Under Siege

by Belinda Neil

  I was glad to get back from the holiday; relaxation had been so elusive. This continued, I still couldn’t relax. Weekly massages, however, gave me some relief and I would normally walk out from a massage in a daze. When I took my children to a local park for a girlfriend’s birthday, by the time I got home I was anxious, felt very stressed, angry and had pains in my chest, simply from trying to keep an eye on my children in the park.

  I felt I was losing my children. I was always so stressed trying to protect them, my hypervigilance was exhausting me, I couldn’t seem to relax and enjoy time with them. I had lost the ability to simply get down on the floor and play with them.

  On my fourth visit to the psychiatrist at Kogarah I finally opened up to him about the Kim Meredith murder. I found this incredibly confronting and distressing, not having been able to bring myself to go into detail about this particular case.

  After this visit my symptoms seemed to escalate. One night I managed to read Jake and Melanie a story before bed, then jumped in the shower and cried uncontrollably. I felt I couldn’t cope as a mum. I knew what my capabilities were and I couldn’t believe that I was getting worse. I was spending time away from work, why wasn’t I feeling better?

  On the day of my next appointment with the psychiatrist the receptionist called me at home to tell me he was seriously ill and would not be returning to work until the following year. I put the phone down and started to choke. I couldn’t swallow and I couldn’t breathe. Then I burst into tears. I had finally found the courage to talk to someone in detail about the Kim Meredith murder and now he was off sick for months! I tried walking around the house to calm myself down. I was terrified. I didn’t realise it but I was suffering my first ever panic attack.

  Jake was at preschool, but Melanie was home with me. I was worried about her safety in case I was having a heart attack or stroke. I rang Rob and told him to come and get her, then I put her in my mother’s laundry basket. If Melanie was in the laundry basket, I reasoned, she couldn’t hurt herself if I was unable to protect her. Melanie could stay there until Rob came.

  I went into the kitchen, still crying uncontrollably. Vera, my clinical psychologist, had encouraged me to monitor my breathing rate using my watch. To give myself something to focus on I timed my breathing: nine breaths in ten seconds. (I was later told that fifty-four breaths in sixty seconds is considered dangerous and could lead to cardiac arrest.) I continued timing my breathing as it allowed me to concentrate on something and I didn’t know what else to do.

  Rob arrived shortly after and took Melanie. I couldn’t even talk to him about what was happening. What was I going to say? I didn’t understand it myself. I couldn’t believe my body had reacted so strongly solely because I had opened up to the psychiatrist about one particular murder.

  I was still seeing Vera twice a week and I made an appointment to see yet another psychiatrist, Dr Greg Wilkins at Miranda. Unfortunately this would not be until October, over a month away.

  During this month the young daughter of a dear friend and work colleague died from an aggressive cancer. I rang and spoke to my colleague’s wife, I felt so helpless in not being able to give him further support, the only comfort knowing that he had good solid friends around him. I was quite simply incapable, although my own problems were so far removed in comparison to what he and his family were going through and it didn’t seem right to feel the way I did. I felt paralysed and unable to emotionally connect with my dear friend. This emotional numbing, I later realised, is one of the cardinal symptoms of PTSD.

  Part of my struggle was the intellectual knowledge of what was required and what was appropriate as against my seeming paralysis to communicate. This resulted in further complexity, which compounded my frustration and left me feeling perplexed and devastated that I was not able to be more of a support to my colleague.

  Vera was once again counselling Rob and me about our marriage. Six weeks after our separation I had decided to return to Rob. This was the third time. Once I had been diagnosed with PTSD I wasn’t sure whether my symptoms had been the cause of my decision to separate. At that time I believed that now Rob and I had both been diagnosed with PTSD and were working with the right professionals, perhaps our marriage might also be saved. We were both still struggling with our symptoms but knew why we were behaving in this way. We were also trying to support each other. When I moved back in with Rob I felt safe again.

  In November 2003, we decided to take the children for a holiday to Vincentia, a lovely little town about two hours’ drive south of Sydney. On the drive down I felt more relaxed than ever but as soon as I relaxed the problems started again. My thoughts flew from one crime scene to another, as if I was watching a video of all the jobs I had been to. I relived the police pursuit that had resulted in the death of Tim, my colleague at Waverley back in 1987; I saw the accident site, went to the funeral and then visited Tim’s parents’ home all over again. During these flashbacks I could literally ‘feel’ the weight in the coffin and Tim’s body sliding towards me as we pallbearers walked down the church steps.

  When we reached Vincentia I looked at Rob and said, ‘I see dead people.’

  Upon returning home after our week in Vincentia, I was more anxious than ever from trying to block out these images. My sleeplessness and breathing difficulties became worse. I was doing four or five loads of washing a day and spending hours in the shower. It felt as though I was trying to remove all the blood from my mind. I was suffering from increasing panic attacks while at the same time feeling very detached from my family, including my children. I was feeling emotionless and robotic.

  Doing anything at all was an effort, a particular problem with Christmas approaching. My concentration remained poor. The bad headaches continued, along with dizziness. To try and relax, I signed up for an eight-week beginner yoga course. However, whenever we were asked to meditate I had to keep my eyes open and focus on various things in the room to stop the awful images that threatened to overwhelm me. I did not continue with yoga as I was afraid my emotions would get the better of me and I would break down during meditation in class.

  On 7 December 2003 my beautiful Jake summed up my disposition in one sentence: ‘Please don’t be angry all the time.’ I was trying not to but it was hard, very hard, and I really didn’t know what to do. I was angry and frustrated. I didn’t want to be off work. I was a career police officer and couldn’t understand why my mind was behaving this way.

  By now I was seeing Vera and the new psychiatrist, Greg Wilkins, three times a week. One of the first tasks Greg gave me was to sit quietly for ten minutes every day. I was to do nothing, just sit still. The first time I did this the time seemed to drag on. I checked my watch to see how much longer remained, but I had only been sitting quietly for one minute.

  Christmas was imminent and I knew I had to make an effort for the children’s sake. I decided to show them some Christmas lights; I enjoyed them so perhaps this would pick me up also.

  ‘Okay, kids, who wants to go and see some pretty Christmas lights?’

  ‘Me! Me!’ the kids called out, their enthusiasm bubbling over.

  It was so beautiful to see their little happy faces, such a contrast to the emptiness I felt inside. I put my robotic smile on and we drove to the street where home owners had put together sparkling displays. I opened the door for the kids. Their eyes lit up and they ran to the first house, fingers pointing.

  ‘Look Mummy, look!’

  ‘Yes sweetie, Santa Claus and his reindeers,’ I said. They looked as I felt, plastic, mechanical and false. The kids ran from one house to another, I followed. I barely noticed the displays as I watched the children dart from place to place. They ran, I could barely keep up. My breathing rate started to get faster. It was dark and I was worried about losing the kids in the small crowd of other children and parents.

  Where were they? Ah there they were, near a musical display, with the sounds of ‘Jingle bells, jingle bells…’ permeating through the crowd.<
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  ‘Come on kids, time to go.’

  ‘But Mum …’

  ‘No buts, now!’

  Back in the car I breathed a sigh of relief – I had the kids safe and we were going home.

  A few days later Rob went to the gym for a workout while I stayed home with the children. They were playing with each other and then, as kids do, started annoying each other. I couldn’t stand it. They were driving me nuts! Rob was due home in an hour but I couldn’t wait that long. I rang Mum.

  ‘I’m coming over with the kids.’

  We stayed at Mum’s for lunch and she played with the kids. I took them home later in the afternoon.

  That night I was very upset. I lay in bed thinking I can’t cope with kids, what else could I do? I felt like such an idiot.

  Christmas did give me some respite as I kept myself busy with my family to try and block out the flashbacks. My short-term memory was so severely reduced that I would carry sticky notes with a list of my tasks for the day, or a list if I needed to go shopping. My skills at multitasking had also disappeared. I had been able to lead a team of negotiators, deciphering intelligence, managing the team, formulating negotiation strategies, planning tactics and liaising with the other senior members of the command team all at the same time and under incredible pressure. Now I would walk into a room and forget why I was there. This happened more than once a day.

  I avoided watching the news, as on the rare occasions I did I would become extremely upset at anything involving children or death. My breathing would become more rapid and I had to try and calm myself using the breathing techniques I had been given. It felt that my ability to take on any more stories about death or injuries was saturated.

  I was becoming more paranoid about my children, anxious whenever they stood in front of the glazed front windows of the house because of the possibility of a drive-by shooting. These were not uncommon in the St George area where I used to work, although amazingly nobody had been injured. I also considered the possibility that Paul Offer (see Chapter 13) might organise such a shooting from inside gaol. He had already been charged for attempting something similar. My hypervigilance and irritability made taking my children to the shopping centre or anywhere else too difficult and it was easier to stay home.

  On one occasion I was involved in a road-rage incident. The car came racing out of the side street. I hit my horn and swerved to avoid it, narrowly missing a car in the next lane.

  ‘You idiot!’ I yelled, knowing he couldn’t hear me but had seen me mouth the words. It was a release of frustration after he had nearly wiped out me and my two-year-old daughter sitting in her child restraint seat in the back.

  I caught his look of anger then he slowed down in the lane on my right. I went cold. As he slowed down next to me I saw he had pulled out a gun, similar to a police issue semiautomatic Glock pistol. He aimed it right at me. Oh my God, I thought. Someone had once waved a screwdriver at me in a road-rage incident but never a pistol, and my daughter was in the car.

  My first action was to get us out of there. I put my foot down hard on the accelerator to put some distance between us, then I heard the explosive sound of the gunshot followed by breaking glass.

  I turned and looked into the back seat. The most horrific sight imaginable greeted me. My daughter was still strapped into her child restraint but blood was spraying out of her neck where her beautiful head had been. Bright red blood spurted from her neck to the roof of the car whilst her body, her arms, her legs were still strapped into the restraint. It was surreal, it was horrendous. I could very clearly see severed arteries and veins flopping around in what was left of my daughter’s neck.

  I looked away, turned my head again and saw that my beautiful daughter was still sitting in her seat and looking at me with a puzzled expression in her big brown eyes. It had all been an hallucination. The other driver had only been momentarily annoyed. I was sick to my stomach. I pulled over to the side of the road as it took a few minutes to collect my thoughts. I needed to get home, to familiar surroundings so I could try and recover. How much longer would this continue?

  CHAPTER

  20

  A dark time

  By January 2004 a number of different cases I had been involved in were running through my head: Tim’s fatal pursuit, the murder of Kim Meredith, the murder of Donna Wheeler, the hostage situation with Jack in Carlton. I went over and over that. I kept asking myself why I’d just stood there when Jack came at me with the knife; why had I needed to be pushed out of the way? I was still feeling very detached from everyone, and extremely paranoid about my family’s safety. If Rob went to the local shops or to get a video, I would start hearing potential intruders outside the house.

  In December the rehabilitation officer rang and said that the senior management team from St George LAC wanted to contact me once a month. I had been allocated a welfare officer, whose job was to conduct ‘welfare checks’ on me and keep in touch to see how I was progressing. My welfare officer, one of the other duty officers I had worked with, had called me twice in the previous few months but I had not heard from him after that.

  He had to fill out a form each time he contacted me. I agreed to this but was still paranoid after the comment about putting on an act from the duty officer who had visited me; the commander had also told me he had needed to ‘defend’ me to his peers. I had always put one hundred per cent into work so I didn’t understand this. Apparently I had upset the system by going off sick with a stress-related illness.

  I was still angry with myself for not recognising my symptoms sooner and doing something about them. The reality was that the lack of support from work was partly my own doing as I had not told anyone about the nightmares and flashbacks I had endured for years. I had not sought help for fear I would be ridiculed. It was generally known that if you couldn’t handle stressful situations as a police officer, your chances of promotion would be affected.

  In January, I was very upset when I heard that someone I had trusted had told a friend of mine, ‘She can be a control freak. Sometimes things don’t go her way.’ A reference, no doubt, to my application for part-time work being turned down. I was also insulted and hurt when a friend of Rob’s imparted the news of another rumour. Someone was claiming that Rob and I were off work ‘rorting the system’. The person in question had talked about ‘these women who get pregnant then get pregnant again, then go off sick because they didn’t get part-time leave’.

  This comment highlighted to me what some senior police were thinking and how my name had been damaged. As a result I became more reclusive. I wanted nothing to do with anyone from work, I felt alone and isolated. How could they say I was rorting the system when I was going through the hell that was currently my life?

  I guess these comments came from the fact that at work I was no shrinking violet; I gave my opinion when asked and never kissed anyone’s backside. I often wondered whether I would have been treated differently had I been wearing a bandage wrapped round my head. General Peter Cosgrove, Australia’s governor-general and the former chief of the Australian Defence Force, has described the situation best: ‘You and I can see a wound or a broken bone, but an injured mind is another matter’ (Newcastle Herald, 24 April 2013).

  I bumped into the rumour-monger one day at our local shopping centre and was finally able to tell him what I thought about the comments. I didn’t bother staying for a reply; I was beyond angry. I can only hope that such people have learned to keep their opinions to themselves.

  More upsetting still, I think, was the comment from a former police officer whom I held in high regard. ‘I thought she was stronger than that,’ she said about me. This probably upset me the most because I agreed with her. I’d thought I was stronger than this too. I’d thought I could handle anything, and now I felt I had let the side down.

  Even within the family, people didn’t understand. A family member who is also a police officer told me he couldn’t understand why I hadn’t gone back to wor
k once Rob and I decided to give our marriage another go. He was convinced I’d taken sick leave because of our marriage problems – and he didn’t once ask me about my work issues or being diagnosed with PTSD by more than one highly qualified mental-health professional. This conversation reinforced my need to distance myself from others. I desperately wanted and needed support from my family and friends, but I couldn’t discuss the incidents that had caused my distress. I became increasingly withdrawn.

  The night after I had heard the comment about rorting the system I had a terrible nightmare. It was a dark evening and I had been called to a negotiator incident with a man at the Gap, the cliff on the South Head peninsula in Sydney’s east that was infamous as a suicide location. The man was holding Melanie over the edge of the cliff. She was just a baby.

  ‘I am here to help you,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you put the baby down and let’s talk.’

  I continued to talk to the man but got no responses and I did not recognise his face. Nothing I was saying was getting through to him and Melanie was still dangling over the edge. I was terrified I would lose my baby.

  He held her over the edge to taunt me. I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t reach her, I couldn’t reach him. I tried and I tried to talk him into letting her go.

  Then he did let her go. He dropped her over the edge.

  I raced forward to try and grab her and woke with a start, choking as I tried to take in air.

  In January 2004, I had an appointment with an independent psychiatrist to investigate my formal claim that I had been ‘hurt on duty’. The appointment involved an hour-long interview. I found it harrowing, as it once again required me to open up and discuss the various horrors I had seen. During the interview, I experienced flashbacks to Kim Meredith’s body. I could see the terrible wound in her throat, the blood, the twigs and leaf litter in her hair. It was too real and horrific for me to discuss with someone I had only just met. I supplied brief details of some of the situations I had been involved in, but no more than that.