Victim? Survivor? What's in a word?

Thank you to all who responded..... I would like to add this: I am a SURVIVOR of sexual abuse. Those who have experienced the same and are alive, are also 'survivors,' in my view. 

This statement I have made is not about being a "professional victim" as some may like to claim - such is the nature of Freedom of Speech. It's about refusing to remain labelled as one.

Having said that, being a survivor doesn't automatically mean one has to be chirpy and upbeat all the time. Gee, sometimes I am such pissed off at things as a woman, a person, a mother, an employee.... not everything I do or feel should be constrained by the label people seem to want to impose on me - a victim. 

This stand (or whatever people want to call it) is about the experience I have endured with ACC AND is not an isolated case. It wouldn't have created such a polarisation within NZ society if it were. 

It's about bullying - someone telling you to shut up, know your place, don't argue - or else!

There are a lot of incredibly courageous women and men who have written to me over the last week detailing their own "inefficient" experiences with the legal system, ACC, justice in general. They're the real soldiers in all this. 

And it's time.... time to STOP making child sexual abuse the safest crime to commit, the hardest to convict, the least likely to be punished, and the hardest to gain support or counselling for....

It's time.

Press Release from K1W1 (Jax)

Semantics

Left (over there) is an alleged symbolic representation of disbelief. 

Apparently, in my person opinion, but with out prejudice, and since I have fingers, um... the three hand movements represent a short cut to expressing three words that just about expresses pretty much anything really - WTF.

Using your hand means you can save having to use your mouth... not that I have anything against mouths, or hands for that matter, or other forms of communication like pens and keyboards, whiteboards and/or blackboards... (wipes beads of sweat from her brow)... 

And cutting words up, not writing them out completely is great, economical in fact cause you drop vowels as opposed to buying vowels. The expression is mild, or perhaps more than mild to those who consider this perhaps not mild, a symbolic gesture of frustration..

Oh for Pete's sake.. not that I have anything against anyone called Pete or intending to call anyone Pete.

My point if this.. some people make it hard to express an opinion when everyone's opinion/perspective/beliefs have to be taken in respect.....it's called "setting people up to fail".

As the caption says.... WTF?  

TGIF......

Woke to the news that I had taken down my blog and the "highly offensive" material. For a moment there, I thought some Internet Corporation had taken it down and without me knowing.... I half expected Julian Assange to give me a call.

So, just to confirm... 

I have not been contacted by anyone - from ACC, Jansen, Nick Smith, the Police, Jansen's legal team - anyone about taking my blog down. 

I also refute Nick Smith's comments saying I had been contacted by Mr Jansen in November requesting I take my blog down and that only because the blog was still up there, some 4-5 months later, he sort legal action. I find that odd considering my first email, upon being served, was to Jansen's very lawyer and his reply confirming that was my first communication with him. 

I would also like to add that I have not received 10 years of counselling already from ACC. What I have done is spent a lot of personal money on private counselling whilst I was overseas, back in the good old days when I was a single person and could afford it. (at least 12 years ago now)

I would also like to make a request to Media in general: Please don't hound me for my personal details like my name and address. The only reason why have I not gone public is because, for the first time in years, my child has been able to be semi-normal again. She has made new friends at her new school. She even went to a school camp! The last thing I want is to have uproot her (again) because someone somewhere thought it would be real cool to publicly expose her mother's whereabouts. 

Oh I see RadioLive has decided it would be real cool to do just that... expose me and to top off it off, they've just taken a call from an ex-husband of mine... assuming it is him, doesn't sound much like it but hey.... let's not let the truth get in the way of a good story eh Michael Laws?  Unbelievable.

Jansen: Law suit - hits Parliament

I had to start work at 9am this morning, bushy eyed and attentive.  You'd think that was the least an employer could ask right?

Wrong!

I got a few phone calls... please excuse me for being vague about who - I'm just really starting to understand the power of the "STFU" syndrome.

Needless to say.... my law suit was brought up in Parliament -the place to go when one is ignored.... 

Now ask me this, did I enjoy seeing Hon Tony Ryall being body slammed by something he knew nothing about.... by the looks of things.....No. But here's the thing... it's neither my problem or concern cause at the end of day, he should know... end of story. That's what he gets paid the big bucks for.

This unaccountability shit has become rife in Society. 

Did I like the way Carmel presented the body slam? Well, that's a little more difficult to answer on the basis I knew what she was about to do - with my full permission - and so, I guess the element of surprise was not there so, no, I wasn't that "surprised".

What did get me was the fact that there doesn't seem to be much accountability within an individual's portfolio.  If Ryall didn't know what Jansen was up to when why go hire him to set up a new commission of "sorts" on his behalf? 

http://www.hqsc.govt.nz/section/12380/commission-members/?section=12380&tab=1724) 

This is a couchy job if ever you saw one and by all account none of us have - unlike some people, we all actually have to work for a living - legitimately. Still, it begs the question: How much faith can we have in these people when they go hire someone who goes on to "set them up" covering their ass in Parliament? 

I felt a "tad" uncomfortable seeing Ryall swirm in Parliament. Only cause I could see - bannered across his forehead, all glistening and neon like...."WTF is this chick talking about?".. In fact, at one point, he refers to Carmel as "He... She.." You can see the panic in his eyes.... 

So listen up ..... I am being taken to Court. Apparently, "ignorance is no defence." 

Well guess what? I put that same shit back on the Politicians who have blown sunshine out Jansen's ass.... "Ignorance is no defence." You did't know he was suing some sensitive claims client behind your backs? 

Tough... get in line... face the consequence...

Like I have been made to do. 

Peter Jansen Shows his true colours

In January 2009, I applied to ACC to restart counselling for sexual abuse. I was not going to be of those "ones" on that new shady downward spiral into the abyss where ACC filed all their new claims cause, apparently, I was an existing client. 

Understandably and without fuss, I attended one assessment by some woman I'd never met before who concluded I had PTSD and recommended the re-commencement of counselling. 

Seven months later (after my official DSM-IV assessment) I was still waiting a simple reply to "Well, where's the counsellor?" I got a reply back stating some woman in the Wairapapa, no phone details, no address, just a time to meet her.... but where? Several enduring emails later and nothing. 

In the meantime, back in the jungle, I started writing to Peter Jansen. After all, he's the top wig, he should know what the hell is going on. His response to me was that my email had been referred to the Media department. And, as far as I know, that is where it still remains... nearly 18 months later. 

I am still waiting for my counsellor to magically appear from outside the buttocks of ACC's filing cabinet, all majestic and angelic like but, understandably, I have not held my breath. A lot of things have happened. I've got a pending trial, all to do with child abuse - just the sort of thing I'd kind of need counselling on really but there you go - and my daughter and I have had to relocate. Please note, no one that I know of has had to relocate their email address and I most certainly haven't so, sorry, no excuses why no contact has been made on that side of the fence either ACC.

But wait... 

Today, I have had contact! Yes, after nearly two years, I was served with Court papers!!! 

Apparently my calling Peter Jansen an "completely incompetent prick" is defamatory. He's suing me for $200,000.00 in general damages, an additional $50,000.00 in aggravated damages, and any "other relief" as the Honourable Court deems just (Whatever the fuck that means!), and all Court and Legal costs.

All this as a result of a blog I posted, whereby I satirically referred to Mr Jansen having self diagnosed himself with DSM-CIP - (Completely Incompetent Prick) syndrome. 

Mr Jansen, in response, "has been greatly injured in his professional and personal reputation; has been exposed and held up to ridicule and contempt; and has been seriously injured in his reputation and character."

So let me see if I get this straight... a blog of 15 followers has done more than $250,000.00 worth of damage to a man who has NEVER granted a single woman seeking compensation for sexual abuse a mere percentage of that amount? 

Furthermore, if having a mental illness is not suppose to be such a stigma then what's with the David and Goliath attitude to a nobody who thinks, rightly so, that he's incompetent and writes about it to her mammoth blog following of 15 people? I don't get it... I mean, if mental illness is not so damaging as Mr Jansen likes to claim (and often does when it comes to people making claims!) then why sue when a person even jokingly claiming to think you are! 

Or, and here's another thought... maybe if ACC had got off their ass and given me the "mental illness" treatment I was assessed for, then maybe, just maybe, this sort of shit would not have happened? 

Or is it that ACC can deny your claim, fog you off, and then try the old bullying tactics when that same person gets a little fucked off with being palmed off?

In any event, the last I heard DSM CIP wasn't listed on the official ACC assessment calculations and thank fuck for that! Imagine how many people would be referred to ACC then!

In closing:

I wonder if his lawyer knows the person he hired to serve papers on me was my mother's ex-lover, an ex-cop, and since both my daughter and I are formally in hiding due to a pending historical sex abuse Court case, could only have had access to my CONFIDENTIAL HOME ADDRESS through police files. 

Not a fucking smart move that Jansen!


Correction: Ex cop called me this morning. He did not access Police files. I checked. He's right. But I did get an interesting tip on how my address was accessed. Interesting. Makes sense even. Still an incredible abuse of power and... the Privacy Act, so I have been told.  

Funerals - the last stand

Out of all the milestones a person takes, I think it's their funeral that speaks larger than life and yet no one really prepares for them. 

My ex-brother-in-Law, David, did make a request prior to his passing. We'd all just returned from Hawaii. He was too ill to travel back and when he finally did, it was to make arrangements for his funeral. A few days before he passed, he asked that we play Israel Kamakawi singing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'. Maybe that's why we don't like to hear people's plans because even  now, to this day, I cannot listen to that song without thinking of him and the raw emotions I felt that day. He took, what was a strange song to me and stamped his name one it, leaving an indelible mark that truly lives on.

My Uncle's funeral could not have been more different. Firstly, he would never have known half the people that turned up, least of all me. It was on a Marae with extended family attending, and that, in itself, brought up the turmoil of my cultural ignorance and renown family history that everyone had spent decades trying to conceal. With plastic faces and false smiles of recognition, we carried him to his rest place; a small mountain top, overlooking our family Marae, the place where we all allegedly sprang from. It was all news to me - the history of our beginning - the Kumara fields, dirt tracks, and the soiled river that paddled our goods to the local market. It was hard to imagine some long lost relative even wanted to live in such a remote place but no more than them thinking, one of 'their own,' in generations to come, would stand like some mumbling buffoon, completely ignorant to the heart-wrenching calls of an old woman's waiata. 

My Grandfather's funeral, again, was very different. The two sides of the church had calved up people into those that knew him and those that really knew him - friends and work colleagues, mates. They were the ones courageous enough to stand before the gathering and speak. None of my family moved - too engrossed in their own perpetual family dramas to relent and speak from the heart. I sat next to my tormented mother, nudged her ribs, egging her to get up and speak. When she did, I wished she hadn't. "I wished you'd told me you loved me," she said. The silence that followed was suffocating. Truth not only hurts, it smothers, I guess.

Today's funeral was not a relatives but a close friend's grandmother. Like most families, there were 'dynamics' and as a stranger looking in, I was left guessing who was who and who did what. Ironically, I sat alongside the daughter - my friend's mother - and once again, I felt that similar resentment of unresolved pain. It seeped through her every unsettled shuffle and relentless sighs. One by one, I watched as those who were not blood stood to stake their claim: "We all called her Nana"...."She was my mum." Only one, a small child, was genuine in her grief. It touched me like a bolt of lightening and I found myself holding back tears - not for the loss of a woman I'd never met but for the sorry this little girl felt. The others, I felt, were giving out subliminal side remarks, digs at those who sat before them, some aimed directly at the women alongside me. She responded with a not-so-muffled puff of disdain. 

Yes funerals. They bring out everything that's forcibly hidden. Today made me think of ways on which I want that milestone of mine remembered. Do I want a song that leaves people remembering me? Who do I want to stand up and claim me? Moreover, who would I turn in my grave if they turned up? What sorts of things do I want my friends to remember me by?  Who will sit, stifled, silenced in anger? Who will be the ones brave enough to speak? Am I going to go back to the kumara patch, to the dirty river and waiatas? Or shall I just slip out to sea? Funerals... they really are a person's last stand.