by Lily O'Brien
I was so disappointed with my mother. She had discarded us like rubbish when we were children and now she had turned her back on her son when he needed her again. I hated her for what she had done to him. I wanted to help Simon, but I couldn’t tell the hospital about his past as it would have caused a lot of trouble for my mother and my older brother Kevin. The hospital said they felt that he needed their help, so they were going to keep him in the hospital for a while.
I spent the next six months visiting him every day, but nobody else from our family ever went to see him; they just couldn’t be bothered with him. He never did get much better; but after six months, the doctors said that he was ok and they wanted him to leave the hospital and go home. I asked them if they could do anything more for him, but they said, ‘Sorry, but no.’ And the next day, they let him leave the hospital. I took him back to his flat, I made sure that he had food, and then I left him alone so that he could get back into a normal routine.
But he slowly got worse and, after a while, he would not allow me back into his flat; so all I could do was to wait for him to come to me. Then one day, while I was sitting by my kitchen window, Simon walked along the car park and he looked up at me; I recognised him, but he looked like a stranger. I knew it was Simon, but he had changed again and he looked terrible. He looked up at me and I could see he was holding a few paintbrushes in one of his hands, and then he turned around and walked away. I sat at the window for the rest of the day wishing that he would come back, but he never did; and by the end of the day, I felt very sad for him and I thought about everything that he had been through all of his life.
The next day, I was sitting by the kitchen window again when I heard a knock on the door. So I got up and, as I opened the door, Simon was standing there. He said, ‘Hi’ and then he walked in. ‘I just wanted to tell you that I love you and the kids’, he said in a soft voice, and then he turned around and walked out of the flat. In my heart, I knew that was going to be the last time I would ever see him alive again. I followed him out into the hall and, before he could get into the lift, I gave him a big hug and I told him that I loved him; and as I let go, he walked into the lift and then he was gone. I rushed into the kitchen and I looked out of the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of him as he walked away; and as I looked out of the window, I watched him as he walked away for the very last time and then he was gone.
The next morning, I took the kids to school and then I returned home and sat by the kitchen window and I had a fag and then the phone rang. I slowly put the fag out and I looked out of the window, hoping to see Simon looking up at me, but he wasn’t there; so I got up, I walked into the living room, I picked up the phone and I just listened. There was silence for a moment as neither one of us said a word, then a voice said Simon’s dead, he took an overdose and they couldn’t help him. I felt cold and sad, then I asked, ‘Where is he?’ and I realised I was talking to one of my sisters. ‘He’s in Saint Mary’s hospital, Paddington.’ ‘Ok’, I said and then I rang Tony and I went to the hospital.
When I arrived at the hospital, most of my family was already there and for some strange reason I felt happy for Simon. I think it was because no one could ever harm him again and he was now at peace, and far away from all the people who ever did him harm. I looked at everyone, then I walked towards Simon and I told him that I loved him and he looked like he was sleeping; and then I left the hospital and went home.
A few days later, the hospital said they could not release his body for at least three weeks, as they had to have an inquest into his death. I thought it was a bit strange, but I never really knew much about inquests and things like that, so I said ok. And when they finally let Simon’s body go, we had the best funeral you could imagine for him. His life had been full of unhappiness and disappointments, but it wasn’t his fault, as he had no control over the things that people did to him. For the whole of his young life, he suffered at the hands of paedophiles and disgusting people, who psychologically prospered from his suffering, and one day they will pay for what they did to him.
At his funeral, we had a horse-drawn carriage and hundreds of people from all around the area came to walk with us. And when we reached the cemetery, we stopped the carriage and all of our brothers carried Simon’s coffin the final steps to his resting place and we made the final moments of his existence a happy one. A couple of weeks after the funeral, the police contacted us again, as they wanted to know everything we knew about the people Simon had hung around with, but we never told them everything.
And a couple of days later, they rang us again and they told us that we were allowed to go into his flat to recover anything we wanted from his belongings. So, the next day, we collected his flat keys from the police station and we all went around to the flat; my sisters and brothers all began looking for things of value, but all I wanted was his painting jug with his paintbrushes in it. As soon as I found the brushes, I picked them up and I left the flat.
Then, when everyone else had finished taking what they wanted, I got the keys from my mother, I went back to the flat and I collected all of his paintings. But while I was there, I noticed a couple of odd looking books sitting on the side next to his phone. I knew he wasn’t much of a reader, so I picked one up and on the front cover in big print were the words ‘euthanasia’ and ‘how to kill yourself’. I was shocked. I knew Simon would never read something like that and someone must have given it to him, because he couldn’t read very well and he wouldn’t of wasted his time trying. I looked around, but there was nothing else strange in the flat, so I left and went home.
The next day, while I was looking through Simon’s paintings, the phone rang and it was the police again; and this time, they told me that they were still investigating his death, as something was still bothering them, but they could not tell me what it was. They said that they would contact me as soon as they had more information for me, then I put the phone down and I continued looking at his paintings and I began to cry. We had been through so much together; now he was gone and I felt like a big piece of me was missing and I had a pain in my chest that wouldn’t go away.
Then, about a month later, the coroner’s office contacted the whole family and they asked us if we would object to them recording Simon’s death as suicide. We said that we didn’t have a problem with that, but we did not understand why they had to ask us for the permission; and then they told us that someone had taken out a large life insurance policy on Simon about a year ago. They said that for now they could not prove that it was in any way connected to his death. But they had a good idea that it was and if they could record Simon’s death as a suicide, then the insurance company would not have to pay the person the money.
They also told us that Simon had taken a certain type of tablet and just the right amount to kill him; and once the tablets were in his system, there was no going back. But he did manage to call 999 for help, but by the time the ambulance crew got to him, he only had a short time to live and he begged them to help him, as he didn’t want to die; and he said that he was forced to do it. They also said that they did not think he had done it all on his own, but they had no proof to use against any other person.
We were all shocked, but then again there were rumours going around that the man Simon had lived with had been living with another young boy in Europe, many years ago, who had also killed himself. We told the coroner what we knew and they said that if this man’s name were ever linked to another death in the future, they would look into it. There was nothing we could do, as no one wanted to get involved, so we agreed and recorded his death as suicide; and we hoped that someday the police would get back to us with better news. For anything more to be done, we would need to be open with the police about Simon’s past and whom he was involved with; but for that to happen, we would have to tell them what we knew about the man that he had been living with. But we knew very little about the man, apart from rumours.
We would also have to tell them about our older brother Kevin
abusing him, and if we did that, it would have caused a lot of trouble within the family. And our mother would have said that we were all lying and then she would have done her very best to support Kevin and make everyone believe that Kevin had done nothing bad to his baby brother. So, we said nothing, as it was only going to hurt everyone and probably destroy what little we had left of our family.
We never did hear anymore from the police.
CHAPTER 12
Memories of Ireland
For the next few years, I got on with my life and I tried to concentrate on bringing up my three children, but I could never get Ireland out of my mind and I continued to take huge amounts of painkillers to relieve the pains in my head.
Then, about fifteen years after, I came to London and I got a phone call from the Irish police. They said that the institution I had lived in back in Ireland was under investigation for child abuse and they were following up on a lead about a man who had tried to kidnap me and several other children back in Ireland, in the late 1970s. They also said that the staff and the nuns at St XXXXX were under investigation, along with a number of priests from the same area, for abusing children who had been in their care, and they wanted to know if I had any information that could help them. I said, ‘No, sorry, I don’t have any information about the man. But I can tell you a thing or two about the nuns and some of the other people who abused me at the time.’
The police officer was a bit surprised, but not shocked, then he asked me if he could come over to England to interview me and I said yes; but it took him over two years to get the permission to come to England and, the day he arrived, he had another police officer with him. The other officer was there to make sure everything went as it should and that the interview was conducted in the correct manner.
The police officer asked me many questions about the years I spent back in Ireland, and I spent hours talking to him about the nuns and some of the other people that had abused me while I was in Ireland; and in the end, I also told him about the man in the car who tried to kidnap me. The other officer wrote everything I told them down, and once they had finished they told me that it was going to take them a very long time to investigate all the allegations, as there were so many people involved and because it all happened such a long time ago, but he would do his best. He said that he believed everything that I had told him, but it was not up to him how the government would deal with the investigation; and then he thanked me and they went back to Ireland.
It was almost another two years before I heard from him again. And when he rang me, he said that the investigation had gone well and if I wanted to prosecute anyone, then I would have a very good case against the nuns and the convent staff. However, if I wanted to take it any further, then I would have to go and see a solicitor first and then I would need to spend time back in Ireland, going over everything again. He said that the nuns had conveniently misplaced almost all of the documents relating to the nine years that I stayed with them in the convent and they had lost most of the names of the people they sent me to stay with during the school holidays. But worst of all, because my accusations related to things that had happened to me such a long time ago, the people they did manage to contact wouldn’t admit to anything.
He also told me that the nuns said that the church would never have allowed things like that to happen to the children in their care. Furthermore, most of the people the police did manage to interview had very vague memories of my stay with them, and some of them said that they did not remember me at all, and they would not admit to any wrong doings towards me or any other children in their care.
I told the police officer thanks for trying and that I hoped the information I had given him had helped him in his investigation, but I had decided to leave it at that for now, as it was all too much for me at the moment. I felt that it was too difficult to push on with and I did not want my young children to know anything about my past. Plus what chance would I really have, all on my own, in court fighting against the church?
I never spoke to the police again after that, as I just wanted to forget my past and get on with the rest of my life. I tried to forget all about the time I had spent in the institution, but there was always something or someone that brought the bad memories back to me. I even tried to block the memories out by taking handfuls of sleeping pills and nerve tablets, but nothing helped. In the end, I took any kind of painkillers that I could get my hands on, just to top my other tablets up, but nothing worked. I even swapped tablets with my sisters to see whose tablets worked the best, but the effects of the tablets did nothing to help me.
I spent hours at the doctor’s begging him for stronger tablets, but he would only allow me to continue with the ones that he had prescribed me. His only other option was to have me sectioned under the Mental Health Act, and he did not want to do that to me as he had known my family and my history from the day I had come back to London. He also knew what I had gone through back in Ireland and that it was not my fault, as I had told him all about my past, so he did his best to help me with what little he had to offer.
The only other help I had was from Tony; he never once thought less of me because of my past and, for most of the time, he was able to cope with me and guide me in the right direction. However, we still had a few problems, because I could not stop thinking about all the things that had happened to me in the past and my memories were driving me mad. My relationship with Tony had suffered because of my problems and, in his words, ‘I had become a cold hard person’; well, almost his words! And our physical relationship was almost nonexistent and sometimes he even wondered how we had ever managed to have children.
Then one day, I went to the doctor’s for a check-up and he gave me a birth control injection. I didn’t ask for it, he was just giving them out as if he was giving out flu jabs. I went home and, within an hour, I had gone nuts; the hormone imbalance in my brain had caused me to see no sense at all and, after just one day, I had thrown Tony out of the house for no reason at all. But he didn’t wander far and the next day I told him to get back before I did something to him or myself.
I spent the next six months screaming at him and making our life together hell; and at one point, he almost left me. I was keeping him awake all night, arguing with him until the early hours of the morning, just for spite, and he would beg me to stop, but I wouldn’t and he used to go to work in the morning exhausted. And it got to the point where he could not take much more of the verbal abuse that I was giving him and he pleaded with me to stop, as he hung on to what was left of our relationship; but I kept it up and he stayed with me for the kids’ sake. Eventually, the effect of the injection began to wear off, and I eventually calmed down and things got better for us as I came back to my reality.
Later that year, we went away on a family holiday and it was fantastic; it was Tony, the three kids and me, and God knows we all needed it. We spent two weeks at a villa in Portugal, and we had never had as much fun together as a family before; and when we came back to London, everyone apart from me felt like new people. However, my happiness was short lived, as a couple of days later the phone rang and one of my sisters told me that our brother Kevin had killed himself. She said that he was in Saint Mary’s hospital and the doctors were only keeping him on a life support machine until we could all get over to see him; and then they were going to turn the machine off, as he was brain dead.
I put the phone down and, for some strange reason, I didn’t feel like going to the hospital; I just couldn’t be bothered, I felt like he deserved to die and I was happy he was dead. I sat in the living room and lit a fag; but after a short while, I heard a car horn beeping outside my kitchen window and I knew it was one of my sisters, she had come to take me to the hospital with her. I didn’t want to go, but I knew I would never hear the end of it if I didn’t, so I walked downstairs and I got in the car.
When we arrived at the hospital, the doctors held us back for a moment and they explained that they were very sorry but he was
not a pretty sight; the doctor said that some people had found him floating face down in the Grand Union Canal and we should be prepared for a bit of a shock. We said ok; and as we walked into the room, it stunk and he stunk, and his head was twice the size it should have been. I looked at him and I felt nothing, no emotions at all; then I thought to myself that he should have died years ago for what he had done to my baby brother Simon. Then I walked away and went home as the doctors turned off the life support machine.
Later that evening, the police came to see all of us and they said that some people had found him floating next to a canal boat earlier that day. They then said that Kevin had told a friend of his that he was going to kill himself because he could not take it any longer, and then the police officer asked us if we could tell him what the statement meant. We all knew what that meant; it meant that he could not live with himself anymore because of what he had done to our baby brother Simon, all those years ago. I didn’t cry for Kevin, I had no tears for him; he did not deserve anything, not even my tears.
We never told the police officer about Kevin and what had gone on between him and Simon; and a few days later, we arranged for Kevin’s body to be flown back to Ireland, as we wanted him as far away from Simon as possible. And a week later, most of us flew back to Ireland for the funeral. Once the funeral was over, we all flew back to London and that was the end of it and I got on with my life.
A couple of years passed and, during that time, I began to see my GP even more than usual, as I never felt happy and I only felt normal if I swallowed handfuls of nerve and sleeping tablets every day. I tried to stay away from my family and especially Tracy because of her husband Fred. He was still a creep and he was still trying to be my friend, but for all the wrong reasons, and Tracy still brushed everything he did to one side; always finding some sort of excuse for his behaviour and then laughing it off as if it was nothing.