One family's history of violence

It’s a “national tragedy”, a “dirty secret”, an “outrage”. But within the hyperbole surrounding the issue of domestic violence in our country are countless stories of individuals and families who have felt its impact first-hand.

My own family has such a story – but we’re ‘lucky ones’, who ‘got away’. My sister and I escaped the cycle of violence when our parents made a conscious choice not to raise us within the culture of violence in which much of Dad’s childhood was steeped.

I grew up knowing about the psychological and physical violence inflicted on his mother, first and foremost, but also his younger half-brother and him by his stepfather. But I always had the sense that Dad had stored the details of it away in a tightly-sealed box – and while this was at odds with his natural tendency to articulate (everything from the philosophy of Bob Dylan to the finer points of his digestion), I knew enough to know that there was a lot of pain that Dad simply preferred not to revisit.

In 2013, police launched more than 95,000 investigations into family violence – an average of 260 investigations a day. Listen to more on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report. 

Then, one Sunday, Dad took a tight corner on a rural Hawke’s Bay road a few kilometres an hour too fast on his motorbike. He ended up in an induced coma, followed by months of rehabilitation.

The dark joke in our family is that the accident knocked about his brain and sifted his “issues” to the top – that, or the cocktail of pain relief drugs. Either way, at some point during the early stages of his recovery, Dad decided to write down some of his thoughts and memories in a ‘memoir’ to be shared with family and close friends.

The lid was well and truly prised off whatever internal storage unit he’d shut his memories of childhood in, and our family was thrown into a unique period of self-reflection.

In amongst stories of childhood friends, adolescent antics and terrible haircuts, Dad tells of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his stepfather – “The sheer whirlwind of violence that this guy could whip up still blows my mind” – that today, as a husband and father, he still can’t comprehend.

“It is an evil that lives behind closed doors and smiling pretence … The 24-hour fear and uncertainty that my and many other mothers have faced when trapped in relationships with men like [my stepfather] is very real.”

As I keep turning the pages, a scared and uncomprehending kid emerges. A kid who could have easily turned to the example of his stepfather, as Dad acknowledges.

“If intervention or the offer of refuge is not on hand, the future for these controlled woman and their children is very predictable and sadly… leaping forward, we are bound see the son as the father and another family given to dysfunction… a spiritless vortex.”

But Dad broke the cycle. How?

As any number of agencies and campaigns have pointed out, the trauma inflicted in the home is the trauma inflicted on all of society – in crime, drug and alcohol abuse, self-harm, poor education outcomes, the prominence of gangs.  Nearly all of the above were true for my dad.

“I ended up … numbing the whole deal with … any substance I could carry myself toward defeat with until finally... I called home for help.”

And there it was – one of the key differences between him and the victims of abuse who perpetuated the cycle. He had a home to call for help; people to provide him with alternatives.

My dad had choices, and that fact had the most impact on the outcome of our family’s story. He was able to access a network of people who provided structure and support. He had employers who saw past the blemishes on his record to see someone with the capacity to succeed.  He had sports coaches who encouraged his talent.  He saw men he looked up to showing women respect. He had a Mum who took action and left his stepfather in a bid to give her sons with an alternative life. He met and married a woman who lives by kindness as a maxim.

These people showed Dad a path reinforced by strong, respectful family bonds – and made such an impression that he has tried reconciling with his stepfather twice.

When I was a teenager, Dad travelled to Australia to visit his stepfather, who was unwell and had attempted to reconnect. He even accepted gifts from him on behalf of my sister and me, and impressed to me when he called home how important it was that we say thank you.

As I waited for the man whose historic crimes I’d heard so much about, who could have had so huge an impact on my own life, to come to the phone, I realised – the ripples of domestic violence had finally reached me.

I recoiled from his voice, and struggled to swallow my thinly-disguised spite. How dare he insinuate himself into our happy family, which he could well have jeopardised with his actions years before? What kind of delusion was this person living under?

I hung onto those feelings of injustice and anger for many years. Then Dad’s stepfather died after a stroke, and my grandmother’s first response was to express hope that he had not been alone.

My sense of quiet triumph that a dark spot on our family history had finally been erased was quickly put paid to. I was ashamed. My grandmother had borne the brunt of his violence, as well as years of emotional trauma after she left him, and her first reaction was one of compassion.

Her strength blew me away.

I was politicised. I was righteous. I had spent nearly two years volunteering on the ‘frontlines’ of the ‘dirty secret’ with Women’s Refuge. I had no idea that resilience was not necessarily anger, that there is strength in communication and in attempting to show understanding.

And there was another piece of my family puzzle – dialogue. Empathy. At the very least attempting forgiveness, in the interests of moving on.

Dad uses words like ‘shell shock’ to describe how the abuse he suffered affected him. Kids coming out the other side of domestic violence like he did have to reacclimatise to a world that may bear no resemblance to their previous experiences. But showing empathy to the perpetrators as well as the victims of abuse, as my grandmother did, can ease that transition – and even, on a big enough scale, perhaps break the cycle for good.

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