A Mother's Story (25 page)

So the next time you are reading a story in the newspapers or watching or listening to a story on the TV or radio about violence perpetrated on a woman, apply a little bit of critical analysis. Is there an undertone that because the girl was wearing headphones as she walked through the park in daylight, she somehow had it coming? Is there a suggestion that a woman's decision to walk across a park at night on her way home from work means she deserved to be stabbed to death? Is there an intimation that the short skirt or the fact she had one drink too many automatically means she forfeited any rights to be treated as a human being and deserved to be raped?

We tend to sometimes focus in a sensationalistic way on the details of individual acts of violence without joining the dots to a culture of gender-based violence. And think also about the way the media is quick to assign a narrative to a story, irrespective of the bald facts. I am reminded of the case of the farmer in rural New South Wales who murdered his wife and three children before turning the shotgun on himself. Was he decried in newspaper headlines as a mass murderer? No. He was eulogised by the media as a hardworking farmer who had battled bravely
with the burden of caring for a brain-injured wife. His decision to put bullets into his three kids and his wife was reported on as some kind of act of humanity. I have also seen atrocious headlines that openly disrespect victims. ‘Monster Chef and the She Male' springs to mind. We need to challenge this every time. Perpetrators must be held accountable for their actions. Women are not to blame.

According to VicHealth's latest attitude survey, a significant proportion of Australians still excuse, trivialise and justify violence against women. A growing number of Australians think that a victim is at least partially to blame for an instance of domestic and family violence. One in six think that women who say no really mean yes. Attitudes among young people are particularly bad. According to recent research commissioned by Our Watch, one in four young men believed that controlling and violent behaviours are signs of male strength. One in six people aged twelve to twenty-four believe women should know their place. If we want to tackle this violence, to stop it before it starts, we need to tackle these attitudes and beliefs in our schools, in our homes, around our dinner tables. And men, especially, bear the brunt of the responsibility here. Men are especially sensitive to the approval and respect of their peers. If you are a man and you hear a friend or associate talking about controlling behaviour or violence against a woman in any kind of boastful way, you need to challenge it. You need to tell them that what they are doing is not okay. To not do so is to be complicit in the violence itself.

Importantly, what we also need is a greater appreciation of – and greater funding for – the frontline service providers: the women's shelters, the helplines, the people who go to women's homes and physically extract them from situations of extreme violence and danger. I have been to several of these frontline
service providers and have stood by and watched trained professionals field calls from women in various states of terror from all over the country. I have watched a large TV screen in a call centre show the number of women on hold, waiting to speak to a professional. Women who have already taken a huge step by dialling the number – who then have to sit on hold. And I have watched with a sinking heart as some of those calls drop out before a counsellor can get to them.

Last year alone, the government's 1800 RESPECT helpline missed an estimated 18,000 calls because of a lack of adequate resources. That's 18,000 women whose cries for help went unanswered. One of them may have been your sister, your mother, your daughter.

Resources in these frontline services are stretched, counsellors working around the clock to meet demand. And like doctors in an ER, they are forced to make decisions on the spot about which cases are in most pressing need of the finite resources that are available. Does the professional woman in the city who says she has been threatened with violence but insists on downplaying it take precedence over the mother of two in a rural outpost who is calling for the fourth time that month following a sustained history of violence? Do they allocate what meagre resources they have to getting that rural woman and her children on a charter flight to the nearest urban shelter as soon as possible? Or do they put that money into expanding the number of beds available in the overstretched, under-resourced women's shelters that already exist? It is not uncommon for these helpline counsellors to work fourteen-hour days, carefully listening to each caller, methodically assessing the level of risk, prioritising dwindling resources and doing their best day after day to ensure what little money they have is spent in the most efficient way possible. And
all the while, the calls keep coming. The number on the TV screen showing the women on hold ticks inexorably up.

Once we have looked at this first-responder side of the family violence equation, we need to review what happens next – inevitably at the judicial level. What happens when, once a victim has summoned the courage to stand up to their partner, she finds herself in front of a magistrate? Is she going to be means-tested for Legal Aid, as I was, no matter her situation? No matter that the very finances on which that judgement is being made might be controlled almost wholly by the man who is abusing her? If she gets to court, is she going to be treated with disdain by an out-of-touch judiciary long used to categorising domestic violence situations as low-risk and relatively minor in the scheme of things, legally speaking? Is it acceptable that magistrates seem to believe that an IVO is worth the paper it is printed on? Or that some judges (not all, but definitely some) have so many ingrained prejudices when it comes to women victims of family violence that their response to it is negligent at best and criminal at worst? Is it okay that our court system routinely minimises risk to female victims of family violence and fails to recognise the red flags that continue to put women and children in grave danger?

And what of the Family Court, this most influential institution whose deliberations and decisions cannot be reported on by the news media? Go to the United States, and stories of family disharmony and domestic violence appear regularly in the news media. Why? Because the media there is not subject to the same constraints when it comes to reporting on matters before the Family Court. Assuredly, some of these rules exist in Australia for very good reason: there are often excellent reasons for not reporting on custody disputes, reasons that usually involve the privacy and welfare of any children involved. But what we lose is
a most important sense of transparency and accountability when it comes to the activities of the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court. And as a society we need to ask ourselves if this sort of secrecy is part of the problem. Often victims' experiences are not reported in the media because the people involved cannot be identified. This makes it too difficult for the media, which, frightened of being sued, puts such stories in the too-hard basket.

These are the sorts of questions we need to ask. And if I achieve nothing else in my tenure as Australian of the Year – or beyond that, as an advocate for change in the way we deal with family violence in this country – then forcing these issues out from the shadows will have been a job well done.

Isn't it terrible that your young son might think it is okay to be violent and controlling because it's a sign of strength? Or that it's okay for your daughter to accept controlling or derogative behaviour or the occasional slap because her partner's drunk and he apologised? We need to challenge these attitudes each time they arise so our children grow up understanding there is no grey area when it comes to family violence. It is not okay in any of its forms. Not ever.

So much of it is entrenched gender inequality. As men and as women we are born with our views of life, from the moment we take our first breath. Men have their male sense of privilege and entitlement, and that's the lens through which they view life. They don't know any different. As women, we know our place. And I'm not suggesting centuries of gender roles and stereotypes can be overturned in a couple of years: but certainly acknowledging that disparity is a start.

Think of it as a basic economic issue, if nothing else. Police commissioners around the country estimate that 40 percent of their forces' time and resources is taken up dealing with family
violence issues. And that's not to mention the time and resources dedicated to the issue in our courts and public health systems. Think of how fruitfully these resources could otherwise be deployed.

Because the sad reality is it's far more common to be affected by family violence in this country than not. That's what I realised after Luke died. Even the children who were close friends of Luke's and who came from great homes and lovely families have now had their entire world rocked because, not only did a friend of theirs die, but he died at the hands of his own father. Some of those kids were playing cricket with him earlier that same day. That suddenly makes the world a very dangerous place for a small child in a very safe community in a lovely little pocket of Victoria.

I remember in the weeks after Luke's death, one of my friends told me about an exchange she had with her son. She and her ex-husband had always struggled to agree on access visits, and there had been instances of arguing in front of the children. And her son spoke about Luke and asked her if she thought his father might do the same thing to him. She was horrified. She told her husband, and he was devastated. But it forced him to take a look at his actions and assess the impact it was having on the people closest to him.

We all need to take a look at ourselves. Because change begins with each one of us.

Monday 11 August 2014

My first journal entry since Luke's death. Don't know why I haven't written before now – just haven't made the time or wanted to connect with myself this way until now.

     What am I feeling today? Today has not been so painful, but when I'm on top of a meditation hill and see the sky and clouds, mountains and vast beautiful scenery, I feel the pain. The huge sense of loss.

     Where is Luke? Is he high above the clouds, looking out safely from a tree way up where no one can see and where he is safe from the world?

     Why can't I reach out to touch him? To call out to him. To laugh with him. To get cross with him. To just enjoy his presence. I know why I haven't written before
now – it's too painful. Too real. Too raw. I WANT HIM BACK!!! I so want him back.

     I talk out loud to him all the time – and that helps. I have tried to remember all the holidays we've had, the trips to England. It fills me with so much pain I think I might burst.

     I can only bear to think about all those things so much.

     When will I ever be able to remember him without so much pain? When will I be able to see a photo of his beautiful blue eyes and gorgeous face without sobbing out loud? When will I stop feeling this pain?

     It is too hard. I am better to be busy and distracted – only letting bursts of grief to break through occasionally throughout the day rather than letting the grief consume me.

     I feel cheated that all my memories of Luke will be forever painful. That the photos and videos I have will always bring tears.

     Why did I never sit with Luke and share all our photo albums together? I know he looked at them alone sometimes without saying.

     I do wish that I had thought to make the time to do that.

     All the videos of his life too. I guess you think that one day you will, but there's no rush. Then it's too late and now the thought of watching them is too painful. But still. I have them for one day. One day when the pain isn't so intense. But how long will it take? How long will it be before my entire day is not spent thinking of Luke and feeling the pain of his loss?

     All the things I shall no longer be able to share and all the things I shall no longer be able to do. I am no longer a mother and it hurts like hell.

     
Why me? Why Luke? Fucking, fucking Greg.

     How could he have done this? I still feel no hatred – just total sadness. Disbelief. Sadness and more sadness. When will it fucking end?

*

I have not yet had a moment where I have been inconsolable over Luke – where I have just fallen apart. I know I did when my eighteen-year-old cat died, but it hasn't happened yet over my son. So whether that is still to come, I don't know.

The body is quite an amazing instrument. When I met Gill Hicks, the Adelaide woman who lost both her legs in the London bombings, I was struck by what an incredibly strong, positive person she was. And she told me it took her seven years before she became inconsolable – before her body allowed her to process the full enormity of what had happened to her. Before then, she figured, her body had decided she wasn't up for it. She wouldn't have been able to handle it. And I wonder if that is the same with me. I wonder if perhaps at some level, my body knows that the horror of what I have experienced is so great, that I need to put a certain amount of time between myself and my loss before it will allow me to completely break down.

I believe, if it happens to me like that, it will happen when it is safe for me to do so, when I can cope with it. I am not in denial; I am not disengaged. But there is a point that I can't get past. I can start to feel emotional and I can start to tear up, but I can't seem to let myself go. I am so busy holding back this wave of emotion that my body is scared is going to drown me. I wonder when I am going to stop constantly thinking about Luke.
Because even when I am not thinking about him, I am thinking about him.

And then there are the small mercies. I didn't see Luke be killed. I think about women like Ingrid Poulson. She came across the bodies of her children and father just after they had been murdered: I am grateful that that is something I have never had to deal with.

I think of the pain the Morcombes have to deal with – the fact that Daniel was kidnapped and probably in fear of his life for hours before he was killed. And I am grateful that Luke's death was instant: that he would not have been in pain and if there had been fear, it would mercifully have been fleeting.

And I think of the mother of Darcey Freeman, who was thrown off the West Gate Bridge by her father, and the mother of those three Farquharson boys who were driven into a dam by their father: and I am grateful that Greg is dead. I don't think I would cope if Luke was dead and Greg was still alive.

So you do look at these things – these small mercies – and say, yes I was in the worst situation in my life, but I am still grateful I was spared a lot of other pain. For how else do you go on?

I've only ever taken a few sleeping tablets, and those in the weeks immediately following Luke's death. I was offered valium, but I worried that, once I started it, I might not ever get off it. I chain-smoked in the weeks immediately after his death, and I remember drinking a lot more than I usually would but, even then, I wasn't writing myself off. I'm still on my anxiety medication, the same one I have been taking since Greg's harassment of me really escalated. But otherwise, I am medication-free.

I don't live in a vacuum. I'm aware that some people find my reaction to Luke's death unusual. As if there is a ‘usual' way to react in my situation. They point to my extraordinary
performance in front of the TV cameras the morning after Luke's death, and they say there's something not right about that woman. They look at me standing up to receive awards, like Australian of the Year, or make speeches about family violence to auditoriums full of people, and they think I'm cold or unfeeling or robotic. They don't see me crying myself to sleep every evening. They're not with me during those moments – and they happen every day – when I am overcome with such grief that I have to take myself off somewhere for a quiet cry.

The irony, of course, is that, when it comes to my feelings, I am a private person. Whether it's through being raised by a father who is not demonstrative, or because of a lifetime spent trying not to allow myself to be vulnerable, I'm not much for wearing my vulnerability on my sleeve. Open and honest, yes. But outwardly demonstrative, no – that's not my style.

I've spoken to friends in the media about it, and they point to Lindy Chamberlain, and the trial by media she endured because she refused to grieve in a way the Australian public thought she ought to. But there are no rule books for people like me. It's not as if there is a set of accepted behaviours for mothers who were 50 metres away when their ex-partner brutally murdered their son. I cope as best I can, feeling my way as I go.

There isn't a day goes by that I don't miss Luke. And it's a pain that can be triggered by the most mundane things. A trip to the supermarket when I automatically reach for the cereal he used to like or the bananas he used to eat. A visit to a café where a mother is cradling a newborn. The sight of Luke's former classmates, trooping up the hill to school – marching on into their respective futures. The wave will come crashing down, and for a moment, I am breathless and drowning. Until I can see the surface and I swim back up for air.

Of course, there are times when I lose it completely and take down anyone who happens to be in my vicinity. Sometimes the trigger is obvious, sometimes it is seemingly trivial. The only constant is that when the fall comes, it is spectacular and can leave those in the line of fire licking their wounds. Like the poor shop assistant on the day before Luke's funeral when I couldn't find the shoe I wanted in my size. Or the hapless stylist at a magazine photo shoot who had brought the wrong size clothes. Or the person who happened to be using a leaf blower outside my house, or the friend who was using a vacuum in my house in the days after Luke's death. At the time, it seemed perfectly reasonable for me to scream and rant and rave at them all. But in hindsight, I realise it wasn't. Even now, eighteen months later, I spend every moment of every day suppressing something, be it a fleeting thought or a flood of tears. It is so constant I don't even know I'm doing it. And then, sometimes, it all just bubbles to the surface and I explode, bringing people down around me. I'm not especially proud of it, but nor am I in a position to really control it. I am suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Six months after Luke was killed, I went to a health retreat in the Hunter Valley. It was one of those places where you leave your phone at the door and spend a week detoxing: undertaking classes and diets and exercise regimes to hopefully find again whatever equilibrium you may have lost. People kept telling me I needed to ‘take time to grieve', as if I had been spending my days since his death wilfully ignoring the fact my only child was no longer in my life and had been taken from me in the most heinous of circumstances. I knew my body was drained, I knew I was physically and emotionally exhausted, and so I thought two weeks spent eating well, doing exercise and otherwise being still – away from home and in an environment
purpose-built for taking stock – could be just what the doctor ordered. It turned out to be all of that and more, and I emerged two weeks later, if not a different person, at least a marginally less damaged one.

But what I wasn't prepared for was being in the company of people who didn't know my story. And being confronted by the simplest of questions. I had spent six months surrounded by friends and family. Or if not friends and family, any number of people who life had sent my way expressly because of Luke's death: journalists, politicians, social workers, domestic violence campaigners. So it was confronting to sit at dinner with fellow guests at the health retreat and be asked the questions strangers ask one another when they are thrust into a situation of forced intimacy.

‘So Rosie, tell us about yourself. Do you have any kids?' came the enquiry one night from someone sitting at the next table.

I was stumped. It was the simplest question in the world, the most innocuous of enquiries – and yet it took my breath away. Being a mother had been a fundamental part of who I was. Was I still a mother? And if I was no longer a mother, what was I? An ex-mother? A former mother? What did I answer?

‘Yes, I do. I mean, I am. I mean, I did have kids. A little boy.' I heard myself reply to confused looks, the usual wave of emotion rising in me. ‘But he passed away.'

Did I have the energy to go through with an explanation? Could I face the trauma of going over it all again with relative strangers? And if so, to what possible end? I had been here before. I would explain what happened, I would watch as these people struggled to know how to respond and then I would feel obliged to ease their discomfort by telling them it was fine – when patently it was not.

And so I learned to modify my small talk, to only reveal to strangers what I felt capable of dealing with on any given day. Sometimes it felt bad to deny I was a mother, as if I was somehow dishonouring the memory of Luke, but for the sake of expediency – and my own mental wellbeing – it was occasionally easier just to let it go.

*

Luke's old school, Flinders Christian Community College, is only half a kilometre from my home. Down a gentle hill, past the neatly kept gardens of my neighbours, set at the top of a series of nearby paddocks that stretch to Tyabb and roll eventually down to the sea at Hastings. Every morning around 8.30 am and every afternoon around 3 pm, I see kids in uniform walking past my front gate. I know the uniform well – white shirt, grey shorts. I used to wash it twice a week, hang it from my clothesline out the back. The kids are also familiar to me – faces from Luke's class. Except that they are all changing slowly: morphing from children to teenagers. All gangly limbs and maturing features. All getting on with the business of growing up and becoming adults, fulfilling the potential their parents have spent the past thirteen years nurturing. And it is a peculiar kind of torture. I think of my Luke, frozen in time. Forever eleven – never to go through puberty, never to have another growth spurt, his face never to shuck off the softness of boyhood as he develops into a man. Never to don a backpack and take off around the world, never to experience the highs of first love, never to have his heart broken.

While I was initially comforted on the day of Luke's funeral to see life go on for other parents and children, I found myself
resenting other parents for many months afterwards. I would be angry that they dared go on with their lives when mine had been placed in limbo. It used to upset me that other mums and dads blithely went about the business of raising their kids in my orbit. How could they be so insensitive? But then I realised how unreasonable I was being and that, if I was to have any peace, I needed to confront this irrational feeling and come to terms with the fact that while my world has been brought to a standstill, everyone else's has to go on.

It makes me wonder whether it's better to stay here in Tyabb, where at every turn there is something to remind me of Luke, or move somewhere where I won't be constantly reminded of him. Every time I look at the pool in the backyard, I think Luke will never swim in it again. Every time I drive past the basketball courts, I think Luke will never shoot hoops there again. Every time I pass his bedroom, I think Luke will never sleep in there again. And it's the silence that slowly eats away at me. A house that was once full of noise now lies mostly silent. I sometimes feel like it is closing in on me. How can I stay here with his memories haunting me daily? But then how could I ever move on and leave them behind?