A Mother's Story

by Rosie Batty

  At night, and perhaps sensing my disdain, he would borrow my computer and sit up into the small hours of the morning firing off job applications. He would come into my room, wake me up and tell me all about the general manager’s role he had just applied for with its $150,000 pay packet. And I would lie there staring at him, amazed that he could be so delusional. In all the years I had known him, he hadn’t managed to hold down a job for more than a couple of months, and even then they were pretty lowly positions. I couldn’t understand what made him think he would have even the slightest chance of landing a senior management role for which he had no demonstrable experience. But such was his sense of entitlement.

  At the same time, he worked hard to make sure I understood how inferior I was to him in every way. Nothing I ever did with Luke was right. I was, to his eyes, barely fit to call myself a mother, and with every day that passed, Luke was sliding backwards developmentally simply from being exposed to me. I used to brush it off as more ranting from a madman – but I was tired, I was alone and I was vulnerable. Like every new mother who had ever gone before me and would follow, I didn’t need convincing that I was not much good at this motherhood thing. No matter how hard I tried or how much I worked, I only ever felt like I was barely keeping my head above water.

  One afternoon, a friend of mine was having a party that I was determined to attend. Greg and I had been painting the bathroom together. As I left for the party, I told him to down tools, as I wanted to finish it in a certain way. Of course, when I returned, it was to discover he had ignored me and gone ahead and done it the way he thought it ought to be done. I was so angry, I grabbed a paint stirring stick and whacked him with it on his leg.

  Both of us were in shock. It wasn’t an especially hard whack, but I had been angry enough that it was done with real intent. I immediately started to apologise profusely, offering to take myself off to the police station to report the incident and admit fault. I was instinctively scared of how he might react: worried that he would retaliate with a show of force. But I was also terrified that he was going to use the incident against me. I wanted to neutralise its effect by owning it. I wanted, most of all, for it to never have happened.

  Greg looked at me with a malevolent smile and said that there was no point going to the police. Feigning magnanimity, he told me to forget about it.

  By the end of the month, the air was thick with tension. One morning he woke up in a really agitated state. I could hear him in his bedroom, muttering to himself. Suddenly, I heard a loud thud and shattering of glass. He had taken a framed photo of Luke and smashed it on the floor.

  I kept my distance, scared of further provoking him. I ventured out into the kitchen, trying hard not to make any noise. Greg came bursting out of his room. He bowled up to me in the kitchen and stood over me. I recoiled, drawing myself away, terrified at the sight of this enormous man bearing down on me. His face was red with rage, his eyes wild. He aimed six punches at my head – drawing his fist back at the last moment each time, before it made contact. I flinched in anticipation of a beating – whimpering in fear and confusion. With a groan of exasperation, he turned on his heel and stormed out of the kitchen.

  Sobbing, I raced into my bedroom, collected Luke and jumped straight into the car. Negotiating the road through a torrent of tears, I dropped Luke off at crèche before pulling up at the local shopping centre. For an hour, I wandered aimlessly about the shops, my mind racing. All I could think about was Ingrid Poulson, the woman who had been in the news recently after her estranged husband had murdered her two children and her father in the driveway of her home. Was that me? But Greg hadn’t physically assaulted me – or Luke, for that matter. Surely he never would? The thought of it alone was too chilling to dwell on.

  After what I felt had been plenty of time for Greg to have either cooled down or left, I returned home. As I approached the house, it became obvious Greg was still there, and I felt ill. I was returning to my home, my haven, which was inhabited by someone I didn’t want to be there but whom I didn’t know how to get rid of. I felt sickened and defeated at the realisation that Greg was becoming that presence in my life. He had just aimed six punches at my head for reasons I didn’t understand, and now I didn’t know what I was walking back into.

  I stepped across the threshold tentatively, listening out for any sound of Greg. I heard his voice coming from the living room. He was on the phone and I heard him tell the person at the other end of the line that I was an unfit mother and he was concerned for his son’s safety.

  Enraged, I burst in and demanded to know who he was talking to.

  ‘I’m talking to the police, Rosie,’ he said calmly, staring at me with indifference.

  I stormed across the room and grabbed the phone off him.

  ‘Who is this?’ I barked down the line.

  The constable on the other end of the phone identified himself.

  I looked at Greg, who was watching me with a self-satisfied grin. Whatever reaction he’d gotten from the policeman appeared to have emboldened him. I was suddenly scared again. I gripped the phone tightly, hanging on to it as if it were a lifeline.

  The policeman asked me to put Greg back on the phone.

  ‘Whether you think she is a fit mother or not, she sounds really scared of you,’ I heard him tell Greg. ‘I need you to pack your things and go.’

  It seemed to placate Greg for some reason, and he hung up the phone and made for his room, where he started packing his things. I immediately phoned my neighbour, Adrian, and asked him to pretend to call in, which he did. Greg wasn’t buying that for a second. He made some sneering comment about what a coincidence it was that Adrian had dropped by and walked casually out the door.

  As soon as he had gone, I knew that I was at a crisis point. I picked up the phone and called Relationships Australia. They had a counsellor available, so I hopped in the car and went straight away.

  My counsellor’s name was Nick, and he was gentle and kind. He listened politely as I recounted the morning’s events, then proceeded to contextualise them with accounts of previous instances of Greg’s threatening behaviour. I remember him asking if Greg was violent to me. I said, ‘Well, I don’t think so. I mean, he hasn’t actually hit me.’

  As I spoke, and as Nick sat and listened, punctuating my narrative with expert questions at crucial junctures, it began to dawn on me: maybe there was a name for what Greg had been subjecting me to. Maybe, moreover, I wasn’t alone. Maybe it fit a pattern and that pattern of abuse had been experienced by other women. And there was, oddly enough, a certain comfort in that. A kind of validation in the fact this was not a series of isolated incidents, but part of a wider whole – one part of a bigger picture of a problem that bedevilled society at large, not just my little corner of Menzies Creek.

  And gradually, as our meeting went on and my testimony became more frank, Nick started to slide a series of pamphlets across the table to me. Each flyer contained a description of the many forms domestic violence can take – physical, emotional, financial. A checklist of the ways men intimidate and control women. And as I read the list and performed a mental checklist, it was like a light going on: I was a victim of family violence. I was the one in three.

  As I walked out of Nick’s office, I felt at once empowered and overwhelmed. By coming to understand that Greg’s behaviour towards me constituted violence, I felt immediately stronger, as if by giving it a name I might better be able to manage it. But at the same time, I felt scared. If this was now my path, and that path had an already well-defined trajectory, did this mean I was destined to never escape the torment of Greg? Was my journey now to be that of every other woman debilitated by domestic violence? The thought was too depressing to dwell on.

  That day marked the beginning of the rebuilding of my self-esteem. It’s an important marker in the life of anyone who has suffered family violence to have someone explain the different types of violence that exist, for the terror you’ve suffered to be given a name, an
d to be assured, most importantly, that none of it is your fault. Family violence is a pernicious spiral. Because of the constant verbal abuse, you get worn down and become totally confused – your sense of self is completely eroded. And it takes a third party with experience in these matters to hold up a mirror and encourage you to look into it. I began to understand that it was no accident that Greg had come into my life – that he had targeted me precisely because I was physically isolated from friends and family and vulnerable because of it. Like a lion separating its prey from a fleeing herd, an abuser picks you off, isolates you from the safety of the group and moves in for the kill.

  A new cautiousness crept into my dealings with Greg. Through the prism of family violence, so much about the way he treated me became clearer. There was a pattern to his behaviour, a perverse method to it that I had written off as his idiosyncratic madness.

  Perhaps sensing my newfound determination – or perhaps out of dumb luck – Greg suddenly landed a job in sales with a transport company. It was enough of a steady income that he could also afford his own room in a furnished hostel in Caulfield. It was, he would casually tell me whenever he visited, the start of him rebuilding his life.

  After six months or so, it certainly seemed as if he had turned a corner. He remained employed – a feat in and of itself – and moved into his own apartment and bought a car. He even started to save money. I could well have done with some of it, but never dared ask, not wishing to rock the boat or place any undue pressure on him while he was re-establishing himself. It was the sleeping-dogs-lie principle. As long as he was preoccupied with getting his life back on track, he wasn’t crowding out mine – and that was good enough for me.

  Greg began to make noises about wanting to have Luke stay overnight with him. But Luke was not yet two years old and I wasn’t ready to be separated from him. I went to see a solicitor about my rights as a single mother. It transpired I didn’t really have any. As Luke’s father, I was told, Greg had every right to see his son. And until such time as I took my case to the Family Court, I had no legal right to deny him access. I resolved to try to sit down with Greg and a lawyer and mediate a more structured agreement, but in what would become a pattern, he did everything he could to avoid formalising an arrangement between us. It suited him for things to be fluid – that way he could come and go as he pleased, and I was just expected to accommodate him.

  One night, when Greg arrived back from crèche with Luke in his arms, I noticed Luke wasn’t wearing the jacket he’d been in when I sent him off to daycare. It was winter and already freezing.

  ‘Where’s his jacket?’ I asked Greg, mildly irritated. ‘I dropped him off in one this morning.’

  He ignored me as he walked into the house and deposited Luke in front of the television. The Wiggles were playing – Luke’s favourite show.

  ‘I’m serious, Greg,’ I repeated as he walked back towards the door. ‘Where’s Luke’s jacket? It’s too cold for him to be getting about without one.’

  Out of nowhere, Greg’s temper flared. He bent down and picked up Luke’s diecast ride-on car: a heavy play-vehicle weighing a good 20 kilos. I winced, unsure of where – or on whom – he was intending to bring it down. With a howl of frustration, he smashed it down on the stair railing with an almighty crash. Luke looked up from the television, his face frozen in horror. I rushed to his side instinctively, placing myself between him and Greg. Luke started to wail as his father fumed at the doorway.

  Greg strode across the floor and into the living room and grabbed me by the hair. He forced my head down, then pulled it back so I was brought face to face with him. Red-faced and raging, he leaned into my face and practically spat out the words, ‘If you ever stop me from seeing Luke, I will kill you and kill your animals.’ He pushed me down onto the ground, where I lay whimpering, then he stormed out the door. Next to me, Luke was wailing, his little face twisted in fear, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  The following morning I went straight to Dandenong Court House to apply for an intervention order (IVO). On the spot, the magistrate issued an interim order prohibiting Greg from coming near me. A court date was set for me to stand before a magistrate and explain why I needed a more permanent order.

  It was, in many respects, a watershed moment in my life. Raised in a household where encounters with the law – be it the police or courts – were rare to non-existent, it was a massive step for me to involve the police and justice system in what I had previously believed to be my little problem to manage. I had never been in court before; I had never been in trouble with the law. The workings of a police station and a courtroom were foreign to me. And I approached both institutions with a degree of humility, as if my problem would be a waste of their precious time.

  A week or two later, there was a knock on my door. I had friends over and opened the door to see a policeman standing there in full uniform. He explained Greg had taken out an IVO on me, and that he was here to serve the papers. I was dumbstruck. I went to court weeks later to discover Greg was planning to testify to a judge that I was the violent one and he needed protection from me. I couldn’t believe he would be so bold as to waste the court’s time like this. The magistrate set a date several months hence for Greg’s case to be heard, knowing full well that there was no evidence against me, that this was a nuisance claim and Greg would lose interest in pursuing it by the time the court date rolled around.

  I was eventually granted a one-year IVO by a magistrate at Dandenong Court. I stood before him, nervous as you like, and explained why I feared for my safety. The whole process took no more than ten minutes. The order prevented Greg from coming in or near me or my home. He still had access rights, as Luke’s father – for to change that meant a whole different process before the Family Court – but he would no longer be allowed to show up at my place unannounced. And because Greg had never shown even the vaguest of violent tendencies towards Luke, the IVO only named me as a protected person.

  It was, I foolishly thought, an important first step in finally establishing the long-overdue boundaries between Greg and me. No longer was I going to allow him to co-parent Luke as he had been doing. New babysitting arrangements would henceforth be launched, with Vi – who couldn’t have been more obliging – stepping in to pick up the slack left by Greg’s absence.

  It was a development that sent Greg apoplectic. He didn’t like people as a general rule, but he reserved special disdain for people who busied themselves with the care of his son. He hated the idea that anyone other than him would be looking after Luke – bringing influence to bear on the way he was reared and the prism through which he saw the world.

  Greg phoned one night – in breach of the IVO – to berate me about the new babysitting arrangement. I was at the crèche, helping to prepare for an upcoming fête, and Vi answered the phone. Greg proceeded to abuse her, calling her names and accusing her of unspeakable crimes against his son. She called me, and I phoned the police, who promptly reminded Greg he was in breach of the IVO. Not that he would have cared.

  After an access visit a week later, Greg phoned me to say that after he had collected Luke, he had noticed an ‘offensive smell’ about him, and demanded to know whether Vi had looked after him the previous night.

  Not long after, I received an official notice to submit to a paternity test. Greg had initiated the test to seek confirmation that Luke was in fact his son. It was another power game, another attempt to belittle and embarrass me. Another method by which to manipulate me, waste my time and exert control over me. But I was nothing if not resilient, and figured if the only way to mollify Greg was to wear him down with acquiescence, then that’s what I would do.

  So I freely gave of my blood and offered up Luke for testing too. The results came back indicating there was a 99.99 percent chance that Luke was Greg’s child. Of course, the great irony is that I would have given the world for it to be otherwise.

  11

  The Cycle

  With Greg working a
nd living in Caulfield, things between us began to calm down. But for the occasional abusive text or phone call, he honoured the terms of the IVO and kept his distance. He was still seeing Luke every weekend, collecting him on a Saturday morning and returning him on a Sunday afternoon.

  My grandmother had left a small amount of money for me in her estate, a modest financial windfall that I immediately invested in a state-of-the-art chicken coop. My country roots would flare every now and then, and I would be gripped by a new determination to reassert my farming credentials on the outskirts of suburban Melbourne, no matter how absurd that seemed.

  At least one person in the neighbourhood seemed to understand. He had been a farmer all his life and had that salt-of-the-earth quality that reminded me of the farmers I had grown up with in Laneham. He was really good with animals and was only too happy to share his skills with an amateur farmer like me, so he helped me build my chicken coop. He was really passionate about sustainable farming, a subject that interested me greatly. He was, to a large extent, an enlightened version of my dad, and I enjoyed his company enormously.

  As we spent more time together as friends, it became clear that a mutual interest was developing. I had more free time as Luke grew, and with Greg on something of an even keel, I wasn’t consumed with the task of managing him or otherwise remaining on permanent tenterhooks in anticipation of his next outburst. And so we began dating. It was nothing serious at first – my full-time job and parenting duties took up most of my waking hours. But when we were together it was easy, and I was reminded that relationships didn’t need to be hard.

  I didn’t mention my new friend to Greg, knowing it would only cause unnecessary stress in my life. It’s funny now that I think of it – it never occurred to me that Greg might be seeing someone else. Not that I would have cared. In fact, I would have welcomed someone else distracting him from harassing me. But I think, on reflection, I knew him well enough to know that he had devolved mentally to such a state of paranoia and introspection, there was no way he would trust someone enough to enter into a relationship with them. Which was, of course, to completely ignore the bigger elephant in Greg’s room, namely, that no woman in her right mind would go within ten feet of him.