Two months passed before I returned home to get some clothes. Mum wanted to know where I had been and why I’d ran away. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. When I went to my bedroom to get my clothes, Mum went into a frenzy, part anger and part hurt. I think it was an affront to her pride that I didn’t want to live with her, not to mention what the neighbours must be saying about me moving in with people other than my family. First she begged me to stay then she demanded I stay. So my prison sentence commenced again.
I had recently turned twelve when my second violent assault took place. Leon was his name and he was twenty-nine. He had lived three doors up from my parents’ house for many years and was a regular in our shop. I hadn’t seen him for a while because he had moved to the other side of town. One Saturday, I was shopping in the city when I ran into him. We were casually chatting, as acquaintances do, when he offered to give me a lift home. It was hot and would have taken an hour to walk, so I eagerly accepted.
He said he had to stop at home first and wanted to show me his new flat. I reluctantly agreed. Once inside his bog-standard traditional Queenslander home, he made me a coffee. I took a seat on the three-seater sofa, while he sat to my right on a single chair. While my hands were busy with the coffee cup on the wooden armrest, he jumped me and tied my hands to the couch’s armrest with a rope that seemed to come from nowhere. He jumped on my chest with his knees and put his dick in my mouth. I was choking. His torso was up against my nose and pushing into my face. He was over six feet tall and weighed about one hundred kilos. I had never seen a penis before and certainly had never had one in my mouth. He pumped my face and with every thrust I thought my nose would break. I was choking on this god-awful thing, but as quickly as it started it finished. He remained perched on my face for what seemed like an eternity. I was left with bruises on my chest, a bleeding nose and a mouthful of thick, salty fluid. He kept his dick in my mouth until I swallowed the fluid. It was horrible. He got off me, untied me and finished his coffee. Then he dropped me off at the shop.
This man had been a long-time neighbour of mine. I could never have imagined that he would have done this to me. One of the most disarming things about the incident was the way he acted afterwards: as if nothing had happened. To him it was a mutually pleasurable experience. He even told me to say hi to my parents for him. I felt completely betrayed.
I never told my parents of my experience—I couldn’t trust them to be loving, supportive and understanding. And after my last experience with the police, I knew they would be of little use. So I just kept it to myself. Over and over I would ask myself, why do I bring out the animal in men? I couldn’t see it but I must have been to blame, just like the police had said, or it wouldn’t have kept happening.
If that was what sex was all about I didn’t want any part of it. It was still summer time, but I sat in the shop all day, rugged up in jumper, jeans and leg warmers. I didn’t want to play with my friends, so once again I returned to being mute. I had lost all trust. I hated my body, men, my family, work, school, life and all that it seemed to offer.
My parents had reached the end of their tether with me. I refused to speak, to engage, to smile, to participate, but mostly to do anything in the shop bar serve customers with a permanent look of despair on my face. I was to be sent away to live with my maternal grandparents.
Giving Away Sex
I had three days left in the town before I was to move to Sydney. I wasn’t really upset by the decision, I was too numb to feel any emotion. I did however feel relief to be leaving the town that had brought so much pain and misery to me.
In those final days, I seemed hell-bent on self-destruction! So I set my self-destructive sights on Joe. He was the James Dean of our high school, handsome beyond belief. Everyone wanted to be with Joe, but only for one thing. He was a few years older than me so I had always thought that he was out of my league, both in years and in beauty. But one night Joe saw something in me that put me in a whole new light. I was a girl on a mission, a girl out for danger no matter what the consequences.