My dad: Domestic Violence through the eyes of a child.

We left my dad when I was four. I didn’t know why – Mum really didn’t tell me. I knew she was sad and didn’t have a car or any money. We lived near my Nan and Grandad and that was good. I went to preschool and had friends over to stay, and sleepovers. My dad came to visit sometimes. That was fun, we all went out to dinner and Mum drove because he had some drinks, then he stayed but was still asleep when I went to school – he was cranky in the mornings. Mum said he was a ‘night person’. He’d be gone when I came home from school the next day. We’d talk to him everyday but he wanted to talk to mum mostly. He told me he loved me about a million times, but his eyes don’t smile.

For a while we went back to our area and I went to big school. We lived in one house, he lived in another, but he always came to our house. One night Mummy didn’t come home. Dad was there and he said she was in hospital – she’d had a fall. When we went to see her she didn’t look like her. She was in hospital for ages.

When she came home we went back to Nan ’s. Mummy couldn’t walk for a long time. Daddy used to ring up and tell me to beg her to come home. I told her, but we lived with Nan now, she said. She wouldn’t say much.

Sometimes I went to visit Dad, but I’d always be in trouble and I wanted my mum. I’d cry, but he wouldn’t let me ring her. Dad was always really fun for a little while, but then he got bored and felt angry to me. I was really happy when I got back home. Sometimes I’d tell Mum what happened, and she’d give me cuddles and say ‘Never mind, you look beautiful to me. If I got really mad she’d say ‘Hmmm, sometimes he can be a bit silly can’t he? Was it fun to see Grandma and Grandpa?’

That was more than eleven long years ago and there was a lot of negative stuff and a growing sense of rejection from that side of the family. He pretty much lost interest in me when he remarried and had another daughter. His wife didn’t like me. She was spiteful. When I visited he always said something that really hurt me. I think I just wanted him to be pleased to see me, to recognise the good things I’d done, to be my dad. I also have this drive to ‘be there for my little half sister’, if she needed me. I've never had a sister.

Dad often forgot birthdays and things, but there was one thing he never failed to do – not once, not one visit. He always remembered to put my mum down, and he always put me down. Like asking me what I wanted to become? I got as far as saying ‘well you know I love dancing’ and he scoffed ‘Oh don’t be ridiculous – you’re too fat to be a dancer!’. I WAS going to say I wanted a dance school, but to study Psychology at uni as my main job. I was a total reject.

Well, now he can’t call me fat. A good dose of bulimia fixed that, and my IBS. I dropped out of school. I stopped dancing. You know, even though I had danced since I was three, he’s never bothered to watch me. Not once; even though I gained a place at a special performance school for my dancing. That hurts a kid. Not good enough. It didn’t matter that Mum constantly supported me, accepted me, guided me and told me how beautiful and special I was. My own father didn’t. I was plagued with thoughts about what I could do to get his approval. I became depressed, suicidal.

All the way through it’s mum who has to pay and cope. Financially, legally, socially, heath etc and dealing with me – an adolescent at risk. I know he bashed her brutally now, but that’s really all I know. 

With all the Fatherhood debate raging at the moment, I want to say, as a child of a violent relationship, it’s not contact that makes a father. It’s the ability to look at what is good for the child, what nurtures it. It’s not saying things that are meant to hurt, and it’s not being disloyal and cruel about the child’s mother. It’s realising that children grow and change and taking part in assisting the best outcome for the child, not insisting on ‘my turn’. It is not about punishing the child as the only way left to harm the mother.

I never had to undergo sexual abuse from my father. God help the children who do. I nearly killed myself because I wasn’t good enough for my own father. He was never violent in front of me. He didn’t need to be – we all utterly obeyed him. A raised eyebrow was enough to let you know he was displeased. You just ‘knew’ what he could do. He felt immensely powerful.

I hope this helps explain what it’s like to be a child where an abuser is a parent. Courts are all kids have to protect them. Where there is violence by one of the parents, there’s a very good chance the children will live in fear, and, like me, struggle to be ‘a good enough person’.

Thanks, Kate 2004