MAUREEN THE LIAR

Marty called me a liar the first night he molested me. I walked by him after, and in a loud voice he said, ‘Well if it isn’t Maureen the liar.’ It stopped me in my tracks, and I waited for the accusation to continue, but that was all he had to say. He just looked me dead in the eyes with a horrible smirk on his face.

Then he said it again, ‘Maureen the liar.’

I don’t think he referred to me again without tagging that on. I used to wonder what he meant, what lies had I told. I mean, I knew I did lie; I told my granny I fell when she asked me why I was rubbing my hip. I didn’t want to tell her the truth, that Marty had kicked me and left a bruise. I told my teacher I had forgotten to do my homework once or twice, when I had done it but Marty had pulled the pages apart in a temper at the scraping noise of my pencil. I told my mother I had a pain in my stomach to try to get her to stay home and not go to work because I knew what was ahead of me if she did.

Those were the lies I told.

But I knew Marty didn’t know about those, and I knew intuitively something else was going on with that new nickname. I knew he was saying it for a reason, for something that was confusing. I know now he was gaslighting me. He said it so often that everyone picked up on it. One day my mother even said, ‘Maureen, is this another one of your lies?’ Apart from pretending to be ill I had never lied to my mother in my life.

Mud sticks, they say.

Paedophiles do whatever they can to be able to keep abusing children. Marty knew there was a chance I would either slip up and tell someone something weird about him, or that I would reach my limit and tell my whole story. Maybe he considered the idea that my granny would accuse him to my mother. He had his defence well set up: sure, isn’t Maureen a terrible liar. Even now that name follows me, even these days people I grew up with will still insist I tell lies. Well, that’s for them to say, and to be honest it’s none of my business if they want to say that, let them. My story belongs to me and it is not a lie. I’ve had my story torn apart by the redress board and a judge found every bit of it to be truthful.

Marty’s manipulation added a huge pressure to my life that caused me great pain and the horrible stress of injustice. The smaller kids picked up on that nickname quick and it spread into school and I became ‘Maureen the liar’ there too. There was nothing I could do about it. My reputation as a child was what he painted me and it gave other children the upper hand. They did what they liked to me and got away with it because Maureen’s the liar. So I never fought against it. I was so worn out at that point I didn’t see the point anyway. I just carried on and hoped something terrible would happen to him.

I wasn’t the only one. My brothers were painted in similar ways and struggled because of it too. Marty told the Christian Brothers on day one that Michael was a handful and prone to violence, and they went extra hard on him because of that. They beat him sometimes within an inch of his life, but Michael would never submit. He was my father’s son, strong and good, and he always got back up when he was knocked down. Eventually when they couldn’t break him they sent him away to Artane Industrial School, like they would send me away to the laundry. The memories of my childhood and teens come to me in blocks when I look for them. They start on one part and end on the other, with mostly blur in between. I think we are all like that. But then there are the ones that creep in when I’m not thinking of anything. Sometimes I flinch from a flying hand that isn’t there because I am on my own, in my own home. Sometimes I feel the stirrings of the same fear I felt as a child when I noticed a look or heard a footstep, even though I am safe, locked twice into my own house. Marty’s violence and depravity has impacted my entire life and always will – no matter how much I work through it, no matter how much I reassure my inner child that he is burning in hell. I was tormented by that man as a child and I am still tormented. I never had a say in any of it.

When he comes into my mind, and he often does, I shake. I’m shaking now telling this story – it’s a reaction. For years though, I didn’t speak about what Marty did to me, what he took away from me – the years I had bottled it all up, sworn to take it to the grave with me, the whole thing. For years it was like I was living a pretend life, where this didn’t happen to me. I’m glad I’m not living that way now, even though at times this is harder. That life would have ended me for sure. It almost did a few times, if I am honest with you.

Now, when I think of him, it’s as if his shadow comes into the room, the same one I’d see on the bed when the bedroom door opened, the one I’d see move in the sunlight on the floor taking his braces off as I crouched in the corner. That shadow was how I knew my day was up, that shadow was how I knew I was in for something.

The dread of the noise of those braces, the way the elastic sounded against the material of his shirt sleeves, it was like the hiss of a demon. I hear that hiss in my nightmares. I get flashbacks of the sound of the door of our house when I was coming home from school, knowing my mother was at work. I’d push the door open and the light would reveal whether Marty was home or not. The pure relief when he was not, the spike of fear when he was. I can hear him, the strange shuffle as he hobbled around the clay floors of Green Lane. I can see him, his thin body in wide-leg trousers that gave him bulk, fists balled up in the sleeves of his jacket, furious. The smell of smoke and pigs from his clothing.

He would say, ‘Maureen, throw a dash of coffee under my chin,’ and I would imagine throwing the scalding cup into his face. If I could go back now I would do it. I wanted to spit in that coffee, but I never had the nerve. The pot never boiled fast enough for Marty. The coffee he drank turned his breath sour. His tongue tasted of it.

More than once my anxiety would manifest in twisting pains in my stomach that were so bad my mother would take me to the doctor. I did get constant urine infections and other infections below. My insides were bruised and torn up. I was wetting the bed because going to the toilet often hurt so much.

But there is that one lie I told a lot. Even when I felt fine I told my mother I had stomach pain anyway, just so she would take me out of the house and bring me to the doctor.