‘The struggle we had escaping from my emotionally and physically abusive father’

After reading the story of another community member and her abusive father, I can totally relate. My father was not just angry, but physically abusive towards my mother and psychologically abusive to her, me and my brothers. He was especially abusive towards me and my mother though.

My father referred to all women as ‘b****es’. He took every opportunity to demean and belittle us.

My father attempted suicide a number of times when I was too young to understand the situation. I simply remember being shushed away from my parents’ bedroom, the ambulance arriving and we children being sent off to relatives. This part I enjoyed — each time I begged my aunties to keep me with them because the abuse at home was tortuous, but I was unable to verbalise this at such a young age. Even my mother, who seems (still) such a lovely person to everyone, was physically and emotionally abusive towards me, yet no one believed me on the rare occasion that I asked for help.

It was the 1950s and ’60s and in those days no one talked about domestic violence. It was considered personal and even the police would ‘not interfere with a man’s rights to treat his family as he deemed fit’.

My father moved us from an inner-city suburb of Brisbane to ‘the sticks’ of Redcliffe in the mid-’50s and I believe it was a deliberate move to isolate us from my grandmother, who had been my mother’s defender and supporter, and our only loving relative. She was the only person with whom I felt safe and loved. On the rare occasion we saw her after the move, I would beg to let me live with her. She thought I was being foolish, even though she knew my father was a violent man.

In fact, my father was an alcoholic. I remember every Christmas Day he would be drunk by mid-morning. He would drive us all (yes in those days, drunk drivers got away with it) to my grandmother’s home where the family gathered for the morning. By the time I was eight years old, his drunken behaviour had become so bad my grandmother banned him from visiting.

As my mother couldn’t drive, that meant we all missed out. For many years, we had little or no contact with cousins, aunts and uncles except for during his suicide attempts.

Christmas Day at our place — I’ll never call it ‘home’ — was always a nightmare. Father would lounge outside with my brothers while Mother and I slaved over the wood-fired stove to produce the expected Christmas dinner. He was drunk in the morning, mostly hungover from the night before. He was a chronic drinker. He always went to work though …

Until he died, aged 60, I never enjoyed Christmas. I always felt nervous and unsettled. I blame him for my dislike of Christmas for most of my life.

We lived in fear. I believe I was born a sick and nervy baby due to my mother constantly being on tenterhooks around him. He abused her physically halfway through her pregnancy with me. I was the oldest child, and that I was a girl … The horror! He never seemed to take responsibility for the pregnancies.

He projected himself as a man who could do no wrong. Of course, now I understand he had endured an abusive childhood of his own. He also suffered post-traumatic stress disorder from his service in the war. These two facts had a dramatic impact on his character, I feel, but they are not excuses for his behaviour towards his family.

My father expected a perfectly clean home, in every way and at all times. We were never relaxed, always cleaning something whenever he would appear.

He considered play time to be some sort of sin, requiring us to work instead. From a young age my brothers lifted and carried crates of soft drinks that he sold from his truck. They would help Dad around the house. To his credit, my father was actually very handy and when he fixed anything, he did so perfectly.

As the only girl, I was expected to be a housemaid. I would often be required to polish the wood floors, which was done with a heavy machine in those days. I was also required to dust and clean, which was torture because I had an allergy that was aggravated. I was frustrated by my mother, who refused to help me with the chores, which included scrubbing my father’s overalls in the bath before squeezing out the water and carrying the heavy load to the laundry for washing. I loathed this work.

Two of my brothers are close in age and would often disappear after school to play with their friends. They knew the joys of freedom. It was a different story for me.

My mother got a job when I was 10 years old. I was then expected to collect my younger brother from a neighbour on my way home from school, care for him and prepare all the vegetables for the evening meal. My brothers were supposed to take turns lighting the stove, but they usually managed to escape such chores, so it was on my shoulders to do it all.

I was never able to have friends over. I never visited a friend’s house after school, on weekends or on holidays. It’s no surprise that I had few friends then.

All the heavy lifting I did as a child has resulted in long-term back injuries. My two older brothers are alcoholics, just like our father. Fortunately, my younger brother escaped most of the torture because he was protected by my mother. She should have done this for all of us!

In the evenings we would listen to the radio or watch television when it came along. As soon as my mother saw the headlights of my father’s car in the street she would rush us off to bed. However drunk he was when he arrived, he would drag us out of bed no matter the hour and lecture us on how lucky we were to have a roof over our heads, food on the table etc. We had to stand during the lecture and heaven help us if we moved a muscle.

Could that have been the start of my sleeping issues? Probably!

I can never let go of the memory of the night my father beat my mother and threw her out of the house. I can still hear her begging to be let back in and then the quiet. I worried about my mother — where was she, would she come back, was she all right? I feared he would come for me next, after all, I was the only other female in the house; a dreaded b**** that didn’t deserve to live. However, he never physically assaulted me … At least I don’t remember him doing it. I have suppressed a lot of my childhood.

I found my mother curled up in the sandbox the following day. She told me she was grateful she was wearing a thick dressing gown that night, so she’d not suffered to much in the cold. However, I was shocked to know she’d been left outside the whole time.

It might have been the only time I recall her being left outside like that, but I still remember a number of beatings he would give my mother over the years. My father would also threaten my mother, saying that if she tried to leave him she would find her and kill her.

I did not have a happy childhood. We all lived in fear.

I sometimes think that those who have no experience with domestic violence cannot understand the actions of the victim. It takes a great amount of courage to ask for help in these circumstances. I feel there should be more education about the different forms of domestic violence to ensure that victims and their families get the support they need.

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