*
While I acted like a normal little girl, I wasn’t one. I was always tense and, looking back on those days, I believe I was afraid. Even during the day, I never knew what lay around the corner. I remember going to Mass one Sunday with Da. Ma wasn’t with us that day.
My body temperature raised and my face started burning when I saw him positioning himself, standing at the back of Fairview Church. Two younger girls were standing behind him. I saw him put his creepy hand behind his back and grope one of the children. I prayed she wouldn’t say anything.
I didn’t recognise her, and I thanked God for that, but I recognised that he seemed to have no fear. The little girl had a horrible experience in Mass that day.
I wasn’t sure whether I felt worse watching him do it to another girl or when he did it to me. Doing it to me at least kept it hidden, but when he did it to someone else in front of me, I froze.
That was the first time I remember seeing Da touching anyone else besides me. At the time, I didn’t understand why but I felt physically sick.
I didn’t know if the little girl realised what was happening to her but I assumed she must have felt dirty, because I always did when he did that to me. My childish brain really couldn’t make sense of this action. I thought it was something that daddies did with their little girls—not with other children.
I can recall seeing her face drain of colour. At the same time, mine was red and boiling. I couldn’t wait to get out of the church. Ma always made us carry tissues up our sleeves, so on my way out, I took one and dipped it into the holy-water bowl. I dabbed my hot face with it, hoping that it might cool me down and also that it might wash away some of my shame and terror. Da just walked out of the church like nothing had happened. I think he must have enjoyed himself and that was all that mattered.
I remember being tired a lot after school. I would come home a lot of days, lie down on the couch and that was it, I’d sleep for the afternoon. This was a continuing habit of mine throughout my school years. I never got much sleep during the night and then during the day I couldn’t stay awake. This was a symptom of my body clock being all over the place. Most kids would fall asleep shortly after being put to bed, but not me. I hated going to bed because I knew Da would soon follow.
In the beginning, I’d lie in bed waiting for him, my muscles rigid with tension. Then, as soon as the door opened, I’d relax every muscle in my body, not with relief, but so that he might think I was asleep and leave me alone. This was a useless exercise which never stopped Da. When he would finish, I’d come back to life and stay awake all night. How could I possibly go to sleep? My mind was contaminated with feelings of being dirty. I would lie awake for hours mulling dark thoughts over in my head.
I usually fell asleep in the early hours of the morning only to be awoken again shortly afterwards. I would be so exhausted the following day that I needed long naps to mentally recharge.
*
My earliest memories of school are from when I was six. I don’t remember junior infants or senior infants too well, but I do remember first class in St Mary’s National School in Fairview and have fond memories of my teacher Mrs Ray. She was exactly the type of teacher all kids love. She was very child-orientated and I don’t ever remember her giving out to anyone. On their birthday, every student got a present. I distinctly remember the yellow, stretchy headband she gave me to keep my long blonde hair off my face. I kept that headband for years afterwards.
I had a great time in that school despite what was happening to me at home.
I managed to do all of my school work and I came to love reading and writing. I found maths pretty simple, so all in all, school was good. At the beginning of first class, I clung to Mrs Ray’s every word and did whatever I could to please her. Any attention she gave me was like a ray of sunshine in my life. If she ticked my homework with a red pen, which meant ‘very good’, I was over the moon. But as the year went on her approval stopped being enough to keep me happy. I felt increasingly stressed and different to the other children. The feeling of emptiness intensified. I was depressed but at the age of six I had no understanding of what this even meant.
Even though I had lots of friends it didn’t stop this feeling of dirtiness that often welled up inside. I was never sure how to describe it but I felt empty on the inside and blackened to the core. This feeling never left me. It was something that I felt every day of every waking hour. It was only in later years that I came to understand this feeling but at the time I didn’t. It was just something that I learned to live with. It started to interfere with my feelings about school and I realised that school wasn’t going to fill the void inside me. Because I wasn’t sleeping much at night, I also was feeling very tired in class and I was unable to concentrate much.
It was a friend who discovered how easy it was to get out of class and this was the start of us going on the hop, or ‘mitching’ as we called it. It was also the beginning of the end of a normal life for me.
*
Bunking off school was my way of taking control and rebelling against what was happening, though at the time, I think I did it just because I could.
I never knew from week to week what day or time my friend would come knocking on Mrs Ray’s classroom door. But once I heard the knock, I’d start packing. At first, I managed to get out once a week, then it was twice a week and before long I wasn’t going in some days at all. Sometimes I got false notes from somewhere that said I was sick. It was too easy.
I used to hang around Main Street in Fairview instead. One of the side streets had rows of large three-story houses with big steps leading up to their doorways. If I was early enough I was able to steal the milk that had been left on their doorsteps. I never normally drank milk but this milk was different; because it was robbed it seemed somehow more precious and I used to gulp it down greedily. This became a daily thing and, just like the mitching, it was a great buzz.
I used to rob empty lemonade bottles from crates at the back of different shops so I could make some money. I would go into shops to sell the bottles back to the woman behind the counter. I think I got about 1p a bottle. I did this in a few different shops and when I’d gathered enough money I’d buy Fizzlesticks, Toffee Logs, Black Jacks and Fruit Salads. My favourite was the quarter mixes from the big clear jars with the black lids that had a mixture of Apple Sours, cough sweets and Bull’s Eyes.
Before long, me and my accomplice had a great life going—lots of money, sweets and milk, and no school. Nobody paid too much attention to me mitching in those days. And if they did ask questions I had an excuse ready for them. One day we were sitting on a seesaw in Fairview Park when a woman came over.
‘Have you no school kids?’ she asked suspiciously.
I just said, ‘No, Missus. There was a bomb scare.’
‘Oh, okay.’
And off she went.
The Troubles were bad in the North around this time so there were a lot of bomb scares in Dublin. I remember going into town once with my aunt and my brother Fergus. We were walking along, minding our own business, when all of a sudden there was a loud noise and all around us people started dropping to the ground, face-down. A bomb had gone off nearby. I don’t know which paramilitary group was behind it, all I know is that it went off pretty close to us and we were terrified. The three of us got home as fast as we could. So bomb scares were the norm back then and nobody ever batted an eyelid. So once I knew I was on to a good excuse, if anyone asked me, I’d tell them there’d been a bomb scare. This worked like a charm until one day a woman asked what school I was in.
‘St Mary’s,’ I said.
She didn’t say another word, just took off screaming, ‘My babies! My babies!’ at the top of her lungs.
Back in those days, schools could send you home for the day with no warning to the parents whatsoever. Whether you were four years old or ten, it didn’t matter. Like if the heating was gone or a teacher was sick, we were all sent home.
Priest
s had the power to let you go early too. If they visited the school and you were able to answer your catechism questions correctly, they could say, ‘Right, I’m going to tell the headmistress to let you off early today.’ And he would. Could you imagine that happening today? With mothers at work—or even if they were at home. Young kids coming skipping home unannounced. Parents would go bloody mad. But back then no one seemed to mind.
The odd day mitching soon turned into the odd week and before long I was hardly in school at all. The inevitable happened and I eventually got caught because of something stupid. I came home with muck all over my shoes and there was no muck between my house and the school. My ma’s instincts kicked into action.
One evening, I strolled in the front door as usual only to meet Ma in the hallway. I remember there was a full-length mirror in the hall so I could see both the front and the back of Ma at the one time. I now know that it’s bad Feng Shui to have a mirror facing a doorway. I think it was probably more than a mirror that screwed up my life though.
As soon as my mother saw the muck on my shoes she began to question me.
‘Where were you?’ she asked.
‘At school.’
‘I know you’re lying.’
Just then one of my friends came knocking on our door. Of all the girls to come knocking on the door at that exact moment, she was the girl that I didn’t want to see. She couldn’t lie to save her life. I was only six at the time but I still knew that you couldn’t rely on her in this type of situation. But Ma was delighted to see her as she knew she’d definitely get the truth out of her.
‘Was Audrey at school today?’ Ma asked.
My friend looked scared. She knew I hadn’t been in school. She would never tell on you—she was loyal—but she just couldn’t lie.
‘Was Audrey in school today?’ Ma repeated.
I nearly felt more sorry for her than I did for myself. She was in an awful position. The questioning went on for ages but my friend held her ground, refusing to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
She eventually whimpered that I hadn’t been in school.
I went to run but Ma caught me. She never hit me but she told me to get changed into my pyjamas and wait until Da got home.
I was afraid of my da, but it was a different kind of fear than Ma thought. It wasn’t the threat of a spanking that scared me. I knew Da was capable of much worse. All evening I listened out for the sound of Da’s keys in the door. When the noise finally came I tried to fade into the shadows in the bedroom. But Da came storming in, his belt already off and wound around his balled-up fist. He told me to strip. He grabbed me and held me up by one arm, my two legs dangling midair, while he hit me with the belt; something he had never done before. It definitely hurt, but the scariest part of the whole thing was that as far as Da knew, I’d only been on the hop that one day. What would he have done to me if he’d found out it had actually been a couple of months?
I don’t think the school ever told Ma and Da that I’d been out for so long. Going back was awful though. I had to hand Mrs Ray a note from my parents the following Monday morning. The letter was sealed and I had no idea what was written in it—I knew better than to read it. I know it was definitely Da and not me Ma that wrote it though.
My stomach was on fire and I was almost in tears handing the letter to Mrs Ray. She quietly read it.
‘Okay Audrey, you can sit down,’ she said in a disappointed tone of voice. She didn’t give out to me or pass any comment whatsoever. I felt so bad for letting her down. She was so nice and I didn’t like her thinking I was bold.
Getting caught didn’t stop me from continuing to mitch from school. To me, mitching was my way of coping with my da. It was a way of rebelling but when I think back, I was probably crying out for help. The problem was that no one could hear me.
Chapter Two
In the midst of the abuse I suffered, I tried to act like a normal child.
I played with dolls, wore bright colours and played with other little girls but inside I was falling apart.
That indescribable feeling of being dirty was never far from my mind. It consumed me.
It is hard to explain the impact that sexual abuse has on a six-year-old girl. In my case, it distorted my whole life in ways that I am only now beginning to understand. Though I knew instinctively that what was happening to me at the time was wrong, I didn’t know why it was wrong.
I had been brought up to believe that Da was right in everything he said and did, so I believed he was doing nothing wrong. In fact, I blamed myself for feeling bad about his nightly visits, which I assumed to be only natural. I guess I believed it was my reaction to him that was unnatural. To cope, I tried to live what I thought to be a normal childhood.
The tragedy is that anyone who would have known me at the time probably thought I was that normal child, as that is what I pretended to be.
The abuse was my secret; one which I shared with Da alone.
I acted like a normal little girl because I wanted to be one. I think this is why no one noticed what was happening. I acted like other children. The tell-tale signs only became apparent later in my life. At that time, I was an ordinary girl who did what other children did but I was fearful of my father. I wasn’t scared of him being violent, I was scared of the power that he held over me.
This manifested itself in all sorts of strange ways. On Saturdays, which was my favourite day because I usually spent most of it in my pyjamas watching all my favourite television programmes, I would get up early and tiptoe by Ma and Da’s bedroom.
I would head downstairs and lay newspapers on the ground before pouring out cereal. Ma thought I was being good doing this but it was really because I was afraid of Da. If I had spilled cereal on the sitting-room floor, he would have stopped me watching my favourite programmes.
So I’d set bowls of cereal down in front of the box and tune in to all my top shows like Daktari, Swap Shop and Riverside Tales among many others. I loved these programmes because they were alternate worlds into which I could escape.
But to the outside world, Da seemed like the best father a child could wish for.
Our family spent more weekends away on holiday than at home and we had a car when our neighbours were still riding bicycles.
We even had a colour television and access to cable channels long before our neighbours had them. In fact, I can still remember the day we got cable television.
Back in those days, RTÉ did not start transmitting until 3p.m. in the afternoon.
If you switched on the television, all you saw was a giant clock counting down the time till the programmes started.
One day, when I arrived home from school, I saw Ma perched in front of the television. I knew it was a few minutes to 3p.m. so I thought she was just watching the countdown.
It took me a minute or two to register that she was actually pressing other buttons on the TV and that we had new stations.
I couldn’t believe it.
Now I could watch Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons, The Brady Bunch, Magpie, Rainbow and Sesame Street. As far as I was concerned, the new stations were the best thing to ever happen to me.
I had hours and hours of pure escapism at my fingertips. A colour television set arrived soon after. I can remember its arrival as if it happened yesterday.
Ma called us in for tea one evening. Once we were all seated at the table, I heard Da bustling about in the hall, making a racket. Suddenly, he peered around the corner, a huge cardboard box in his hands.
‘Bring your tea into the sitting room, I have a surprise for you,’ he said.
We were never allowed to eat in the sitting room so we knew Da had to have something to show us.
When his audience were all assembled, Da unveiled his surprise and sat back like a proud magician awaiting the gasps of surprise.
There, sitting before us, was a big colour television set. Da plugged it in and began tuning the channels as we waited excitedly.
His timing couldn’t have been more perfect ’cause there was a programme on about the Bay City Rollers. How much more colourful could you get?
Although Da hated TV, that night he sat down and watched it without complaining for once in his life.
He may not have liked television very much but that night he loved being the centre of attention of us kids. And we loved doting on him.
It is memories like these that most confuse and upset me. If Da hadn’t been a child abuser, would he have been the best father in the world?
Maybe. I don’t know because I can’t think of him being anything other than an abuser.
When I was a child I wanted him to be the best father. This partly explains why I blamed myself for what he did to me and why I remained silent for years. I didn’t want to say anything because he was my father, the man who brought me into this world, the man who provided for me, the man who was supposed to protect me.
Then I think back and remember and I am confronted by the truth.
He was not a role model but someone who pretended to love me so he could sexually abuse me.
This was the true side to his character; the one that only some little girls saw.
*
Da was a predatory child abuser. He abused me whenever he could and never missed an opportunity to destroy my childhood. When I think back to those days, the memories of what happened to me are as clear in my memory as if they happened yesterday.
He gratified himself sexually no matter what the risk or the cost to me.
Anyone who isn’t familiar with the activities of child abusers often find it hard to comprehend how children are abused or what that involves. Child abuse has become a word that is bandied about without anyone giving much consideration to what it involves. There are different types of paedophiles and abusers, and Da was one of the worst kinds. He spent his time grooming young girls, until it got to the point where many of his victims—like me—couldn’t even pinpoint exactly when the abuse started.
All My Fault: The True Story of a Sadistic Father and a Little Girl Left Destroyed Page 2