Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Claiming again

I reviewed this blog tonight and came across the entries from December 2012 where the state government held a commission of inquiry into the abuse in the school hostels in the 60's and 70's..... I contributed my story to the commission at that time and I was encouraged to make a claim under that scheme.  I did so and I was given the maximum compensation......  but the actual process of preparing the claim had a big impact on me and it took months for me to recover from that impact.

Now the National Redress Scheme is operational ..... and it began on 1st July.  I prepared a new claim at that date ...... and the process of preparing this claim has  had an even greater impact than in 2012.  This deeper impact is largely due to the different frame of reference ..... this redress scheme specifically focuses on sexual abuse ..... so I had to dig into memories that I hadn't disturbed ..... and then record those memories for the assessors.  I have found the after effect of this to be deeply upsetting emotionally and physically.

I have engaged with medical and counseling help and the effects are being overcome.

For the purpose of a record, I will include the wording of the claim.

___________________________________________________________



1. Physical abuse
I came to St Christopher's as a boy who had already been abused.  I was vulnerable, hurting, wary, terrified. I needed a caring nurturing environment  but instead I was thrust into a world where I was literally the prey for more  abusers.  Only the moments of sleep were free from the awareness that more pain and humiliation was a breath away.  Mostly this was at the hands of peers ... but then I discovered that my  supposed protectors .... the adult staff members who were employed to supervise ... were also another form of torment. This was disguised as 'corrective discipline'! The hunting time was bedtime and "lights out" time in the dormitory.  The knowledge of what was coming meant that I (along with the other sufferers) would be in fear.  I would attempt to hide under the bed covers .... hoping that maybe this night I would not be noticed.  At these times my peers would be entertained by tormenting me ... trying to get a reaction or simply enjoying being able to inflict pain.  I would try to  escape their attentions and the noise created would usually summon the staff  members from their lair.  The staff member would select the likely noisemakers  .... and since I was frequently the reason for the noise, I would often be selected for discipline.
Discipline was by the cane or a length of garden hose. Both of these were administered to the buttocks or upper or lower thighs.   The implement chosen depended on which teacher was 'on duty'. It would usually be applied with  clothes on but if it was a bad night we would have to have the cane on bare skin.
Much of the memory of those times has been suppressed by my mind.  The  very act of  writing this account is reviving much of the memory.   I am in tears  as I write this and  I have to stop often.
Who were the staff members?  I think there were two or three but I can barely  remember.  One I  remember clearly because he was married to a girl who  lived next door to my parent's house in Beverly.  Jim XXXX.  Six years later I was involved in a church in Scarbough and I found that Jim XXXX  was also related to friends in that church.
How severe?  This memory is very clear because all the sufferers  would compare the welts inflicted when we returned to the dorm.  The test was to see how deeply you could lay a finger in the welt.  The extent and severity was also compared .... the daily showers were conducted with around 50 boys all naked and the injuries were extremely public.  The shower sessions were usually supervised by the principal Roy Wenlock .... I often ponder why he did not enquire about the apparent anomaly that the 'runts of the pack'  were receiving such punishment.    I never suffered broken skin from the caning but I remember another  boy ... he was diabetic and was particularly targeted .... he sometimes had broken skin resulting from the caning.  The bruising was bad enough that it was hard to walk the next day at school.  The episodes of discipline were frequent enough that they weren't unusual ... nights without a session were something to be remarked on.  They continued the whole time I was staying at St Christopher's.   I can clearly remember the dorms that I was sleeping in for each of  the three years.
2. Sexual abuse
I have been asked to add this to the record.  It was not included in my first draft as I still find this very painful to think about or to talk about. 
I began my time at St Christopher's as a complete pre-pubescent innocent with no knowledge of the 'bird and the bees' and no idea why I would even have an erection.  I can clearly remember that  I was in my second year at the hostel before I experienced my first orgasm. 
Situation A    During year 1, was taken off into a nearby field by a boy who in hindsight was very sexually experienced.  I can remember the other boys discussing the sexual experiences of their parents which they had observed.  The field had some ditches giving seclusion and there the other boy introduced me to masturbation and fellatio.  From that time on I was used as the 'plaything' at night when I would be forced to give oral sex to several of the other boys.  I would be taken from my bed at night and made to kneel at their bedside and then give them oral sex.  I have utterly clear memories of this right down to the physical shape and characteristics of their cocks.  I have no idea of how many times this happened but I can remember the three different dormitories that I was assigned to for each of the three years I was there.  In one sense this was not too bad as there was little malice involved  .... just force ... I had no choice in the action .... I was a useful toy to them I suppose.  In today's  attitudes, I guess this was rape.
Situation  B   A frequent "game" played on we boys at the 'bottom of the pecking order' ... was the "flush" and the "royal flush".  These episodes happened at random with no warning.  A group of the boys would see that the situation was OK .... no staff or prefects around .... and they would grab the nearest victim.   The "flush" was when a boy was immobilised  by force and the pushed into a toilet cubicle and his head was forced into the toilet bowl.  The toilet was then flushed.  The "royal flush" was similar except that a toilet bowl containing excreta was used  ...... so the experience was particularly traumatic.  If the tormentors were being energetic they would invert the victim and lower them vertically.  This was worse than the normal kneeling in front of the toilet bowl method.  I remember being subjected to both forms of flush but I could not say how many times.  Of course I resisted these episodes as far as I could ..... and I remember how the tormentors would be delighted if I did resist as it was then a great source of entertainment for them.  I remember them calling their mates to come and watch.  I was physically much more immature than them I had no chance at all of fighting against these boys who were much bigger  than me .... and hardened by farm work.
Situation  C   In the hostel, each boy had a locker in which his clothes were stored.  All the lockers were in one room and they were arranged in aisles and there were many obscured areas.  I one particularly bad episode a tormentor sought me out during the time after showers.  I was naked.  He grabbed me by the balls and then dragged me round the locker room by the balls in front of about 30 or 40 other boys.  The pain and humiliation was extreme.  
At all times I had to avoid attention and I learned to find ways to hide.  The lockers mentioned above were often a place to hide. I could get right inside the locker and pull the door closed .... if I was very quiet I could escape notice for a while.     In dry weather I would sneak into the fields which surrounded the hostel.  When the fields had high grass, I could make a refuge in the grass and stay there till I had to emerge for meal times.  I had to attend meals as there was a head-count.   Meal times were relatively safe as only non-obvious attacks could be employed while in the lines or in the dining hall.    In wet weather, I would sneak into the laundry/boiler room and I could usually find a refuge behind the boiler or under the mounds of washing.  I remember watching till the tormentors  were attacking some other victim .... and then I could sneak away and hide when the tormentors weren't watching me.
The only friends I had during these years were the other boys who were being similarly abused.  I sometimes wonder what has happened to them.  During my first year at the hostel, my older brother was also there .... he was a 17 year old final year prefect.  I think I was a nuisance for him as he ignored my presence and the tormentors seemed to delight in this.  
When I reflect on the descriptions above, It all seems rather trite and innocuous ..... but the horrible thing was the unrelenting, day after day, continual nature of the abuse ... for year after year.  When I went home for holiday breaks I would be terrified of returning to the hostel ..... but I never told my parents.   I never spoke of these experiences to anyone .... family, peers,  teachers, authorities.  The effect was so great that I could not speak  of it for thirty years. I think my parents must have suspected something because they removed me from the hostel in mid-term in 1966 - my third year.  That removal to private board was in itself very traumatic  as  I still had to attend Northam High school with the boys I had left behind ... I was seen as a deserter.
I still struggle daily with the memories of those times and I frequently think of suicide.  There have been several occasions in the years since when I have come very close to suicide or attempted it ... obviously without success.  Other impacts on my daily life have been deep.  I have little self esteem, little self  confidence and it has had a deep effect on my ability to have any form of friendship or social contact with other males.
The experience of those time has deeply scarred me and I have had many years of counselling and therapy as a result. All counsellors who have worked with me have diagnosed PTSD.  If in current times, I hear media accounts of abuse or bullying, I cannot stop myself identifying and so  reliving the distress.  Part of my mind is almost constantly thinking of those experiences  from over fifty years ago.  I exist on two levels ... one part carries on a seemingly  successful business and family life .... while the other part of me struggles with the memories and their effect. Depression is a constant battle and my plan for suicide is a constant solace and refuge in my every day life.  I know that if things get too bad and I can't cope, I can put my plan into action and end it all.  I have planned a method and assembled the means for a non violent, non painful  suicide when the time comes.
To this day I have frequent nightmares and my wife is probably very weary of having to wake me to stop the nightmares.  Remembering the nightmares is bad too .... I cannot erase  the memory  of the nightmares ..... and many of the nightmares were ghastly.
I have no hope of recovery or 'normality'.... I just try to keep going  .... to look after my  family ...  and I look forward to the ending of the torment when I die. 
Beverly District Hich School 1961 - 1963 ages 10 - 12
During my years in primary school classes at this school, my father was employed by the local shire council as the Health Inspector and the Traffc Inspector. In the traffc role he would frequently be confronting the young men of the town and their younger siblings were students at the high school. As a means of gaining revenge on my father, these boys would constantly attack and physically abuse me. My memory of this time is of unrelenting terror and torment. I remember trying to gain refuge in the classroom .... but being told that the room had to be locked during recess and lunch breaks and I could not stay inside. Without the protection of the teacher I was "fair game" for the abusers and they would come for me in a group and take me to a secluded part of the school yard to extract their revenge. Their favourite method was to stand behind me and .... using their projected knuckles poked into the spot below my ears ..... they would lift me right off the ground. I mentally separted my self from the pain .... the internal part could watch what was being done to the external part.
There was no sexual abuse during this time .... purely physical.  But this time laid the groundwork for the abuse that was to follow at the hostel.
I never spoke of this to my parents ..... nor to any one else till about 35 years later in the mid 1990's when I was in relationship counselling with my wife. Part of the counselling was because I could not speak .... I could not tell even my wife of what had been done to me. The counsellor likened my defence mechanism to me being a small child inside a tank ..... the child could drive the tank and the "tank" would function in the outside world .... but the small child remained locked inside and unable to communicate. The counselling undertaken over the next 25 years has meant that I can now think about the experiences in my mind .... and talk about it with diffculty .... and write about it with shaking hands and many tears.
But my childhood dreams of what I could accomplish as an adult had been ripped away from me. I had dreamed of a career as a doctor and one time I was essessed by the guidance counselor at high school ..... he just looked at my testing and dismissed me with the comment that I was capable of doing anything I wanted to do. I sometimes wonder why that counselor didn't look deeper to fnd out why I was unable to cope academically .... I knew ..... but I could not speak. Throughout high school I struggled academically .... and this continued in adult life when I attended and failed at uni ... and then attended Teachers College.  It had a deep effect on further study that I completed as a Company Secretary.
(In the previous section it asked if any person in this institution knew what was happening. The school had a policy of locking classroom doors during breaks and there was no place of safety that a child could retreat to .... so no staff were able to know. Probably they would have protected me if it weren't for the locked door policy.)

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