Almost ten years ago, I interviewed a survivor who made a lasting impression on me. One interview was not enough - she had so much to say, and had been through so much, that I spent an entire week speaking to her. In all, we talked for 20 hours and her interview transcripts, when I received them all, totalled over 100 000 words.
To protect her anonymity, I gave her the pseudonym Abigail. She survived a childhood of organised sexual abuse orchestrated by her sociopathic father and collusive mother. Her father was known to police on other matters, but they never investigated him for sex offences. Abigail disclosed her abuse at school in the 1980s and her teacher told her mother, who told her father, which had devastating consequences for Abigail. This was a prestigious private school, and it seems that her teachers were reluctant to engage child protection services or police.
Abigail went to police, once, in her late teens, after sustaining serious injuries during sexual violence. They took her statement but she retracted it when she realised that they were going to interview her father and his associates, which would place her at immediate risk of their retaliation. Abigail began using alcohol and heroin to cope with her abuse.
Her father and his friends continued to abuse Abigail until her twenties, when her mental health broke down completely. She become wildly unwell, beset by intrusive anxieties and hallucinations that haunted her throughout her life. I always wondered if this 'breakdown' was, in some ways, protective, since it meant that she could no longer be controlled.
It was at this time that Abigail was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID), and she would go on to receive treatment for DID for many years. I’ve interviewed dozens of people who live with DID over my career, but I think I learnt the most about the condition directly from Abigail.
For most of our interviews, she was clear with me that “Abigail” was not the person talking to me, but another self-state who was in control at the time. In one interview, she sat down in front of me, and I couldn’t recognise her. There was, physically, another person there – her face, posture, gaze, tone and the tenor of her voice was someone else, someone who had something important to tell me.
And once that person had delivered her message, Abigail (well, the other state who insisted she also was not Abigail) returned. I’m not sure I ever actually met the person who Abigail would agree was “Abigail”, only other selves. During that week of interviews, at night, I would receive very short video messages from childlike parts of Abigail who wanted to tell me things as well.
When I was interviewing her, Abigail’s first romantic relationship had just come to an end. She disclosed her childhood history of abuse to her partner, who used it to humiliate and shame her. She didn’t know that this behaviour was not normal or acceptable, and when she realised that she was being abused again, she was deeply ashamed and angry. But she had never known anything different.
Abigail was funny, insightful, self-deprecating, and gentle. She was wracked with the traumatic shame of the abuse inflicted on her and its indelible traces on her mind and body, but she was also inhabited by something unbroken and irrepressible. When the week of interviews finished, we stayed in touch. I wrote her letters supporting her applications to the NDIS and for better public housing. She had a knack for gathering people around her to care and be cared for, even though she never received the quantum of support that she needed, and deserved, in the wake of successive failures to protect her from her parents, their “friends”, her ex-boyfriend, and the alienating and cold systems that she found herself entrapped within as she fought for healthcare and housing.
A few years ago, I asked Abigail if one of my honours students could base her thesis on Abigail’s interview. Abigail was trepidatious about a stranger reading her story, but also excited, and she agreed. The student wrote her entire thesis about Abigail, pouring over the interviews, drawing out the moments of institutional betrayal and failure that made Abigail’s abuse and trauma possible, but also the moments of institutional courage where community members and professionals took a stand to defend Abigail, protect her and help her recover.
The student received first class honours, and I sent the thesis to Abigail to see what she thought. It took many months for Abigail to work up the nerve to read it. She wrote a gorgeous letter of appreciation about how much it meant to be believed and seen in this way, which I shared with the student, and Abigail and the student began corresponding directly. The student wrote to Abigail, explaining what she had learnt from Abigail’s perseverance and resilience, and how Abigail had changed her career choices. Abigail recorded a video of herself thanking the student, expressing her astonishment that a stranger could be so kind.
A few months ago now, Abigail passed away suddenly. One of her friends reached out to let me know. A lifetime of hardship caught up with her. It is desperately unfair that she is gone while her abusers live on. Abigail could never quite accept that a university professor, or a student studying social work, or frankly anyone, could find something redeemable in her. For the chronically abused, hope is dangerous. It is safer to believe what the abusers tell you about yourself than to dare to listen to others with a different view. But there was always a mischievous part of Abigail who was listening nonetheless, hoping, in spite of everything, that there was truth in the mirror we held up to her.
I’m going to miss you Abigail, and I’m not going to forget you. Perhaps your abusers are relieved you are gone, and you can’t implicate them in their crimes against you and others. But I will remember, and your story will keep helping other survivors like you, and will keep helping other professionals understand what you’ve been through, until the day comes when we begin to protect children like you and hold people like your parents accountable. Go well and thank you x