No More Silence

This article first appeared on 20^th March 2016 on Catherine Deveny’s website. It was written as part of her Gunnas Writing Masterclass, which I attended thanks to a birthday gift voucher from my Mum and Brother for which I am very grateful. You can read other student’s contribution here.

A small box of love. Image: NMJoyce2016

In recent weeks the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has been getting more than the typical amount of attention from the world’s media. The stories of the group of men and women known collectively as either as the ‘Ballarat Survivors’ or ‘Team Roma’ have been highlighted as they made their unlikely journey from relative obscurity in Ballarat, into the cold glare of camera lights in Rome. Up to this point I have successfully ignored the majority of reporting about the Commission because it didn’t apply to me. In fact I have been quietly surprised that, given the prevalence of child sexual abuse within my personal circles, that someone close to me hadn’t become personally involved. For that I am grateful. Then Mum asked me about a guy I’m friends with on Facebook.

Now, just to explain – Mum reads my Facebook page. She won’t have her own page but she quite likes seeing what is happening on mine. Yeah. It’s weird. Whatever. It’s not the issue up for discussion here. Anyway, she asked me about A Guy whose name pops up in my feed occasionally. I explained that I had never actually met him in real life but that we had a Mutual Friend who is quite wonderful, and that if we did ever meet we would probably be totes BFF. “Hmmmm – is he related to that XYZ bloke?” she asked innocently. I had no idea who she meant. “That priest from Ballarat.” Nope. No idea. Hadn’t been following it. “You should look it up.”

I looked it up. And what I found was horrifying in the Gothic sense of horror in that I couldn’t look away and I kept digging and reading and picking at it until it bled. I had managed to avoid all of the shit about this damned Commission and now here it was landed in my lap, and This Guy I barely knew was smack bang in the centre of it.

I wrote a short message to The Guy. It was simple and one of recognition. It merely said “Hey mate, it’s only just come to my attention that you’re That Guy doing That Thing and I just wanted to say I think maybe we have more in common than our Mutual Friend originally intended* and hey what you’re doing is ace and if you ever need anything just yell, yeah?” I am not sure exactly how he responded but it was probably a thumbs up. The quiet nod and shrug that survivors have established as a means of saying everything whilst remaining silent. I left it at that and for a while things were mostly quiet.

Then everything went batshit crazy. Pell said he was ‘too ill’, boo hoo. No one believed him for a minute or at least, very few thought he was genuine. More and more survivors from Ballarat spoke angrily about wanting to look Pell in the eye. The Guy hinted privately that something amazing was being cooked up and then BOOM! like a smoke bomb, a crowdfunding campaign was ignited and went off in a chain reaction of tears and feels more than two hundred thousand dollars strong. Big Name Comedians backed it. Big Name Columnists were outraged. I felt something I thought had healed over decade’s earlier start to tear and I did what I always did… pushed it to the side. Stuff needed doing.

Suddenly I was at the airport to wave goodbye and because I was meeting The Guy in real physical life for the first time, I wanted to give as optimistic a farewell as possible – so I focused on keeping it together. With our Mutual Friend, I had made some little care packages for the Travellers, which is to say she packed a dozen little boxes with bits and bobs and I wrote a nice note for each one (pictured above). I don’t remember what the notes said but I’m told it was lovely. We were interviewed by national media about why we were there. I said some very articulate words about the Commission being for institutional abuse but that the recognition it was creating was a boon for survivors of familial abuse. As I did so I could feel a few tears sliding dramatically down my already blotchy red face and somewhere in my hyper-vigilant state a voice told me that Sinead O’Connor would be proud.

It was definitely at this point that I clocked something wasn’t right. 

Later on at the airport I had the opportunity to meet some of the men travelling to Rome and the chats we had were brief but significant. As we handed out our little care packages one older bloke bluntly asked “why did you make these – why are you being so nice?” Now, it was obvious to me that this was a man who had had a hard life. I figured he wasn’t accustomed to random acts of generosity. I wasn’t sure how much to say. So I did what I usually do and fell back on a straightforward approach, “Because I care. I care what happens. And long haul flights are just shit mate.” But what I couldn’t and didn’t say out loud was “because it happened to me too.” But he knew and we just kind of shrugged at each other and I said “this, what you’re doing, is for all of us.” And my voice was choked and the tears were welling and we just did that shrug thing at each other and shook hands and went back to our beers.

Yep. Something was definitely askew inside me. I hadn’t had these feels for a very long time.

Fast forward to Pell ducking and weaving in Rome in front of the video link and I’m watching at home on my own in Bendigo, in my pyjamas. Pell has nothing and everything to do with me. I watched his performance for days. I was appropriately outraged.

I did nothing.

And then it was over. A video statement from Team Roma popped up on my Facebook time line thanks to the Loud Fence supporter’s page. It was the Survivors, giving thanks for the support they had and continued to receive. My mind went into quiet overdrive as a particular phrase said during Pell’s ‘evidence’ repeated itself on an endless loop. The Commissioner had mentioned “gentle euphemisms”, referring to the code Catholic priests may have had for what was being perpetrated against those in their care. The meaning I took from it however was the silent code we survivors have for recognising one another in a crowd. An unspoken code – a secret handshake if you will: “Oh, you had one of those did you? Right. Snap.” I have been asked what it is that marks us in such a way, that we are able to see it another person. I don’t know - yet. It’s body language, tone, behaviour. Something that says “this happened to me and I see it in you too”. A nod and a wink that means it can be left unsaid because, hey – we’re not meant to talk about it.

On the last day of Pells ‘evidence’ I cried for a few hours with no idea what or who I was crying for. I finally decided that if these guys could do what they were doing, some of them travelling overseas for the first time in their lives, then screw it. No more silence. All I did was say a few words in a Facebook status update. I don’t know what I expected but it sure as hell wasn’t the outpouring of love and revelation that continued for days. Friends said yes, this had happened to them too. That it happened to a family member. To a friend. That it had somehow influenced their lives. I spoke of intergenerational trauma. But most of all I discussed why it was that this event – this collective of broken men taking action against their abusers – had had such a huge emotional impact on so many people.

I truly believe that Team Roma had and continues to have so much widespread support because so many people have been affected by child abuse in some form or another, either directly or across generations. And while many of us won’t get a Royal Commission into our abuse because it was our families, not institutions who were the perpetrators, by no means do we begrudge the justice and recognition finally given now. Because seeing anything done at all is an incredible relief. And release.

Last week I called my local CASA to book in for a session. I haven’t talked about my abuse in a counselling environment for decades because I’ve always been ‘over it’. I haven’t wanted my life to be defined by something that happened 33 years ago. What my brief contact with the Ballarat Survivors has shown me is that while it may not define me, it’s there and it’s not going away. So like a cold sore that appears in times of stress, every now and then it will show up and I need a better treatment kit than the one I have now. When I spoke to the counsellor making my appointment I mentioned that it was in response to the Commission. “You’re not the first” she said. “I doubt I’ll be the last.” I replied.

So thank you to the Ballarat Survivors and all involved for putting this issue front and centre in the world’s view. It’s been a tough few weeks and there’ll be more tough weeks, but I want the Survivors to look at this shining thing you have done and hold it and own it and know it is yours.

* Update: since this article was first published the Mutual Friend has told me that she did in fact introduce The Guy and me precisely because of our shared history. I may or may not have known this previously but one of the things I have come to realise about myself is that my memory is really weird.