His Story Part 1

He was born to a mother who loved him very much and a father who was, from the start, indifferent. He grew up, and the first few years seemed to be okay, but there were signs.

His father left when he was very young, in fact he would tell you that he couldn’t remember him at all. (which actually wasn’t true. He spent some time living with his bio-dad but that didn’t work out, and instead of having to acknowledge another rejection he claimed he never knew him at all). His mum remarried, and husband number two became ‘dad’. When he was five, he displayed some ‘troubling behaviours’. His school called Protective Services, and there were concerns that maybe someone had “interfered” with him. These concerns were never validated, and so Protective Services ran a programme, a programme with a 5 year old, and withdrew their contact altogether. By the time he was 10, the relationship between him and his mother had soured. Not as much as the relationship between his mother and husband number 2. Throughout this relationship he had witnessed the violence and anger that between mum and dad. Later, his mother would advise that his stepfather had consumed drugs and excessive alcohol in front of him, and he this was where he had learnt this behaviour. His 2nd dad left, and, at 10, he was man of the house again.

When he was 13, a man, a ‘friend of the family’ tried to take advantage of him. At the age of 13, in what most of us think of as being a civilised community, he learnt that he could defend his own. Violence became his skin, his protective skin. It wasn’t second nature anymore, it was his first nature, his instinct, his primal reaction. No one could take from him anymore. His relationship with his mother worsened, she couldn’t understand why this was happening.

At this time, he had his first brush with the law. First serious brush. He had been a ‘non-attender’ for some time, not going to school when he was supposed to, not being home when he was supposed to and not being what he was supposed. For no 13 year old boy was supposed to go through what he went through. By 14 he had done enough to get himself locked up. For quite some time. He had hardened more. No more softness. Softness got you hurt, softness allowed people in, softness meant vulnerability. No softness for him. At 15 his mother had no game left. No other options. She wrote a letter. She gave him up. She couldn’t care for him anymore. It broke her heart. It broke his spirit.

I first met him at 16. At 16 he seemed cocky and self assured. He thought he had the world figured. By his reckoning, those who were the most violent had the power. With that went the understanding that no one person could manage to keep that all to himself, that there would always be challengers and you always had to sleep with one eye open. He never trusted anyone. He couldn’t trust anyone. Trust lead to a soft underbelly. And that was unforgiveable.

The events that unfolded in the time that I knew him, few would believe could occur in our quiet little city.


1.

The first time I met him, I was just doing a duty. Tick and flick, we used to call it. Out into the waiting room I wandered. I called out his name. He stood up, sauntered over to where I was waiting and into the interview room. My first impression was of a young guy, pretty sure of himself, and who was dead keen to promote a certain image. Tattoos and low slung jeans said one thing, but his well kept hair and coordinated clothes said another. Over time I would learn that this outward contradiction was just a brief glimpse of an inside turmoil. He had a need to appear like you wouldn’t want to cross him. But there was an irrepressible need for cleanliness and order, that no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t quash.

He flung his arm of the back of the chair and bantered back and forth with me. We had never met, yet somehow I felt like I had been “handled”. Like the power in the room was squarely with him. The parting remark, aimed not over his shoulder but looking me dead in the eye was that there was part of me that was just, boring. With regards to us, he didn’t have too much left to sort out. Coming in a few times a week, doing a bit of community work. But if there was one thing to describe him, it was illusive. He slowly stopped coming in, telling me he was working. I asked a few times for proof of this, but he never committed. One of the things I learnt about him was he never committed to anything whole-heartedly. Then it’s not as bad if you don’t follow through.

In the end, it was his ‘aunty’ who came to me. Just before Christmas. On a Monday. She explained that he had been living at their place, her and her partner’s, and on the Saturday morning he had come home, well and truly rattled. He had gone to his uncle, and asked him for some money. At this point, they were not really willing to just hand over money to him, as he had already asked for so much. But he explained them the story, how he had been involved with some guys a while ago and now he owed them money. They had finally caught up with him. The words ‘drug debt’ chilled their bones. So they handed over the money, with the promise he would return it the afternoon. He didn’t come home. They repeatedly tried to get a hold of him but he did not answer his phone. Finally, someone answered. In the small hours of Sunday morning. And told them that ‘whoever’s phone it was’, they had grabbed and bashed and left for dead in a park somewhere. They flat out panicked and called the police, and everyone else that they knew he had contact with. But there was no response, no contact, no answers. She explained that they were not able to cope with it anymore. By it, she met they could not cope with him anymore. They needed to know he was okay, that he was safe, but he could not come back to their home.

I called him. I left an angry message, telling him he needed to call me as soon as possible. Within an hour I had heard from him. He told me that I could not know where he was calling from, as the ‘bikies’ were after him. I told him to call the police. He told me not to be stupid and that he would call me back. By the end of the day he had. And there was ‘nothing wrong’. Everything was fine. He was safe. I demanded he came to see me the next day. And he did. Nothing I said could penetrate the shield of lies he threw up. He told me that he was not staying with his uncle anymore, nor was he staying with his girlfriend, although they were still together. He would not give me an address, instead providing me with a ‘friends’ address to be picked up from for community work.

Later on, after he left, I called his girlfriends mother. She informed that he had not been welcome at their house for at least 2 months, and that he and her daughter had broken up. She also informed that she was going to take a VRO out against him, as he had been beating her daughter. That was true, she did attempt a VRO however it did not stand in court. That was the next time I saw him.


2.

He stopped taking my calls. But he showed up for community work to appease me. He no longer needed to come in, so I allowed this to happen. I was at Court one morning, and he was there to defend himself against the VRO. In a waiting room full of people I beckoned my finger and he came over. No remorse, not even remotely abashed. I reminded him of his legal obligations, he agreed to attend. He lied.


3.

The next thing I knew, he was involved in some awful things. Random violent acts, fuelled by excessive alcohol and peers. Strangers bashed with extreme violence, shoved into cars and taken away, left in the middle of an unknown suburb then chased down and further tormented after being released. Things that left me speechless. On reflection, I had always known he was capable of mindless violence, but I did not realise how close to the surface it was, or how thin his grasp on control was. When I went to see him in remand, he was subdued and scared. He couldn’t sleep, was over vigilant about his safety, perceived threats everywhere he looked.

Not long after he had been arrested and locked up again I got a call. It was the call that helped me to understand why he had lost his mind, why the little grasp he had on his control had disappeared. It was from his caseworker. He was under state care. His caseworker called me, and told me about the events that had precipitated his total loss of control. The caseworker summarised that in the weeks before the most recent and bloody acts of violence, he had been a victim. One night, he was grabbed. By two men he knew well and one man who he claimed as an acquaintance. He was stuffed into a car. He was given something, no one could say what. And after he had taken this stuff in, he became unable to control his body physically, describing himself as being ‘paralysed but aware’. And then they raped him. Multiple times. Violently. And left him. It was a warning, consequences of some other arbitrary action on his part. He called his mother, she didn’t believe him and hung up. He called his second dad, his stepfather. He didn’t believe him, and hung up on him. He called his mother back. His mother recognised that maybe something was not quite right, so she picked him up and took him to a hospital. Left him there. Still not believing him.

The caseworker told me that the hospital had confirmed that he had been assaulted. But he wouldn’t talk about it and he wouldn’t make a statement. His conception of the world, of his grasp on how he could be safe had once again been shattered.

He spent some time with a professional or two. He was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. Over the next few months he would try to wean himself off the medication they had prescribed for him, only to find that he would start to have panic attacks, be unable to sleep for fear of the nightmares and be so reactive that he was aware he was a danger to himself, and to others. So medicated he stayed.


4.

It was during this time, while he waited the court outcome, and then completed his required sentence, that we did some good work together. I started to appreciate his personality. He started to relax a bit with me. No longer was it a battle of who had the power. His bullshit became less, and he responded better to me calling him on it. We never talked about the ‘incident’ that resulted in his loss of control. He knew that I knew, but that was as far as we got. I kept my promises and showed up when I said I would. I went to court with him, he had no other supports. He was sentenced, perhaps not as harshly as he could have been, regardless it was a relief to him to finally have a timeframe.

During his time inside, he worked hard at building relationship with his mother again. In fact, they worked to a point where his mother accepted his request to come and live with her again. Temporarily, at least at the start. There were dramas with his caseworker, neither he or his mother appreciated his ‘commitment’, often telling me that he was all talk, promised the world and never followed through. Something that I tried very hard to avoid doing. Although he would be living outside my catchment area, he wanted to keep seeing me. I was pleased, it was testament to the hard work I had done.

He finished year 10 and year 11. He completed courses, drug counselling, weekly psychology sessions, fortnightly sessions with the psychiatrist. Everyone was impressed. Everyone believed that he was changing. He had demonstrated his capacity to fulfil his potential, to be able to ‘participate in a law abiding society’. He was a man with a plan. More and more often he would allow me to sit and look into the cracks that were appearing in his façade. We skirted around the ‘incident’ more regularly, however he was adamant that he was not going to press charges or talk to his psychologist about it. He refused. It was too raw. It undid him. Even thinking about it for too long a time meant that he unravelled a bit, and it took some coaxing to remove him from the dark place it took him to.