THE Royal Commission’s recent hearings in Hobart not only put perpetrators on the stand but their victims. Reporter DOUG DINGWALL speaks to one of the victims who had to relive her horrific past once again.
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SHE was warned that suffering would come before healing as she confronted the legacy of sexual abuse inflicted on her as a teenager.
The Hobart woman, 62, who cannot be named for legal reasons, attended hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in the city.
‘‘You have to go back to the past and relive it,’’ she said.
Her abuser took the stand and faced questions, and she discovered other men associated with the Church of England Boys’ Society she knew in Tasmania had committed paedophilia.
The woman said she became unwell during the commission hearings.
‘‘For me there were a number of times I became very upset,’’ she said.
She considered confronting her abuser at the hearing and telling him she forgave him.
Instead she decided not to sit in the same room as him.
‘‘To be honest, I didn’t recognise him, because he’s so much older,’’ she said.
Some of the things she heard sitting through the hearings were already known to her.
‘‘What was new and quite shocking was the sheer scope of the abuse occurring across the diocese,’’ she said.
People she had met, known and trusted were involved in paedophilia.
While abuse survivors gave evidence at the hearings, she was one of many who spoke privately to the commission.
‘‘This hearing is not showing the scale of abuse,’’ she said.
The woman said she was still considered a high risk of suicide and self-harm.
She has received compensation for the trauma she experienced.
‘‘Even if it was a million dollars, it doesn’t take away the risk of suicide ... it can’t take away the memories of the abuse,’’ she said.
The woman forgave her abuser in 2010 out of necessity.
‘‘The hatred and the anger about the abuse was going to kill me,’’ she said.
‘‘It was consuming me, and unless I did something, I was dead.’’
The moment was a turning point in her recovery.
She met her abuser at the age of 10 and he began to groom her.
From 1966, she was made to perform oral sex and have anal sex with him, and the abuse stopped two years later when she was 14.
‘‘I never understood why [it stopped],’’ she said.
‘‘As it turned out, he had other victims to pursue.’’
By 14 years of age, she was an alcoholic.
She said she had ‘‘false fronts’’ and amnesia barriers that protected her from the memories.
However, when the abuser was jailed for child sex offences in the 1990s, her trauma came to the surface.
‘‘Learning about the abuse much later on put me back where other abuse victims start,’’ she said.
Her marriage broke down, she lost her job, and she struggled with alcoholism.
She tried to kill herself, and as she went in and out of psychiatric wards she received multiple diagnoses, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder.
Eventually she was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder.
‘‘The thing that kept us alive [through the abuse] was fragmentation and dissociation in the mind.’’
Despite her trauma she says she is ‘‘luckier than some’’ abuse survivors.
‘‘I’ve heard some terrible survivor stories,’’ she said.
She said the royal commission was a ‘‘godsend’’ because it believed survivors’ stories upfront.
‘‘Being able to talk about it publicly is part of the healing process,’’ she said.
‘‘It’s like a lot of things, the more you talk about it, the easier it gets.
‘‘I would encourage anyone who’s experienced any kind of sexual abuse ... to speak out openly.’’
The commission hearings in Hobart ended on February 5.
