‘Crippling’: Woman’s past horror uncovered 64 years later

It took 64 years for this Aussie woman to uncover the awful mystery of what really happened to her, and it was a moment that changed everything.

An Aussie woman has faced her past in a shocking way. Picture: iStock

I have survived most of my life by forgetting.

They call it “disassociation”. My unconscious mind absorbed the childhood trauma I suffered to protect my existence and my sanity … for 64 long years.

As a child, being abused mentally and sexually meant there was no time or space to evaluate which memories might be useful or beneficial to me in the long run. Any threatening memories were simply banished beyond my reach. Repressed as quickly as you might pull your finger away from a flame.

I was in my teens when I lost the ability to pay attention in class. I couldn’t read, stuttering and stumbling over words. I knew something wasn’t right but couldn’t put my finger on it – I just knew that I was permanently rocked with fear and gripped with crippling anxiety.

I did anything I could to avoid being exposed – developing tricks to avoid reading in class; playing the class clown to distract from what I saw as my glaring inabilities.

I was 17 years old when I woke up in a boarding house for the elderly in Coogee with no money and no idea how I got there. I was 19 when I was raped and fell pregnant, living in a home for unwed mothers run by the Saint Joseph nuns in Croydon. For the wellbeing of my baby girl, I decided to offer her up for adoption.

I went through life afraid of everything; the gaps in my memories became huge, gaping holes. Any effort at recalling the past left me crippled with self-doubt.

After two failed marriages, I found myself living in Mallorca, Spain. I was 64 years old and still very much marooned in the dark.

After two failed marriages she was marooned in the dark. Picture: iStock

Judy was 17 when she woke up in a boarding house for the elderly in Coogee. Picture: iStock

I decided that once I was financially secure again and resettled in a peaceful space that I would finally take time out to contemplate what had gone so badly wrong in my life.

While others, I knew, were enjoying a happy retirement, here I was, back to square one.

It was then I finally discovered the merits of therapy. Until then, my constant state of fear had meant that by not asking questions, I kept myself safe from threatening answers.

I went on to try a series of healing techniques, from unfamiliar hands on massage tables, knocking at my head and neck and chanting in incense-soaked rooms.

I came to know the worth of a good professional Freudian psychiatrist by getting involved with an English psychologist, who made such an accurate diagnosis I ended up supporting her.

Then she found herself in Mallorca, Spain. Picture: iStock

When I met my now Catalan psychiatrist, I knew he was the person I had been searching for my entire life.

He didn’t speak English, and so I committed to weekly therapy sessions in Spanish. He explained to me that the chances of being able to change diminished with age.

“Let’s see how it goes,” he tentatively said.

I underwent extensive psychotherapy for some time, before I dared to return to my birthplace of Sydney.

Arriving back to the white sails of the Opera House shimmering in all their pristine purity, a place I was old enough to have seen being built, the Harbour Bridge far behind, joining the northern suburbs where I grew up, I was home for the first time in 30 years.

Judy King has released a book about all she went through.

As I traversed my way through the city from east to west, north to south looking for answers, it was a chance encounter at my early childhood home in Gordon that stirred memories of a forgotten traumatic event.

A neighbour mentioned an electrocution and I realised it had been me who had been holding his hand; my friend Paul, who had died after picking up a live cable. It made the newspapers and my parents blamed me for the accident.

Judy felt at home upon seeing the Sydney Opera House. Picture: iStock

Judy King’s book.

The memories hit me like a sledgehammer, tumbling like stones crashing down a ravine.

The past horror had never left me, but my denial had rendered it stuck in time …

I was able to recognise the very moment I’d begun repressing my feelings of confusion, cruelty and alienation from my family.

On that visit to Sydney, the missing pieces of my puzzle gradually started falling into place.

Now I look back in both horror and amazement. How was I so blind, I wonder? But I have mourned the lost years and now, at 82 years old, my greatest joy is being able to remember the past.

I am celebrating the present and have at last become the star of my own life.

And 16 years later, my therapy sessions are ongoing. My Spanish has improved along with my state of mind – proving it’s never too late to change.

Judy King’s memoir Agnes, A Childhood Betrayed and Reclaimed is the true account of one woman’s determination to wrestle with – and heal – a life haunted by abuse

Originally published as ‘Crippling’: Woman’s past horror uncovered 64 years later