The family friend – Stories from a child survivor

It was a stinking hot 38 degree day in Melbourne, mid January 1974. The late afternoon clouds brought no comfort to a day that had been nothing less than gruesome except for the occasional teasing cool breeze.

As the orange sun kissed the streets and the dry dusty day settled, I knew we were in a for a shocker of an evening. My little brother Stu and I were dressed in our swimmers and looked forward to getting under the sprinkler right after dinner at our babysitter’s house, as we’d been promised.

At around 4.30pm Gary arrived. We were to spend time with him while Mum and Dave had a ‘date’ night. I was looking forward to spending time with Gary – he was funny, kind, generous and I liked how he winked at me and blew kisses from under the rim of his hat. I particularly liked the crisp green two dollar bills he slipped me with a stray lagging finger across my palm, the most.

When he came to visit he often let me sit on his lap and I enjoyed his story telling and cuddles. There had been one occasion when I’d awoken to find him stroking my belly under my pajamas which I thought was odd. I didn’t think anymore of it though since he left my room the moment I woke. I never saw the need to tell anyone.

We were about to hit the road and for the first time ever, Gary let me sit in the front seat of his panel van which was a novelty since I wasn’t allowed that privilege in Mum and Dave’s car. Chuffed and feeling all grown up, I sat as tall and as proud as I could. I could barely see over the dash board but I didn’t mind.

Rod Stewart’s Maggie May enveloped us and Gary held my hand tenderly while he drove, occasionally using his knee to steer so he could take long swigs from his long neck Melbourne Bitter bottle. Life could not have been better.

After about forty minutes and almost two bottles of beer later, the engine groaned in the heat, Gary switched off the radio and we drove on in a weird, deliberate silence. Stu had fallen asleep in the back.

Suddenly, Gary leaned over and started to massage my inner thigh with his left hand. As much as I tried again and again to push and slap his hand away, he continued to rub my inner leg. I sat frozen and fearful of this man I thought I knew and out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of his foul expression. I noticed a puffy red face; bulging, bloodshot eyes; a swollen purple nose and a dreamy-like forward gaze. He looked obsessed, possessed and was now a total stranger.

His hand was large, strong, determined and rough from doing many hours of hard labour each day. With each knead of my flesh I felt a man full of strong intent and desire. His breathing was heavy and irregular. His hand seemed to have a mind and will all of its own. I was powerless. There was no way out other than to throw myself from the car. I checked the lock to see that I only needed to lift the handle and slip out – if of course he didn’t grab me in the process. I should wait until he wanted to drink again.

But it wasn’t an option – we were going much too fast.

I begged him to please stop because he was hurting me but my pleas fell on deaf ears. His obsession to self-gratify coupled with an overwhelming burning temptation was much stronger than any compassion he may still have left in his heart to keep a young girl’s innocence in tact.

He warned me firmly to ‘BE QUIET AND STILL’ but not loud enough to stir Stu. So, I sat there horrified and frozen in my seat ‘allowing’ this monster to rape me with his rough, calloused hand for the next 15 minutes as he drove on in silence through the suburbs. His eyes never left the road and I wondered whether, if he saw the horror in my eyes, he may stop. But he didn’t dare glance at me, not even once. I was purely an object of pleasure to him, not human.

As this family ‘friend’ stole away my innocence it hit me that I was a filthy, hated, putrid, disgusting, despicable little slut who deserves all that I was getting. My eyes welled with tears, my body shook in fear, my heart sank to my feet. I was eight years old.

I began to pray under my breath. ‘Dear God’ I pleaded. ‘Please PLEASE make Gary stop. Please make him stop hurting me. Please stop this nightmare. Please stop this God, please please PLEASE help me’.

Gary relaxed his hand somewhat and stopped for a few seconds only to guzzle down the rest of his second bottle of beer.

What he then did with that empty bottle sent me into serious survival mode. A rush of adrenalin burst through my core seconds before he forced the empty beer bottle between my legs and up to my vagina where he left it. I was confused as to what he was trying/wanting to do and because I didn’t want to believe he would truly hurt me with the bottle, I forced it back down to my knees, thinking (hoping) he’d made a mistake and I was imagining things. Frustrated and angry, he brought it abruptly back up as high as it would go and began to lift it up and down for the next five minutes or so until we arrived at a bottle shop.

As Gary got out of the car to purchase more beer, I had a look around the back of the pub to see if I could make a run for it. But Stu was asleep in the back seat and I figured that by the time I managed to wake him and get him out of the car and explain, surely we’d be caught and I felt the consequences would be dire. I decided against it sensing it was not wise to upset Gary. My gut told me I needed to play along to a degree because I sensed he was close to hurting me badly.

We arrived at Gary’s house and I noticed his two young children peering through the front windows. Then suddenly his wife ran out of the house and across the road. Soon we were in his territory and the will to live soared inside my heart. I was alert and now looking for an escape route. Where on earth had his wife gone? Why had she gone?

The younger children, including Stu, headed straight out the back to play, totally oblivious to my nightmare. How on earth was I going to convince Stu to run with me when he was having so much fun?

The disgusting smell of Gary lingered in every corner of his house. There were empty cigarette packets, empty beer bottles, dirty bongs and putrid dirty nappies strewn across the floor in the living room. 

It was here that Gary picked me up and made me straddle him. His stale beer and nicotine breath was warm and heavy and sickly on my cheek as he whispered in my ear that he wanted to play a game in his bed. He ran his fingers inside my swimmers a few times. I wriggled and squirmed and tried to get down but the more I fought, the more he thought it was a game so he prolonged the agony and continued.

After a very uncomfortable few minutes, Gary set me back on the floor and lead me by the hand to the backyard to another car – a fast looking black one. He towered over me in his dusty akubra, dirty grey overalls and oil-stained blundstones. Knowing that under his overalls he was naked and hard made me giggle nervously. I didn’t know what else to do and somehow, in a weird way, I thought that by giggling and pretending that I was not uncomfortable he might just go away.

No.

He pushed me into the front passenger seat of the car. I sat still and terrified yet nervously giggled again. He took my continued giggles as an invitation and so, in the front seat of his car, in his backyard, on that stinking hot evening, with my little brother and his children running around, took my hand and placed it through his unbuttoned overalls and around his sticky penis and said it was “[his] turn for a massage.”

Feeling sick with fear and with uncontrollable tears again welling, I forced myself to massage him as I sobbed. It was at this point that I felt I was going to vomit profusely and felt my mouth water and quiver in anticipation of my stomach turning. He must have seen my face go white so he withdrew my hand and said we were going to play another game. He said he would pretend to be a truck driver on his cb radio and I would pretend to be a lady truck driver called ‘Scarlet’ talking on the cb with him. He had a turn first and said he was looking for some lovely ladies to talk to.

I was calculating how long it may be until Mum turned up to collect us. I gathered we’d been gone about three hours and figured I still had another three hours at least to survive. I sensed Gary had lost all control and could actually kill me, if I ‘allowed’ him to do too much to me. My goal was to play along, prolong everything, drag out the evening and do all I could to prevent him from taking me into his bedroom.

I jumped as he slapped me across the head yelling that it was my turn, that I should now come on the radio, announce my name and say I was ‘hot and wet’. I took the cb and with my entire body and voice trembling tried to say ‘hello my name is Scarlet and I… ‘ but I couldn’t get the words out. My hands were trembling so much that I dropped the cb on the floor which angered Gary. He picked it up, threw it at me and yelled for me to ‘DO IT RIGHT’. I tried again and said ‘hi my name is Scarlet’. Gary yelled that I needed to say it in a sexy voice. I tried again but the game was sick and he was angry and I was shaking all over. I started to cry. He then dragged me into the house again and I could hear distant laughter and squeals coming from happy, carefree children in the back yard. I longed to be them. WHAT was going on?

Once inside he muttered something about his bedroom again and then offered me a cold drink (which I didn’t drink because I thought I saw him pop something into my glass before pouring the cordial in). I sat on the bar stool as still as I could yet my body trembled from top to toe and watched him skull the rest of this beer straight from the bottle. He slammed the empty bottle down on the bench top, lit a cigarette and glared at me for a long time. His eyes were like red hot steel cutting through me. I was petrified of him. I hated him. I was sure he was really going to hurt me badly. I wished his wife would come back. Where was she?

Breaking the awkward silence, I told Gary that I would like to go out and play with my brother because he wanted me to play with him too. This worked and for the next hour or so I pretended to laugh and play with the younger children as Gary watched my every move from the laundry window as he rocked back and forth for much of that time.

I had checked out the back of the yard. There were only vacant lots behind the house and if I ran very fast after getting through the barbed wire fence, I could perhaps get away, get to safety. But I couldn’t see any houses to run to and what if Gary came after me with his motorbike or car in the paddocks and ran me down? Something told me that in order to survive this, I needed to pretend I was ok, not make eye-contact with Gary, continue to be seen to be having fun, but keep my distance as best I could. That was my survival plan at this point in time.

The younger children were announcing they were hungry so Gary called us all in to eat. We scoffed down as many vegemite triangles as we could. I was desperately wanting to go to the toilet but aware that I shouldn’t allow Gary to be with me on my own. After a few more sandwiches, Stu announced that he needed to pee and I went with him. I found a nail brush in the bathroom and I desperately tried to wash Gary from my hands. I wanted to scrub my body too, scrub myself until every last piece of him was gone from deep under my skin.

After dinner Gary said we could go outside again and play. It seemed like a long time playing out the back and I didn’t see Gary watching me any more. I didn’t know where he went.

Some time later, as darkness drew near, I heard a cheerful, familiar voice. It was Mum. She was here. I ran into her arms and asked if we could go home straight away.

Mum had came back early. She sensed she had to. She knew.

She KNEW.

…..

The next day

I was scolded harshly and beaten repeatedly by Dave for having made up such a colourful story. Dave and Gary were good mates and the two men now reduced me to a very sick, very evil little girl with a wild imagination. I was grounded for two months and my favourite records were taken away – all my favourtes – Sally Boyden, Olivia, Simon & Garfunkel, Neil Diamond.

Shattered but eager for peace, eager to take the blame so that everything would be rosy again, I contemplated accepting defeat and announcing that I had made the entire story up for attention. I thought that was the only way this huge mess could be made right. So I told my Mum one morning in the kitchen that I’d made it all up, that I didn’t want Gary to be in trouble or Dave to be angry with me anymore. I told her that I was naughty and bad and didn’t deserve to be loved. I told her between sobs that I was a liar and would be better off dead.

My Mum saw through this, held me for the longest time, calmed me and then asked me for the truth.

Over the next few days she secretly prepared our getaway.

In less than 7 days Mum, Stu and I were headed for the hills, never to seen by Gary or Dave again.

……

I’ve shared this nightmare because I want people to know what life is like for a child who has been sexually abused.

I want people to know just how dirty, how frightened, how humiliated, how shameful, how disgusting, how unloved and how sick a child feels after being sexually abused – for a LONG time.

I want people to know that for a good 30 years after that horrific day I had to fight the recollections of Gary’s rough callused hands on and in my body with much strength and determination.

I want people to know that I showered up to three times per day for a long time in an attempt to scrub Gary away. My skin was left red and raw after each 30 minute shower and yet at the end of each day ‘he’ still remained on and in me.

I want people to know that I wanted to take my own life due to so much guilt and shame. I blamed myself for what happened that day, as all children do who have been sexually abused. Children believe it is their giggles, their smile, their pretty locks, their face, their body, their trusting nature, their kind words, THEIR FAULT! I felt entirely to blame for all of Gary’s actions.

I want people to know that the pureness that once was, once stripped away, can NEVER be restored. Once the lights are out, THEY’RE OUT!

I want people to know that for a very long time I felt that NOBODY cared, the world was oblivious to my torment, my reality, my pain.

I want people to know that for a long time I drank a lot of booze, screamed, hit out, hurt myself and gave my body away to strangers because I did not care about me anymore. I was dirt in my eyes.

I want people to know that there is still an ongoing struggle to normalise day to day life, relationships, to make sense of love, touch, intimacy. To trust.

I want people to know that Gary had been grooming me and my entire family for months prior to that day. It came out years later after talks with my Mother and a therapist that he’d probably followed me home from a friend’s house, noticed that roof maintenance was required so approached Dave to see if he could ‘lend a helping hand’ to get it fixed for ‘a few beers’. Dave agreed since Gary’s rates were great and he seemed to know what he was talking about. Gary then managed to pick up other handyman jobs about the property – he even erected a granny flat out he back (where he and I became ‘friends’), fixed the back fence, attended to plumbing problems – all the time building a relationship with me and my family, long before he offered to babysit, first in our own home and later at his house.

I want people to know that despite all of the above, I forgive Gary. I had to in order to move on. Had to release the hate in my heart.

I want people to know that I do not know where Gary is, he was never found, I never went looking, he was never convicted. If he were, I am sure that he may get a light sentence as most pedophiles do, no more than 12 months, if that.

I want people to know that  I have spent 20 years in and ~$40,000 on therapy and a further $5,000 in medication recovering from this (and other similar) ordeals. That’s a lot to pay for being a victim. Pedophiles when (if) convicted today may pay a miniscule percentage of what victims do for their crimes. So not only are victims suffering from the ordeal itself, they also keep on paying, in many ways for being abused. Do you this is wrong and twisted?

So, tell me, where is the incentive for pedophiles to stop destroying children’s lives?

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