Becoming Myself: The True Story of Thomas Who Became Sara (12 page)

Things reached an all-time low when I was knocked down in a hit-and-run accident in October 1979. Barbara had called it off with me, again, for the umpteenth time. I was cycling up to work in a distraught state, crying much of the way. I was preparing to turn onto Airton Road when I was struck from behind. I knew nothing about it and was unconscious for quite some time. When I regained consciousness I found myself in a field surrounded by passengers from the number
77 bus. Apparently, the bus had been behind a van which had hit me and sped off. I was taken to hospital with some internal bleeding and cracked ribs, and was kept in for four days.

When my mother came in to see me, she had the most awful expression on her face. She never asked how I was. What she did say was that she was going to ‘sort me out’ when I got home. The reason? I had confided in my sister (a typically girlie thing to do) that I was having a physical relationship with Barbara. The situation between us became irretrievable after this. When I came home from hospital, I made it clear to her that I was not going to stay and suffer her injustice any longer, and I went upstairs to pack my clothes. She followed me, and, to my horror, she went for me with a knife telling me she would ‘fucking kill’ me. I knew then that I must leave the house. I packed all my belongings into a black plastic sack and was carrying it downstairs, but unfortunately, my mother intercepted me. She told me I wasn’t leaving and followed me up to Barbara’s house, all the way up Ballyfermot Road, telling me I was nothing but a ‘fucking troublemaker’ and that I would marry Barbara over her dead body.

When I knocked at the door, Barbara came out, but once she saw my mother standing outside the gate, she told me I should go home, that she didn’t want any trouble. I felt like the ground had opened up and swallowed me, except that I now had to turn around and see the awful face of my mother looking smug and superior. What hurt more than anything, was the fact that I felt I could not depend on the very person I was marrying. My mother had been so enraged by my plans to leave that she had tried to stab me and my fiancée failed to support me.

The situation just went from bad to worse over the following months but, just as I had promised, I succeeded in leaving
home, staying first with Barbara’s sister Lily, before moving into the mobile home which I had bought with Barbara on the Killeen Road, with her parents’ reluctant agreement.

One of the issues I discussed with Barbara was the number of children we would like to have. When she asked me how many children I wanted, I said that I would like five. Her reaction was to give me the most awful clatter across my face. ‘I want at least twelve’, she said. I replied that that was okay with me so long as we could afford to have that many. I thought we were all set for building a loving, happy and fulfilling family, despite the many problems we’d had along the way. There was definitely the prospect of having children and that made me immensely happy.

We finally got married on 27 March 1981. It was, to say the least, a lacklustre affair. Just two weeks before we were due to get married, my family announced that they were not coming to the wedding. My mother cried and said it was sad that they would not be there. I reminded her why they weren’t coming — because of her attitude to my break for independence — and that this was never the way I wanted it to be. She relented and determined that she would be there, even proposing to have the reception in her house. For the sake of a possible reconciliation, I agreed.

On our wedding night, after a quiet meal at home, we left for our hotel. When we registered, I overheard someone saying, ‘There’s another Mr and Mrs Smith.’ I was mortified. We headed for Killarney the next day, Saturday, to begin our honeymoon, which was remarkable for the almost complete lack of enthusiasm on Barbara’s part; I knew that she didn’t want to be there with me. I tried all manner of things to generate some interest in our honeymoon, but it was to no avail. I was completely clueless as to the real reason why. That was
to come later. Now, I realise that we were both marrying for the wrong reasons. Barbara was desperate to get out of the house and away from her parents, and so was I — hardly a good foundation for marriage

However, the first few weeks of our married life were reasonably okay, though a little uncertain. But the next few months were to see a significant deterioration. It started with Barbara not wanting to do any kind of housework and on the occasions when she did, it was with the minimum of effort. It fell to me to do the cooking, cleaning, ironing etc. despite working long hours in Gilbey’s. I had started working there after the Weavex factory had closed down and I was to stay there for the next twelve years.

The situation deteriorated to such a degree that I wasn’t allowed near her without the use of condoms. This was a terrible blow, given the fact that she stated that she definitely wanted children.

Shortly after our honeymoon, we started saving for a house of our own, as we wanted to get out of the mobile home as soon as possible, but I was to get the most awful shock and one that was to reverberate through the remainder of my time with Barbara. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was resting in the sitting room of our mobile home. Barbara came in and started shouting at me: ‘I hate you and I don’t love you. I’m sorry I ever married you and I’m never going to have your children!’ Words can barely describe the feeling of hurt and pure devastation which I felt. I later learned that Barbara’s outburst was due to her realising that she had made a terrible mistake marrying me. She loved and cared for someone else and preferred to be with him. But she was not prepared to take responsibility for her mistake and tried on numerous occasions to pressure me into leaving, which I
steadfastly refused to do. It was clear to me that she did not want to be seen as the one who had walked away.

It was impossible to focus on anything after that and at work I was reduced to tears thinking about what was happening at home, but was unable to explain why; after all,
men
are not supposed to tell their troubles to anyone. But, as difficult as the situation was, worse was to come and from a most unexpected source.

I
was still struggling with the devastation caused by Barbara, when another devastating event unfolded. I had just turned twenty-one in June and received Barbara’s bombshell a few weeks later in August, and then came one of the most awful events of my entire life. It was a balmy evening and I was coming home from work at around 10.30 p.m. after doing the evening shift. I was cycling towards the Church of the Assumption on Ballyfermot Road, when I saw my father
standing outside with a suitcase. Of course, I went over to him and asked him what was up.

He said, ‘That fucking mother of yours is causing trouble again. Can you give me a pound so I can get the bus into the barracks?’ I knew better than to pry and left him off with a couple of pounds. My next stop was the house to find out what on earth was going on.

No sooner had I reached the sitting room when my brother James took me into the kitchen and told me that I was not to breathe a word to anyone of what he was about to tell me.

‘Dad has been interfering with the girls.’

‘What!? What do you mean he’s been interfering with the girls?’

‘He’s been having sex with them…’ Silence. What else could there be but silence. ‘How many of the girls?’

‘As far as we know, two.’

‘Where’s Mam?’

‘She’s down talking to Brenda and Martina and the other girls.’

Shocked, bewildered, devastated, appalled, sickened, dumbfounded. None of these can adequately describe the feelings that were running through me. The envy that I carried towards my sisters because of their closeness to my father paled into nothingness compared to the awful realisation of what they must have been feeling every time he placed them on his lap.

The more I thought about it, the more one of my sister’s later actions began to make sense to me. She would come and sit on my knee from time to time and she would allow her hand to run down between my knees. I would be acutely embarrassed, but without ever realising where it was coming from. Now I realised its meaning and I was just distraught.

My mother came in and called us all together. She threatened every one of us with the direst consequences if we attempted to tell anyone about what had happened. And after the previous incident in which she attempted to stab me, I knew she meant what she said. She proceeded to intimidate us against telling even our own wives and husbands. My immediate thought was, how dare she do that to us? In the name of God, what were we supposed to do? According to her, it was none of our business and we were to stay out of it.

I could not believe that she could actually think that this devastating news would not have repercussions, which would go far beyond our house and would last for decades — for the rest of our lives. Whatever limited information we received then, our imaginations took over and ran riot. It was to be many years before my family were to face the full impact of what our father had done and the lengths our mother and my siblings went to in order to protect him; to protect this villain.

I went home in a complete daze and with my adrenalin pumping to the point where I thought my head and my heart would explode together. I tried not to say anything, but how could I not say anything? I went to bed. I kept tossing and turning and kicking the sheets as I often did when distressed over something or other. Try as I might I could not stop playing the images around in my head; images of what he was doing to my beautiful little sisters; my innocent little sisters. How dare he do that to them. Try as I might I could not stop the tears any longer, my breathing quickened and was shallower. I was hyperventilating. The tears came in floods and I kept crying: ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!’ Barbara kept asking me what was wrong. I tried not to tell her. But how could I not tell? Needless to say, I slept very little, if at all,
that night and for many nights after. I realised that, ironically, had I been born the girl I so much wanted to be, I could have been subjected to the same abuse.

The revelations about my father’s actions became an issue in our not having children, despite the fact that she had already made it perfectly clear that she never had any intention of having them. And she did this, knowing the deep hurt it was causing me. In fact, it got to the stage when it was hard to tell which of the two I cried for the most, that I felt so acutely the pain of my sisters’ abuse, or the fact that I would never be a parent to my own children. This, with a strong sense of being trapped in a relationship, was proving to be more than I could bear and I felt I needed to do something drastic to enable me to cope.

It seemed to me at least, that we needed to deal with the revelation of my sisters’ abuse as a family, and that we should all give them the fullest support and reassurance of our love. It is a shameful fact that this never happened and for years afterwards my sisters were to suffer alone, with the fear and guilt of hurting their mother if they dared to have their father charged, as he should have been. The only thing more disturbing than this was the lengths they and my mother went to to keep things quiet. The situation was so bad for my sisters that some of them were terrified to seek counselling for fear of how their mother would react.

It was obvious that my refusal to keep quiet about the abuse that had taken place meant I was no longer welcome in the family home and that my sisters wanted to avoid any mention of what had happened; despite the fact that they were still hurting because of it, this was easier for them to bear than the guilt of getting justice and hurting their mother in the process. It was after these revelations and my
reaction to them that I believe I lost my sisters for ever.

Of course, secrets like these can only be hidden for so long, and ours was to come to light in spite of my mother’s threats. The catalyst for this was an act of violence against one of my sisters’ boyfriends, which resulted in the boyfriend and my sister, Sophie, going to the local Garda station to make a complaint. During the interview, Sophie was asked why she wasn’t living at home, to which she broke down in tears and proceeded to disclose the sexual abuse she’d suffered at the hands of her father.

The first I knew of this was when she knocked on my door on a Sunday afternoon in a state of terror. She had obviously realised the enormity of what she had done and was in fear of her life. I promised her that I would stand fully behind her if she was telling me the truth, knowing full well that I was going to pay a high price for it, but she was my sister and there was no question of abandoning her at a time when she needed me the most. I went to the Garda station the next day and I made a statement, confirming what I knew up to that time, which was not very much, but it was enough to confirm what my sister had told them.

Word had gotten back to my parents that Sophie and her boyfriend were staying with me and Barbara, as they were terrified to go back to their flat. Another brother and sister came to my home and tried to speak to Sophie, but she was too terrified to talk to any of them. A few days after this she fled to Dingle with her boyfriend, thinking they would be safe. They were wrong and about five of my brothers and sisters went to Dingle to bring her back and to ‘close off’ the situation, as they saw it.

In the meantime, however, two garda detectives called to see me, looking for a fuller statement. I duly obliged, and
then they told me they intended to go to my sisters’ places of work in order to get statements from them. I was appalled and told them that that was completely unacceptable and that it would be too much of a traumatic experience for the two sisters involved. I proposed that I would accompany them and go into the supermarket where they both worked and have them both released by their supervisor.