Saving Jazz (20 page)

‘Yes, students do,' Earl said, ‘but, Jasmine, it's unlikely you'll ever get the opportunity at the rate you're going.'

I shrugged. His arrows weren't even pointy anymore.

‘What's the view like from the top?' I asked.

He shook his head. ‘You can't get up there, it's blocked off.'

‘Why?' I asked.

‘Suicide,' Earl said. I shuddered and looked at the tower. If you jumped from there no one would be able to put you back together.

‘Students from Psychology and Social Behaviour 101, no doubt,' I quipped. His face changed, went grey and slightly saggy.

‘Don't even joke about it,' he said grimly.

The weird atmosphere was disturbed, thankfully, by the ringing phone. Earl lifted the receiver and started speaking. I sat there twiddling a pen, thinking about what I was going to wear to Frank's gig and everything that had nothing to do with this course. I looked around the room, stuffed to the ceiling with books, and not just on psychology — on poetry, art, history. I noticed fiction in there too. Earl was obviously intelligent, well read, highly educated. He was a brilliant lecturer. So why did he feel the need to be so awful to me? What had I done to offend him? My clothing, my appearance?

‘No, I've got Jasmine here.' I looked over at the mention of my name. ‘Yes, she's a first-year student who's really thick. Needs all the help she can get. Hang on, I'll put her on.' He waved the phone at me. I shook my head, I wasn't playing his ridiculous games. He shoved the phone into my hand. I sighed.

‘Hello,' I said. The voice on the other end belonged to a man.

‘Is Earl giving you a hard time?' he asked.

‘Earl always gives me a hard time,' I replied. ‘He's a right wanker.' Within the ten months I'd been at uni I'd learned that teacher–student relationships were vastly different to those at school. And while I didn't make a habit of calling my lecturers obscenities, Earl deserved it. Earl, of course, found it funny. He always seemed invigorated if I fought back. He laughed delightedly at my comment, as did the man on the other end. I handed the phone back in disgust. I felt like a toy being used for two little boys' amusement. This was getting weird.

‘
What
? Invite
her
to lunch?' Earl said to the other man. I screwed my face up at him. As if! Earl listened, then said, ‘Yes, she is as pretty as she sounds, but we don't know how many men she's been through by this time of the day.' My mouth dropped open in sheer shock. Surely he hadn't just said that? It was one (rather disgusting) thing to imply that kind of thing to a student, but to say it to another grown man? Possibly another lecturer at the uni? To make up things about me and spread them around, in front of me? He had gone too far. That was it. I'd had enough.

‘Fuck you,' I snarled and walked out the door, slamming it as hard as I could behind me.

I walked out of the building angrily. What an arse. Everything started falling into place. Maureen had been right. This
was
a classic case of sexual harassment, but I hadn't seen it because there had been nothing overtly sexual, until more recently. Earl had cultivated the situation, groomed me into accepting his behaviour and then pushed the boundary that much further away.

I wasn't sure what to do, so I pulled out my phone and called Karan for an appointment.

‘I just put up with his shit all year,' I said to Karan. ‘I didn't tell anyone what was happening. I just thought I needed to learn resilience.'

‘It's interesting that you use that word — resilience. What do you think it means?' Karan asked.

‘I guess …' I frowned. What did it actually mean? ‘I guess I thought it meant being tough. Not running to someone every time things got hard. Learning to stand up for myself.'

‘And to a certain extent you're right,' Karan nodded. ‘Often people think bullying or harassment is when someone makes a random unkind comment — even a threat. But it's not. It's repeated. Sustained. Which is what you endured — and for nearly a year.
Is that why you think you kept this to yourself?' Karan asked.

‘I don't know.' I started racking my brain. At what point had I made the decision to suck it up? ‘I guess it didn't seem that bad, not when I compared it to Annie.'

‘So that was your benchmark? Sexual abuse and systematic bullying versus sexual harassment from a lecturer?'

‘I didn't even consider it as sexual harassment, and truthfully if Maureen had never mentioned those words I'm not sure if it would ever have fallen into place. He made me feel stupid. I thought I was so dumb and had no right to be at uni. He embarrassed me, that's why I really kept it to myself. I didn't want anyone to know, because what if he was right and then by telling others they recognised that in me too?'

‘You see the power imbalance here?' Karan asked. I nodded.

‘That's when it actually all slotted together,' I said. ‘He had made veiled threats about what was in my best interests before, and I guess on some level I was aware of that. He'd texted me and emailed me — but within the system, so I thought
it was within the boundaries. But it was that incident — where he basically told some guy that I was a slut — that made me see exactly how much power he had. I felt like a plaything, because I was. He's actually a sick and disgusting animal.'

‘What do you want to do?' Karan said.

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘I'm still aware how this could affect my grades, but then that makes me feel angry. Keep my mouth shut, so as not to jeopardise my marks?'

‘You don't know how many others he's doing this to. Or whether he'll do it to someone else after you, if he gets away with it,' Karan said. ‘And if we look at his behaviour, his comments started escalating, becoming more sexual, entering different forums — text, email, looking up your personal details, finding photos of you — there's no reason to suggest this wasn't the step before physical contact. As you pointed out, he kept shifting the boundaries further out.'

That made up my mind. I had stood by before and done nothing. I had been cowardly when tested. Now I had to confront my fear. I hadn't defended others — but noticeably, I hadn't defended myself. If
I allowed Earl to get away with it, what was I saying about me, Jasmine Lovely? That I wasn't worth protecting? That I didn't deserve basic fundamental human rights? Earl had sent me a photo of my life before Greenheadgate — but if everyone involved hadn't scurried like rats in the light when the police homed in on Greenheadgate, then Earl might easily have found a screenshot of me in that room with Annie. And then what? That whole sordid affair would be front-page news in my new life?
Those pictures will always haunt you
, the cop had said, but the reality was,
her words
actually haunted me. Now I knew I did deserve protecting, so I went to the Student Grievance Officer and lodged a complaint.

When I'd completed the written form I looked at all the times he'd insulted me and the things he'd said, emailed and texted — there were so many. And although each one individually was a minor graze of the ego, or self, collectively they amounted to a tirade of abuse. The grievance officer gave me a small smile. ‘You're being very brave,' she said as I left.

Earl was waiting for me as I walked through the doors to sit my final three-hour exam for Psych and
Social Behaviour. It was his final shot. He walked up to me as I sat at my desk, my student number in front of me. He bent down and whispered in my ear, ‘I'm glad I saw you, Jasmine. I wanted to wish you the very best of luck. Given your semester average, if you don't make fifty per cent you will fail this course. And I'll make sure you never do another Psychology unit at this institution again.' He walked off without looking at me. I was shaken, but not freaked out. In fact, he gave me strength, because more than anything else I wanted to have psychology as a career option — so I could figure out what made dickheads like him tick.

I never really found out what happened to Earl after my grievance, but I heard whispers that there had been others. I guess if by complaining about him he got removed from the frontline, then that's a victory for all future female students.

Oh, and I might add I got seventy-two for that exam — it was marked externally, so Earl was unable to bring my marks down to the low fifties he always awarded me. It was a great feeling to finally be vindicated, to know that despite everything he'd
thrown at me, I'd overcome it.

I'd promised myself years earlier that I'd save myself, and I guess I finally did.

So that leaves me to sign off. This time for good. Life is too busy to spend ruminating over the past, psychoanalysing one's self on a blog site, opening up to a world of strangers and their thoughts and opinions. The cruelty of people is really what started this whole saga, and I have decided I don't need that anymore. It is the opinion of those I love that counts, not some random comment by someone I'll never know. It is also my opinion of me that matters the most. When I started this blog I never thought I'd recover from Greenheadgate. I'm still not convinced I ever will. As you have seen, dear reader, often things happen that drag it all to the surface again. So those images
will
always haunt me, and I'll never forget the part I played. But I'll use my perspective and resilience to keep it where it needs to be — firmly in the past. As a piece of me, that helped form the me I am today. So now, almost four years from where I began, I wish you all the best. So long, farewell, adieu, ciao.

My name is Jasmine Lovely, Jazz usually (unless I'm in trouble, and do I try to avoid that), and I'm a clinical psychologist.

When I was sixteen I declared to the world that I was a rapist and spent a long time trying to explain my actions. I haven't visited this blog since I signed off all those years ago, but for my dissertation I was doing research into sexting and when I googled several relevant terms, my own blog came up in the results. Rereading it was like sifting through a shoebox of old photographs. I even felt sorry for that younger Jazz, the girl who maintained she was a rapist and maybe even a murderer, the girl who hated herself so much. It compelled me to write this final post (I was surprised I remembered my
password to this account — but of course it was JackyWest, as it always was), to prove to the world that there is nothing we can't overcome.

It has taken seven years of full-time study to get my qualification, and over those years I've been able to examine the behaviours of my parents and my friends, but more importantly, I've been able to understand myself. As we know, my journey of self-discovery began with a horrific drunken escapade, but through it all it got me questioning what underpinned the way I behaved. It became clear that I had some genuine father issues. And I've since identified a lot of patterns of my dad's behaviour in men who seek to control women. I remain estranged from my father. His will was unbending, he could never accept what I'd done, nor any of the efforts I made to rectify it. Trying to please him and regain his acceptance of me was torturous, and it was Karan who told me to let it go. I do see my mother, though. She remains with my father and she knows that I know the truth about him now, so she is a bit more gentle these days. Her primness was her own mechanism for dealing with my father's dominance. ‘Walking on eggshells' was what creeping around
someone like Dad felt like. It is not a feeling you ever forget.

Now, you might like to hear about my nemesis Earl Stirling. He was moved slowly, by the university, from lecturing into the sole role of researcher, never to have student contact. My PhD supervisor told me this many years after I'd made my grievance against Earl.

‘You know, Jazz, I knew about you when you became my second-year student,' Professor Michael Milton told me. ‘I had marked your first paper and I was astounded by the quality of your writing and so I referred to your academic record. When I saw you had only received a very marginal pass for your first-year unit I phoned Earl up and asked him why this potential Honours student had done so badly in first year.'

‘What did he say?' I asked.

‘He laughed and said, “Oh Mike, don't tell me she's batting her eyelashes at you already?”'

I shook my head. ‘It's one thing I never understood — why he despised me so much.'

Mike frowned at me. ‘Seriously, Jazz. With all
your understanding of social behaviours you never figured Earl out?'

‘No,' I said. ‘His scorn was immediate, his hostility visible and his reasoning unhinged. I thought he was bored.'

‘He was infatuated,' Mike said. ‘Jazz, you weren't the first and until they moved him to no student contact, you weren't the last. Every year he selected a first-year student who was the subject of his attentions. In the Faculty lounge you girls were known as the Stirling Club.'

‘They knew about us?' I was horrified.

‘There were whispers and rumours about Earl's “special tuition sessions”. Earl himself, in later years, made no secret of his “first-year girls” — but aside from some whispered complaints, no girl had ever risked coming forward. Your complaint was the first formal one made. You saved a lot of girls from him that day.'

‘But the university keeps him employed,' I said.

‘He's a tenured professor. They're hard to get rid of — until the inevitable. So they just moved him out of harm's way.'

‘So where is he now?' I asked.

‘They gave him an office, up near the top of Winthrop Hall,' Mike said.

Aunty Jane and Uncle Rob finally got the second set of twins, Bernie and Jake, through high school and are awaiting their final results. Louie and Charlie both ended up at WAAPA, Louie studying music and Charlie studying lighting and sound. When I moved out, at the start of this year, it was a tearful occasion.