After decades of abuse, Katherine has 4 children with her own father.

Trigger warning: This post deals with issues of rape, incest and sexual abuse. Some readers may find it triggering.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. – Maya Angelou

Of all the things that have happened to me, it was 17 September 2009, a Thursday morning, when my world came crashing down. My kids had gone to school and I was getting ready to go to art class.

It had been a typical morning; it was always a rush trying to get my sleepy boys out of their beds and off to school. No one at my house ever hurries in the mornings. The boys scoffed down their breakfast, and I nagged them to get dressed so they didn’t miss their buses. My boys have no sense of time and things in our house are usually chaotic, but it’s a chaos that I love. This morning, there were Weet-Bix crumbs and milk splatters on the bench, the bread left out, a buttery knife sticking out of the Vegemite jar. In the end, I wasn’t really certain who’d had what. But I was running late so I turned a blind eye, knowing the mess would still be there when I got back.

The newspaper had been delivered long before we were up and going. My brother Michael had grabbed it from the bushes near the front door and left it on the kitchen bench, but in the madness of getting breakfasts, making school lunches and packing bags, I hadn’t had time to look.

It wasn’t the ‘Evil Dad’ headline on the front page that caught Mick’s eye. It was the photo inside of a red brick house. The headline read: ‘The Little Girl We Failed’. Mick put the paper down in front of me.

‘That looks just like our old place,’ he said.

And it did.

‘It can’t be,’ I said while I silently tried to reassure myself that no one knew.

I read the story. The details were heartbreaking. A little girl had been kept prisoner by her father for decades. She ’d been abused since she was thirteen years old and raped almost daily. She had given birth to four children to her own father. Inside the headline read: ‘Sex Case Shock’. A whole lot of experts were giving their opinions about what had happened in this case.

My stomach churned. I felt like I was going to vomit. I was cold to my bones, my blood felt frozen. I glanced at the paper, trying to catch a glimpse of the words without Mick seeing me. After the first paragraph I went numb and couldn’t read on. That little girl was me. I had no warning this was coming and yet every detail of my life had been exposed. The paper had published photos of our family house and interviewed my former neighbours.

My life, my shame, my secret. The life I’d silently endured was splashed all over the front pages of newspapers around Australia. It was difficult to read.

It’s funny how the mind works, though. Although I knew deep in my heart the article was about me, I went straight into denial and carried on as if nothing was wrong. I pushed the paper aside and got on with all the jobs that had to be done. I rushed around and got ready to go to art class, quickly put a load of washing on and bolted out the door.

But my mind was racing the whole time. How did they get my story? Over and over I went through every detail. I kept telling myself that there was no way. No way could it be me. No way.

I put on a brave face in class, pretending nothing was wrong. I grabbed my brushes and the canvas I’d been working on and sat down, although I have no idea what I actually painted that day.

The women in my art class have all suffered abuse, too, we ’ve all had dark days. We don’t sit around and talk about it though, and we don’t know the details of what others have endured. We don’t need to, it’s an unspoken understanding. But we are there for one another when we need it. The art classes have been my salvation during some very difficult times and those women have been a rock to me just by being there.

But this day, even surrounded by these women whose silent friendships I treasured, I felt more alone and more scared than I had ever felt. Deep down, I knew that I would have to deal with the story, and I knew the ramifications that would follow. I was so frightened, and I was so ashamed.

By the time I got home my mind was in a frenzy and my body quite numb. The emotional layers were falling away faster than I could pick them up. I was in turmoil. I rang my psychologist. She knew I was falling apart. I felt so betrayed.

Up until now, only a few people had known my story. Someone had leaked my file. Someone had betrayed my deepest trust – and that trust has never returned. Supposedly, an ‘unidentified letter’ from a concerned neighbour had been sent to the newspaper, but that’s rubbish. No neighbour could have known so many of the details, and if they did, why didn’t they speak up sooner?

I felt stripped bare. It was like being abused all over again. Without any warning, the details of my abuse had been published, and I had no control over this. It was all true, of course, and much worse than the newspaper had detailed. I was raped almost every day for decades. I was often brutally bashed and psychologically tortured, and I was kept prisoner in my own home by my own father. I gave birth to four of his children, and my mother couldn’t but have been aware.

The shame of what happened to me has swallowed me up every single day, but I wasn’t ready to be ‘outed’ in this way. The day the paper came out the Department of Human Services went into overdrive. They arranged an emergency meeting about me, without me knowing, and turned up without warning to see my kids. I was devastated. I was a good mum and I loved my kids dearly; I would do anything to protect them and it would be over my dead body they would be taken away. No one can look after them better than me.

Until that day, my brother Michael had no idea of the extent of the abuse I’d suffered, and that same day my eldest son learned that his grandfather was actually his father, just by reading the paper. I had to sit them both down and explain what had actually happened. I can’t tell you how difficult it was. My son will always resent how he found out who his father was, and Mick was shattered. He was consumed by guilt because he hadn’t protected me, but how could he? He didn’t know what was really going on behind closed doors.

I didn’t sleep at all that night, I didn’t even cry. I was still numb.

The next morning while I was in the shower a reporter turned up at our front door. The rest of the papers had picked up on my story and before long it was in every newspaper around the country. For some time, we ’d been living in a secret safe house organised by the Department of Human Services. We weren’t listed anywhere, so how could a reporter have found out where we were? Someone with knowledge of my case must have tipped them off and this final betrayal tipped me over the edge. My home was no longer a sanctuary, but another prison. The reporter turned up again later that day. When it became clear he wasn’t going to go away, we called the local police and Mick told him flatly to ‘fuck off outta here ’.

I’d worked so hard to build a safe haven for us, a home where my boys could grow and we could rebuild our lives. We ’d moved towns, made new friends and were slowly picking up the pieces of our lives. We were accepted for who we were. No one knew our secret, no one judged us. We ’d made a fresh start. Until a reporter came knocking on my door.

No one called to verify that the details were true – and no one had the courtesy to let us know this was coming. DHS just bowled into our house and began questioning the kids and Mick. I was consumed by fear that the boys were going to be taken away from me, and the anxiety crippled me. I rocked backwards and forwards, my body shaking and trembling, my mind slipping into the darkness.

I was already suffering severe post-traumatic stress. Sometimes, I’d take a nail brush and scrub my skin until I bled because I felt so dirty. I’d shower two or three times a day to wash away the smell of my father, which never ever left me. I knew when I was vulnerable and most fragile, and I knew that now I was plunging into an abyss.

The next day I was admitted to a nearby mental health hospital, suffering a breakdown. It wasn’t the first time I’d been there and it wasn’t going to be the last. I spent two weeks there, my doctors worried I was going to kill myself. I wanted to be released from it all, but I couldn’t leave my boys; they are my world.

At this time my father was in remand, awaiting trial. He’d been charged with 83 offences. One count alone represented 700 incidents of rape and I had agreed to cooperate with police to have him convicted. It had taken two years to build up enough trust with the team of police officers looking after the case for me to agree to testify, but after the story hit the papers I decided to pull out of the case. I couldn’t trust any bastard.

Two police officers, Detective Senior Constable Danny Shaddock and a Sergeant Rebecca, kept me going. They were country cops, posted on opposite sides of Victoria, and had worked their butts off getting my father arrested. I always knew both of them were on my side. Danny convinced me to testify and he protected me, Rebecca was always there for me; she ’d often pop in and see how I was going or take me for a coffee to reassure me I wasn’t alone. I enjoyed my conversations with her; she wasn’t like a cop at all, she was gentle and reassuring and she made sure I knew what was happening every step of the way. I will always be grateful for Danny and Rebecca’s support.

After being presented with watertight evidence, my father begrudgingly pleaded guilty and was convicted on all counts. He was sentenced to 22 years imprisonment and will most likely spend the rest of his life in jail. Even though I didn’t have to appear in court, testifying against him was a huge step for me. It had taken many years to build the courage to share my story with the police and a court, let alone the public, and it’s still a very raw and difficult issue for me to deal with today. For so many years I lived in constant fear of my father, and even though he is now in jail, and a very old, pathetic man, I am still afraid of him.

Even after my father was imprisoned, I was still very anxious about people knowing who I was and what happened to me. I hadn’t planned on ever telling my story, but it has been a deep thorn in my side that because someone else told it I didn’t get the opportunity to reveal the details on my own terms.

For the past few years I have spent a lot of time putting the pieces of my life together. Much of what happened to me was so shocking I had blocked it out, buried it in the deepest parts of my mind, because that was the only way I could survive each day. I doubt I will ever unlock some parts of me. I hope as a reader you will appreciate and understand that some things are just too painful to relive and, no matter how hard I try, there are things I just can’t recall, places I just can’t go. Equally there are some memories so vivid and raw I can’t bury them away, they never leave me.

I have relied on the help of those around me who supported me and helped me see justice done. Their records, their recollections, their detailed reports have helped me piece together the jigsaw puzzle of my life. One day, when the time is right, I will pass this book on to my sons in the hope it gives them a better understanding of what has happened. They are the light of my life and the only reason I have kept going. My boys fill my world with joy every day. Although they can be little shits too, without them I would not have survived. Those boys gave me not only a reason to live during the very darkest days of my life but also the only unconditional love I have ever received.

My sons didn’t choose the way they came into this world and they should never be judged for something they had no control over. My job is to make sure they live happy, healthy lives and become whatever they dream of.

I hope that by sharing what has happened to me, I can help others. I want to encourage people to speak up. If you see something, say something. If you are suffering abuse, it is never too late to seek help. There is help out there, even though I didn’t believe anyone would ever help me.

Good people do good things. Throughout my life, so many people had the opportunity to put their hand up for me, but they didn’t. My case is not isolated and I’m sure that behind closed doors in city suburbs and country towns many more victims are silently suffering. No matter how impossible it seems, you can break free; there is another life. Abuse doesn’t have to be the end of the story. For me it was only the beginning.

This is an excerpt from Katherine X’s ‘Behind Closed Doors’. You can find Katherine’s book, co-authored by Sue Smethurst and published by Simon & Schuster here.

If you are dealing with issues of abuse, please contact LifeLine:

Call: 13 11 14 or go to Life Support Chat

For more stories of survival:

DV survivor Jessica Silva stabbed her partner to death to save her own life.

An 8-year-old survivor’s letter to the social workers who saved her life.

Carrie is a survivor of a paedophile ring. This is her story.

Meet Caber- The dog who helps child sex abuse victims to give evidence in court.