ABUSE CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME FIBROMYALGIA TO FULFILLMENT TO ART

ABUSE  CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME  FIBROMYALGIA TO FULFILLMENT TO ART

Chapter One

Birth To Ten.

I was born in a small country town called Warkworth in New Zealand, on the 4th January 1946.  The place we lived was called Port Albert in New Zealand.

My parents were married November 1944 after my father came home from the war.

My mother was engaged to another soldier and I feel my father was a rebound partner.

I never knew my biological father as you will find out as I go on with this story.

Looking at old photographs I have, my mother was a farmhand and a in the Land Army during the Second World War. She was bought up on a farm all her life along with her brother who was about 10 years older than herself.

So she was quite masculine and I have photos of myself and my brother on backs of many horses. She was a very tough and strong woman and my father being a smaller man she used to embarrass him by lifting him up in her arms. Not nice for a man who had served his county in Egypt during the Second World War. and came home with malaria and war neurosis.

My brother Leslie was born 21 months later on the 19th September at the same hospital.

   My parents bought a small cottage and farm and lived there until I was around 2 years old and my brother was only 3 months old. My father had been a city person prior to the war and had no skills in the area of farming. My mother knew it all.

Also my grandmother lived with us and she was a fierce controlling woman and had a great

control over my mother and then also my father. She interfered with their marriage right from the start. My grandmother was a tough woman and was very stern and I was scared of her

My grandmother or Gran as she was called had a kind heart under her tough skin and she used to read to myself and my brother for hours when we were small.

                             SCREAMING FROM MY FATHERS ARMS

      I was two years old and my brother was about 3 months old when my mother took me from my father’s arms and I can still remember my screams as I was ripped away from him, never to see him again. I still cannot stand children screaming and crying due to my experience as a small two year old child. It haunts me to this day.

 Don’t tell me childhood events don’t have an overall effect on the rest of your life?

As I was taken from my father’s arms my little body was shaking all over and I sobbed on my mother’s skirt as she carried my three month old brother to the waiting car.

The car was been driven by a neighbour to take my mother and brother and Gran to a bus in Wellsford, about an hour’s drive from the farm in Port Albert.. Mrs Gillespie who drove us to the bus told me 50 years later, had she realized what was happening she would never of taken us.

   I met Mrs Gillespie when I went back to New Zealand in 1997 and she was in a nursing home but she remembered me and told me the story and she was very sorry what had happened to myself and my brother. We were never seen again for a few years.

Everyone in the district did not know where we were going.

As a 2 year old I do not remember the bus ride but know we were taken to Gisborne  a town on the east coast of New Zealand.

My father was left behind suffering from malaria which he got while in the Middle East during world war two in 1942.

 A young Maori man found my father very ill at the farm and took him to the hospital for treatment. Those in the district were very upset with my mother including her brother Les.

I remember we moved around allot in the first five years of my life and also lived on a farm in Hastings New Zealand.

So I was used to being put on a horse and taken all over the farm as my mother worked. I sometime wonder if that is when The illness I have started way back then?

There were floods and I can remember having to leave the little old run down shack we lived in and taken to a big wool shed where we slept for a week or so until the floods went down. I still can remember the smell of the wool in the shed and still like that smell. The farm hands were very kind to myself and my brother and Gran was still with us reading us stories.

My mother was managing a small farm and had to milk cows morning and night and run the farm as there was no pensions for single mothers in those days.

   When I was about three years old and my brother nearly two, Leslie fell into the river and started to float down the river.

I ran screaming to my mother who was milking cows across the river. I had to run over a small plank to get to her.

My mother came running and she jumped into the river gumboots and all and it was a miracle  my brother was saved. I was so scared at the time and didn’t make me scared of water.

I always loved the water but my brother Les didn’t and that is why?

    We lived in various places from birth to five years old. When I was around 4 and living in Hastings New Zealand I was given water with fluoride added to the water supply. Hastings was one of the first places in the world where fluoride was being trialled for tooth decay. I  often wonder if that was the beginning of my battle with the chronic invisible illness called Fibromyalgia I suffered with all my life.?

Around the age of five we returned to Port Albert to live with my Uncle Les and Aunty Marge in their big farm house with their two children  my cousins Janet and John, and Gran was with us also. I went to school along with Janet and John as Janet was 2 years older than myself and John was six weeks younger. John and I were very close and that was due to the fact that Aunty Marge used to breast feed us both when we were babies and my mother didn’t have any milk for me. Aunty Marge gave me a good start.

It was a long bus trip from Port Albert to Wellsford where I went to school. But I enjoyed the country life on the farm and my Aunty teaching me to cook in her big kitchen and Gran still reading to us all, four children stories.

I can remember my mother going out with a man called Uncle Karl who use to take us on a big barge up the Tamaki  river near Te Hana. He had a farm there also and I can remember him sitting me on his shoulders and showing me the rainbow and that there was a pot of gold waiting for me at the end of the next hill. We never did find it. For years I thought this Uncle Karl was my real father.

The next thing I can remember is my mother marrying my step father Malcolm who was Uncle Karl’s younger brother. Malcolm was a scary man and I was around 6 years old when the sexual abuse started. His first move on me was across the road from the house in Wellsford where he abused me in the bushes and was sworn not to tell. A small child doesn’t know this is wrong and I just disassociated from it all. On my mother’s wedding day to Malcolm I went up to him and said now I have a daddy and I was pushed away. I was upset as a seven year old child.

I used to walk to school in Wellsford and as my mother worked in a Milk Bar my brother and I would call in to the milk bar on the way home from school and my mother would give us a lovely big milkshake. I used to look forward to those afternoons and still to this day love my milkshakes. I was always a sickly child and suffered from anything that went around and had my tonsils out at aged 7 and then I got Yellow Jaundice at the age of eight. When I was 10 and my brother 8 we both got so badly sunburnt we had to be carried to school to sit on our chairs to do our tests. It was cruel and I remember the pain very well. It was due to too much sun at the local beach where we would all go for fishing. I loved the ocean and the sand. I felt free there away from the constant sexual abuse.

My half-sister Ethel was born when I was eight years old and remember this bundle of joy

coming into our home and cuddling her as she used to suck her toe.

When I was around 10 years old we shifted to the north of the North Island to a few places like Ruawai and Dargaville. We moved around so much I went to a different school every year and it is all a bit of am blur. My mother and stepfather became share milkers looking after the farm and living in the old old cottages while the Land owner has his big mansion. One house we lived in had pigs living under it. And yes Gran was also still with us. One place I slept in the same room as Gran with a curtain in between and I was always so scared I would wake up and find Gran dead. Just a childhood fear manifested. I also remembering hiding from gran at the top of an big pine tree all day and knew I would get a beating when I got down and yes I did. Gran minded us while my mother and stepfather milked the cows and did the farm duties.

Due to shifting every years I never had childhood friends and can’t remember many names of any school friends. However I developed a love of sport especially swimming and running and by the age of 12 years old was the Champion of the North Island in swimming and in running. I was being trained by one of the All Black footballers how to run and remember how he taught me how to run the right way. I loved the steeple chase or long g distance as called today and use d to run with the boys as there was no long distance for girls in those days. I came third with the boys one time. The only time I got praise from my mother was when she used to stand at the end of the athletic course and yell come on Pam. My mother did not cuddle me or tell me she loved me. She showed it by always making sure I had a nice clean warm bed and made me nice clothes, knitted me many jumpers and cardigans and was a great cook. She just did not know how to show her feelings emotionally. I craved hugs so the sexual abuse was all the touching I got.

When we lived in Ruawai I came down the hill on my bike and fell off and ended up in Dargaville hospital with my knee in a cast for a few weeks. My mother wasn’t coping at one time and my brother Les and I were sent to a health camp for 6 weeks and I hated it? We lived on horrible food and I hate green chockos  to this day. For some reason all the girls who were booked into this place way out in the country did not arrive. So there were only 3 girls in the large dormitory for around twenty beds. Myself another Kiwi white girl and a lovely Maori girl. We used to have an afternoon sleep every day and I can remember being given the strap for not sleeping. I just could not sleep either day or night. That was due to the sexual abuse I was experiencing when I was home by my stepfather and I just was a bad sleeper right from a small baby so I was told by my mother. So I may have been born with Fibromyalgia.?

My memory is vague at this health camp but I do remember feeling alone and abandoned by my mother and grandmother. Safe from my stepfather.

At the health camp I met a Maori man who taught me how to play the bones and then I went onto learn how to play the spoons. This made my stay here bearable. I still play the spoons to this day but not so good due to my arthritic hands.

    Shifting back to Ruawai again to another farm when I was around 10 t0 12 years old ( I moved every year of my life ).always in the middle of a school year. Here I focused on my sports ability in running and swimming again and looking back it was my way to get away from the abuse at home. I was a dreamer and always waited for my biological father to come to save me, but he never did and my mother would not tell me anything about him. He was my mystery man, the Prince Charming to come and save me and all I wanted  was for my daddy to come.

     We moved to a place called Rama Rama south of Auckland near Papakura and Pukekohe districts. When I was about thirteen years old. We lived in a very small farm house with only 2 bedrooms and my brother had to go through may room to a little out cove to his part in the room. I don’t know where my younger half-sister slept? My memory is very vague at some points mainly to disassociation an abused child’s coping mechanism.

The farm was a strawberry farm and I used to have to get up before school and chase all the birds away and to pick strawberries for no pocket money. I was tired before I even got to school. I wonder why?

   I went to Pukekohe High school and was picked by a school bus and it seemed a long way back and forth every day. At night I used to try to run around the small farm my way of getting away from all my problems. I had the passion for running and had an goal to train for the Olympics that was my dream. I tried so hard to run as fast and as far as I could. I didn’t do well at school due to all the moving and so running was what I was good at and enjoyed. The endorphins making me feel wellish. (Wellish my word for feeling okay but never really well)

   It was while we were living at Rama Rama that my step father who had got swine fever a few years earlier and also emphysema ( being a strong smoker)  suddenly became converted to the Seventh Day Adventist church and there is where my dreams began to fade away.He suddenly became very religious in an over the top way and behaved in a terrible way in the name of religion. The abuse to me stopped in regards to the physical touching of my body but then the emotional and verbal abuse began. I was not allowed to go to sport on Saturdays so my running days went. I was made to go to church every Saturday even if I didn’t want to go I had no choice. Neither did my brother or sister. School was made harder as I was seen as a weird person with a weird religion I didn’t understand but was made to study the teachings of the Seventh Day Adventist church. I was brain washed and had no choice.

My stepfather would not let me listen to the 1960s music or anything that the ordinary teenagers at school were doing. I became a hermit in my own family inside myself. I was not allowed to have a fringe or wear anything that was at all femimein and was made to wear a dress to the water when I went swimming. This was so my stepfather was not excited by my emerging teenage body. He had to hide his sexual abuse and made me the scapegoat. But making me un sexy via my mother. He would not directly tell me but would have arguments with my mother and then she would come and tell me what and I could and couldn’t do and I always knew it came from him. He didn’t have the guts to tell me himself. He now was a forgiven man due to his new religion so it didn’t matter what I had suffered in the past. He though he was saved and forgiven, so it didn’t matter the damage it had done to me. Leopards don’t change their spots, especially a paedophile.

As I struggled through school and did not do very well, I was always sick catching every flu and bug that went around. I had bad periods every month rolling around in pain. Was always having very bad pain all over and especially in my right side. My parents never told me anything about sex or anything about the birds and the bees. So when I was staying overnight with a school friend I got my period and thought I was dying? My friend’s mother was so kind and explained it all to me and got some rags which were used in those days to wear. To take the flow of blood. I bleed allot making me very weak.

One of the not many funny things I can remember knew, I seemed to have small breasts, compared to the other girls. My mother was a very good sewer and I found some stuffing type material and decided to stuff my bathers with this and lo and behold one day while in the swimming pool this material went floating to the surface and I would not admit they were mine, but I knew everyone knew it was me. But the girls never said anything or teased me. Mind you I got bullied and teased most of my life at the many schools being the new kid at school and pug nose was one  name I was given due to my pointy nose which I disliked so much as a child and my younger years. However today I like my nose.

My mother was a very good cook and good at sewing and knitting but when I tried to learn I was very clumsy with my hands and my mother had not patience with me and would grab them out of

my hands and say I was ca ck handed so I never learnt to cook or knit and sew. Yet my sister Ethel was taught all this skills. I felt so helpless and so dumb. Not a help to my very low self-esteem

   My life form 13 to 15 was going to church studying the bible and church church church. It was then I was again in an abusive place. Two elders at the Seventh Day Adventist church we attended who came from a well-known SDA church family and were brothers began to take advantage or my emerging sexuality and body changes. They were around ten years older than myself and I thought they were handsome and because they paid me much attention and would give me a hug when my stepfather and mother were not looking , the only reason I liked going to church was my crush on these two men who gave me the only attention I knew. (Sexual. Attention.) So I would make my outfits which my mother made and I would pick colours and designs I knew suited me and would try to make them shorter as I could get away with and I had learnt at an early age the only way to get any touching or affection was to be sexy. I didn’t know any different. No hugs at home.

As I attended the church camps I would make sure I was near these two men and I knew they were both attracted to me even though they were married men.

When I was fifteen years old I was made to leave school and was found a job in a cake shop in Papakura not  far from Rama Rama. I was still living at home and still having ill health with the pains in my side, so I had allot of time off. But the owners of the Bakery Mr and Mrs Nissen who came from Denmark loved me and gave me the much needed time off. I will always remember how kind they were to me. Teaching me how to use the money register and to add up and pack up cakes.

It was while after many visits to Doctors, as my mother was concerned about my health and tried everything to help me. I was suddenly made to become a vegetarian at aged thirteen and I remember one Doctor telling my mother that I needed a good piece of steak and my mother went and bought me some every now and then and would cook  it when my stepfather was away and I was told not  to tell anybody.

It was here when I worked in the cake shop that the two elders would come in and I will call them Guy and Garth. They used to flirt with me and then one day Garth asked me to meet him in lunch hour in his car and that is when the abuse and affair with him began. He used a minor and a vulnerable young woman who was broken goods already and hurting and looking for love and even though I went along with all this attention, he was the adult and should have known better.

So this affair went on for over 5 years on and off. At aged fifteen years old he would come into the Bakery and flirt with me along with his brother Guy who also knew what was going on. So the hiding in Garth's car and bobbing down if anyone came along as he used to drive me out into the country where he would have sex with me. One time he took me home to his house where in his bedroom I lay with him while his wife was having their second child. I know feel so bad about that but at the time I was a child seizing the only affection I knew.

  I worked at the bakery the year I was fifteen and when I turned sixteen I was sent to Long Burn Seventh Day Adventist Boarding College in Palmerston North a twelve hour trip from Papakura. The year I worked at the bakery I was often off sick with very bad pains in my side and finally I was diagnosed in having 4 or 5 large gall stones. The specialist was amazed as I was the youngest in New Zealand at that time to have had gallstones at such a young age. They say it is usually fair ,fat and forty and I was none of those things. My name was put on the hospital public waiting list to have the operation. At least we knew what had been causing all the pain I had been having.

  I was made to give most of the money I earned to my parents to help pay for my college fees and someone else in the Papakura Seventh Day Adventist church paid the rest for my parents. I never found who it was but had an idea.?

I was also not allowed to choice my subjects as my stepfather chose then for me as he had done all through my school life.

   So at aged sixteen in 1962 I made the long over night train trip to college boarding school which I disliked. I seemed like I was always been sent away and always felt abandoned.

Arriving at college I shared a room with an older girl whose name I cannot remember but she came from a very strict SDA family like me. I did my best to not get homesick for the attention of Garth who I wouldn’t see for a year. He was my secret joy I carried in my heart at that time. Like the mystery of not knowing my biological father. I kept getting sick and on one occasion I was rushed to the local hospital in Palmerston North and saw a Dr called Dr Crisp. I told him I had gallstones and he looked at me and said “girl what makes you think such utter rot you are way too young to have them”. I just cried and said “I do have them”. Eventually after 3 or 4 visits to the hospital I was x-ray ed and yes there were the gall stone but of course no apology was given to me.

Here I was away from my parents and siblings in a strange place and hospital having a major operation to have the gall stones out. I was very sick with a scar right across my belly and the drain hurt as I can still remember it. So I did not do much schooling and when I came out of hospital I went to stay with the headmaster and his wife in his nice house next to the college. Of course my mother or any of my family came to be with me. I went through this scary operation all alone.

But all through this I caught the eye of a young man called Bryan who was attracted to me and he supported me allot in his way through this time.  We were allowed to have a night every now and then when a male student could ask a female student to have dinner with them in the dining room. Prior to that girls sat with girls and boys with boys. Bryan so was my first real boyfriend and we sat together quite a few times over that year. Every term most students went home but I had to stay and so dint get top go home in the 3 terms. One term when I was over my operation I was allowed to go to Wellington and stay with Bryan and his mother. I really felt wanted then and was nice to get a break from the dormitory at college.

When I came home at the end of 1962 year with an added scar on my belly and full of wanting to tell many stories I was shut down by my step father but was able to tell my mother when he wasn’t around including my relationship with Bryan (which was non sexual.) My mother always sent me parcels at college and made me clothes and sent things when I was in hospital but this was always behind my stepfathers back so I could never write and thank her. So thanked her when I got home.

   I of course after a year was looking forward to seeing Garth again and see how he would be with me and yes he still was interested in me and we began our secret meetings when I could sneak out from my family. The church would have a picnic at the local beach on a Sunday sometimes and as I loved the water and swimming. I would go to the end of the jetty and dive off and would often find Garth secretly coming up behind me under the jetty and caress me. He seemed to enjoy doing this with his wife sitting on the shore line (beach). He seemed to like being bad with me. So I told him about Bryan and I sensed he was jealous but did not think any more about it until a year later. I was only home about two months to have my seventeenth birthday before I went back to college.

Birthdays and Christmases’ were never celebrated in my family right from aged five when my stepfather came into the picture. He didn’t believe in them so we never had birthday gifts or parties like other children did and we never celebrated Christmas. So I used to go to school and pretend what I had got as I felt so left out and embarrassed about being different to others. So I have always felt strange when given a gift as don’t know how to show my thanks very well. Another scar I carry to this day. I enjoy giving to others and love wrapping up gifts for my friends.

I went back to college in 1963 aged seventeen and my parents moved from Rama Rama to Mercer near the Waikato river and while living there we all got aluminium poisoning and the whole family was very sick. My stepfather was a colporter selling religious books for the SDA church.

My 1963 year at college was so so as I didn’t do too well in my studies due to the interruption the year prior. And my stepfather was very upset with me, but I tried my best.

Bryan was at college and we continued our friendship and I thought he would be who I may marry.

However once I left college and once I turned eighteen in 1964 my parents were back on a farm in Mata Mata where I lived with them for a while, working at a local factory. While there I was still in contact with Bryan in Wellington but for some reason I told him about my affair with Garth and Bryan dumped me. I was heartbroken. Then Uncle Kirk my stepfather’s brother whom I always thought was my real father came along with his wife and young son Simon and asked me if Id like a holiday in Christchurch with them. He had to go back to his big farm up north. So I was excited and said yes and went off with my Aunty Margaret and Simon to Christchurch where we did allot of sightseeing. We stayed at the Peoples Palace and I had a nice room to myself and I felt so happy being away from the stress of living at home. While we were there I met my first husband to be Tony. He was an Australian three years older than myself and was staying also at the Peoples Palace run by the Salvation Army. He was up with all the latest music and as I wasn’t allowed to listen to the radio and top hits did not know much about all the hits of the early sixties. Tony played me some and I found him interesting and after two weeks of seeing each other we exchanged addresses with each other when I left. Tony was working in Christchurch.

My Uncle Kirk and Aunty Margaret had an argument over the phone and she came to me and asked if I would go back to the farm to care for Simon as she was going to stay with her sister for a while.

So I said yes and it was Okay ed by my parents. This was a big mistake. I arrived on the farm and when Simon who was around aged ten or twelve went to bed it was just Uncle Kirk and I and I still was thinking he was my real father due to his intimate actions towards me? But one night I woke to find him on top of me in my bed and before I could kick or scream I was raped by him. I again disassociated myself and was numb yet scared. From then on I would push a big wardrobe against my door so he could not get in. I then started to plan a way of escape as I was to go to live in Papakura with Maureen and Gary as I had a job to go to in Papakura. There was a farm hand working on the farm and I confided in him and he got me out and drove me to Auckland one day when my Uncle went into the town for supplies.  Again another big mistake as he put me up in a hotel and yes he then had sex with me. I was a mixed up young woman being abused everywhere I turned. I never told anyone about all this for many years as I knew I would not be believed.

I finally arrived in Papakura around early 1965 to stay with my now dear friend Maureen.

    I was still in contact with Terry who was still in Christchurch working and I worked in a factory in Papakura and would baby sit Maureen’s children while she and her husband worked in a café they owned. However late at night I would feel a man in my room and I would pretend to be asleep as the husband would play with my sexual parts. Not a word was spoken then or ever. I just wanted to get away from all this horror.

   So when Tony decided to come up and get work near me I was so excited and soon he was living in Papakura and I could see him every day but still never told him about the life I had had so far.

I still saw Garth at church and he still gave me allot of attention and when I was engaged to Tony he paid my dentist bill. What a much needed gift. Tony and I decided to get married in August 1966 when I was twenty and he was twenty three. He was from Australia so had no family in New Zealand and my stepfather refused to give me a wedding much to my mother’s heartache as she wanted to make my wedding dress and help out. But she was under my stepfather’s thumb and wasn’t allowed to have anything to do with it. So my wedding was put together with the help of members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church and Maureen’s help. I bought a second hand wedding dress and Maureen altered it for me. I had Maureen’s adopted daughter Sharon as my flower girl and she was a gorgeous little Maori girl. Allyson mu god daughter was only two years old and she was also in the wedding photos along with her little brother Craig. I am still very close to Maureen and Allyson to this day. They are the oldest friends I have as I never had school friends due to all the moving as a child.

My brother Les was at the wedding as he had left the SDA church and I had one foot in and one out.at this point in time.

AUSTRALIA 1967

After our wedding Tony and I went to live on the North shore of Auckland where I worked in a printing factory and Tony had some sort of shoe designer job. as that was his trade

In 1967 Tony’s sister in law passed away giving birth to her second child and Tony’s mother wanted him back in Sydney Australia. So we packed up and left New Zealand and I landed in a country where I knew no one except my in-laws. We lived with Tony’s parents for a while and I met his brother Jack who had just lost his wife and had a small baby and a young two year old daughter to bring up. This was being done by his sister Barbara who was minding the two girls.

When I arrived in Sydney from New Zealand I could not believe how big the city was and how hot the weather was. I had never experience all of this so was quite a culture shock to a young twenty year old who had been bought up a sheltered religious life. I had my first alcoholic drink and saw my first poker machines and pub life, counter meals and pub meals. I worked in various factories as we seemed to move a fair bit while I was in Sydney. It was then I was told Tony was in trouble with the police for false pretences and was in trouble with them somehow. I never really understood why we moved from flat to flat. Again I was on the move. Yet we always managed to catch up with Tony’s family and go to family meals and met at the pub. I could not believe my mother in law would sit at those darn poker machines and put through all her pay every week. I enjoyed the music as there was always entertainment and I would put five dollars in and that was for my entertainment and would leave empty handed or a small amount for my five dollars. Once I won quite allot but I still walked away with my winnings something my mother in law could not do.

    Tony was friends with a man who I learnt was a very much wanted con man and over the years I would see him on television over the years being wanted for one scam or another. One day I can remember Tony and this man would have me sitting down cutting out kangaroo skins to make post cards and it was one idea after another and they would disappear for days and leave me alone. What they were doing I would find out later. I was alone in a strange city in a strange country with a husband who wasn’t supporting me in any way.

KINGS CROSS  SYDNEY NSW 1967 1968

One day the pair disappeared and after a few weeks I realized Tony was gone and not coming back.

I was alone and felt I couldn’t turn to my in-laws or his brother and sister. I found out Tony was in New Zealand as he was in trouble with the Australian Police and went to New Zealand to escape being caught for false pretences. I was distraught and alone and I was having many pains all over my body and very very tired all the time. All I wanted to do was rest and at aged 21 just couldn’t seem to keep up with others my own age. I struggled to keep my job in a printing factory and eventually it all got the better of me. I had lost contact with my mother in New Zealand and went into a depression. I took and over dose of sleeping tablets and woke up in Gladesville hospital in Sydney.

I was in a ward with others with mental illness and began treatment with a Dr John Castro who was a treat psychologist and he would have me come into his office every day for so called therapy.

He soon found out my history and that I had no one to care for once I was discharged from the hospital. He began to make sexual advance to me and eventually had sex with me in his hospital office. I was drugged up with various medications. This monster took advantage of me being  very naive and used it to his benefit. He made up some long lost relative to get me out of the hospital and he set me up in a hotel in Kings Cross Sydney Australia. I was his little mistress and he was around the age of fifty at the time. He would walk with me up Kings Cross and if I admired something in the shop windows the next day it would appear as a gift in my hotel room. I was waited on and could have whatever I wanted to eat and every day he would come and have sex with me. I felt trapped and at the same time felt sort of safe as had someone who cared for me even though I would shut my yes and cringe at his sexual advances. After about a month I was told by Dr John he had found an apartment closer to his Chemist shop he owned in Kings Cross as he was also an pharmacist. He said it would be cheaper for him and I then had my own bed sitter room in a large building with about ten other bed sitters in there. I needed 3 keys to get to my room so I felt quite safe there.

The room consisted of a bed, lounge, TV, small kitchen and bathroom. I go to see my first lot of television alone and then during the day John took me to the Chemist and taught me how to sell and how to use the cash register and soon I was also his shop assistant. I enjoyed working in the Chemist shop as loved to try out the makeup and the perfumes and then sell them. I would get a nice pat on the back and praise for making such a good sale. I was not allowed to wear makeup growing up so I made up for it by learning all about skin care and women’s cosmetic’s. I was very naive in the beginning as the chemist shop was very close to many brothels which I never knew what they were or anything about prostitution but I learnt fast. The girls would come in for condoms and I had to learn what they were and then they would say can I have a packet of condoms and when I have had a bang I will pay you back. I soon learnt what that meant and would have the girl’s names down in a special book and after an hour they would come in and pay for their goods. I couldn’t believe it. I used to ask questions and I think John used to enjoy my nativity and enjoyed explaining to me what various sexual words meant and acts were to me. John was very protective of me and would not let the pimps near me as they tried on many occasions to get him to put me in as a prostitute. I am so thankful I wasn’t made to do that. John would enjoy walking up the Cross with me and made me hold his arm and he was very well known by all in the Cross. He took me to many strip shows and to Le Girls and I couldn’t quite understand how all these beautiful woman dancing were actually men.

I found that hard to fathom. Also when transvestites would come into the shop I was often heard whispering to John. Is that a man or a woman and he would get great joy in telling me and told me to look at their hands and you could then tell they were men by their shape and larger hands. So I became a hand watcher. John took me to see Hair the musical when it opened in the Cross around 1968 and I loved the show that I went alone a few times later and would end up on the stage dancing my heart out. I found my joy of the sixties music and loved the dancing and found I had good rhythm as had never danced before. John began to let me walk up the Cross on my own as long as I was back in a certain time. There were no mobile phone then but he always seemed to know where I was. I used to walk the Cross day and night and I felt protected as it seemed I was known as Johns girl and not to touch me. I used to sit day and evenings near the fountain and watch the pigeons and fed them. I would look at the people passing by and wonder who they were and where they were going. Since then my fear of being alone in strange places never bothered me. Hence the various events further on in my life where I went and what I did, things others would criticize me for.it?

My sense of danger was disassociated from me during this time in Kings Cross and stayed with me for most of my life. I knew no better and my body just followed that numb feeling where as others would be terrified.

  I began to grow up in the Cross and John showed me how to dress like a lady and then like a tart depending on his mood. There used to be a strange man called Joe who used to come into the shop quite often and he and John would talk together in private and I would notice John would give Joe something. I found out later he was giving Joe drugs. Joe was a small man with a scar above his mouth and always wore and cape and I found him a little scary. I found out later he was an underworld guy and was also a hit man. He would say to John “I will be away for a week or so as I have a job to do, then I will be back”. I began to know that job was a murder somewhere? I just again coped with my fear by disassociating myself and looking down on the situation like it was a dream and that is how I coped all my life.  So I was quite scared of this Joe guy.

One day I had had an argument with John about something I can’t remember may have been flirting with another man or made him cross with me in some way. John went for a walk up the Cross and left me alone in the shop as he had often done now trusting me with selling. I was in the back of the shop when suddenly Joe came up behind me with a gun between my back ribs. He said if you don’t keep John happy I will find your husband Tony and kill him? He also said he knew where Tony and his friend were? I was terrified and said yes yes I will keep John happy and was made not to tell John what had just happened? Johns wife used to visit the Chemist shop occasionally and knew me as the new shop assistant and so she did not know I was her husband’s little mistress. I really felt trapped again as had been talking about Tony to John and Joe must of overheard as I was wondering where he was and what he was doing and in my heart I still loved my husband but I couldn’t find him and now certainly wasn’t the time to do that just after I had been threatened by Joe. Over the time I was there in the Cross as Johns mistress he would at various times give me a tablet and say take that it would do you good. I would not dare say no and thought it was some type of vitamin and after I would take it had various side effects. Sometimes I would loose a few days and sometimes I would feel very sexual. So I still do not know what kind of drugs he was giving me. John just  how to keep me hooked into him and reliant on him. He would take me to his Psychology Clinic where he taught me how to test children and adults for colour blindness.

I would feel so proud when marking the results and giving them to John and tell him who were colour blind and who weren’t and I was always right. John would praise me and say I would of made a good doctor. So the praise and spoiling me along with the sexual abuse went hand in hand. I began to dislike the sexual part as being a big overweight Greek man with garlic breath I began to feel repulsed sexually by him but I knew I had to play the game to keep him happy so did so with gritted teeth and pretended I enjoyed everything?

   One night I was asleep in my apartment I was woken up by Joe again with his pistol. How did he get through the three doors to me? I lay petrified as he questioned me about the keys to the drug cupboard? He wanted to know if I had them and I had to say I was never given the keys to that cupboard and that they were always strapped to John’s waist on a long chain. I never had a spare and I think he kept his spare key at his home residence? As Joe left I began to shake and felt real fear of this horrible little yet scary man. I had to keep all this to myself and couldn’t tell John. It was then I wanted to escape and I wanted to leave. I gently began telling John how much I missed my husband

Tony and wonder where he was? Eventually John asked Joe to find out where Tony was? Within a day Joe came and said your husband is in Perth and will be crossing the Null arbor road from Perth to Adelaide. I wondered how Joe knew all this and yet he was right. A few weeks later I found out Tony and his mate had been arrested and was in the Port Lincoln jail in South Australia. I didn’t know where that was but all I knew it was a long way from where I was living.

 ADELAIDE SOUTH AUSTRALIA

I tried to keep myself composed and not think too much about Tony but behind John and Joes back I wrote to Tony in jail and gave him my address in Kings Cross. Tony replied to me and told me he would be in jail for around six months or more. After or around two years of not seeing him I began to have feeling for my husband and wanted to see him again. I again gently told John and once John knew I really wanted to see Tony again he offered to pay for a return trip to Port Lincoln thinking I would come back to him in the Cross. Joe again came into the picture and told me don’t you dare let John down and make sure your come back. I of course said yes I would.

So sometime early 1969 I flew to Port Lincoln and stayed in a hotel courtesy of John to meet my husband again. I visited the jail and over a few days knew I wanted to get back with my much younger handsome husband and not the big fat Greek physcholgist. I didn’t tell Tony much about what had happened to me while we were apart and Tony just kept saying he would make it up to me and that he still loved me.

As I was in contact with John via phone I was very worried how I would tell him I wanted to stay in Adelaide and not come back to him. I also was very scared of hit man Joe and knew he would find me if I upset John. However fate took pity on me in some weird way. One day I phoned Johns number and got Johns wife on the phone. I was told John was in hospital with a very bad heart attack and he passed away a few months later. So I knew I couldn’t go back to John and he was now being taken care of by his wife. I was very relieved yet still scared Joe would find me and was always looking over my shoulder for many years to come.

Tony was sent to Yatala the jail in Adelaide so I was able to visit him every weekend.

I got a room boarding with and elderly lady in Woodville on the Port road and had a job in a pharmaceutical ware house in Adelaide city. John had given me a good reference of my time in his chemist shop and I had a few from my factory jobs in New Zealand and Australia so it helped me get a foot in the door at the Company.

A NEW START 1969