All My Fault: The True Story of a Sadistic Father and a Little Girl Left Destroyed (3 page)

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.

Priests 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.

He was so clever about how he would groom a victim. It might start with a game of tickles, where he would chase a girl and tickle her. In my case, when I was comfortable with him tickling me on my hips, he would gradually move his hands down, until he was ‘tickling’ me under my knickers, between my legs. This was a process that didn’t happen overnight, and it was this behaviour that made it so dangerous, because he made it seem so normal.

He also took every possible opportunity to meet other little girls. Da, I would learn in later years, was also an opportunistic paedophile and would sexually interfere with a child when he saw an opportunity.

I can recall specific events, which now chill me to the bone. One day I went out with Da on a message. He was driving along in the rain when he suddenly stopped to pick up a lady and a couple of children who were complete strangers to us. He asked her where she lived and told them to get in out of the rain, that he would drop them home.

Obviously having me in the car gave the impression that he was a family man and could be trusted. The woman said she was very grateful, and rushed her girls into the back of the car. Da told me to move into the middle so the girls could sit at the window seats and look out. I did what I was told without thinking about it too much. One of the girls, who was around nine years old sat behind Da’s seat and started drawing little pictures on the window pane in the condensation. As the woman shook herself dry and organised her belongings, she told Da how kind he was.

‘I was a bit wary of getting in the car with you, but then I saw your lovely little blonde daughter.’

‘That’s my Audrey, my only little girl,’ he replied smoothly and as he spoke, with the car still stationary, the little girl who was on my right suddenly stopped drawing and froze. My da’s hand had stretched in between the doors of the car and his seat into the back, and up the little girl’s skirt. He continued chatting to the lady while his dirty hand was up her daughter’s skirt. The knots in my stomach were so tight I couldn’t straighten myself up. When we finally got to their house, Da and the lady were all smiles and thank you’s. The other little girl just gave me a filthy look, scrunching her face as if what had just happened to her was all my fault. I felt that it was.

There were lots of other opportunities for Da. Most Friday nights, we would go to swimming baths in Artane. I didn’t go to swimming lessons. I would just copy people, and stay up somehow. That’s if some older kid wasn’t holding you down till you couldn’t breathe, which was a popular game then. Swimming was brilliant, except when my da came. I had the feeling that he was touching girls that I didn’t know in the pool and I was dead embarrassed.