On July 1st, something astonishing happened to me. A panel
of distinguished medical professionals made the announcement that, in their
judgement, I should be protected under the 2010 Equality Act (replacing the
2005 Disability Discrimination Act) as I have been suffering from a medical
condition so severe that it has had a profound, repeated and long term effect
on my life in the past, does so in the present and, as far as can be reasonably
foreseen, will continue to do so in the future. While I would never seek to define
myself as disabled, this judgement means that I am, legally, a vulnerable
adult, which is a status I will bear for the rest of my life in all
probability.
My condition is related to my mental health. As a result of
the repeated physical and sexual abuse I suffered as a child from my father and
other men in my close family and his friendship group, as well as my mother and
one other female, I have spent my entire life plagued by feelings of
worthlessness and inadequacy, with an unshakeable belief I’d be better off
dead, that have profoundly affected my interactions with both genders. As the report says -:
Ian recognises that
many men frighten him, particularly if they are confident “alpha male”
individuals, as he perceives them as potentially aggressive or confrontational.
He describes his feelings of fear when close to such individuals as
overwhelming. His levels of anxiety remain high. In my opinion, these are
connected to trauma he experienced as a child which has left him with long
standing and deeply entrenched feelings of low self-esteem, poor
self-confidence, lack of personal value and rage. The key to Ian’s recovery
will be his capacity to unlearn ingrained responses and negative patterns of
thought that he has lived with and repeated for decades and consistently and
reliably replace them with positive, adult alternatives. These will take
practice.
To reiterate; I do not see myself as disabled, but having
endured serious bouts of mental ill health from the age of 16 onwards, I am
delighted that I have medical and legal protection, to help me move forward. The
realisation that I have a long-standing fear of aggressive, confrontational
males explains almost everything in my life so far. I have always sought to
have the last word and stand up to what I perceive is bullying, not with my
fists but with words, as I see something of my father and the repeated years of
vile abuse he inflicted on me. It is something I’ve never been particularly
successful with.
This explanation, which I will need to explore further in
the years of psychotherapy that lie ahead, occurred to me when cycling through
from High Heaton to Tynemouth, as I tried to count up just how many people I
have ever been engaged in some sort of ultimately meaningless on-line and real
life feud with. You’ll not be surprised
to know I lost count, though the most crucial points to note about these people
is that they’re either fans of Newcastle United, non-league football, or both,
or they’re related to me. Generally they are working class and aggressive as
well.
I’ve been here before. I had my first episode of mental ill health in
1981, when I attempted to take my life because I could not endure any more abuse
from my parents and their circle. All I ever wanted in my early life was
protection, or intervention; many people in my extended family knew of the
abuse (indeed several of them were enthusiastic participants in it), but not
one of them sought to protect me. On being discharged from hospital, with
bandaged wrists and a burning throat from reflux occasioned by the stomach
pump used to get the tablets I’d taken
out of my system, my father beat me up in the Queen Elizabeth car park. Back in
the house he smashed my head off the television stand and hit me in the
testicles with a golf putter. Ever wondered why I’m terrified of bald men? I’ve
not even mentioned the time he punched me so hard it broke the fence between
our house and next door when I crashed through it.
My previous episode of mental ill health began in 1994 when
I learned I was to become a father, as received wisdom held at that time that
all those who were abused become abusers. Thankfully, I have broken the circle
and have been a good father to my son, though I believe it took until 1999 for
me to recover sufficiently to function as human being, which was when I left
Newcastle, forever or so I thought at the time. What I have come to realise is
that I’ve never really recovered and have always been at a constant, though
fluctuating, level of mental illness; hence why the Equality Act applies to me.
Back in 1994, I wanted to die; I really did. I had just
turned 30 and I found the world to be empty, meaningless and utterly without
value. I hated myself and my life; had profound feelings of failure and
self-loathing, repeatedly thought of death as the only escape. This was, to
those on the outside, baffling and inexplicable as I had it good; newly married
to a wonderful woman, soon to be a father, living in a nice house, with a good
job and a wide circle of friends. However, I simply couldn’t cope; the
pervasive sense of my worthlessness (ingrained by years of abuse) made me feel
like I was an imposter and I wanted to escape. I wanted to stop being me.
Believe me, I tried. Despite the love, support and help of those around me, not
to mention medical intervention that extended as far as psychiatry and
psychotherapy, all that was good about my life melted away. It took until the
late spring of 1999 when I finally accepted that I didn’t need to die. I may
have been worthless, evil and beneath contempt, in the eyes of both me and many
people who knew me, but I deserved to live a while longer, though how and where
was another question.
Now, almost 16 years on, it’s out the closet again, in the
shape of a series of complaints against me, some of which have merit, though
others are fanciful nonsense, that resulted in me being summoned to attend a
tribunal of NUST committee members to discuss these allegations. It appeared I
may have been expelled from an organisation I joined voluntarily and to which I
paid an annual subscription of £10. Do I have any defence for my words? No. Do
I wish it had not been made public again? Obviously. Anything to say in
mitigation? Not really; it was stupid and ill-judged, but when I wrote it, I
knew what my motivations were for saying those things. Did I mean them? Of
course not; I’m sure even then anyone who knew me could understand my bizarre
motivation. The impact I’d wanted was to leave a mark in the consciousness of
all those who knew me, as I prepared to depart Newcastle forever on the 6am
train to Kings Cross on Saturday 18th September 1999 (next stop
Orient 0 Torquay 2). I hated myself (I’ve always had next to zero self-esteem
and can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t loathe and despise myself)
and wanted everyone else to hate me too. While I’m disappointed at this letter
becoming public knowledge again, I would wonder who hasn’t said something
foolish or ill-judged a decade and a half ago.
That sunny morning, as I kissed my son and my soon to be
ex-wife goodbye on the platform, I thought I was saying farewell forever, as I
didn’t imagine for one second that I was ever coming back. But I did come back
and, somehow, I rebuilt my life. I had 3 peripatetic years of being vulnerably
housed and vulnerably employed, living out of holdalls in towns and cities
where I knew no-one and could live anonymous and ignored; London, Dublin, Bournemouth,
Oxford, Slough and York, which felt like coming home almost.
Serendipitously, I returned, which was the right thing to
do; the young boy who’d just started reception when I waved him goodbye was
coming up 7 and had been bitten by the Newcastle United bug. He needed me in
his life and I needed him in mine; I haven’t been a perfect father by any
stretch of the imagination, but I’ve loved him unconditionally and I’m very
proud of the way he has turned out. In time, I got a new home, a new job, a new
partner and reconciled myself with many members of my family as well as a section
of my old friends, who’ll tell you what a nice bloke I am. I recognise, accept
and regret that there’s a horrible, nasty, unpleasant Mr Hyde side to my
personality that makes me reviled and hated for the horrible things I’ve said
and done to a whole range of people who’ve done nothing other than disagree
with me, or prevent me from having my own way, either on line or in real life.
In essence, I respond badly to anyone standing up to me; I
always have to be right and I always have to have the last word. Emotionally, I
am still the little boy who suffered years of abuse from my parents and other
men and women in my extended family, as well as my father’s network. The only
way I found to “cope,” or so I mistakenly thought, was to try and outdo the strong
men I feared so much. I tried to “stand up” for myself, by dishing out abuse,
in a horrible way and seemingly without any awareness or insight, much less
care, for the other person’s emotions. Consequently, the wave of obloquy and
approbation I was forced to endure seems part of a perfect storm where all my
chickens have come home to roost, at the very time I would hope to be able to
avoid any further conflict. Trouble is; I’m reaping what I sowed. During the
period 2002 to 2007, I was a keyboard terrorist, inhabiting the fetid waters of
messageboards in the time before Twitter came on the scene.
Why did I behave in a manner that would appal and disgust
anyone who knew me? Either because I am genetically and inherently evil, or
because my ability to deal with stress and conflict had not recovered from the
1994-1999 episode of mental ill-health. I found that I couldn’t rationalise or
gain any sort of perspective in cyber space; I simply could not allow anyone to
have the last word and would not allow what I saw as illogicality or stupidity
to go unchallenged. This brought me endless hours, days, months of conflict and
a massive array of grudges and feuds with people in front of keyboards
elsewhere in the world. These people were not real to me; it was as if I was
arguing with a machine, like some kind of weird game of verbal chess. Not for
one second did I contemplate these people had opinions or feelings; all I was
concerned about was me getting the last word. At the time, I felt it was a way
of dealing with stress, which was crazy. Why didn’t I go for a walk or read a
book? I don’t know; perhaps I was almost addicted to both the internet and to
conflict. In effect, what I was actually doing to my mental health was adding
to my stress levels and upsetting innocent people. I said some vile things to
supporters of various teams and eventually, once I gained an insight into the
very real effect it could have on people after I was attacked in The Bodega by a Newcastle United fan, in
front of my son, I began to extricate myself in late February 2007, though the
scars and relics of my terrible legacy of bile still exist. I have no defence
about this set of activities either.
Now, I’d guess at some level I’ve always been argumentative,
or disputatious about anything and everything; music, politics and books are as
important to me as football and the interpretation of such topics is obviously
far more contentious and personal than the events of a football match. This is
presumably why I’ve always been enduringly fascinated by the sociological and
political aspects of football culture, rather than the actual minutiae of how
the game is played. Because I’ve spent so much of my life discussing recondite
interpretations of literary texts with other effete bourgeois pseudo
intellectuals, this is why I’ve always struggled to deal with ordinary, working
class men. This attitude may sound simply like snobbery, but I’m convinced it
has a clear psychological basis in the fact I am unconsciously standing up to
my late father, who repeatedly abused me up to the age of 21.
My father was a weak man; a violent, dictatorial bully who treated me like a dog. He made it clear he owned me; I had no right to personal freedom, in a physical or mental sense. Certainly these days his conduct and that of his co-abusers would not have been tolerated in normal society. They would be in jail. He never allowed me to have opinions of my own, he belittled every single aspect of my life and he assaulted on a weekly basis, but I forgave him because he was coerced into this behaviour by my mam, whose sexual abuse of me is simply too horrific for me to detail here, and because I had no choice but to love him. It occurred to me that there may be some dreadful relevance to the fact that the other female who sexually abused me on the instructions of my mother, organised for my parents to stay at the infamous Dolphin Square complex several times in the 1990s and early 2000s. This female also went on record, saying the following -:
- November 2, 2011 at 2:03 pm #Sir Jimmy Savile was an early influence on me. I noted his connection to Stoke Mandeville Hospital when I was four. I didn’t realise he fundraised for the hopsital. I thought he was a doctor and was impressed by the way he held down two jobs: doctor and DJ! Sir Jim inspired me to declare “when I grow up I want to be a ballerina nurse!” I wanted to entertain as well as look after patients in hospital.
Bearing this is mind, it is no surprise that our corner of Felling was infused by Stockholm Syndrome. Relatively late in his life, my dad and I were reconciled and he was a wonderful grandfather, but the damage had been done on my psyche. My entire life has been blighted by the abuse I suffered. It seems obvious to me that the reason I seek out conflict with strong, aggressive male types, often in authority, is because I see in them something of my father and I suppose I am unconsciously expecting to suffer the same kind of abuse as I suffered for the first couple of decades of my life. Because all I knew in my childhood was hatred, intimidation and aggression; all I understand is hatred and aggression. Because I hate myself, I behave in a way that invites those I find myself in conflict with to also hate me.
My dad died the day after Bobby Robson and was buried on the
day before my 45th birthday, 10 years after my infamous letter in The Sunday Sun. The day of the funeral,
I promised my mother I’d look after her and she’d never end up in care. At
first, my mam did really well to look after herself, but by 2011 it became
clear she was getting old and needed help. She may have been a monster of a
parent; an evil, perverted, callous sociopath, but she was the only mother I
was ever going to have. I didn’t forgive her (I never will), but I put it to
the back of my mind and dedicated myself to helping her, in her absence of any
other living relatives prepared to talk to her.
The situation was exacerbated by her living in Swalwell and
me at the coast, but not driving. I did my best, triangulating three times a
week between Tynemouth, High Heaton and Swalwell, often by bicycle, but I was
fighting a losing battle. Back then I really ought to have sought help for her,
in terms of carers and me, in terms of support groups or social services, but I
struggled along. Now I wish I hadn’t; instead of putting on a brave face in the
real world and a sneering scowl on line, I should have had the self-awareness
to call a halt to things and ask for help. Unfortunately, when one is mentally
ill, self-awareness is in scant supply. For almost the entire period since my
mother started to need a higher level of care, I feel as if I have not been in
control of how I live my life. Ironically, it has taken until that same state
of affairs has involved my mother before I am able to start addressing the
enormity of the problems I have. Now she lives in a secure nursing home with a
sea view on the border of Cullercoats and Whitley Bay. I hope she is happy
there. I am sure I will never fully know if she is or not.
I am now faced with the task of saying goodbye to someone
who is not dead; someone with whom I had a difficult and fractious relationship
for most of my life. Someone who will never, ever apologise to me for all the
terrible things she did to me, because she doesn’t (or didn’t) feel she did
anything wrong. She told me that as my mother, she was entitled to use
inappropriate sexual contact with me as a means of control. Grief and loss are
profound emotions; ones that affect the strongest of personalities. Those of
you reading this who have already been there will presumably understand what
I’m talking about. It would be fair to say my relationship with my mother was
made by my dad’s death. Since then, we’ve learned to love and respect each
other, in a way that hadn’t been possible before, though I will never be able
to reconcile the encouragement she gave to my father when he abused me and the
level of sexual satisfaction she gained from observing him abusing me, or her
own actions, performed for her own sexual gratification as well as my utter and
absolute humiliation. The other female involved in the sexual abuse with my
mother did so for reasons of my mother’s control over her, rather than her own
sexual gratification. However, I am now considering, in the light of the Crown Prosecution Service's decision to revisit the case of Sir Greville Janner, whether I ought to inform the police of the sexual abuse I endured from my mother and her accomplice. My father and all of the men in his circle, or so I understand, are dead and thus beyond prosecution.
At the same time as I attempted to grasp the enormity of my
mother’s departure and my own health problems, every single thing I’ve done
wrong over the past however many years has been regurgitated. The motivation
for this is a moot point and in many
ways irrelevant. Certainly it isn’t very pleasant to be on the receiving end,
forced to face up to the consequences of my activities over the years, and it
undoubtedly added to my stress levels and delayed my recovery as I lived in
terror at the revelation of the next skeleton from my cupboard.
There is no point in explaining or defending my actions. This is an end game. I offer no empty
apologies and accept I have no option other than to resign from NUST, while
continuing to receive medical and psychiatric help for my conditions, in the
hope I can live out my remaining years as a more self-aware person. I am 50; I
rebuilt my life once previously. I crave indulgence that I am not required to
do so again.
Those who seek restitution in whatever form they wish may
contact me via email on iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk
or by phone
