Roxanne: My Extraordinary Life

Photographs

england

I remember the pain and blackness of growing up as a rejected and abused child. Relationships, even the bad ones, develop in subtle ways. I don’t recall exactly when the abuse first started; it seems as though it was always there. In 1970 I was four years old. My parents named me Elizabeth Lee. They both rejected me from a very early age: there were no cuddles, no kisses—no affection. I had two sisters: Sofia was the eldest and Larissa was a year younger than me. Jacob, our father, was in the Army, and we children were always told that he also worked for British Intelligence—the secret service. My parents had recently divorced, and my father had been posted to Germany, where he now lived with his new wife. I lived with my mother and sisters in the ancient city of Canterbury, in a three-bedroomed suburban house. Our house held many secrets.

Later on, Madeleine, my mother, used to tell me stories about how my father had abused her. She said he had pushed her downstairs when she was pregnant with my younger sister, and had then beaten her so badly that she haemorrhaged and was rushed to hospital by ambulance. Somehow she seemed to transfer all the blame for this abuse to me. Sometimes she would set about punishing me in a very systematic way. For hours I would be made to stand facing the wall. My mother called this sending me to Coventry. Every day I would be emotionally abused. Sometimes she would lock me inside a dark cupboard. I remember how I would cry out to her and to my sisters, but no one answered me. The only sound I could hear was the frantic beating of my heart. I was terrified. I prayed to God to make my dad come and get me, but this never happened. While I was living in fear and misery, Dad was acting the part of the dutiful husband in Germany. At four and a half years old I felt dead inside.

At other times my mother would lash out indiscriminately and beat all three of us. She told Larissa and Sofia not to talk to me—if they did, she said she would beat them black-and blue. Immediately after my father left, while the divorce was pending, the beatings got worse. Mum would drag me into the living room and begin to punch me. She told me that if I moved I would get more. There was nothing I could do about it, I just had to lie there and take the savage attack. I hated the way my mother treated me and I hated my sisters. Most of all I hated myself.

Yet in some strange way, even at that early age, I understood that my mother did not enjoy hurting me. With hindsight, I realise that she herself was a victim of rejection and domestic violence. My father’s abuse and his eventual rejection of her caused enormous stress. I was the only one of her daughters who resembled my father, and having a child who was the spitting image of her husband didn’t exactly help matters.

One day, together with three of the neighbouring children—we were all aged about four—I wandered off to the railway tracks. They were electrified, but being so little, we had no idea of the potential danger. Luckily we were spotted by a policeman, who detained us and then got in touch with our parents. My mother arrived to collect me. She didn’t say a word until we got home, and then I was beaten. She said I had put everyone to a great deal of trouble—the policeman had told her that all the trains had been halted between Canterbury and London. But she said nothing about any fears she might have had for my safety. I craved love. All those other children I knew had loving and caring parents, but I had no idea what real affection was.

Another time, my mother took me into the city and told me not to go near the busy traffic on the road. She said I might be run over and killed. My response was to run right in front of a car. I wanted to go to Heaven. I thought that if I died she would not be so unhappy herself. I knew I made her miserable. I knew it was my own fault she was so violent. My mother was incapable of expressing her emotions in any other way. There was only one way she could get close to me, and it hurt so much. I just accepted everything that happened. The more she hurt me, the more I needed her. When we went shopping she would make me steal chocolate bars. I really wanted to please her and would walk out of the shops with my loot. One day I was caught by a check-out girl. My mother pretended she was horrified, and told me off in front of everyone. I was very confused, and of course when we got home she beat me because I’d been caught.

Without my father, my mother found it difficult to make ends meet, so she took a job in a local restaurant. My sisters and I would be left alone at home. About this time, Mum met a man called Allen, who worked at the local supermarket. He used to visit us, bringing lollies and toys, and one day he invited Larissa and me to his house while Mum was working. Allen was weird, and so was his house. He wasn’t married and lived alone in this dark, smelly cottage. We thought he was real creepy. Once inside his place he led us into an attic room and said that he wanted to play a game with us. As we walked upstairs he said it would be lots of fun, and promised us more lollies. Then he told us to take off our clothes—he had a funny look on his face. After I had undressed he unzipped his pants and sexually assaulted me. He did the same to Larissa, who was really only a baby still. I began to cry. I wanted to go home. That day my innocence was taken from me.

Allen had violated me in a way that damaged my mind as well as my body and his assault instilled in me a very deep fear. I knew that what he’d done to us was not right. Later, when my mother arrived to pick us up, Allen told her we were crying because we’d been missing her. An outright lie. Yet I was scared to tell my mother the truth, because I was afraid of her reaction. As for Larissa, she hadn’t even learned to talk properly yet.

After that incident with Allen I began to wet my bed. When this happened my mother would yell and scream and hit me. She told me I was evil, just like my father. (I couldn’t help reminding her of him every time she looked at me.)

A few years later, I discovered that as well as suffering domestic violence, my mother had been abused as a child. She was abandoned as a baby and knew what it was like to feel rejected even before my father left her. I asked myself how she could pass on the same experiences to her own children. But it wasn’t just my mother, it was my father as well. I felt enormous rejection from my father, and although I remembered that he and Mum both used to abuse me, I still needed him. I needed his love.

Then it happened. I saw my father again. After a lot of argument between my parents, my mother agreed that I could go to Germany. Dad came to Canterbury to collect me, and I flew off with him to Dusseldorf, where he was stationed. Isabel, my stepmother, doted on me and brought me pretty dresses and dolls. Yet all the time I was there, in spite of all the new things I was given, the deep-seated fear caused by Allen’s sexual assault hung over me like a dark shadow.

My father decided to give a party for my fifth birthday. My very first party. Lots of little German children came along to celebrate my existence. I wondered why. Once the party was over, the joy soon evaporated. After the last guest had gone, my father suddenly reverted to his former behaviour and threw me against a concrete wall. I ended up in hospital with a cracked skull. The doctors were told I’d had a bad fall. No one bothered to ask a crying five-year-old what had really happened. Child abuse was not commonly talked about twenty years ago. Another two months went by, and then my father made plans to ship me back to England, to my mother. He told me the Secret Service was posting him to a mysterious destination and I would not be allowed to go with him.

So Dad and I flew back to England. As soon as we arrived on the doorstep of our house in Canterbury, I remembered everything that had happened there and fear came flooding back. Please don’t leave me, Dad! I begged, while my mother screamed out: I don’t want her! Larissa, who was sitting on the floor, began to cry loudly. Can’t you shut that thing up? my father shouted, then kicked her across the room with his Army boots. As my parents argued and screamed at each other, I began to cry too. I really wanted to stay with my father. When Dad left, he told me he would come back to get me soon. He promised he would not leave me with my mother forever. After that, I used to wait for him, sitting on the doorstep, every day, but he never came back. I wish he hadn’t lied to me.

Most of my childhood was spent in cycles of periodic abuse, and I ended up thinking this was a normal way of life. By this time my older sister, Sofia, was a boarding pupil at the Convent of the Nativity at Sittingbourne, a town in Kent between Canterbury and London. Now I was sent off to join her there. When the holidays came around, my mother called the school to let them know she would be unable to look after me; she asked if I could stay there instead of coming home. This convinced me once and for all that my mother loathed me. I think the truth was that the very sight of me drove her mad. I ended up spending the rest of that summer with the nuns, but I didn’t mind. At least they cared for me properly.

My family was not Catholic, but as I grew up I found that I liked the Catholic faith—when it suited me. Children came to the Convent of the Nativity from all over the world. It was a red-brick building dating from the early 1900s, surrounded by extensive grounds with tall trees. We slept in draughty, high-roofed dormitories. Sister Philomena was the head sister in charge of the school. Sofia and I were sent there, of course, because my mother did not want us at home.

perth

In 1974 my mother made a momentous decision. We would emigrate to Australia. In December the following year we arrived in Perth. I was now eight years old. Once again I was separated from my mother; as part of the Migrant Settlers Scheme, my mother had arranged for my younger sister Larissa and me to be placed in Fairbridge Farm School, originally an orphanage for British children sent to Australia after World War II.

At Fairbridge we were placed in one of the open cottages in Pinjarra. But it wasn’t like living in a real home. The Farm School was just another institution for parents to offload their unwanted kids. I used to cry myself to sleep and dream about having a mum and dad who loved and wanted me. Life at Fairbridge could be cruel. I remember how we were forced to eat up all the food on our plates every night. However much we might dislike something that had been served up to us, we had to finish every scrap. One evening I spat out some beetroot, and I was made to go on eating it until I vomited. Then I had to swallow the vomit surrounding the remaining beetroot. I threw most of it under the table.

Although I was never physically beaten at Fairbridge, we were intimidated by the cottage workers. I yearned for my mother to tell me that she wanted me with her. Instead, she allowed Larissa to go home for the holidays, but not me. I wasn’t really surprised; I had known somehow that this would happen. I lived with the knowledge of her constant rejection. Gradually, over the years of my childhood, her behaviour towards me turned me into a depressed and suicidal young girl.

After a year at Fairbridge, Larissa and I joined my mother and our elder sister Sofia at a migrant centre for a few months. Eventually Mum found a unit in Karawara, a small housing estate surrounded by a pine plantation, south of Perth, and we went to live there. Finally we were all together again—and it wasn’t long before our former way of life was resumed. Only this time it was worse. Sofia began to use drugs and my younger sister started to hurt herself. She would bang her head against the wall and punch herself black-and-blue. Because I was jealous of the fact that my mother loved Larissa but not me, I added to her injuries by beating her up. My mother would play emotional games with the two of us, turning us against each other at an early age. She would tell Larissa she mustn’t talk to me, often for days on end. If Larissa was caught disobeying her, she would be threatened and even locked in a room or cupboard as punishment. Poor Larissa! She suffered enormously because of the situation between my mother and myself. If I thought she was siding with my mother I would beat her, and if she disobeyed Mum then she would beat her. Larissa’s problems were complex. We were both victims of child abuse.

Larissa and I went to Koonawarra Primary School, in a nearby suburb. I was in Year 6 and Mrs Riberras was our teacher. I loved her. I felt close to her, and I thought that she cared about me as a mother would. I never had the courage to tell her about the abuse at home, but she made the daytime great. I used to steal cheap jewellery from shops to give to her. I wanted to please her all the time and I had a secret fantasy that she might adopt me, but of course it didn’t happen. It seemed that the harder I tried to gain love, the more rejected I became. About halfway through that first term, Mrs Riberras started to pay more attention to another girl, Susan, than she did to me, and I was so upset that I ran away. I turned up at home in the evening and my mother told me to get out and stay out. I screamed at her because Larissa was inside and I wanted to come in too, but Mum wouldn’t let me. She began to kick me, calling me a little cretin and a slut, and told me she hated me, that she had always hated me. Then she slammed the door in my face. I begged her to give me some food, but there was no response. There never seemed to be enough food at home.

I really couldn’t stand living with my mother. Her moods went up and down like an elevator. I think now that she should have sought counselling from a psychiatrist. Our family life was so unhappy. Every weekend I used to go away to friends’ places, and sometimes I’d stay with them on week nights as well. I was looking for substitute families who would make me feel wanted. Needless to say, my mother didn’t like this. Going to school was my greatest escape from unhappiness. I loved learning—I think I was just about the only kid who didn’t wag school regularly.

That night after my mother slammed the door in my face I went to our next-door neighbour and asked to use the toilet. In the bathroom I found a razor, then went off to a building site down the road. As I walked I cried without stopping. When I got there I sat down, ran the razor across my wrists and began to cut. For the first time in my life I felt in control…of the razor and of my life. Many of my confused feelings seem to pour out of me. I felt depressed, but I was in control. For years, ever since I was a tiny kid, even though my parents would beat and abuse me, I used to pretend that I was happy. Then, after my father left, I would fantasise that I had a loving mum. Now, as I cried and cut myself deeper, I felt powerful. I felt that I could control my emotions. When the blood started to run it seemed as though my pain was running out with it. But this didn’t last. I knew that if I cut too deep I could die, and I did not want to die. I always wanted to survive, even then.

Eventually I went home again, to receive a mouthful of insults. My mother told me she had put a curse on me. (She was very superstitious.) She had an African voodoo doll which she stuck pins into, and she told me I would feel pain in my body wherever she placed the next pin. I used to believe all the things she said. All she ever did was to bully me into submission. It seemed that everyone I had ever trusted had given me reason to fear them. Practically since the day I was born I had been emotionally, physically and sexually battered. I didn’t want this sort of life. It had left me without a shred of self-esteem, just self-hatred. I felt dirty and worthless, and there was a lot of anger hidden away inside me. I remember that on one occasion I saw a little boy about five years old on the building site. He was happy and smiling, and I knew he must have a family who loved him. I was so jealous that I beat him up and locked him in the builders’ toilets.

But I never showed my anger properly until I met Lewis, my first boyfriend. This was when I was about fourteen. Lewis went to my school and his family lived very close to us, only nine houses away. Lewis’s house became my home and his family became mine. We’d often hang out together till all hours of the night. I really enjoyed walking the streets with Lewis. He wasn’t the greatest looking boy, but he had a heart of gold. He had straw-coloured hair and deep blue eyes and he was my first true love.

Living in suburbia was boring for adolescents like us. Lewis and I formed a gang of all the local kids, and we’d spend the nights walking around the neighbourhood pelting cars with eggs and being generally destructive. To begin with I could never actually bring myself to throw an egg—I was too scared my mother would find out. She always seemed to know whenever I did anything wrong. (She told me she was a witch and could find out anything, and I used to believe her.) Then one night Lewis told me to have a go at the egg throwing, and I did. For the first time my anger really came out as I hurled one egg after another. I didn’t care if my mother found out and turned me into a voodoo zombie! I was in control now, I could express my feelings.

a ward of the state

In 1980 I discovered that my mother was privately plotting to have me made a ward of the state. At this time I had been going about with Lewis and the neighbourhood gang for about three months. When I came home from school one day, my mum accused me of burgling a neighbour’s house. She telephoned the police and sent me to my room. Two police officers arrived and she invited them in. She encouraged them to tell me that if I didn’t behave they would lock me up in prison, and they went along with this. I was scared, but I was also confused: here was my mother, who had abused me for years, pointing me out as a criminal—and the police wouldn’t even listen to what I had to say. While they were reprimanding me and making me feel like I was the criminal, I broke down. I grabbed a razor