In the past I have written some difficult and even very personal articles for Yorkshire Bylines. This one, is different. It a story that has been 21 years in the making and one that I have started and then decided not to pursue on many occasions. So I’ll start by giving some trigger warnings that this article deals with issues of death and sexual assault.
After losing a parent
My dad died with a heart attack when he was just 55, as we were sat as a family one Sunday at Headingley cricket ground. We went most Sundays both home and away watching Yorkshire play. We knew that he had heart problems, but it was still a massive shock when it happened. I suppose that if it has to happen, then to have that fatal attack whilst doing something you loved is the way that most people would choose. For me though, it left a long list of things that I wanted to say to him and wouldn’t have the chance to.
When my mum died some 14 years later it was very different. Knowing that she was suffering from ovarian cancer and dementia I had taken redundancy which allowed me to nurse her over the last seven months of her life. As anyone who has cared for family in such circumstances will know, it is not always easy. It does though give you a privileged position; it allowed me to be there for her over that very difficult time during which we talked about anything and everything. When she eventually died peacefully one evening, I believed that there was nothing left unsaid.
Memories of serious sexual assault
Early on in her dementia it became apparent that there was a recurring memory that was both extremely painful and worrying to her. An incident of which I had previously been totally unaware of. It eventually surfaced in our conversations, and I discovered that she had been seriously sexually assaulted (I could never establish exactly what happened) as a young child, by a man who lived nearby. The aftermath of the assault stayed with her the rest of her life and suddenly many things fell into place.
From our conversations and some digging of my own, I established that the attack had been carried out around the mid to late 1930s. The offender was a young man with learning difficulties who lived with his mother at the end of a ginnel which ran down the side of the back garden of my grandparents’ council house. Despite the dementia, my mum had quite vivid memories of being sat on a police officer’s knee and having to tell people what happened. Something that for a young girl, must have been horrendous. She thought this was in a court, though I’m not sure about that. The upshot of all this was that the young man was found guilty and as my mum put it “sent away”.
This was no doubt at a time before the provision of counselling or any real mental health help for victims, especially children. I assume that it was just expected that my mum “would get over it.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, the lad in question died whilst incarcerated. Apparently his mother accosted my mum everyday on her way to school screaming at her, “you murdered my son”. I can’t imagine what damage this did.
After effects and impact of sexual assault
Fast forward to the 1960s. I have early memories of my mum always trembling. She’d married my dad in 1958, the most loving and caring man you could find. I remember him once trying to explain to me after I had been playing-up, as I occasionally did, that my mum wasn’t well sometimes. He told me she’d suffered from a breakdown as a result of something that had happened to her many years ago and that I should try and be good for her. This is probably my first experience of the effects of the assault.
My mum was always, as they used to say, “a bag of nerves” but it was only at the end that I really found out why. As I got older my mum was much better and we had a brilliant and happy family life.
It wasn’t until the dementia set in that those long suppressed memories returned big style. They obviously frightened and worried her and she began to talk about them. By then I knew very few people who were still alive who remembered the events. Her sister was much younger and, in those days, I suppose it wasn’t something you talked about. Gradually more information came out as she became more and worried, seeking confirmation that it “wouldn’t happen again”.
My mum died peacefully one evening in the bed we had set up in the sitting room, having been placed on a syringe-driver. Her noisy breathing just stopped, and I remember just smiling that her pain both physical and mental was over. It was not until two days later that the grief really set in.
Why did I write this? The answer is simple. I think that so many people, probably men think that the effects of sexual assault eventually disappear and once they have done, they are gone for good. Certainly, in the case of my mum this wasn’t the case. It stayed with her until her dying day.
