A Mother's Story (15 page)

I pulled myself up off the floor, comforted Luke then called my neighbour, Chris, who sat with us as we waited for the police to arrive. I remember straightening my hair and trying to look respectable for the police's arrival. Luke sat silently in the living room, tears streaming down his face as Chris comforted him.

When finally the police showed up, they stood on the doorstep as I relayed what had happened. They asked me to come directly to the police station to report the assault, took a description of Greg and set off to find him. I drove down to Hastings Police Station and filed a report. I was told to attend Frankston Magistrates Court the following morning to seek a family violence intervention order.

Meanwhile, the constables who had come to the door were scouring the neighbourhood for Greg. They found him walking along the road not far from my house, the glass vase still in his hand. According to police reports of the arrest, at first Greg ignored them, refusing to acknowledge their entreaties to stop and speak to them. As they proceeded to arrest him, he became abusive, ranting and raving and calling them names.

The arresting officers took him to Hastings Police Station, where he continued to be aggressive, refusing to cooperate, refusing to answer questions, responding to their every enquiry with a torrent of abuse. He was taken to a holding room as the constables called in their supervisor. Police notes from the night indicate the supervisor decided Greg was prone to ‘mood swings' and, as a result, he was sent in an ambulance to Frankston Hospital for a psychiatric assessment.

The ambulance and Frankston Hospital emergency room notes from that evening record that Greg complained about sore wrists, but upon arriving at the hospital for psychiatric assessment he was ‘calm, rational, articulate and completely normal'. Privacy laws prevented me from ever being told the outcome of Greg's psychiatric assessment.

The police charged Greg with ‘unlawful assault', ‘assault by kicking' and ‘assault with a weapon'. He was told to front up to Frankston Magistrates Court the following day, where a family violence Intervention Order would be served.

The police entered details of the assault into their internal database, called the LEAP system. But their records would later indicate they left the ‘Assessment of Future Risk' box blank and failed also to tick the box indicating that a child had been present during the assault. Luke was listed as a secondary victim of the assault.

As per protocol, the incident was referred by police to the Child Protection Service, a division of the Department of Human Services, and a local family violence service, and a file was automatically generated recommending counselling for both Luke and myself. The family violence service notes from that day indicate that only the first page of the police report from that night was ever received. It further notes that as per
standard procedure at no point was a copy of the file passed onto me.

The following day, I fronted up to Frankston Magistrates Court. I walked into the foyer, where respondents for the day's proceedings were all milling about, and was shocked when I saw Greg standing there too.

Without a clue as to where I should be or to whom I should speak, I stood on the spot, assuming at any moment someone would be along to explain what I was expected to do. I hadn't been referred to Legal Aid – all I had were instructions to be at court at nine-thirty that morning. I didn't even really understand what I was there to do.

I tried to avoid Greg, but he eventually saw me and sauntered over. ‘You need the police prosecutor,' he said, clearly amused at the level of discomfort his presence was causing me. ‘They're over there.'

Without answering, I made my way through the crowd to the small office out of which the police prosecutor operated. He was so rushed, trying to make sense of the briefs he had only received that morning that he barely acknowledged me.

‘I'm just not sure what I am supposed to do,' I ventured, as he hurriedly swept up an armload of files and made for the courtroom.

‘IVO application,' was the only reply I got as he bustled into the courtroom.

Until my case was called and the magistrate kicked off proceedings, I hadn't even understood that the police had taken out a family violence safety notice on my behalf. But – as I would learn in the months to come – it didn't have the restrictions on it that I required, meaning that I would be forced to go back to try to have it tightened. At the time, and in the confusion of the
moment, I was just swept along in the proceedings. It was all over before I even understood what was going on.

A note from Luke to me, written in November 2011

Greg was served with an interim IVO in which Luke and I were listed as protected persons. Under the terms of the order, he was not allowed to commit family violence against us or damage my property, and he was told he needed to seek counselling from the Men's Referral Service.

As for the assault charges, they were to be heard at a later date, and this would keep happening. The assault took place on 16 May 2012, but it wouldn't be until 8 January 2013 that the matter was to be heard in court.

The next day, I received a phone call from the family violence service. I told them I wished to change the access Greg had to Luke but was worried that it would only provoke him to further violence. They recommended I seek a change to the access arrangements with the Family Court, which would mean engaging a lawyer and going through the time-consuming and expensive process all over again. In the meantime, they suggested, it would be best if Greg's access visits to Luke were ‘supervised'.

Some days later, Child Protection contacted me to say they had assessed me and deemed me to be a responsible parent and therefore the best placed adult in Luke's life to provide that supervision. I did point out that I was also the person that Greg had threatened to kill. But they explained that their remit was simply to protect the child. The courts, they informed me, had the responsibility to protect me and they had done that with the issue of the IVO.

I pointed out that, in their wisdom and despite a serious assault charge, the courts had also let Greg walk free from the court on bail, and that previous experience had taught me Greg didn't much care a jot about orders written down on pieces of
paper. They told me to call the police in the event he breached the IVO.

In May 2012 Luke wrote me this note, suggesting I ‘laugh out loud' and ‘take a
break'.

I was still a relative novice when it came to dealing with these sorts of bureaucracies and institutions. I had enormous respect for the legal system. I had been raised to pay every parking fine I ever received. I believed that if a court deemed something to be so, it would be so. And if an institution called Child Protection said it would protect my son, I took them at their word.

The authorities were involved now, I told myself. The courts, Child Protection: they have this situation in hand. All I needed to do was continue to do everything by the book – follow their advice and trust in their processes – and everything would be okay.

A week or so later, the family violence service sent Luke to a counsellor. The psychologist gave Luke something to play with to distract him and began asking him questions about how he felt when he saw his father attacking his mother. By all accounts, Luke was a model patient: speaking openly about Greg's assault, and referring without any real sign of distress to multiple other examples of his father's extreme behaviour. If the psychologist had probed longer and deeper – and he did see Luke two or three times – he might have concluded that a ten-year-old for whom violent, religious-themed outbursts from his father were so commonplace they barely raised an eyebrow was a child who needed some careful attention. But he didn't.

The one comment that Luke made to the psychologist that did resonate was his regret at not having been able to protect me from Greg's rage. ‘I tried to stop him,' Luke said of Greg. ‘I tried to pull him off Mum, but I was too little.' When the psychologist told me, it nearly broke my heart.

Two weeks later, I received a letter from the Department of Human Services advising me that Child Protection had
completed their investigation into Luke and concluded he was not at significant risk and, therefore, his file had been closed.

And so, I had once again been cast adrift. The very people I had believed were now going to come to my rescue and do everything in their power to protect us from Greg had finally deemed we were safe.

Perhaps, in retrospect, we presented as too capable: intelligent, composed individuals who could take care of themselves – and Child Protection simply had more pressing cases of children in danger. Nevertheless, I felt abandoned.

When you write down, one after the other, all the incidents in which Greg sought to harass, harangue and assault me, it's easy to get the impression my life was one great big misery: that I lived in a state of constant fear. But in actual fact, I didn't. Greg definitely cast a long shadow over my life for a long period of time, but there were also many happy times.

Luke and I mostly had a ball. He was becoming better – and funnier – company with every year that passed. We had developed a rhythm, a happy sort of co-dependency. We fought and bickered as all mothers do with their children. He muttered angrily under his breath at me whenever he didn't get his own way, and as he lurched towards adolescence he began to ever so subtly push me away, to assert his independence.

There was no doubt that, at ten years of age he increasingly began stepping up in his role of man about the house, and while I was sad my little boy was growing up, I was proud of the little man he was growing into.

I had always sought to ensure he had a childhood like any of the other boys in the neighbourhood, and had gone to exhausting lengths to organise birthday and pool parties to foster a social group for Luke – paranoid as I was that he didn't have brothers and sisters. But he was in my company most often – and as a result, I spoke to him like an adult. I never shied away from having the big conversations with him – especially if he initiated them. Religion and the Bible and God were obviously high on his conversational list, especially after weekends spent with his father. I always made a point of remaining as neutral as possible on the subject, wanting to encourage him to explore spirituality if that was something he wished to do when he got older.

Obviously, I was both suspicious and hyper-conscious that his dad's worldview – if indeed you could call it that – was likely to be having an effect on Luke. But while I disagreed with much of it, I strove to never criticise Greg in front of Luke. He was his father, after all. For all his many faults, he loved Luke unconditionally. And, for better or worse, I believed it was manifestly more important for Luke's emotional development that he knew the experience of having a father who loved him than not having a father at all.

Besides, Greg's violence, when it flared, had only ever been directed at me. In some respects, he verged on being a model father when it came to looking after Luke. He would spend hours with him at the basketball courts shooting hoops or hitting the tennis ball against the wall. He would take him to the library and they would while away the time poring over books together. He taught him to ride a bike and would happily play in the pool with Luke and his friends for hours on end.

When Greg was with Luke, he was 100 per cent with Luke. There was no attempt to juggle the care of Luke with other
things he had to do or other people he wished to spend time with. In many respects, Luke was his whole world.

To Luke's credit, he hadn't faltered in his dedication to his father – even after all Greg had done to me and all Luke had seen. He remained loyal to his dad, faithfully trotting off with him every weekend to whichever sporting event he had on.

And Greg remained loyal to his son. He never missed a single session of Luke's weekend sport. He may have been mentally unstable, but his dedication to Luke seemed beyond question.

*

In the final months of 2012, life for Luke and I resumed a kind of routine. Greg would collect Luke every Saturday and take him off to his sporting fixture – leaving me to pursue the teddy-making business.

The police would occasionally call me asking if I knew Greg's whereabouts. Because the police had brought the assault charges against Greg, I was never aware exactly where the proceedings were in court. And it was not a subject I was especially keen to raise with Greg. Our interactions now were cursory at best, and communication was hampered by the fact he no longer had a mobile phone.

Meanwhile, a subtle shift had taken place in Luke. Where previously, his dad had been the slightly odd apple of his eye, a man who, despite a few idiosyncrasies, was his fun-loving, attentive father, Greg had become a tragic figure who Luke was starting to feel sorry for. And Luke, being a sensitive kid, was torn between the loyalty he knew he was supposed to feel and the growing sense of pity and distaste he actually felt for his dad. None of it was helped, of course, by the fact that, as Greg's
mental deterioration continued, he was increasingly unfit for mixed company. Luke once came home from sport complaining that Greg had been earbashing the other kids and parents with tracts from the Bible. Luke was starting to become embarrassed by Greg. He was self-conscious about Greg's ratty old car, which by now Greg was living out of. And he told me he didn't want his dad collecting him from school anymore.

Bundled into all of this was Greg's physical appearance, which was declining by the month. Where previously he'd always been well groomed, no matter his housing circumstances, now he started to present as a homeless man. His clothes became shabbier and his personal hygiene declined. On more than one occasion, I had to tell him to buy some deodorant because his smell was offensive.

It never occurred to me that Greg's appearance or behaviour was starting to concern other parents, because none of them ever mentioned it to me. But, looking back, I am sure there was a growing sense of disquiet about Luke's odd dad.

The Christmas and New Year period came and went. As 2013 kicked off, I looked at my finances and decided I needed to alleviate the pressure on my outgoings. As it happened, a work colleague had recently split from his wife and needed somewhere to live. I had a big house with an empty room, and so invited him to live with Luke and me for a while. His weekly board would help with the bills, and his company around the house would also be welcome.

Lee moved in early in the new year, and while I was mindful that it would be a development that would not please Greg, I was determined to stop living my life in fear of him or making decisions about what would or would not please him. For too long I had second-guessed my every life decision based on how
it would affect Greg. It was classic family violence, the subtle psychological pressure that the perpetrator manages to bring to bear on every aspect of your life, often without you even being aware of it. Besides, Lee was quite a few years older than me, and there had never been any suggestion of romance between us. I had hoped – naïvely as it turned out – that Greg would be untroubled by his presence.

The first interaction they had was one afternoon when Greg came by to collect Luke. The first words out of Greg's mouth as Lee introduced himself were, ‘I don't like you.' Part of it was jealousy on Greg's part – because he wasn't able to be the only male influence in Luke's life. Part of it would have been motivated by some strange belief that Lee was leading the life he ought to be: living in the house he ought to be in.

And so I found myself at a familiar juncture with Greg. How was I supposed to react to his verbal abuse of Lee? Let it destroy me or dismiss it? I look back now and can see the cycle of violence quite clearly. You do get used to the abuse and you cope with it, and that's why the perpetrator has to dial up the violence, because they're no longer getting the reaction out of you that they used to. With hindsight, I can see that as Greg's life began to disintegrate his need to control and have power over me only increased.

One Thursday in January, Greg came over to collect Luke. I was hanging washing on the line and Lee was having breakfast in the backyard by the pool. Greg let himself onto the property and walked around the back, as had become his custom. As he passed Lee, he spat out, ‘I don't like you. You're a parasite.'

I turned around from the washing line, surprised to see Greg standing there.

‘Get Luke,' he said to me. ‘Tell him I'm here.'

He was clearly in a bad mood. When he was in a mood like that, I knew not to provoke. As we walked around to the front yard and Luke climbed into Greg's car, Greg looked at me and said, ‘I never liked David. I don't like Lee. You need to watch yourself.'

I didn't respond, figuring it was not worth my energy.

Greg took Luke out for the morning. I knew they would be back by lunchtime, because Greg never had any money to buy them lunch and had hence developed the habit of structuring his outings around lunch at my place. In their absence, I decided I wasn't going to take Greg's abuse anymore. I needed to make clear to him what was acceptable behaviour and what was not.

I heard the car pull up outside and went to the front gate to meet them. Luke ran inside and I closed the gate, keen as I was to make sure there was some sort of physical barrier between Greg and I.

‘Greg, there are some things I need to discuss with you,' I started.

He cut me off, staring at me angrily. ‘Right now, I would really like to kill you,' he said, seething with barely controlled rage. ‘You think you are going to outlive me in this lifetime, but I can make you suffer. I will cut off your foot. I hope you have made a will.'

He climbed back into his car and drove off.

I stood rooted to the spot, shaking. I felt sick. I was used to Greg being nasty, and certainly he had said his fair share of hideous things to me in the past, but there was something about this threat that was chilling. Chopping off my foot was so specific – that comment especially troubled me. Why my foot? Was it something to do with the Bible? There was no real way of telling, such was Greg's muddled mental state.

I decided I had to go immediately to the police. The time had come to stop thinking I could contain this on my own and to get the police involved. Greg had crossed the Rubicon now. He had made it clear, as if it wasn't clear enough before, that he meant to do me harm. For my sake, and for Luke's, I had no choice but to take the fight to him.

I went inside to collect the car keys and drove straight to Hastings police station. I knew that Greg was due to come to my house the following day at 10 am to collect Luke, so while reporting his threat to kill me, I informed the police of as much. The initial reaction from the police officer on duty could not have been more comforting. The constable could see the state of distress I was in and assured me every measure would be taken to find and intercept Greg, and if he showed up in the meantime, I was to call triple zero immediately.

‘We'll be on standby to come to your house tomorrow morning,' the constable said. ‘Meanwhile, my suggestion would be that you make sure Luke isn't there in the morning, and we'll come out and arrest him.'

I had a sleepless night, worrying that Greg would steal onto the property under the cover of darkness and lie in wait until the morning. At daybreak, and after feeding Luke his breakfast, I dispatched him to the neighbours. True to confounding form, Greg appeared at my house at nine-thirty the following morning – half an hour early. Before I had a chance to call the police, he was on the doorstep. I started panicking, worrying what he would do to me, aware I was all alone.

I gathered myself and answered the door. ‘You're early,' I said, feigning nonchalance. ‘Luke's down at Josh's. He'll be back in thirty minutes.'

Greg glared at me menacingly. ‘I'm going to get a coffee then,' he eventually said. ‘I'll be back at ten.'

Watching his car pull out of the cul-de-sac, I leaped on the phone and called triple zero. The police arrived some ten minutes later. Two young constables got out of the police car and came to the front door. Visibly distressed, I explained they had just missed Greg, that he had gone for a coffee and said he would be back in twenty minutes. I felt comforted that they were there: at least I wouldn't have to face Greg alone.

‘We can't wait, ma'am,' said one of the constables. ‘If he comes back, just call triple zero again and a patrol car will return.'

I was incredulous. ‘What?' I heard myself say. ‘But you can't go! You can't leave me here! He threatened to kill me yesterday!'

The constables stood awkwardly looking at each other. ‘We've had a call to attend another job, ma'am. We have to go.'

‘But you can't leave me!' I was starting to become hysterical. ‘I was in your station all afternoon yesterday and you told me to call triple zero, which I did, and now you're just going to drive off and abandon me? He'll be back here any minute. You have to stay and arrest him!'

‘With respect, ma'am, you can't tell us how to do our job,' one of the policemen replied. I could tell they were starting to form a perception of me as an hysterical woman. Neither of them had been at the police station when I had arrived, in a state of high agitation, the previous afternoon. Neither of them properly understood the history between Greg and me. To them, I was just another complainant, a crank with her crazy ex-partner conspiracies who had phoned triple zero and now had to be indulged.

‘Have you ever been threatened to be killed before?' I continued, my voice rising shrilly, tears streaming down my face. ‘He's a six-foot man! I'm terrified!' All the emotion of the past fourteen hours came tumbling out.

They made to leave. Sobbing uncontrollably, I went back into the house and slammed the door, convinced I had once again been abandoned by the very people whose job I thought it was to protect me.

Luckily, the police had been sufficiently moved by my hysteria that they had radioed their inability to attend the other job and, instead, waited at the top of my cul-de-sac. When eventually Greg returned, they intercepted him, arrested him and put him in their car for transport to Hastings police station.

They came back to my door to apologise. One of them introduced himself as Constable Paul Topham. ‘I just wanted to say sorry about the misunderstanding,' he said. ‘He is a dangerous man. When we arrested him, he started ranting and raving and hurling abuse. We nearly had to use capsicum spray.'