by Lily O'Brien
As time went on, my children grew up, and I tried to keep my past and my family’s past a secret from them, as I did not want them to find out about all the abuse I had been through. I knew I had to keep my children away from my family for as long as possible, as they would have told my children terrible stories about me and my past before they were old enough to understand; and I did a pretty good job of it. I even found the time to go back to Ireland for a few days to see my dad and I took one of my kids with me; we had a wonderful time and no one said a thing about my past while I was there.
Then, about a year later, when everything was going just right again, the phone rang and one of my sisters said that daddy was dead. She said that the police in Ireland had rung her and they told her they had found him on the beach dead and it looked like he had died from a head injury. I said ok, put the phone down and headed over to my sister’s to be with the rest of my family. The next day, we arranged to travel back to Ireland and within a couple of hours we all boarded a plane and headed off.
But the moment we arrived at the airport in Ireland, our mother walked off and she went straight to our father’s solicitors, she told them that she was his wife and that she was entitled to everything that had belonged to him. She then went off and stayed with some friend of hers, leaving the rest of us to arrange everything. The next day, we began the arrangements for our dad’s funeral; and at lunchtime, the solicitor contacted us and he told us that our father had left everything to us, his children. Then he said that our mother was not entitled to a single thing, as her name was not in the will; but he said that she was contesting the will and it was up to us whether she would get anything.
I hated her. I hated her for giving me up when I was little and I hated her for this now, and she was an evil bitch and she always will be. She had left our father over thirty years ago and now that he was dead and he had left us some money she wanted to be his wife again; and because they had never divorced each other, the solicitor said that she was legally still his wife and probably entitled to everything he had. The solicitor also said that we had a choice of either giving her half of everything or she was going to take the lot of us to court and then she would take everything and leave us with nothing. We thought for a while and then we decided that she could have half of everything he left us.
However, before she got her hands on the money, the solicitor said that we could spend as much money as we liked on his funeral and she could not stop us as it was in the will. So we did and we spent thousands of pounds on flowers and thousands on the best coffin we could get; and we could see that it was making our mother sick, she was fuming and she even came up to us and asked us why we were spending so much money on a dead man. We told her that he was our daddy and we loved him and we always will. She looked disgusted with us and she walked away grinding her teeth together, as we carried on spending the money on the best of everything for him.
Then when it was all over, we all went to the solicitor’s and in front of us he gave our mother a cheque for over twenty thousand pounds, and the rest of us got almost two thousand pounds each. Her mouth dropped open with shock and she looked disappointed at the amount printed on the cheque; then without saying a word to any of us, she marched out of the solicitor’s office, got back on a plane and went back to London, leaving us to deal with his relatives and his friends. She had taken half of the money our father had left us and she never once thought a thing of it or of us or our feelings; she was only interested in how much money she could get out of the solicitor’s, to spend on our stepbrothers and Jim.
Before we left, the police told us that we would have to come back to Ireland for the coroner’s report, but they said they had a good idea of what had happened and how he died. They said that he had been walking along the sandy beach in the early hours of the morning, when he wandered off into the sandy mud and he became stuck in what must have felt like quicksand to him; and because he was old, he was unable to get himself free. Then the tide came in and he drowned, and he hit his head on the rocks lying around the beach, and it had been all over in around 10 minutes.
However, we knew that daddy had been walking the same beach day after day all of his life and it was no accident. We said thanks and then we went back to London; and a few weeks later, we all returned to Ireland for the report, and we were told the same story at his inquest. We left Ireland and I never went back to visit daddy again. My mother never even went to the inquest.
CHAPTER 13
Living Through It All Again
A few more years passed and the only problem I had was that I was still taking far too many tablets to keep my mind relaxed and to stop me from thinking back to when I was a child. The tablets were becoming less effective on me, and every year I had to take stronger and stronger tablets for them to have the same effect on my mind; and I was drinking a lot of alcohol to help me forget everything.
Then, one day, one of my sisters said that she had seen an article in a local newspaper relating to Irish children who grew up in the institutions back in Ireland. The article mentioned that a panel of people, were being put together to deal with child abuse claims against the church and its followers, who ran the institutions on behalf of the church; and anyone wanting to file a claim against them was invited to do so.
It sounded interesting, so later that day I spoke to Tony about the article and I asked him what he thought I should do. He said that if I felt like I could cope with talking to strangers about what went on back in Ireland, then I should give it a shot. But if talking about my past became too stressful for me to cope with, then I should not continue with it. Ok, I made up my mind and I contacted the panel of people at the address printed in the paper; and a few days later, they sent me a questionnaire form that I had to fill in and send back to them, so that my claim could be scrutinised by them. Then if they felt that I had a case against the church, they would contact me again and then advise me on what steps I should take next.
And a few weeks after I had sent the form off, they contacted me again. First, they said that I had to get a solicitor to represent me and they said that I had to go and see a specialist in the field of child abuse and psychology, so they could assess me and compile reports on my behaviour and mentality. I agreed and I did everything they asked me to do; and six months later, they sent me an appointment to attend a meeting at the Priory hospital in London.
But before I attended the meeting, my solicitor asked me to make a statement for her, explaining everything I could remember about my nine-year stay at the institution run by the nuns. I said ok; and by the time I had finished telling my story to my solicitor, she was in tears. She said that she had never heard anything like it before and she asked me if I could go home and put it all down on paper for her in my own words. So that she could present it to the panel of people who were going to judge me, and when the time came for them to cross-examine me she would be familiar with my story, and she could tell them that I was not lying about everything I told them. I said ok, and I went home and began putting my memories of Ireland onto paper.
I had to go back to the solicitor’s many more times before the enquiry ended and because the process took such a long time. My solicitor and the panel of people, who were representing the government and church back in Ireland, suggested that I have counselling for the duration of the enquiry; they said that it was to help me cope with the trauma of having to go through all my bad memories again, and they told me whom I should go and see.
However, after about six months of going to see the counsellor, I began to feel worse and I had to stop going to see her. The counselling sessions had a negative effect on me and I hated going to it; plus the only person really getting anything out of it was the counsellor, as she was getting £140 an hour just for letting me sit in a chair in her office, while she just looked at me from behind her huge wooden desk. She would hardly speak to me and I spent most of the time just looking at the clock on the wall behind her, wishing for the time to go fa
st; and when the session was over, she would just say thanks and I would leave the room and go home.
However, within a couple of weeks of me stopping the sessions, I began to feel better and I never went back to see her again. Anyway, not only was she representing me and my solicitor, she was also working with the panel of people back in Ireland; and somewhere down the line, I think they were all connected to the compensation money set aside by the church and they were all making a fortune out of it. Soon afterwards, I received a phone call from my solicitor and she told me that my claim had been accepted. Then my solicitor and I waited and it took another two and a half years before the panel of people said that they were ready to look at my case.
And a couple of months later, my solicitor told me that the panel of people had made a decision and they did not want to see or speak to me at all, they only wanted the solicitor to attend the hearing without me. The solicitor said that my case against the church was so strong that the panel of people probably thought they had a better case against me and they could offer me less money if I did not attend the hearing. My solicitor also said that it was their right to refuse my request to attend the hearing, as they were the ones that had written some of the rulebook relating to the compensation scheme and they did not have to report to anyone but themselves. Even the police had no say in what was going on, as they were set up and run by the government and church; and they held all the financial strings of the church’s purse and everything they did was behind closed doors.
The day eventually came for my solicitor to represent me in Ireland; and when the hearing was all over, they gave me a short time period to either accept their offer of compensation or to refuse it. And if I refused the offer, then the same panel of people who gave me the first offer would look over my claim again and then if they thought the amount of compensation was not correct, they could either reduce the amount offered to me or offer me a higher amount. The problem was that the same panel of people, were also representing the church and making the decisions about the amount of compensation awarded to the victims.
And for that reason, my solicitor advised me to take the first offer, as the second would probably be of a lower amount than the first; and if I refused the second offer, then they would not give me a single penny and my case would be closed. She said that she was sorry, but she had felt very intimidated by the people at the hearing, and really we did not stand a chance against them and we were at their mercy. So I said ok and I signed on the dotted line.
And a few weeks later, I was sent a cheque in euros that was probably only an eighth of the amount that I would have gotten if I had taken the church to court. I even lost a lot of money changing the cheque from euros into pounds and I think they did that on purpose just so they could have the last say in the whole matter. However, if I had taken the church to court, then I would probably have got nothing at all from them, as they are answerable to no one but themselves.
Moreover, the panel of people knew they were for most people their only hope of ever getting a penny out of the church, for all the abuse they had suffered. Plus they knew that most of the people claiming compensation would be easily tempted by the small amounts of compensation offered to them, as to them the amount offered was more than they had and would ever see in their entire lifetime. It was easy for the panel of people to take advantage of the situation and they used it to their advantage.
Once I got the money, I only spent a very small amount to pay off a few bills and I kept the rest in the bank for a year, while I decided what to do with it. If everything had been left to me, then I would probably have spent all the money in the first year. But Tony was better with money than I was and he said that it was better for me to leave the money in the bank for a while and for me to forget all about it, while he worked out the best options for me.
Then, after eleven months, we made the decision to buy a house with the money; and for the next few months, Tony searched the whole country for me, using the internet, and he found that the only place that I could afford a house was in Wales. He said that he had found a few houses for me to look at, but I felt a bit confused about the whole thing so I left it all to him. I had never been to Wales, the only time that I had seen the place was when I travelled through it on the train from Ireland to London and back again, and I knew nothing about the place. I said ok and I left him to get on with it.
But he had no transport to go looking at the houses, so he went to a motorcycle showroom and, on his 44th birthday, he bought himself a new Harley Davidson; and he never used a single penny of the compensation to pay for it. Instead, he signed an agreement to pay the amount off each month for the next five years and the money came out of his wages. And once he got the bike, off he went to look at houses for me and he spent months riding up and down the M4 motorway, looking at crap. I had been given such a small amount of compensation that it was beginning to look like I would never be able to find a house for the small amount of money I had; and for a while, we gave up looking.
After several months, Tony decided to try again, so he went back onto the internet and he tried again; and this time, he got some details about a few houses that were up for auction, so he got back on his motorcycle and he headed up the M4 motorway again. This time, it began to rain and it never stopped, it was going to be a 500-mile round trip to where the houses were and back again, and it was going to take the whole day.
About half an hour into the journey, the rain became a full-blown storm, but he continued on; however, it never stopped raining. He eventually crossed the Bristol Channel and he continued riding into Wales; but after 200 miles, he had to stop. It was still raining and he was freezing cold, so he pulled off the motorway and he headed into a small town. He had no idea what he was looking for, but he needed a rest, so he pulled up in what looked like the high street and he got off his bike and looked around. Nothing but rain, no people, just freezing rain. So he decided to get back on his bike; but as he turned around, he noticed an estate agent’s on the corner of the street. The windows were all steamed up with condensation, but the lights inside were on, so he walked across the road and he pushed the door open and walked inside; and there were four estate agents, all sitting at their desks doing nothing.
He took off his crash helmet and he asked them if they had any houses for sale in his price range and one of them said yes, just one, and the person walked into the back of the office. And within seconds, he came out of the back office with a tatty sheet of paper that had a photo and some details about a house on it, and he handed it to Tony. Tony said thanks, but his hands were soaking wet and the ink on the sheet of paper began to run, so he stuck the sheet of paper into his pocket and he left the shop; then he got back on his bike, he headed back to the M4 motorway and he continued on his journey.
The weather got worse and fog began to cover the entire motorway, so he decided to stop again; he had been sitting on the bike for over four hours and the weather conditions had become unbearable, so he decided to give up and he left the motorway at the next exit. But there was nowhere for him to turn around and the fog got so bad that after a while he got lost, so he decided to pull over and have a rest by the side of the road.
He pulled up at the first junction he came to and looked for a place to stop; but as he pulled up by the side of the road, he seemed to recognise the road sign in front of him. But he had never been there before, so he pulled his gloves off and he took the piece of paper out of his pocket. The paper was soaking wet and it was falling to bits, but he could still make out the name of one of the roads on the piece of paper and the name was the same as the road he had stopped at. That’s strange, he thought to himself, so he decided to go and look for the house on the paper, but the ink on the paper had run even more and almost all of the address had vanished and all that was left was the picture of the house and nothing more. He knew that he was on the right road, so how hard could it be to find the house, he thought.
And off he went, but the road went
on for miles and miles and he went past village after village, but none of them looked or felt right. He soon found himself riding along a valley road and, as he rode up into the hills, it began to get misty and foggy and he had to slow down to almost a walking pace. It was still raining and he could only see a few feet in front of the bike and the conditions got so bad that he had to ride the bike onto a grass verge to let some cars go past him, as he was holding them up; and then he decided to stop, as the visibility continued to get worse.
He was now exhausted, so he decided to give up and head back to London; he switched the engine off and he got off the bike and looked around and all he could see was mist and fog; he knew he was in the middle of a valley, but he could see nothing. Then, as he walked back towards the bike and as he turned the key, the mist began to clear and he found himself standing at the corner of the street that the house stood on. He had now travelled eight miles along a valley road, not knowing where he was heading, and he had stopped because he had to and not because he wanted to and he was exactly where he wanted to be.
He got back on the bike, but it was still foggy and he could hardly see a thing as he rode along looking up at all the houses; and as he caught glimpses of them through the fog, they all looked the same and something just didn’t feel right. Then he found himself a split in the road, so he decided to ride up a steep hill; and as he turned the corner at the top of the hill, he was facing the front door of the house. He pulled the front brake and his whole body tingled as he stopped outside the house; he looked around and it was as if fate had brought him straight to the front door. And the house was just what I had been dreaming about for most of my life. A house surrounded by trees, fields and countryside, in every direction you looked.
