Trapped no more: Life after child abuse

April 2018

It was mid-summer, so everything was humid and unpleasant unless the air conditioning was running on full blast. Luna, a young girl of about five-years-old, had recently moved into her new house in Georgetown, Ontario. It was 2002, and they had been there for only two years. She was a dysfunctional, scatter-brained kid, always seeming to forget things after she’d left them in places.

Luna was in her playroom and had brought a glass of milk with her. She busied herself with playing with her toys and forgot about it on the TV stand in the corner of the room. A week later when her father found the milk, which had curdled, he got angry. He dragged her into the playroom to clean it up.

“He was yellin’ at me. I don’t remember what he said, but I remember he showed me the milk and I reeled backwards. Then he pretty much almost tried to make me drink it. If it weren’t for my mom coming up the stairs at pretty much that exact moment, with my dad’s hand on the back of my head, shoving my face into this glass of curdled milk and telling him, “What the fuck are you doing?”, he probably would have made me drink it.”

That was Luna. Her recollection of what happened was crystal clear in her mind’s eye. She did not forget the first time her own father abused her, even after all these years. As I got to know her, I realized she would never forget.

In Canada, family violence is not reported to authorities as frequently as other societal issues. Many people suffer in silence at the hands of their abusers because fear stops them from voicing their pain.

Police-reported data from the Canadian Department of Justice showed that there were about 99,000 victims of family violence in Canada in 2010 who reported incidents. The data account for one-quarter of the number of victims of police-reported violent crime. Forty-nine per cent of the reported crimes were spousal and ex-spousal violence victims, while the other 51 per cent were children, siblings or extended family members.

According to the Canadian Department of Justice, “Many experts suggest the amount of family violence may be much higher than these figures show. Surveys, studies and police reports do not capture all cases of violence and abuse. Research has shown that many abuse victims do not — or cannot — report their abuse to the police.”

Finding Luna was not how I expected things to happen. It was sudden, as we glanced over at each other in line waiting for coffee in a Tim Hortons on Humber Lakeshore campus. We struck up a casual conversation about the weather. Cloudy, but not so much so that rain would fall.

At first, I was not sure how to ask about her life. Luna seemed closed off, unwilling to open up about herself. But I asked anyway, the worst I could get was a disgruntled look and a middle finger thrown up at me. Surprisingly, she said yes. I was taken aback, but the look in her eyes made me realize she wanted to tell her story. She wanted to be heard.

After Luna turned 12, her family life began to crumble further. Her father whipped an empty Lysol bottle at her head after she did not hear him say to put the garbage near the garage door. Her mother was out, so they were home alone.

“All I remember is seeing his hand go back with the Lysol bottle in it, and then all of a sudden it’s forward, and hearing the whoosh past my ear and then it hitting the column behind me. I don’t know if I dodged. I mean, I feel like I dodged, but it was one of those surreal moments where I don’t think I moved. And if I had dodged left, it probably would have hit me square in my forehead,” she said.

In 2015, police-reported data from Statistics Canada showed that children and youth under the age of 18 represented 16 per cent of violent crime victims in Canada. Out of that number, 30 per cent were from family violence caused by parents, siblings, extended family members or spouses, and 59 per cent were female.

May Lui, Training and Resource Coordinator for the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH), coordinates the training programs that assist people who work in shelters that help women who have been abused. “When you turn 16 you get some rights, not quite adult rights, but under 16 I think you don’t have the right to make those decisions, so if you leave, the state has the right to return you to the home. Or they’re taken into foster care or protective care,” she said in a phone interview.

Lui has worked on the front lines, helping women get the support they need when they come to the shelters to seek refuge from their abusers. “Some women leave two or three times before they leave for good. Some leave after one incident. Women are from a very diverse set of backgrounds by the time they end up in a shelter,” Lui said.

Lui explained that it is important to remember that the shelters have no way of knowing what percentage of abused women end up in the shelters because there is a lot of stigma surrounding the idea of going to a shelter or seeking any help to stop the abuse.

Luna’s mother did not go to a shelter for help. Instead, she lived with some friends before she moved in permanently with one friend who is now her partner. Luna also never went to a shelter. She lived with her father until she could move in with her mother and her mother’s partner.

Luna never left home. She was afraid of what her father would do to her. She was also scared for her mother, Dawn, who was also abused. The night that Dawn left, she was arguing with her husband, Stuart, Luna’s father, about him cheating. At the time, Luna did not know that Dawn and Stuart were in an open relationship.

“I wanted to make him happy, my husband happy, so I said okay,” Dawn said, remembering that night. She never thought it would lead to that. For her, marriage was to be between two people.

When Dawn and Stuart had gotten married, Stuart had expressed that he wanted to keep the marriage open, meaning that he could have sex with other women, but only with Dawn’s consent. He also said that Dawn could bring any woman home, but not any men because it was threatening to his manhood. Stuart did not have Dawn’s consent for the woman who was calling that night.

“I heard the phone ring. Turns out it was my dad’s mistress. The voices started to get louder. The first thought through my head, which I’ve never even told the police, or most people, was, ‘Oh my god, did he get her pregnant?’ I just knew something was wrong,” Luna remembers.

“I was so afraid. I didn’t want to open my bedroom door. Next thing I know, I hear a BANG from downstairs. ‘No get off me! Get off me!’ It was my mom screaming. Part of me was like ‘I gotta go downstairs.’ The other part of me is saying, ‘Oh god no don’t go. He’s gonna hit you. If you go, he’ll turn on you,’” Luna said. She clarified that the BANG was from her mother falling on the floor, not a gunshot.

Luna remembers her mother coming into her room a little while after the argument and being told to pack a bag because they were leaving. Dawn had decided to take Luna and leave, but the police had already arrived at the front door. Dawn said that Stuart had spun the story in his favour and had made sure to get her arrested for domestic assault. This was in September of 2011.

“By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, I saw a police officer on the other side of the door, and I screamed as loud as I possibly could at the time, ‘Dad you son of a bitch you ruined my life!’ Police officer came in and told me to go to my room,” Luna said.

Dawn was arrested and kept behind bars at the police station overnight. She was released the next morning on her own recognizance, but with bail. “I lost my mom that night,” Luna remembers. She thought she would never see her mother again because her mother was forced out of her home and not allowed to return after she was arrested.

A week later, Dawn had a large handprint on one side of her face from her husband hitting her. The bruise was red and purple and covered her entire cheek.

After the night of the argument, Luna lived with Stuart for a while. She had just started high school. Dawn never went back. She moved around, staying on couches for short periods, and then finally settled into her friend and now partner, Janet’s home.

Luna and Dawn had visitations to see each other every Wednesday and every other weekend. On one of those visits, Luna remembers crying to her mother, saying, ‘You know mom? I wanna die. I don’t wanna be here anymore. I don’t wanna go through this. This hurts.’

According to a 2016 report done by Kids Help Phone, 22 per cent of teenagers experience suicidal thoughts. Eleven per cent of teens suffer from violence at home or school.

A week after the argument and Dawn’s arrest, Luna was interviewed by a detective on the case. Stuart was almost detained after he tried to force his way into Luna’s interview with the detective. He also threatened that Children’s Aid would get involved and have Luna removed from the family, never to see her parents and grandparents again if she told the truth about what her father was doing to her, Luna explained.

“I’m terrified of my dad and what he’ll do to me,” Luna said, sobbing.

At one point, Luna lost track of her mother because her mother was moving from couch to couch trying to find a place to live after she was arrested. Luna began writing handwritten letters to her mother, hoping to release unspoken fears off her chest. This was back in 2012. One of the letters, dated February 18, 2012, said, ‘Honestly I’m not sure whether I should be scared of what father is doing or what he will do.’

Another letter dated April 23, 2012, said, ‘PLEASE get me the hell out of this house!! I can’t stand dad and his whore! He threw fuckin’ scissors across the kitchen because I wasn’t going to put my hair up for cadets using a sock bun. He got all upset and says, “I don’t care about you anymore. Get walking.” The fucker threw the Lysol bottle at my head. I honestly can’t fucking stand another minute of this!! NOT ONE FUCKING MINUTE!!!!’

“I don’t know who that was. I don’t know who that person is,” Luna said when showing me the letters. “I know it’s my handwriting. I know I wrote those letters, but I don’t know who that is. It’s terrifying how much I changed.” Luna wiped tears from her reddened cheeks with a tissue.

Luna’s letters were written over a period of six months, until she was finally able to move in with her mother in Toronto, in July of 2012. Luna was turning 15 and had started her second year of high school by then. The court date for Dawn’s assault case was in December of 2012. Dawn filed for divorce from Stuart soon after. The divorce was not finalized until December of 2017.

After battling with depression and anxiety for many years due to her father’s abuse, Luna attended therapy in early 2012 and 2013. Luna said she went to her sessions on and off for about a year because the first time her father took her out of therapy was because she told her therapist the truth about what her father was doing to her. The second time was because there were not enough funds to keep sending her to therapy, as well as her father’s insurance ran out. Luna also told me that she has not been able to return to treatment since then, due to lack of finances.

Under the Child and Family Services Act provided by Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, anyone who suspects any harm being done to children must report it to authorities. One stipulation in the Act that applies to Luna’s situation is one in which a person has the right to state their suspicion to authorities regarding child emotional harm. It reads, “There is a risk that the child is likely to suffer emotional harm of the kind, resulting from the actions, failure to act or pattern of neglect on the part of the child’s parent or the person having charge of the child.”

Luna believes her father did not want her going to therapy because if she told her therapist about the abuse, he would lose his job, get arrested and thrown in jail. He also would not be able to control her and abuse her. “He was afraid he’d get caught,” Luna said.

Throughout her father’s abuse, Luna was also verbally disowned three times by him. Although her father never acted on the threat, he never filed the legal papers, but Luna still took it personally. “I’ve learned how to be strong on my own,” she said. Dawn has also started to come to terms with the abuse and the divorce. “I’ve just started to get over it now,” Dawn said. “It’s tough stuff to deal with.”

Luna’s father was and still is a paramedic in Ontario. He has worked to save lives and respond to emergency calls for over 20 years. Due to the amount of time he has spent responding to emergencies, Luna believes that he did and still does experience untreated trauma. Luna said that since he was never diagnosed or treated for his trauma, his coping skills are to “take it out on his wife and daughter.”

Luna is now 20-years-old and attends Humber College. She will be graduating this year from the Criminal Investigations program. She also still lives in Toronto with her mother and her mother’s partner Janet.

“I was trapped, and I never want to be like that again,” Luna said.

*Disclosure: Some names have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.*