A Discarded Victim: A Lesson In Taking Time To Listen

G’day, this is not a good lesson but an important one.

Patrick was one of my mature age students. He used to follow me around, make sure he was in my tutorial classes and come to my office often to have a chat about his assignments. To be honest, I got to the point where I did my best to avoid him. Had I been his counsellor rather than his lecturer I might have handled the situation differently. Fortunately Patrick got 1st class Honours and then went overseas to do his post graduate studies. However a couple of years later I received this email from him.

Dear Dr Irvine.

I know towards the end of my final year that you were trying to avoid me. I understand that but because I looked up to you so much, I was hoping that you could read my need and help me through my turmoil. After I finished my studies there I summoned up the courage to see a counselor.

Years later, I’m now sharing this letter with you in the hope it may help others and that something good may come out of my destructive experience. I was a victim of child abuse over several years. At the end of my Honours year, I summoned up the courage to phone the man who had sexually abused me and asked him why. I wanted answers. I trembled as I asked and listened: "I regret it", he said.

Thank god, I thought, for in that statement he actually admitted what he had done and was not proud of it. He called it an "affair". I wanted to vomit. An affair! With a ten year old child. The word affair meant complicity. There was no complicity, it was pure abuse. He asked me to keep it to myself. NO! Not any more. I had kept quiet all my life and the abuse had haunted me. No more.. End of story. End of abuse. End of being a victim.

Suddenly my life had changed forever. I was in control and I felt powerful. I was free. After phoning my counsellor and sharing the breakthrough I wrote:

Victim no more.

The journey has ended, I have left the train. It will travel on, I don't know where.

Passengers are still on board, new ones will be picked up. A few will get off.

I am alone standing on the station. I breathe the air, smell the atmosphere.

Scared but powerful, victim no more!

I don't need the train to pain as I have my own two feet. I am standing not sitting, walking, not being carried.

Control, I am in control. The train had no driver, no conductor, out of control.

The victim express will travel without me. Victim no more.

This episode had a huge influence on me. I let Patrick down big time and hope I’ve been more sensitive since and more ready to down tools, drop the bureaucratic bustle and be ready to hear that “inconvenient” truth. Patrick deliberately left no return address and I’ve not heard from him since. But Patrick’s journey has a message too; becoming a victim is often something over which we have no control, being a victim is up to us. We do have choice.