And......we're off - let the games begin! The file is open and a number has been assigned - I am now known as #07-20901. Next on the to do list for the RCMP is to interview my abuser. I elected to allow him to present himself at the detachment and I'm told that he was there lickety split after the officer called him and offered him his choices.
Oh how I wish I could have been a fly on the wall but I had to settle for a verbal description of the event. He appeared at the front counter and asked for the officer. He had no clue what was about to happen but he was officially invited to be a guest at the crowbar hotel! The officer met him at the front counter, read his rights and just like - on went the silver bracelets and down into the bowels of the detachment and into a cell. Where.....he was given the privelege of having a moment or two to himself before the real fun started!
About 30 minutes later he was taken from the cell and brought up to a "hard" interview room and his video/audio taped interview was underway. There was no doubt in anyone`s mind that he was guilty of alot of bad behaviour - he had openly admited it 10 days ago - and the goal of the interview was to have to him verbally say the `word``. Which didn`t happen. At some point he had retained a lawyer - one that was relatively unknown in the finer circles in Langley. He couldn`t very well go to one of the law offices that had handled conveyancing for his office for the past 30 years so he opted for Plan B. The officer called me after he had left to apprise me of all the information that she could without breaching any Privacy Act issues. She did coroborate a lot of my dates, etc. that I had given and locations etc. but she couldn`t nail him down not even when she told him that my therapist would be providing a statement to go with my file to Crown Counsel.
Two days later on a blistering hot afternoon my phone rings. It is the officer calling to tell me that my abuser had called her and asked her if he could come and talk to her! Would this be the day that he would admit his guilt and stop this train from going down the tracks and picking up speed......would this be the day that he would man up and admit to what he had done so that I could have my day in court and my restitutionÉ She told me that both she and another female officer interviewed him for 2 hours solid and so many times they had him in a corner and he was so close to `the word`but he held out. But of the tales of woe he laid on them about his dysfunctional life and he tried to use the `pity`card. One of those tales of woe that he told them literally took my feet out from underneath me.
As I had been listening to the officer I was walking around the kitchen putting things away and suddenly she grew quiet. `` There is something I have to tell you Michelle`she said. `` Your uncle said that he was abused by 2 of his sisters and also your mother. She had sex with him when he was 12 and that left him feeling so confused because he knew what happened was wrong but it felt right. I`m so sorry Michelle to tell you this.`
Silence. I was on the floor, fighting to breathe, my gut totally tied in a knot. The feeling you get when you get really bad news. I had dropped the phone on the way down and managed to prop myself up against a cupboard and pick up the phone. The officer was calling my name, asking if I was ok, apologizing for what she had told me. She needed more information and she wondered if she could come and see me. Not. I did not want a police car in front of my home. I told her that I would take a few moments and then come up to the detachment. I hung up the phone and I laid on the floor and sobbed. Sobbed because a useless waste of skin had accused a dead women of the most indecent act, sobbed because she wasn`t here to comfort me and protect me, sobbed because I was the one that had been abused for 20 years and had once more just been àbused`` in a most painful way. More painful than any act of the 20 years prior. Sobbed because I realized that this `file`was rapidly spiraling out of control and I had been the one to open Pandora`s box and this was my punishment.
I appeared at the front desk at the detachment and then went outside to sit in the sun by myself. A few moments later the officer appeared and ushered me into a `soft`interview room - 2 doors on either side locked, a table and chair and a couch. No tape recorder, no video tape here just her notebook. I told her that there was no way that my mother could have done that to him because she was already married and living in another city. I told her the family dynamics and how dysfunctional his generation`s family life had been and that there was no doubt in my mind whatsoever that there was abuse going on. I believe that my Grandfather was abusive to some of the older girls, and whether this had in turn happened to the younger boys in the family I did know nor could I speculate. But there was no doubt that there was abuse going on behind those 4 walls.
This day was one of many of the `bad`days that were to come. The emotions ranged from complete hatred for this man who would say such a horrible thing about my mother to despair. I felt very exposed, vulnerable, unloved and unprotected. I wanted to go over to his house and scream at the top of my lungs on his front lawn every obscenty I could come up with. `` Trust in the system Michelle`I was told. Lesson /2 - do not trust in the system.
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