I’m 28. I was in the shower shaving my legs when the penny dropped. Nobody fucking helped us, so many adults saw the abuse saw how we were treated and they just collected their wage and turned a blind eye.
I’ve been beating myself up for years as the oldest sibling I dealt with a lot of our parents crap I was the one, with the help of my oldest younger brother who shielded the others who played mediator. I was the third adult in that house at 8 years old. But I always saw myself as the adult. I keep looking back now beating myself up because I should have taken photos and printed them off, hidden them away from the house, Mum did room raids and checked all social media. Our internet usage was closely monitored. I used to rebel by reading news articles online and telling my mother it was for school. But I could have over the years hidden something away.
I could have videoed her drunk and belittling us beating my brother put it on a USB, wrapped it in plastic wrap and hidden it under a rock in the yard.
I shouldn’t have listened when we were told to lie to CPS I should have told the truth to them. I should have said something to the cops when they came out, while she was standing there “help us, were just kids and she starves us.” I should have notified a teacher. Everything for all of us could have been different if I just could have brave, just one time.
For years I’ve been holding this guilt for failing myself and my family for letting us endure it and not getting us the fuck out of there. But I always come back to “I was just a kid too, I wasn’t supposed to know how to deal with that situation” unfortunately no matter how many times you say that to yourself the guilt and feelings of failure are so strong because the price of that failure was six shattered lives.
Then it hit me. For a while a good chunk of time we had Governesses paid like 1800pw through government funding. There were at least from what I remember eight adult women and 4 adult men who took that job a couple were our govies for like three damn years. And not one of them said anything. Not one of them took a photo or wrote a diary. Not one complained or notified anyone about anything.
I recently got in contact with one of the mother’s of one of the govies (she was mums friend from years back but didn’t have heaps to do with her later in life) she told me while her daughter was looking after us she called her mum told her how much my mother was drinking about how there was hardly any food. She said there was no fresh fruit she didn’t know what to feed us. She didn’t understand why we lived like this, hair unbrushed and matted our education was destroyed.
This woman told me how awfully we were treated years later as if I didn’t live it. Told me with empathy in her voice about how mother decided to buy smokes and grog instead of food for us as if I didn’t have to unpack it. I had that conversation months ago and I didn’t put two and two together. They all fucking knew and every single one of them looked the other way. They lived in our home they saw the pain and suffering they saw the empty pill packets and whisky bottles. They saw her bully and hurt her own children. And none of them cared.
I always wanted someone to bare witness to what happened, I’ve thought about writing a book or a series of posts on Reddit. Maybe trying to hold my mother accountable in a court of law so that someone anyone can see what happened. And it finally at 28 hit me that they did. They saw. They didn’t care.