Thought for today:
"I am often contacted by Facebook friends who inform me of their past abuse by family members and seek my advice that it urged me to amend a previous 'Thought for today' of mine many years ago. Please excuse its somewhat scary content. If there is anyone out there who is still living with this terrible experience, please seek help which begins by talking about it to a trustful source.
'Please someone, rescue me from my horrible life here. I want you to save me from my dad, to save me from what I have become; a little mummy in the night. Whenever I smile, it is only a brave face I put on. I don't want people to know that I am broken inside and have been made rotten. I'm fed up of dealing with this pain, of trying to understand why you don't love me like dads are supposed to love their little girls. Have I done something wrong to deserve this? I just want it out of this life now! I want it to stop! I fear the damage is already done and that I can never be normal again. Every night I dream that you have died and that I can sleep again without you coming into my room, into my bed, in me and inside my head. I wish that you were dead! I wish that I was dead!'
What a horrible train of thought to have to live with from one's childhood and through their adult life. However, no tale could scare me more than the true tale of 'J', whom I once knew and worked with. I had only been a Probation Officer in Huddersfield for five years when I started to work with 'J.' She was aged around thirty at the time and had a history of self mutilation and failed suicide attempts. She had been in a number of relationships with men, but they were always short term and either violent or emotionally destructive; with her often being the one to first act violently.
After approximately six months of weekly counselling sessions, it eventually partly emerged why 'J' was as she was. She essentially hated men and the cause of this hatred lay at the door of her father who had sexually abused her between the ages of six and sixteen' Just before her 16th birthday she ran away from home and was eventually placed in care for two years. From the age of nine years, the abuse by her father (which was reportedly two or three times weekly), involved full sexual intercourse, which her father explained was his way of 'loving her.' Her mother was often an in-patient of Storthes Hall Psychiatric Hospital and when she was at home she drank heavily; a situation which frequently led to her forgetting to take her proper medication. 'J' had no other siblings, which in many ways she considered a blessing in disguise. When she was twelve, her mother took an overdose and subsequently died. During the following two years 'J' said that her father made her 'a little mummy' in every way most nights of the week.
After six months of counselling with me, 'J' entered a six month group which I ran weekly for two hours at the Huddersfield Probation Office. This group was a highly successful group and by the end of a six-month period, its members had positively bonded and had started to open up to the group as a whole about their own personal problems. 'J' felt strong enough to tell the group about her father's abuse of her over so many years without fear of being rejected by them. Her story brought tears to the eyes of all present and was followed by a group hugging session.
The group was naturally supportive and empathetic. Some suggested she report it to the police and get him locked up even if the offences were up to twenty years old. One even suggested that she kill him or at least pay some hard guys to break his legs! All however (including me), were of one mind. We were all convinced that she should confront her father with what he had done and how his actions had harmed her! Until she confronted him with his abuse of her, it was agreed she would not be able to positively move on with her life.
Only at that moment did 'J' reveal that she couldn't confront her dad because he had died some years earlier. During our weekly counselling sessions prior to the group, she had never told me that her father had died and after having informed me of the abuse, she always refused to speak about her father whenever I mentioned him. She told the group that she didn't know where he was buried and didn't care! Under normal circumstances the story could be expected to end there, but it didn't.
During the following month, I discovered the burial site of 'J's' father and persuaded her to visit, accompanied by me and a few other group members 'J' had got close to. It had been agreed that one way or another, 'J' had carried too much anger inside her for so many years and until she expressed it, it would continue to eat her up and contaminate her life. While there, 'J' expressed her anger over her father's grave and told him everything she would have said had she been face-to-face with him. For nearly ten minutes she screamed, cursed and cried, and we cried with her as it started to rain. Although the offender was most certainly dead beneath that soil, his only daughter was definitely showing herself at long last to be more alive than I had ever seen her. Months later, after her Probation Order period was over, our contact ended and I never saw or heard of 'J' again. I think she must have left the Huddersfield area.
In the main, I consider myself to be a compassionate soul, but I must admit that the one type of offender who I could never comfortably work with or get to see 'outside their offence' in the twenty five years I served as a Probation Officer was the sexual abuser of sons, daughters and young children. I don't know where 'J' is today, but I hope that she has at last found some peace of mind. God bless her and all the other 'Js' in the world out there who fear the onset of bedtime approach." William Forde: June 15th, 2017.
"I am often contacted by Facebook friends who inform me of their past abuse by family members and seek my advice that it urged me to amend a previous 'Thought for today' of mine many years ago. Please excuse its somewhat scary content. If there is anyone out there who is still living with this terrible experience, please seek help which begins by talking about it to a trustful source.
'Please someone, rescue me from my horrible life here. I want you to save me from my dad, to save me from what I have become; a little mummy in the night. Whenever I smile, it is only a brave face I put on. I don't want people to know that I am broken inside and have been made rotten. I'm fed up of dealing with this pain, of trying to understand why you don't love me like dads are supposed to love their little girls. Have I done something wrong to deserve this? I just want it out of this life now! I want it to stop! I fear the damage is already done and that I can never be normal again. Every night I dream that you have died and that I can sleep again without you coming into my room, into my bed, in me and inside my head. I wish that you were dead! I wish that I was dead!'
What a horrible train of thought to have to live with from one's childhood and through their adult life. However, no tale could scare me more than the true tale of 'J', whom I once knew and worked with. I had only been a Probation Officer in Huddersfield for five years when I started to work with 'J.' She was aged around thirty at the time and had a history of self mutilation and failed suicide attempts. She had been in a number of relationships with men, but they were always short term and either violent or emotionally destructive; with her often being the one to first act violently.
After approximately six months of weekly counselling sessions, it eventually partly emerged why 'J' was as she was. She essentially hated men and the cause of this hatred lay at the door of her father who had sexually abused her between the ages of six and sixteen' Just before her 16th birthday she ran away from home and was eventually placed in care for two years. From the age of nine years, the abuse by her father (which was reportedly two or three times weekly), involved full sexual intercourse, which her father explained was his way of 'loving her.' Her mother was often an in-patient of Storthes Hall Psychiatric Hospital and when she was at home she drank heavily; a situation which frequently led to her forgetting to take her proper medication. 'J' had no other siblings, which in many ways she considered a blessing in disguise. When she was twelve, her mother took an overdose and subsequently died. During the following two years 'J' said that her father made her 'a little mummy' in every way most nights of the week.
After six months of counselling with me, 'J' entered a six month group which I ran weekly for two hours at the Huddersfield Probation Office. This group was a highly successful group and by the end of a six-month period, its members had positively bonded and had started to open up to the group as a whole about their own personal problems. 'J' felt strong enough to tell the group about her father's abuse of her over so many years without fear of being rejected by them. Her story brought tears to the eyes of all present and was followed by a group hugging session.
The group was naturally supportive and empathetic. Some suggested she report it to the police and get him locked up even if the offences were up to twenty years old. One even suggested that she kill him or at least pay some hard guys to break his legs! All however (including me), were of one mind. We were all convinced that she should confront her father with what he had done and how his actions had harmed her! Until she confronted him with his abuse of her, it was agreed she would not be able to positively move on with her life.
Only at that moment did 'J' reveal that she couldn't confront her dad because he had died some years earlier. During our weekly counselling sessions prior to the group, she had never told me that her father had died and after having informed me of the abuse, she always refused to speak about her father whenever I mentioned him. She told the group that she didn't know where he was buried and didn't care! Under normal circumstances the story could be expected to end there, but it didn't.
During the following month, I discovered the burial site of 'J's' father and persuaded her to visit, accompanied by me and a few other group members 'J' had got close to. It had been agreed that one way or another, 'J' had carried too much anger inside her for so many years and until she expressed it, it would continue to eat her up and contaminate her life. While there, 'J' expressed her anger over her father's grave and told him everything she would have said had she been face-to-face with him. For nearly ten minutes she screamed, cursed and cried, and we cried with her as it started to rain. Although the offender was most certainly dead beneath that soil, his only daughter was definitely showing herself at long last to be more alive than I had ever seen her. Months later, after her Probation Order period was over, our contact ended and I never saw or heard of 'J' again. I think she must have left the Huddersfield area.
In the main, I consider myself to be a compassionate soul, but I must admit that the one type of offender who I could never comfortably work with or get to see 'outside their offence' in the twenty five years I served as a Probation Officer was the sexual abuser of sons, daughters and young children. I don't know where 'J' is today, but I hope that she has at last found some peace of mind. God bless her and all the other 'Js' in the world out there who fear the onset of bedtime approach." William Forde: June 15th, 2017.
