“I always have a lot of respect for people who have spoken out about their abuse because the few times I’ve thought about doing it, the Catholic church is incredibly powerful and it makes you nervous. I’d love to know if those people have then been audited or what other things happened in their lives after for speaking out. I find it hard to believe that somewhere along the line there weren’t some other consequences because you are dealing with a very powerful institution. My abuser is higher up the tree than a Priest now. I won’t say more than that so he has further to fall now.
As I’ve said I’ve had various relationships after that. Nothing major. They probably thought they were major. I meet people easily and it sounds like an arrogant thing to say but men have always fallen in love with me. I’m a passionate person so I would also fallen love with them but I also lose interest very quickly. I think some of that comes from losing my father when I was 6 and Mum not having a partner till I was maybe 20. I didn’t really know men so I had to work them out. That’s what made me vulnerable to the Priest as well because I had no understanding of an adult man. Predatory men can pick that up. My Art teacher at school who was a married man. He never did anything sexual but when I was 15 he pulled me aside. He was in his 40’s with a couple of kids and he pulled me into the art room and burst into tears. He told me he was in love with me and took out all these creepy drawings he’d done of me, poetry he’d written for me. He started reading me the poems and OMG, it’s made me hate poetry ever since. He totally damaged my love of poetry. I was so uncomfortable but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with this. For the last part of the year he actually sulked in class. He acted as though I’d really hurt him and he told my best friend I was nasty to him. She said, Oh Mandy, you should be nice to Harry….So I’ve had a bit of that through my life.
Most of my relationships after that have been with creative types with lots of problems. Artists, Musicians, etc. Some were just a few months, some longer, some a few weeks. I only liked relationships where I could see that it was never going to work. I wasn’t interested in a sensible relationship with someone who had something going for them. I know this sounds bad but I liked to see the door out as I took the door in. I learned a lot though along the way. A few ended up in violence and I think at that time it happened to quite a few of us. Some relationships would erupt into violence and as I’d grown up with it, it was sort of normalised but it was really quite hidden. The violence happened behind closed doors. What I find weird now is how it hasn’t got any better but the violence is on the street. It’s become public . The most recent deaths of a couple of women were out on the street in full view. It’s like a show of power and dominance and I find that aspect of it really horrible. I never stayed in those relationships for long . I remember how vulnerable you were when a situation would change quickly, particularly when your partner was dodgy with drugs or alcohol and they would flip out. All of a sudden you were at risk and realise you were in a serious situation and how quickly that can accelerate. I would hope that conversation is enough now that most men are aware know how they need to conduct themselves in a relationship.
My son was actually born on Internationals Womens Day. He just turned 19 and broke up with a girlfriend recently. He’s such a gem and he was fighting with the girl on the phone. I walked in and said… ‘Get off the phone! When this happens, this is what I want you to do, she’s upset and I can hear you responding to her in a way that’s escalating the argument, I need you to shut the argument down and let’s come back and talk about this if we can. I need to see you walk away.’ For me that’s a big part of parenting a son, teaching them how to treat women but also teaching men how to conduct themselves in disagreements with women so it doesn’t get to a point where…. That would be a terrible thing, if I had a son that assaulted a woman. As a woman I need to teach him respectful behaviour and he said, You’re right Mum! It’s particularly important to learn how to be respectful in a relationship in destruction. When people talk about respect it’s often about the beginning of relationships and it’s really easy to have a respectful relationship in the beginning but all people, men and women, non-binary, women together, two men together, all people need to learn how to be respectful and how to not do all that toxic stuff. That’s the stuff we should be learning in school..life skills. How to manage your anger so you don’t use it to punish each other.
I moved to Byron with one of my boyfriends at the time. He was a bit older. I really liked him but he was really shifty and I found him really interesting. We’d been together for 3 years. He was a real entrepreneur but he was also a bit of a Gigolo. He had all these older women on the go and I always felt like the perfume he gave me had been filled up with water. I never asked questions when he came home late. I just wasn’t like that. I was more a free spirit so it took me so long to put it together. One time we were living in Canberra and the same thing happened again. I said, I don’t like living with you, I want to move to a share house because I want to meet people. He went and found somewhere too but wouldn’t tell me where he was living. I didn’t care. We were still seeing each other, he was flying around the country doing stuff. I was at a dinner party and this woman starts talking about this amazing man that’s moved in. I said..Hang on a minute, that’s my boyfriend! I rang him and said that’s it, you’re done. We were still together two years after that. He proposed. It was so dysfunctional and finally we broke up. We stayed friends and then he just disappeared never to be found again. I get a knock at the door years later and it’s his adult daughter. I never even knew he had children. Apparently he had 3 children and she’d never met him. That girl has come back into my life a few times, when she had her children and we’ve never been able to find him for her. He just disappeared, he could be dead, someone could have killed him, could have changed his name. Someone probably did kill him.
I was only coming here for 6 months. I didn’t like it at first. I thought it was really boring. I loved the beach but after about 6 months I got to meet people, that’s when I left him. He was not a violent person in any way, he was just mentally difficult to be with. He was a Sociopath but I was intrigued by his mind. I put all my stuff in a suitcase with wheels because I had nothing. I wheeled it down the road, knocked on a door and said…Can I live in your garage? They said, Oh yeah, 20 bucks a week. I didn’t even know them. I’m pretty resourceful. I thought if I don’t go now, I’ll probably stay another year. That was the beginning of me staying here.”