MIXED MESSAGES - PART 2
There will be no sweeping reforms. There will be
no change of policy or prosecution of those who refuse to help those seeking to
make an official complaint, who slander, intimidate, isolate and silence
victims and witnesses to conceal and enable predators. There will be no changes
to the laws, policies and procedures that reduce legal outcomes to commodities
that the most disadvantaged cannot access let alone afford. There will be no
justice or dignity for the vast majority of victims, and their abusers will
continue to inflict themselves against others without fear of exposure let
alone prosecution.
What
happened to me includes so many elements detailed in those three stories, but
those three stories are just a brief glimpse of the hell far too many others
must suffer every day. Read what I posted in The Tip of the Brimstone, and
you’ll see those same elements echoed in what was written in those reports. It
is repeated in thousands of other cases, and millions more before me writing
it, yet nothing changes and the vast majority of victims remain silent because,
one way or another, they are forced to do so.
It was
hard to read those articles, to watch those reports. I could relate to them. A
lot of victims can. We have suffered similar mistreatment. At the age of 16, my
weight was just 62 kilograms. My step-father was a huge, mentally deficient
brute of 6’2” and 130 kilos, my mother 5’9” (my own height) and 100 kilos,
while her second son, my younger brother, 95 kilos and 5’11” at just 14 – he’d
reach 6’2” and 130 kilos. They all ate well. The three youngest children, 1, 2
and 4, were all skinny and malnourished too.
My days
were spent looking after the youngest children and doing all of the domestic
duties whenever I wasn’t at school. I was not allowed to socialise or leave the
property. At the time, although unaware of the fact, I was in the fourth year
of a war for my grandfather’s estates. My mother waged a campaign of defamation
to drive a wedge between me and my relatives, telling everyone I was a drug
addict, violent and stole from them and others, that I couldn’t be trusted.
On
infrequent visits to the doctor for serious injuries, she insisted I was
accident prone. I was required to remain silent. In reality, I was getting
daily beatings, constant physical and psychological abuse, so hungry I could
barely stay awake let alone study at school, depressed and even suicidal. Even
when I managed to escape at the age of almost eighteen, my mother continued to
stalk, defame and harass me. She had stolen everything I had, everything my
grandparents ever gave me.
In the
end, I had to break contact with my relatives and move interstate. I tried to
form a relationship with my father, a man who had abandoned me before I was
born. My mother had told me stories of his abusive, manipulative nature, but
given she was a psychotic liar, I needed to learn for myself. She was right. I
had to break contact with everyone I knew and change my name to escape from him
too. I was 27 before I got enough work to buy food to put on weight.
I still
suffer from anxiety, depression, self-confidence problems, and darker moments.
My parents and half-siblings have long since carried out their boastings and
stolen everything from my grandparents, the deaths of those four people sudden
and suspicious, but leaving very little in the way of sorrow. I had to say
goodbye to them long ago, and they were already dead then, they just didn’t
know it. I guess they may have remembered my warnings in the end, realised they
had been played.
Perhaps
they even regretted the way they had treated me. Undone all their empty
promises in that very moment they fell for the manipulations of our relatives and
refused to help me stop what was going on. How much worse, I wonder, did they
feel as they watched those three youngest children become as bad as our collective
parents and mother’s second son? Did they realise at all? Did they care? I’ll
never know. They died. Their Wills were changed shortly before. The offenders
benefited from their deaths.
It was
almost 15 years before I learned my father had returned to Victoria after living
in Queensland for almost forty years, estranged from his parents and siblings,
returning with a wife 25 years his junior, an IVF created daughter, 35 years my
junior, and younger than all the other children he had fathered, then abandoned,
never paid a cent in child support for, and manipulated, abused and stole from
in the very same way as he had the countless women he seduced, used and
discarded.
I’d spent
those years avoiding public outings for fear of running into him. After what he’d
done to my ex-girlfriend, my life was empty, devoid of people, until I met the
girl I’d marry. He had left soon after a girl who lived near his business had
gone missing. Tabatha Hodge. Her car was the same as that of my ex. It turned
up in a canal a year later, not far from his business, her remains inside. It
was ruled an accident despite the extremely disturbing circumstances and
coincidences.
But just
because my relatives are capable of committing (and have committed) evil acts,
does not mean they have murdered people even if they have a motive and
circumstantial evidence suggests otherwise. Yet how can any of us be sure suspects
have not until there is an investigation? How many people had a bad feeling
years earlier and thought, “gee, those Turpin folk are an odd bunch, that was
suspicious, maybe I should tell someone?”
How many
thought that about McLachlan, Larry Nassar, or any of a hundred other predators
over the years? How many did and were silenced for their efforts? How many of
those predators went on to commit further crimes, harm and kill other victims,
because nobody said anything or they were silenced by the authorities? Why aren’t
those authorities charged with complicity? Why are the public not informed of
that? Without deterrent, predators and those that aid them will continue to
offend.
But, no,
we have a legal system that reduces legal outcomes to commodities and sentences
predators to a few years jail for the lives they destroyed and took, and even
lets them out on bail, and when they are out, what do they do? They continue to
do what they have always done and more victims pay the price for the rights of
the predator who denies their victims the same basic human rights. It’s time
something changed, and that fourth article demonstrated a good first step.
The fourth
article was about a police officer who had a gut feeling something wasn’t right
about what was ruled a “freak accident” that led to the death of her defacto
partner, a former police officer. What followed his own investigation exposed a
brutal murder and insurance payout of over $2m dollars, and a ‘life’ sentence
of just 13 years. Not enough. And at over $100K a year to imprison a murderer,
a waste of tax-payer money that could be saved with a bullet.
But the
point here was one that should not be lost in the sanitised environment of
legal niceties and the inevitable cover-up it ensures – a police officer
actually got off his arse and did his damn job. He looked at a report and
decided it was worth a look. He uncovered something others had helped,
deliberately or inadvertently, cover-up. The same thing (eventually) happened in
the case of McLachlan, the Turpin’s, and Larry Nassar. Imagine what might
happen if the police actually looked at and investigated my report. Imagine
what might happen if they did their damn jobs with every report.
The
excuses of “not enough evidence” are self-serving. A victim cannot investigate
their own abuse any more than an accused offender may investigate their own
crimes, and any evidence they provided would be considered suspect and inadmissible.
They are unlikely to have documented the case given many of them are children,
their abusers unlikely to allow it, they are untrained in the intricacies of
the law, and, again, it would be inadmissible. Evidence is obtained through official
investigation.
The
attitude of “take no action” has repeatedly demonstrated that predators continue
to inflict harm on their victims and, in too many cases, escalate and or kill
the victim. Recently the policies were changed to “take no chances”, yet in
reality, “take no action” is still applied and, in the few cases intervention
occurs, there is a lack of victim support after the initial act to remove them from
potential harm. There seems little interest in addressing this failure.
Victims are
not things. Victims are dehumanised by their abusers. Reduced to objects for
the purpose of brutal, sadistic, self-centred gratification. Then, if they are
ever permitted to lodge a formal complaint, the police, public services and
legal system do the same. They sterilise everything that happened to the victim.
Reduce it to “allegations”. Insist that only facts - supported by “documented
evidence” – shall be permitted, no “emotional manipulations” will be permitted
to demonstrate “alleged” suffering that may “prejudice” the outcome even as the
defence forces the victim to relive the hell and brands them a scheming liar
out to defame and harm their client.
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