparents she was worried about me. She
said I was moody and wasn’t eating properly. She said I was aggressive and had
attacked her and ‘Bull’, and bullied ‘Micha’ and the other children. Eventually
she told them she discovered I had a drug habit. She told them I was using
drugs and would lie to them about things so I could get them to give me money
for drugs. She said I would steal from them. I didn’t use drugs. I didn’t drink
alcohol or smoke. I hated those things and saw no point to them. Other kids
thought I was weird because it just didn’t interest me. When ‘Micha’ and I reached
the age of twelve, ‘Lilith’s’ father let us have a beer with him. I didn’t like
it and never tried it again. I never accepted the offer again after that first
taste. ‘Micha’ did though. He’d drink a glass of beer with ‘Edward’ each night
we stayed with him and ‘Sharleen’ after that. ‘Micha’ would constantly remind
me that “real men drink beer” and “that makes you a woman”. He was just like
‘Bull’ by then. But ‘Edward’ wasn’t sure. What ‘Lilith’ said made him uncertain
about me. When ‘Lilith’ started telling him I was gay, which was another lie,
the gulf between me and my grandfather got wider. He started spending more time
with ‘Micha’, and less with me. He didn’t like the fact that I seemed to have
no will of my own. Even as an adult I had trouble surviving on my own because I
didn’t know how to think for myself. I needed direction.
Whenever ‘Edward’ gave me an instruction, I followed it. “Run down to
the garden and get me the shovel,” he’d say, and I’d run and get it, or search
for it if it wasn’t there. If he gave the same instruction to ‘Micha’, my
brother would walk half the distance the opposite way, get in ‘Edward’s’
four-wheel-drive and tell me to get in. I was there to open gates and go
collect the shovel. If I got it ‘Micha’ would say “I got the shovel.” If the
shovel wasn’t there, he’d say “Lee’ couldn’t find the shovel.” It was the same
with any task. ‘Edward’ liked the fact that I did what I was told but he became
frustrated by lack of self-confidence and always kept my eyes downcast instead
of making eye contact, and it frustrated him that ‘Micha’ was idle, full of
himself, wouldn’t do as he was told. If he left us both a task, ‘Micha’
wouldn’t do it. He’d tell me to do it and then claim he had done it all by
himself because I wouldn’t help him. It was the same thing ‘Lilith’ did. But
the claims about me being a gay drug-addict made him uncomfortable. ‘Lilith’
told him that’s why I was so thin and covered in bruises. Soon I found myself
relegated to household tasks, looking after ‘Sharleen’ and whatever needed
doing on the home property, while ‘Micha’ got to go with our grandfather on
whatever outing he was attending. ‘Edward’ rarely spoke to me anymore. I think
he probably knew what was going on, but he never liked to get involved in conflict,
so he just left me to fend for myself.
This kind of psychological abuse escalated in response to me asking
‘Edward’ and ‘Sharleen’ if we could visit ‘Claud’s’ parents during the school
holidays. We were already at the farm between [DELETED] and [DELETED], and it
was only a three hour drive to [DELETED]. ‘Lilith’s’ father arranged it. Our
grandparents would make a day of it, meeting half-way for a picnic lunch. We’d
go the rest of the way with ‘George’ and ‘Elisa’ and then return a week later.
‘Micha’ didn’t really like it there. He was twelve and over-sexed. From that
age on he’d constantly tell me girls he liked wanted him to have sex with them.
It was disturbing. I was fourteen and sex hadn’t interested me in the least. It
wouldn’t interest me for another four years. But ‘Micha’, well, that’s a
different matter. Our cousin ‘Myshell’ was visiting at the same time we were.
She always visited in the holidays. Her father, ‘Jon’, was an alcoholic. Her
mother, ‘Maurisa’, was an enabler who let ‘Jon’ do as he pleased with little
regard for her three daughters. And ‘Claud’ use to visit them, a lot. ‘Dana’,
the eldest, was a couple of years older than me. At seventeen she’d take off
and rarely return home or have anything to do with her relatives. The second
one, ‘Jas’, was two years older than ‘Micha’, almost to the day. At seventeen
she’d marry a twenty-six year old so-called Baptist Minister. Not the first
time a “Christian” has kind of bent their whole moral code. She was desperate
to get out of there too. ‘Myshell’ was two years younger than me, almost to the
day. She would develop a drug problem around the age of seventeen, leave home
and decide not to date males, another daughter desperate to leave that house.
‘Myshell’ had followed me around like a lost lamb when ‘Lilith’ took me
to visit the Christmas before my fourth birthday, and had stuck to me like glue
during the visit of 1979. She and I had some kind of bond. We were friends.
Maybe she recognised a kindred spirit. She once spoke of the abuse she suffered
at the hands of her father but refused to talk about ‘Claud’. She’d just go
pale and quiet whenever he was around or mentioned. The visit of 1987 didn’t go
well for ‘Micha’. He insisted she wanted him to have sex with her and climbed
into her bed one morning. She avoided him for the rest of the visit and he
decided to be nasty and vindictive toward our cousins after that. They didn’t
like him. ‘Lilith’ had encouraged his worst personality traits. He was a bully
and a braggart. Arrogant. A know-it-all. When he tried his usual put-downs
against me to make himself look better, ‘Myshell’ and our uncle ‘Lorenzo’s’
daughters didn’t respond the way he hoped. They took offence. After the
holidays, ‘Micha’ told ‘Lilith’ I had turned everyone against him. ‘Lilith’
accused me of being a jealous little bully. ‘Micha’ got worse after that. He
never learned from his mistakes because he never had to acknowledge them.
‘Lilith’ tried to warn ‘Claud’s’ relatives that I was a gay drug addict and,
from what I’d learn later, was trying to have sex with my cousin ‘Micha’. They
didn’t respond to her as well as her father. None of ‘Claud’s’ relatives
trusted her, and with good reason.
The year ended with ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’ purchasing a property in
[DELETED], down past [DELETED], in Victoria. They sold the house at [DELETED]
Street. ‘Bull’s’ mother had responded to the news by launching legal action
over a boundary fence line that moved it within one meter of the house,
something that violated the building code. This was an act of spite in a series
of nasty acts between ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’s’ mother. ‘Bull’ had brought a baby
wombat home a year earlier after he and a group of idiots went out shooting
wombats. They killed the mother and he took the baby to give to ‘Lara A’ (his
eldest daughter) as a gift. ‘Lara A’ loved that thing. She called it [DELETED].
It use to wander down to the flats at night to eat and then back again the next
day. One morning ‘Lara A’ went out to play with it and found it dead, stiff as
a board, with snail-bait around its mouth. ‘Bull’s’ mother had poisoned it.
‘Lara A’ was devastated. It was like the fighting with [‘Ray’s’ wife] in
[DELETED], and then Mrs ‘Dunstan’ in [DELETED] Street, all over again. Wherever
‘Lilith’ went, she started fights with people.
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