September 4, 2025 • 37 mins
The Sisters Kavanagh, Joyce, June and Paula, are three sisters born into a large family of ten children in the late 1950s and early 1960s, raised in a disadvantaged area of Dublin.
From the age of three or four and throughout their teenage years, they endured daily sexual abuse at the hands of their father.
In 1989, they made the courageous decision to bring charges against him. The following year, the Irish State successfully prosecuted their father, resulting in a conviction and a seven-year prison sentence, of which he served five.
The Grip of Childhood Sexual Abuse’ is a 10 hour – non-fiction audio book in which they share openly and honestly all the knowledge, insights and understanding derived from over thirty years’ experience in recovery work as a direct result of being sexually abused as children.
In This Episode
You can learn more about what I do here:
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The Trauma Therapist Podcast: I interview thought-leaders in the fields of trauma, mindfulness, addiction and yoga such as Peter Levine, Pat Ogden, Bessel van der Kolk and Bruce Perry. https://bit.ly/3VRNy8z
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You can learn more about what I do here:
The Trauma Therapist Newsletter: celebrates the people and voices in the mental health profession. And it's free! Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4jGBeSa
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From the age of three or four and throughout their teenage years, they endured daily sexual abuse at the hands of their father.
In 1989, they made the courageous decision to bring charges against him. The following year, the Irish State successfully prosecuted their father, resulting in a conviction and a seven-year prison sentence, of which he served five.
The Grip of Childhood Sexual Abuse’ is a 10 hour – non-fiction audio book in which they share openly and honestly all the knowledge, insights and understanding derived from over thirty years’ experience in recovery work as a direct result of being sexually abused as children.
In This Episode
You can learn more about what I do here:
The Trauma Therapist Newsletter: celebrates the people and voices in the mental health profession. And it's free! Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4jGBeSa
The Trauma Therapist Podcast: I interview thought-leaders in the fields of trauma, mindfulness, addiction and yoga such as Peter Levine, Pat Ogden, Bessel van der Kolk and Bruce Perry. https://bit.ly/3VRNy8z
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
You can learn more about what I do here:
The Trauma Therapist Newsletter: celebrates the people and voices in the mental health profession. And it's free! Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4jGBeSa
———
If you’d like to support The Trauma Therapist Podcast and the work I do you can do that here with a monthly donation of $5, $7, or $10: Donate to The Trauma Therapist Podcast.
Click here to join my email list and receive podcast updates and other news.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Trauma Pipis Podcast. My name is g Macpherson.
I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go,
so five four, three, two and one our folks, welcome
back to the podcast. Very excited to have Joyce, June
(00:20):
and Paula Kavanaugh back with me. Welcome ladies, Welcome, glad
to be back. These Kavanaugh's sisters were born into a
large family of ten in the late fifties and early sixties.
Raised in a disadvantage area of Dublin. From the age
of three or four and throughout their teenage years, the
endured daily sexual abuse at the hands of their father.
(00:43):
In nineteen eighty nine, they made the courageous decision to
bring charges against him. The following year, the Irish state
successfully prosecuted their father, resulted in a conviction in the
seven year prison sentence of which he served five The
GP of Childhood Sexual Abuses is a ten hour non
fiction audiobook in which they share openly and honesty or
(01:04):
the knowledge, insights and understanding derived from over thirty years
experience and recovery work as a direct result of being
sexually abused as children. All right, ladies welcome. So we
spoke a while ago, and before we get into the audiobook, Well,
(01:25):
first of all, when did you record the audiobook?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And we've actually recorded the book over the last two years,
obviously not all the time, but over the last two years.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Okay, And I just wanted to think about how to
start here.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
It's a very different kind of audiobook of that hes
because along.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
With you, you want to give Okay, let me just
I just want to give some context for our audience
because this has been going You've been dealing with this
for a long time.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
And before we get into the audiobook, I'm curious how
on a day to day basis, is this just front
and center for you.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
No, it's not for the law. There's huge gaps where
we don't deal with it at all. And even when
we were recording for the audiobook, we might meet up
fortnightly or weekly or monthly. Just we fit it into
our lives and for the longest time, it's not part
(02:39):
of our lives at all, but it is always a
driving force. It's something we are really passionate about putting
out there and contributing to the eradication of childhood sexual abuse,
and we believe it is possible.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
We also believe we're meant to do it.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
We believe it is our mission almost because the strength
we have together is not the strength you would typically
say in a victim of this crime. It's a very
complex crime with very complex impacts on a human being.
And although we are all in our sixties now, we're
still uncovering and healing from parts of us that were
(03:20):
damaged true the abuse. Now we also recognize that the
actual act of the sexual abuse itself was probably the
easiest thing to heal from. The psychological harm is what's
taken us a lifetime to recover from, and that's just
part of life now for us. But we believe so
(03:41):
many people can relate to the book because it's related
to it's connected to the psychological harm that occurs with
anybody who has been traumatized, especially like especially childhood sexual abuse.
Because we're not claiming to be experts, but we are
experts in our own lives.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
So I don't know, right.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I we just say this and just quickly, and you
have two other books, Yeah, Our Father's Secret and Why
go back, And we'll have those listed here at the
show notes page at the Trauma Faviors podcast dot com.
But go ahead this I keep you.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
One of the difference in this book is the fact
that we had a lot more people involved in the
recording of it, Like there's a three of us and
just twenty four other people, family members and friends.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
And what we really wanted.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
To do is to make the book relatable and for
people to be able to hear the message when they
would shine away from the actual facts.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Of what we were talking about.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
And also because through the whole process of doing the
audio book and doing the previous books, it was really
all about healing ourselves. It's like John said, every time
we do something, we're uncovering something that like even this week,
I'm still uncovering stuff and how I was impacted by
my abuse through experiences that I'm creating today. But if
(05:10):
you don't, if you're not willing to go back and
look at your past and understand the core of your thoughts,
then you actually never get to move on.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
You never get to move forward. So I understand why
people might feel that.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
For somebody who's thinking, we are spending all this time
during the book and the audiobook that we're living it
every day. That's not really the reality of it, but
the healing from it is a day to day thing,
and it is something that takes a lifetime to recover from.
And we're just blessed that we've had, like the process
of doing the audio books and the other books for
(05:47):
us to learn about how we were damaged and how
we overcame that damage.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah, but I think he was kind of asking how
we let.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Me ask you this the this book? You did you
approach it as we want to do an audiobook, We
want to do a recording of it rather than write
a book and do an audio version of it. We
are a different idea and it so happened. How did
that come about? What was the impetus for that?
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Well, from the very first book, we wanted to turn
that into an audio. The first book took about twenty
years to complete, and it was a purging of our pain.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Really.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
It was really difficult to do and there was times
we couldn't face it, and when we were finished it,
we did.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Have a desire to turn it into an audiobook.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
But looking back now we're kind of glad that it
didn't happen, because.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
This is the this is the book.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
This is the one where all of our growth, all
of our knowledge comes across, because we've got it contained
within the book as loads of conversational pieces which are
not scripted, just off the cuff.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
And the part that we.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Do, the pieces, the segments that we do read about
our past. We're demonstrating what it looked like in real
time living with our father and alongside the abuse. And
that's why family, friends and added their vices to it
to make it come alive.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
And it really is. It's a bit like a play.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Let me, let me, let me stop you there? What
do you mean by that? You you kind of created this?
What does that mean? I'm sorry?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
It's The book is like a combination of a play,
an audiobook, and a podcast.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
It's like the three of the back of mind in it.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
So there are parts of the book where we read,
we tell our story, the history of how we got
to where we are today.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
And at the end of.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Each segment of our abuse, we have conversations about what
did we learn from it, from writing about it, from
talking about it, from dealing.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
With it, what did we was to recover and heal
from it?
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Like I suppose an example would be In the opening story,
we have a segment where our father is knocking on
the door call and Paula to get up in the
morning and joyce the's sun. We used his vice to
enact our further and it really does come to life.
You know, you'd have to hear it, because we can't
(08:25):
really do it justice by describing it, but.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
It really was.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
At one stage of our healing, we took part in
a form of therapy called family Sculpton, where you get
a group of people all strangers, practically strangers, and they
play a role in the family. They take the position
of each of your siblings, and it's incredible how it happens,
but you actually take on the persona of the person
(08:51):
you're supposed to be portraying. And that's something like that
happens in this process where our relaying our story with
other voices coming into it, it actually came to life.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
It really did.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
And then on top of that, we have a conversation
piece at the end of each chapter where we discuss
what that incident, how that particular incident impacted us, what
it looks like in our life, how we reacted to it,
and given that we're three different personalities, we have all
been impacted by the same abuse, and yet we're different.
(09:28):
We had a different relationship with him, we had a
different relationship with each other. And it's like we're all
in our sixties now, we're all at different stages.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I know, I keep saying, we're really not in our sixties.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
We're only pretending, like you know, we're all at different
stages of recovery, so to speak, but we're not.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Nobody's any further along than the other.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
We're just due to our life circumstances and our personality,
we've been able to deal with different.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Aspects of our recovery different times.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
And so when it comes for example, if I was
able to confront my fear, and then by the time
Paula was ready to confront her fear, myself and joycep
be there to support her and be able to advise
her as to how that impacted was. I'm just using
that as an example. It's just to show that each
of us you're ready when you're ready. It just takes
(10:23):
as long as it takes each person. Like Paula has
only recently uncovered true an illness, the levels of fear
that she had been holding in her body and she's
learning to release now at this stage. That's why it's
so important that people realize the impact sexual abuse has
on a child and how those impacts are lifelong.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
They're not you can't cure them quickly.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
It's like I was saying that, it's what was really
important for us was to go back and look at
what happened and what were we thinking at the time happened,
and then what did we do with those thoughts? And
as you know yourself being in this field, when you're
in a trauma situation and you try to escape, you
can't run away from me. You escape by disassociation. For me,
(11:12):
that was my savior when I was grown up. That's
what kept me alive. But that also turned into the
biggest enemy I could have possibly had in order to
be able to live in the world. And because everything
I did I suppressed, I manifest things physically, so I
would have been sick quite a lot.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
I would have been ill quite a lot.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
But over the last since we finished the book, actually
I have got particularly sick because I like to lay
lessons big, so I go fucking big or go home.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
But the one thing I did learn, and I was
only talking about today was.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
When I was a child and I was being raped
and it was happening at the moment it was happening,
because I didn't want to feel like I disassociated from it,
so I didn't want to feel the physical, the mental,
or the meop emotional.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
But what I did with all.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Those feelings was suppressed them, and they stayed in my body,
and they've run my body up until today. But over
the last couple of weeks, I got really sick and
really ill, and I got into a situation where the
pain was as bad as it would have been as
a child, and the trauma would have been as bad
as it was as a child. But the difference this
(12:22):
time was as a child I was met when when
those things happened, I was met with anger and rape
and more trauma and aggression. This time, when I went
through that trauma and the experience of being sick and
all that, I was met with compassion and kindness from
the nurses and the doctors and and that and June
and Joyce of course, and the understanding. And but what
(12:45):
I gained from that was that was a life changer
for me. That's a that's a whole new way for me.
To move forward now because the belief system I had
that if I was vulnerable or fearful or in pain,
that I just had to get on with that and
live with it and just not acknowledge. And now I'm
actually free to acknowledge that and move forward.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Let me just pause you for a second there. Let
me just pause pause you for a second there. Thank
you so much for sharing that. I mean, look, there's
a lot there's no words for a lot of this.
But what I think what you just shared, besides being
so personal, I think you articulated in really an incredible way, uh,
(13:32):
the journey of healing in a sense, and what it
means for for your one person of course, right, and
as you've said before, people here heal at different times
and in different ways. But I really appreciate you sharing that.
Let me let me ask you something here this book,
(13:52):
it's it's an intense thing to do to put together
an audiobook and bring other people in. It might sound
like a good idea in theory, and I'm wondering, did
it sound like a good idea in theory, And then
when you started doing it, was it a different.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
From the instant we began, the very forced recording.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
We knew this is something we have to.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Do, and also take into account none of us had
ever done this before and none of us knew what
we were doing. And also the recordings took place where
people who were abroad in Canada, in England, in Spain,
all overs.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Were relatives relatives.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
So everybody that was in the book we had to
then try to get it, get them to record the pieces,
and then try and put them and make them sound
like they were sitting in the same room having a conversation.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
No guy quite, We didn't.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
It was quite challenging, but it was fascinating at the
same time, and it was great to have other people
on board and have the family on board because there's.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Actually been healing for everybody who took part in this. Everybody.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
It wasn't painful, It was actually really good. It was
a really good sense that this is the right thing
to do. We did learn, We learned loads, but not
I don't want you to think we're walking around wounded.
I know healing never stops, but at the same time,
(15:21):
it takes up less of our days now than it
ever did. Like we don't walk around wounded, but every
now and again something had happened, and it would throw
you back into a feeling you have as a child,
and you're able now you're in a good space to
allow it to leave.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Do you know what I mean? To move forward? You
can let it go because you're now aware of it.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
A lot of the things we would say we're going
through now, we weren't completely aware and we didn't have
a deep, full understanding.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Of what was actually happening. It's understand what that word
integration means.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah, yeah, and we didn't. So you how so you
brought people in, You invited them to take part in this.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Now, my guess is that some of these people did
they know what was going on at the time. Some
of them didn't.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
One of them was my son. He wasn't even born
at the time.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
So so he what was your what what did you
ask of them?
Speaker 4 (16:27):
They got a script? They got like one of them
might have been a nurse's vice. One of them was
our sister. Couldn't actually we have another sister who couldn't.
She feels she couldn't take part in this, But when
we asked her to be the vice of our mother,
she was able to do that and through that process
(16:49):
she actually gained great insight into my mother, into the
whole situation. She was able to look more objectively at it,
and she got an awful lot out of that process
for herself.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
And it was.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Actually okay, so so my my, my apologies. You were
asking you were asking people to basically play roles. Yeah, okay,
not necessarily to go back and ask them, you know,
what was going on for them during this time.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
With some of the boys, with some of the all
of the brothers played themselves.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I see, and.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Particular would have would have engaged in the conversations as
at the end of it, because he would have been
one of the brothers in particular was very involved at
the time with bringing my father to court, so he
would have also got a lot of healing from it.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
And he did contribute as himself.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
He wasn't playing a role, and he was relaying the
story as it unfolded at the time.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And he also needed to forgive himself like a lot
of the boys did, thinking that we expected them to protect.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Us and we didn't.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
They couldn't, but they expect they expected that a man
mm hmmm.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
So the process I would imagine, I mean, as as
you're probably aware and there. There are certain therapeutic modalities
that are similar to this, like certain drama therapy. Yes,
right where you bring people. You have a big group
of people, and some of these people play different roles
(18:24):
in Wow.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
It was really healing for all of it because every
time we got together, we learned something.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
One of us had an aha moment.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
At most of the sessions, you could nearly say, well,
that session was really about you, parlor or You've got
a lot of that.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
So I realized something just true.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Can you can you give me an example?
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Give me the example actually hated. Yeah, there's two. Actually
I can't. I can't remember how that came to me.
But I grew up.
Speaker 5 (18:59):
Believe in I loved this man, and I always felt
I have to protect him.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
They don't ask me what that's about.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
I believe this about the man that was abusing me.
And I remember we were doing the session. I don't
even remember what the session was, but I know when
I laid down that my I realized how much I
absolutely fucking hate him, how much it was, and I
was petrified him, and I thought if I didn't please them,
(19:30):
my life was at risk.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
And that's how deep it was. But like I walked
around for days.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
I couldn't believe that it took me this long to
realize how much I hate him.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Yeah, because that's not that long ago. That's only No,
that is only a year or so. It's even And
it was the realization she had to listen.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
To her own recording when she was talking about an
abusive situation, and she was saying like, I just wanted
to please them, and I loved him, And when she
when she heard back, she was going, hang on, it
wasn't that I fucking loved him at all.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
I was absolutely terrified of him.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
And so she convinced herself that she loved them and
wanted to please them.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
But that was the brainwashing. We all went throught that.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
We were totally conditioned because our abuse began from Childbert.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
We were well and truly conditioned.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
We had no thoughts of our own, like we were programmed,
and so we had no real reality.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
We did not we had nothing to return to. We
didn't understand what was even happening to us.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
And when we first even heard about sex, we didn't
know that that's what we were having.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
We didn't know we were even when we were giving.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Our police statements. We would say he had sex with
us instead.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Of he raped us. We didn't understand the role we
played in it. We didn't understand, but we did so. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Yeah, And that's where you take the responsibility and carry
the guilt and the shame. That's why the secrets so
very tightly hell by so many people. That's why people
don't open up about this crime till twenty years later.
It's and that's why we're here in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
Trying to figure out how to deal with this bloody issue,
you know, and to try and eliminate the ignorance around
the actual crime itself, because I think even victims going
through court, the way they're treating, just the way they're
made to feel, the way they're just fucking dismissed if
they don't feel there's enough evidence like that has to stop.
Speaker 5 (21:30):
But I do think comes from ignorance and the lack
of understanding of the impacts of abuse, and also.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
That ability that victims have to disassociate along with then
the ability to DeCamp to compartmentalized stuff makes them really
bad witnesses in any court case.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
But that isn't explained in our courts over here.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
That's not explained to the judge, to the legal system,
to anybody who's dealing with it. So that's why victims
make really bad witnesses.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Because you can't.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
I can honestly tell you even today, I am still uncovering.
I am still joining the dots of stuff that happened
to me, how I behaved, why I behaved, and what
grew out of that, and how my life was completely
messed up way after the abuse had stopped, decades after
it because of what I had done to survive. And
(22:25):
I did it, and I did it so long that
I became a habit. Then I became a belief, and
then it came something I never thought I even did,
so I never questioned it until something happened when we
were having conversations around the book. I never had a
reason to question stuff, but our conversations actually led to
those questions.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Coming up to the front and going okad. I never
thought it. I never even looked at that. And that's
where the healing was.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
The what you share is obviously wisdom that's come from
a long thought journey of healing is what has helped you.
I mean, obviously you have each other, which is amazing.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
It's huge.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Did each of you take part in other different types
of therapies or or what?
Speaker 4 (23:20):
No, there is there is one fucking more than one
millions of issues, but one of it. The things that
we cling to is each other because we have gone
through this situation and we've gone through the years of
healing together, and we recognize the need for each other.
And if we spend a long time apart, we nearly
(23:41):
come to get back together again with Siah relief gone.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Thank God, I need, I need.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
I think we've healed more in the process of doing
the books.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Yeah, and you know.
Speaker 5 (23:55):
It's it's something we took gone and we were determined
to do. But yeah, when you're actually doing this and
reading back, it's amazing the freedom we get. It might
hurt a bit, but it's freedom. And we don't look
upon healing as the enemy anymore. We didn't want any
(24:16):
more pain at one stage. Now with something like that happens,
we welcome it and we.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Learn from us. But we all seed each other.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
We also do have probably an unhealthy attachment to each
other because although we are very sociable, we know lots
of people and we love lots of people, we really
only feel safe and I suppose a home when we're
together because we completely we've gone through so much together
(24:45):
and there's a total acceptance of each other. Not that
we don't have problems where we fight like anybody else,
but there is a sense that the only case that
it's really safe is together.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
But just to clarify, you've never seen a therapist.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Oh no, we went through therapy for years and some
of us like something.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
Yeah, we started off and it did put us on
the right thing.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
It did. It gave us a.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Great foundation, but we didn't go anywhere near the edges
of what we needed to do until we start writing,
and we didn't even know the depth of what we
had to deal with. And it was just as well
we didn't because we probably wouldn't have gone near it.
But when we got rid of the layers of like
the actual abuse, when we thought we had purged that,
(25:35):
we thought that was it because we thought that's the
problem there it is.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Thank god, we're done with that.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
And then we realized, well, why is our lives still shit?
So we would be discussing that and then we'd look
into it and we'd start we'd say, right, well, no,
we're not done, and people would ask us for another book.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Is there another book?
Speaker 4 (25:53):
And we didn't think we had another book in us,
but we did start to write about our the issues
that were still e and we realized.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Oh my god, we're only starting.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
It's the psychological harm that has altered you and your
life and your behaviors and your relationships and your jobs.
Every decision you make has been altered. So now we
have to look at that. So we had to really
start from the bottom and build ourselves. And now the
audiobook is the accumulation of everything we've done, and it's
(26:25):
like we've arrived. We haven't had a single doubt throughout
the entire process that we.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
You know that it's overkill. We need to leave it alone.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
This is meant to be. It is meant to be,
and together we're strong enough to do it.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
What is your hope for the book to.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Reach as many people as possible?
Speaker 4 (26:51):
And there are some key messages in the book that
we really want to promote, and that is, you know,
given people who might be thinking of offending somewhere to
go to if they're consideringly even families, And we want
some attention brought onto the fact that secondary victims like
the families of people who abuse, their lives are destroyed forever.
(27:14):
There's no end date on that. I know a couple
of personal friends whose lives have been torn upside down
by a family member committing a sexual crime, and now
their lives may as well be over as well, and
there has to be support and help given to that.
It's like mothers as well who are in a relationship
with an offender.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
And we can only speak from our own experience.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
And I'm sure there are women who take part in
offending as well, but that hasn't been our experience, and
that's all we can speak from. So if you vilify
the wives and partners of abusers, then they're not likely
to speak either.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
One of the things that I would feel really strongly
about is if you don't give a perpetrator or a
possible perpetrator hope, the hope that their life could be different,
the hope that doesn't and give them the reason. Like
I know how difficult it was for me to go
back and look at my past, and I was a victim,
(28:15):
I can't imagine how difficult it is if you're a
perpetrator to want to go back and look at your
behavior and why you did something, and hell you did it,
so we I feel we really need to give a
sense of hope to somebody.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
And look at that enoughful of young people now offending,
and I honestly believe if they were reached, if they
could say to you listen, I'm actually thinking like this,
they could be helped out of that. But who do
you say that too? Without being annihilated? You know what
I mean.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
It's just it's there. You're not looking. You have to
look at the whole picture.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
And if society is telling people who offend that they
are the worst on the whole planet and there's.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
No hope for them, well then we actually do have
no hope.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Because there's no one going to change or fix anything
by only looking at one side.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Of an issue.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
We have to we have to have paer petrayers, given
that the support and the understand them that victims get.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
But in a different way. Yeah, they have to.
Speaker 5 (29:20):
Understand the impact of their behavior, and if they don't
understand that, they'll never ever change or even.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Have the desire to change.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
And we just have to keep harping on about it
because it's a societal change, paradigm change that's required here
it's not This is not simple, and it's every aspect
of a person's life.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
So it's everybody on board. We just have to keep.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Chipping away until you tip the scales and change happens.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
And I think the time is right. It does seem to.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Be being spoken about more and more now, more and
more victims are coming forward and showing courage and speaking
out right, and we just had keep shining a light
on it, making it okay, normalize the conversations around anything
to do with sexual abuse, given people victims.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
The vice, you know.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
I found COVID very triggering because I felt it just
reminded me of being abused, and so far as I
felt incrementally my rights were being taken away, my voice,
my choices, I felt powerless, and I found the whole
thing scary. I really did, and I felt to a
(30:32):
degree that shut us down. We were in the middle
of doing podcasts, we were doing great, but it was like,
I just found the whole thing very frightening. And Jicce
recently had an episode where I remember you got you drove
the wrong way and you were stuck up the country road.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
I got lost of the mountains. I mean, I'm over
dramatizing this. I was lost in a car. I'm sure
it was about twenty minutes away from my house, but
I'd never seen it before. It was dark, I couldn't
get the lights in the car were and maybe saw
the condition.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
I got into.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
I was trembling from head to toe. I couldn't even
put my foot on the pedal. There was nothing I
could do. There's no houses, just complete darkness, and I
shook in a way that was I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Even hold the wheel of the steereding wheel.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
Eventually I got out of there and realized how close
I actually was to home.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
But the fear, the level of fear I felt.
Speaker 5 (31:27):
I just connected immediately with my child, with me as
a child, and I said, that's the level of fear
I would have felt, and I would have had nowhere
to go with that. So that's actually trapped inside me.
So little moments like that we've all had. That came
out of nowhere.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
But I know.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
After it, I felt so much better that I've given
my inner child a voice.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
And the significant of that is the how nascence that was.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
That's why that's significant.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Right?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Right? Exactly? I mean What's what's very uh interesting, but
also really inspiring is to hear each of you reflect
on the level of awareness you've accumulated about how this
(32:27):
is impacting your lives now, and how that awareness is
even though it's the experiences like your joys being terrified
up there, getting lost, even though that's horrible, you're able
to kind of step back and move through it and
like you learned from it. Wow, ladies, I mean seriously, no,
(32:53):
I mean, every time I talk to you, it's just
I'm blown away by you. Probably hear this all the time,
but I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm
going to say it anyway. I mean, Jesus, it's just
so inspiring, really, you know, and this this new audio
(33:13):
book you what you've done is I think it's it's amazing,
and believe in it. I feel like, yeah, I mean,
I feel like you're you're you're giving people the wealth
of your experience, your hard won experience, and I love
(33:35):
the way you're just you're open and honest and raw,
and you know you're not professing to be experts, of course,
I mean, you're just sharing your own experience, and I
think we all learn from that. So thank you.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
And I think we never really celebrate any of our
achievements like book one and Book two, and you haven't.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Really celebrated this one either.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
But there's a deep knowing within each of us, a
surety that this is absolutely going to help people. There's
no doubt whatsoever. And I don't care how long it takes.
I don't care if we're even dead when it happens.
We've put it out there and it is absolutely going
to help people because it really brings a home what
it looks like, how the emotional impact on the psychological
(34:25):
harm of the sexual abuse plays out in your life,
and how the huge levels of self hatred. But are
such obstacles in your life in every direction, and.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Most of the time you're unaware of them. Yeah, and
it's the tragedy of it.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
And when you actually move past you can you can
see how it sounds. It sounds like it's not the
right way to say, but it sounds like all of
that suffering if you've given the right information at the
right time, all of that, not all of it. Maybe
you can't, you can't take away from the facts of
what might have happened to you. But a huge portion
(35:04):
of that self hatred could be removed from victims. There's
no need for them to go to the levels of
hell that victims do go to internally, and the negative
self talk that never turns off like that is not necessary.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
But nobody tells you.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
You know, right right, Well, as we wind down here,
what's the best way for people to learn more about you,
to get in touch with you, and to check out
the audiobook?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Well, everything that you need to know about was is
on our website, the Cabinet Systems dot com.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Can't be simpler than that.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
And anything we've ever done and anything we've ever said,
any podcasts is all up on our web page.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
And the book you can download from Spotify.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Okay, we'll have that link.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
The link actually on their website to Spotify. So everything
that you need to know is on the website. And
it's called The Grip Child Sexual Abuse. But the audio
is very gripping. I don't think you'll be able to
stop once you start listening to I know.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
But I do.
Speaker 5 (36:13):
Guy, I would suggest you just actually listen to the
first section yourself, which is only about abuse how the
abuse came out. But if you listen to that section,
you'll see exactly what we're talking about, including other people's
voices and how it makes it.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
It's different, is different, but absolutely water listen.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
So once again, the kavanaughsisters dot Com will have that
link up here at the show notes page at the
Trauma Theaprist podcast dot com. As always, you ladies are
welcome back here anytime. And I just want to close
out by saying, you know, sometimes sometimes we don't know
(36:55):
the impact we have on other people, but you, the
three of you, are so friggin inspiring. I mean, no,
I'm not, I'm not. I'm saying this is truthful. You are.
I'm gonna get off of this interview and I'm just
gonna go Jesus freaking Christ. You're amazing. You really are
(37:17):
just the strength you know, and you might not think
it's true, but the impact you have it's I want
to thank you so much for being here. We'll be
in touch, all right, take care, Bye bye bye
Welcome to the Trauma Pipis Podcast. My name is g Macpherson.
I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go,
so five four, three, two and one our folks, welcome
back to the podcast. Very excited to have Joyce, June
(00:20):
and Paula Kavanaugh back with me. Welcome ladies, Welcome, glad
to be back. These Kavanaugh's sisters were born into a
large family of ten in the late fifties and early sixties.
Raised in a disadvantage area of Dublin. From the age
of three or four and throughout their teenage years, the
endured daily sexual abuse at the hands of their father.
(00:43):
In nineteen eighty nine, they made the courageous decision to
bring charges against him. The following year, the Irish state
successfully prosecuted their father, resulted in a conviction in the
seven year prison sentence of which he served five The
GP of Childhood Sexual Abuses is a ten hour non
fiction audiobook in which they share openly and honesty or
(01:04):
the knowledge, insights and understanding derived from over thirty years
experience and recovery work as a direct result of being
sexually abused as children. All right, ladies welcome. So we
spoke a while ago, and before we get into the audiobook, Well,
(01:25):
first of all, when did you record the audiobook?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And we've actually recorded the book over the last two years,
obviously not all the time, but over the last two years.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Okay, And I just wanted to think about how to
start here.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
It's a very different kind of audiobook of that hes
because along.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
With you, you want to give Okay, let me just
I just want to give some context for our audience
because this has been going You've been dealing with this
for a long time.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
And before we get into the audiobook, I'm curious how
on a day to day basis, is this just front
and center for you.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
No, it's not for the law. There's huge gaps where
we don't deal with it at all. And even when
we were recording for the audiobook, we might meet up
fortnightly or weekly or monthly. Just we fit it into
our lives and for the longest time, it's not part
(02:39):
of our lives at all, but it is always a
driving force. It's something we are really passionate about putting
out there and contributing to the eradication of childhood sexual abuse,
and we believe it is possible.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
We also believe we're meant to do it.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
We believe it is our mission almost because the strength
we have together is not the strength you would typically
say in a victim of this crime. It's a very
complex crime with very complex impacts on a human being.
And although we are all in our sixties now, we're
still uncovering and healing from parts of us that were
(03:20):
damaged true the abuse. Now we also recognize that the
actual act of the sexual abuse itself was probably the
easiest thing to heal from. The psychological harm is what's
taken us a lifetime to recover from, and that's just
part of life now for us. But we believe so
(03:41):
many people can relate to the book because it's related
to it's connected to the psychological harm that occurs with
anybody who has been traumatized, especially like especially childhood sexual abuse.
Because we're not claiming to be experts, but we are
experts in our own lives.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
So I don't know, right.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I we just say this and just quickly, and you
have two other books, Yeah, Our Father's Secret and Why
go back, And we'll have those listed here at the
show notes page at the Trauma Faviors podcast dot com.
But go ahead this I keep you.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
One of the difference in this book is the fact
that we had a lot more people involved in the
recording of it, Like there's a three of us and
just twenty four other people, family members and friends.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
And what we really wanted.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
To do is to make the book relatable and for
people to be able to hear the message when they
would shine away from the actual facts.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Of what we were talking about.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
And also because through the whole process of doing the
audio book and doing the previous books, it was really
all about healing ourselves. It's like John said, every time
we do something, we're uncovering something that like even this week,
I'm still uncovering stuff and how I was impacted by
my abuse through experiences that I'm creating today. But if
(05:10):
you don't, if you're not willing to go back and
look at your past and understand the core of your thoughts,
then you actually never get to move on.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
You never get to move forward. So I understand why
people might feel that.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
For somebody who's thinking, we are spending all this time
during the book and the audiobook that we're living it
every day. That's not really the reality of it, but
the healing from it is a day to day thing,
and it is something that takes a lifetime to recover from.
And we're just blessed that we've had, like the process
of doing the audio books and the other books for
(05:47):
us to learn about how we were damaged and how
we overcame that damage.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah, but I think he was kind of asking how
we let.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Me ask you this the this book? You did you
approach it as we want to do an audiobook, We
want to do a recording of it rather than write
a book and do an audio version of it. We
are a different idea and it so happened. How did
that come about? What was the impetus for that?
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Well, from the very first book, we wanted to turn
that into an audio. The first book took about twenty
years to complete, and it was a purging of our pain.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Really.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
It was really difficult to do and there was times
we couldn't face it, and when we were finished it,
we did.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Have a desire to turn it into an audiobook.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
But looking back now we're kind of glad that it
didn't happen, because.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
This is the this is the book.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
This is the one where all of our growth, all
of our knowledge comes across, because we've got it contained
within the book as loads of conversational pieces which are
not scripted, just off the cuff.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
And the part that we.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Do, the pieces, the segments that we do read about
our past. We're demonstrating what it looked like in real
time living with our father and alongside the abuse. And
that's why family, friends and added their vices to it
to make it come alive.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
And it really is. It's a bit like a play.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Let me, let me, let me stop you there? What
do you mean by that? You you kind of created this?
What does that mean? I'm sorry?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
It's The book is like a combination of a play,
an audiobook, and a podcast.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
It's like the three of the back of mind in it.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
So there are parts of the book where we read,
we tell our story, the history of how we got
to where we are today.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
And at the end of.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Each segment of our abuse, we have conversations about what
did we learn from it, from writing about it, from
talking about it, from dealing.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
With it, what did we was to recover and heal
from it?
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Like I suppose an example would be In the opening story,
we have a segment where our father is knocking on
the door call and Paula to get up in the
morning and joyce the's sun. We used his vice to
enact our further and it really does come to life.
You know, you'd have to hear it, because we can't
(08:25):
really do it justice by describing it, but.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
It really was.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
At one stage of our healing, we took part in
a form of therapy called family Sculpton, where you get
a group of people all strangers, practically strangers, and they
play a role in the family. They take the position
of each of your siblings, and it's incredible how it happens,
but you actually take on the persona of the person
(08:51):
you're supposed to be portraying. And that's something like that
happens in this process where our relaying our story with
other voices coming into it, it actually came to life.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
It really did.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
And then on top of that, we have a conversation
piece at the end of each chapter where we discuss
what that incident, how that particular incident impacted us, what
it looks like in our life, how we reacted to it,
and given that we're three different personalities, we have all
been impacted by the same abuse, and yet we're different.
(09:28):
We had a different relationship with him, we had a
different relationship with each other. And it's like we're all
in our sixties now, we're all at different stages.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I know, I keep saying, we're really not in our sixties.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
We're only pretending, like you know, we're all at different
stages of recovery, so to speak, but we're not.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Nobody's any further along than the other.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
We're just due to our life circumstances and our personality,
we've been able to deal with different.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Aspects of our recovery different times.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
And so when it comes for example, if I was
able to confront my fear, and then by the time
Paula was ready to confront her fear, myself and joycep
be there to support her and be able to advise
her as to how that impacted was. I'm just using
that as an example. It's just to show that each
of us you're ready when you're ready. It just takes
(10:23):
as long as it takes each person. Like Paula has
only recently uncovered true an illness, the levels of fear
that she had been holding in her body and she's
learning to release now at this stage. That's why it's
so important that people realize the impact sexual abuse has
on a child and how those impacts are lifelong.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
They're not you can't cure them quickly.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
It's like I was saying that, it's what was really
important for us was to go back and look at
what happened and what were we thinking at the time happened,
and then what did we do with those thoughts? And
as you know yourself being in this field, when you're
in a trauma situation and you try to escape, you
can't run away from me. You escape by disassociation. For me,
(11:12):
that was my savior when I was grown up. That's
what kept me alive. But that also turned into the
biggest enemy I could have possibly had in order to
be able to live in the world. And because everything
I did I suppressed, I manifest things physically, so I
would have been sick quite a lot.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
I would have been ill quite a lot.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
But over the last since we finished the book, actually
I have got particularly sick because I like to lay
lessons big, so I go fucking big or go home.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
But the one thing I did learn, and I was
only talking about today was.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
When I was a child and I was being raped
and it was happening at the moment it was happening,
because I didn't want to feel like I disassociated from it,
so I didn't want to feel the physical, the mental,
or the meop emotional.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
But what I did with all.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Those feelings was suppressed them, and they stayed in my body,
and they've run my body up until today. But over
the last couple of weeks, I got really sick and
really ill, and I got into a situation where the
pain was as bad as it would have been as
a child, and the trauma would have been as bad
as it was as a child. But the difference this
(12:22):
time was as a child I was met when when
those things happened, I was met with anger and rape
and more trauma and aggression. This time, when I went
through that trauma and the experience of being sick and
all that, I was met with compassion and kindness from
the nurses and the doctors and and that and June
and Joyce of course, and the understanding. And but what
(12:45):
I gained from that was that was a life changer
for me. That's a that's a whole new way for me.
To move forward now because the belief system I had
that if I was vulnerable or fearful or in pain,
that I just had to get on with that and
live with it and just not acknowledge. And now I'm
actually free to acknowledge that and move forward.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Let me just pause you for a second there. Let
me just pause pause you for a second there. Thank
you so much for sharing that. I mean, look, there's
a lot there's no words for a lot of this.
But what I think what you just shared, besides being
so personal, I think you articulated in really an incredible way, uh,
(13:32):
the journey of healing in a sense, and what it
means for for your one person of course, right, and
as you've said before, people here heal at different times
and in different ways. But I really appreciate you sharing that.
Let me let me ask you something here this book,
(13:52):
it's it's an intense thing to do to put together
an audiobook and bring other people in. It might sound
like a good idea in theory, and I'm wondering, did
it sound like a good idea in theory, And then
when you started doing it, was it a different.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
From the instant we began, the very forced recording.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
We knew this is something we have to.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Do, and also take into account none of us had
ever done this before and none of us knew what
we were doing. And also the recordings took place where
people who were abroad in Canada, in England, in Spain,
all overs.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Were relatives relatives.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
So everybody that was in the book we had to
then try to get it, get them to record the pieces,
and then try and put them and make them sound
like they were sitting in the same room having a conversation.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
No guy quite, We didn't.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
It was quite challenging, but it was fascinating at the
same time, and it was great to have other people
on board and have the family on board because there's.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Actually been healing for everybody who took part in this. Everybody.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
It wasn't painful, It was actually really good. It was
a really good sense that this is the right thing
to do. We did learn, We learned loads, but not
I don't want you to think we're walking around wounded.
I know healing never stops, but at the same time,
(15:21):
it takes up less of our days now than it
ever did. Like we don't walk around wounded, but every
now and again something had happened, and it would throw
you back into a feeling you have as a child,
and you're able now you're in a good space to
allow it to leave.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Do you know what I mean? To move forward? You
can let it go because you're now aware of it.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
A lot of the things we would say we're going
through now, we weren't completely aware and we didn't have
a deep, full understanding.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Of what was actually happening. It's understand what that word
integration means.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah, yeah, and we didn't. So you how so you
brought people in, You invited them to take part in this.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Now, my guess is that some of these people did
they know what was going on at the time. Some
of them didn't.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
One of them was my son. He wasn't even born
at the time.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
So so he what was your what what did you
ask of them?
Speaker 4 (16:27):
They got a script? They got like one of them
might have been a nurse's vice. One of them was
our sister. Couldn't actually we have another sister who couldn't.
She feels she couldn't take part in this, But when
we asked her to be the vice of our mother,
she was able to do that and through that process
(16:49):
she actually gained great insight into my mother, into the
whole situation. She was able to look more objectively at it,
and she got an awful lot out of that process
for herself.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
And it was.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Actually okay, so so my my, my apologies. You were
asking you were asking people to basically play roles. Yeah, okay,
not necessarily to go back and ask them, you know,
what was going on for them during this time.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
With some of the boys, with some of the all
of the brothers played themselves.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I see, and.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Particular would have would have engaged in the conversations as
at the end of it, because he would have been
one of the brothers in particular was very involved at
the time with bringing my father to court, so he
would have also got a lot of healing from it.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
And he did contribute as himself.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
He wasn't playing a role, and he was relaying the
story as it unfolded at the time.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And he also needed to forgive himself like a lot
of the boys did, thinking that we expected them to protect.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Us and we didn't.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
They couldn't, but they expect they expected that a man
mm hmmm.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
So the process I would imagine, I mean, as as
you're probably aware and there. There are certain therapeutic modalities
that are similar to this, like certain drama therapy. Yes,
right where you bring people. You have a big group
of people, and some of these people play different roles
(18:24):
in Wow.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
It was really healing for all of it because every
time we got together, we learned something.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
One of us had an aha moment.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
At most of the sessions, you could nearly say, well,
that session was really about you, parlor or You've got
a lot of that.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
So I realized something just true.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Can you can you give me an example?
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Give me the example actually hated. Yeah, there's two. Actually
I can't. I can't remember how that came to me.
But I grew up.
Speaker 5 (18:59):
Believe in I loved this man, and I always felt
I have to protect him.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
They don't ask me what that's about.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
I believe this about the man that was abusing me.
And I remember we were doing the session. I don't
even remember what the session was, but I know when
I laid down that my I realized how much I
absolutely fucking hate him, how much it was, and I
was petrified him, and I thought if I didn't please them,
(19:30):
my life was at risk.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
And that's how deep it was. But like I walked
around for days.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
I couldn't believe that it took me this long to
realize how much I hate him.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Yeah, because that's not that long ago. That's only No,
that is only a year or so. It's even And
it was the realization she had to listen.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
To her own recording when she was talking about an
abusive situation, and she was saying like, I just wanted
to please them, and I loved him, And when she
when she heard back, she was going, hang on, it
wasn't that I fucking loved him at all.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
I was absolutely terrified of him.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
And so she convinced herself that she loved them and
wanted to please them.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
But that was the brainwashing. We all went throught that.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
We were totally conditioned because our abuse began from Childbert.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
We were well and truly conditioned.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
We had no thoughts of our own, like we were programmed,
and so we had no real reality.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
We did not we had nothing to return to. We
didn't understand what was even happening to us.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
And when we first even heard about sex, we didn't
know that that's what we were having.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
We didn't know we were even when we were giving.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Our police statements. We would say he had sex with
us instead.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Of he raped us. We didn't understand the role we
played in it. We didn't understand, but we did so. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Yeah, And that's where you take the responsibility and carry
the guilt and the shame. That's why the secrets so
very tightly hell by so many people. That's why people
don't open up about this crime till twenty years later.
It's and that's why we're here in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
Trying to figure out how to deal with this bloody issue,
you know, and to try and eliminate the ignorance around
the actual crime itself, because I think even victims going
through court, the way they're treating, just the way they're
made to feel, the way they're just fucking dismissed if
they don't feel there's enough evidence like that has to stop.
Speaker 5 (21:30):
But I do think comes from ignorance and the lack
of understanding of the impacts of abuse, and also.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
That ability that victims have to disassociate along with then
the ability to DeCamp to compartmentalized stuff makes them really
bad witnesses in any court case.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
But that isn't explained in our courts over here.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
That's not explained to the judge, to the legal system,
to anybody who's dealing with it. So that's why victims
make really bad witnesses.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Because you can't.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
I can honestly tell you even today, I am still uncovering.
I am still joining the dots of stuff that happened
to me, how I behaved, why I behaved, and what
grew out of that, and how my life was completely
messed up way after the abuse had stopped, decades after
it because of what I had done to survive. And
(22:25):
I did it, and I did it so long that
I became a habit. Then I became a belief, and
then it came something I never thought I even did,
so I never questioned it until something happened when we
were having conversations around the book. I never had a
reason to question stuff, but our conversations actually led to
those questions.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Coming up to the front and going okad. I never
thought it. I never even looked at that. And that's
where the healing was.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
The what you share is obviously wisdom that's come from
a long thought journey of healing is what has helped you.
I mean, obviously you have each other, which is amazing.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
It's huge.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Did each of you take part in other different types
of therapies or or what?
Speaker 4 (23:20):
No, there is there is one fucking more than one
millions of issues, but one of it. The things that
we cling to is each other because we have gone
through this situation and we've gone through the years of
healing together, and we recognize the need for each other.
And if we spend a long time apart, we nearly
(23:41):
come to get back together again with Siah relief gone.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Thank God, I need, I need.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
I think we've healed more in the process of doing
the books.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Yeah, and you know.
Speaker 5 (23:55):
It's it's something we took gone and we were determined
to do. But yeah, when you're actually doing this and
reading back, it's amazing the freedom we get. It might
hurt a bit, but it's freedom. And we don't look
upon healing as the enemy anymore. We didn't want any
(24:16):
more pain at one stage. Now with something like that happens,
we welcome it and we.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Learn from us. But we all seed each other.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
We also do have probably an unhealthy attachment to each
other because although we are very sociable, we know lots
of people and we love lots of people, we really
only feel safe and I suppose a home when we're
together because we completely we've gone through so much together
(24:45):
and there's a total acceptance of each other. Not that
we don't have problems where we fight like anybody else,
but there is a sense that the only case that
it's really safe is together.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
But just to clarify, you've never seen a therapist.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Oh no, we went through therapy for years and some
of us like something.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
Yeah, we started off and it did put us on
the right thing.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
It did. It gave us a.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Great foundation, but we didn't go anywhere near the edges
of what we needed to do until we start writing,
and we didn't even know the depth of what we
had to deal with. And it was just as well
we didn't because we probably wouldn't have gone near it.
But when we got rid of the layers of like
the actual abuse, when we thought we had purged that,
(25:35):
we thought that was it because we thought that's the
problem there it is.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Thank god, we're done with that.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
And then we realized, well, why is our lives still shit?
So we would be discussing that and then we'd look
into it and we'd start we'd say, right, well, no,
we're not done, and people would ask us for another book.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Is there another book?
Speaker 4 (25:53):
And we didn't think we had another book in us,
but we did start to write about our the issues
that were still e and we realized.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Oh my god, we're only starting.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
It's the psychological harm that has altered you and your
life and your behaviors and your relationships and your jobs.
Every decision you make has been altered. So now we
have to look at that. So we had to really
start from the bottom and build ourselves. And now the
audiobook is the accumulation of everything we've done, and it's
(26:25):
like we've arrived. We haven't had a single doubt throughout
the entire process that we.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
You know that it's overkill. We need to leave it alone.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
This is meant to be. It is meant to be,
and together we're strong enough to do it.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
What is your hope for the book to.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Reach as many people as possible?
Speaker 4 (26:51):
And there are some key messages in the book that
we really want to promote, and that is, you know,
given people who might be thinking of offending somewhere to
go to if they're consideringly even families, And we want
some attention brought onto the fact that secondary victims like
the families of people who abuse, their lives are destroyed forever.
(27:14):
There's no end date on that. I know a couple
of personal friends whose lives have been torn upside down
by a family member committing a sexual crime, and now
their lives may as well be over as well, and
there has to be support and help given to that.
It's like mothers as well who are in a relationship
with an offender.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
And we can only speak from our own experience.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
And I'm sure there are women who take part in
offending as well, but that hasn't been our experience, and
that's all we can speak from. So if you vilify
the wives and partners of abusers, then they're not likely
to speak either.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
One of the things that I would feel really strongly
about is if you don't give a perpetrator or a
possible perpetrator hope, the hope that their life could be different,
the hope that doesn't and give them the reason. Like
I know how difficult it was for me to go
back and look at my past, and I was a victim,
(28:15):
I can't imagine how difficult it is if you're a
perpetrator to want to go back and look at your
behavior and why you did something, and hell you did it,
so we I feel we really need to give a
sense of hope to somebody.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
And look at that enoughful of young people now offending,
and I honestly believe if they were reached, if they
could say to you listen, I'm actually thinking like this,
they could be helped out of that. But who do
you say that too? Without being annihilated? You know what
I mean.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
It's just it's there. You're not looking. You have to
look at the whole picture.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
And if society is telling people who offend that they
are the worst on the whole planet and there's.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
No hope for them, well then we actually do have
no hope.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Because there's no one going to change or fix anything
by only looking at one side.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Of an issue.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
We have to we have to have paer petrayers, given
that the support and the understand them that victims get.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
But in a different way. Yeah, they have to.
Speaker 5 (29:20):
Understand the impact of their behavior, and if they don't
understand that, they'll never ever change or even.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Have the desire to change.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
And we just have to keep harping on about it
because it's a societal change, paradigm change that's required here
it's not This is not simple, and it's every aspect
of a person's life.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
So it's everybody on board. We just have to keep.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Chipping away until you tip the scales and change happens.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
And I think the time is right. It does seem to.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Be being spoken about more and more now, more and
more victims are coming forward and showing courage and speaking
out right, and we just had keep shining a light
on it, making it okay, normalize the conversations around anything
to do with sexual abuse, given people victims.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
The vice, you know.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
I found COVID very triggering because I felt it just
reminded me of being abused, and so far as I
felt incrementally my rights were being taken away, my voice,
my choices, I felt powerless, and I found the whole
thing scary. I really did, and I felt to a
(30:32):
degree that shut us down. We were in the middle
of doing podcasts, we were doing great, but it was like,
I just found the whole thing very frightening. And Jicce
recently had an episode where I remember you got you drove
the wrong way and you were stuck up the country road.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
I got lost of the mountains. I mean, I'm over
dramatizing this. I was lost in a car. I'm sure
it was about twenty minutes away from my house, but
I'd never seen it before. It was dark, I couldn't
get the lights in the car were and maybe saw
the condition.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
I got into.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
I was trembling from head to toe. I couldn't even
put my foot on the pedal. There was nothing I
could do. There's no houses, just complete darkness, and I
shook in a way that was I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Even hold the wheel of the steereding wheel.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
Eventually I got out of there and realized how close
I actually was to home.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
But the fear, the level of fear I felt.
Speaker 5 (31:27):
I just connected immediately with my child, with me as
a child, and I said, that's the level of fear
I would have felt, and I would have had nowhere
to go with that. So that's actually trapped inside me.
So little moments like that we've all had. That came
out of nowhere.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
But I know.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
After it, I felt so much better that I've given
my inner child a voice.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
And the significant of that is the how nascence that was.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
That's why that's significant.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Right?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Right? Exactly? I mean What's what's very uh interesting, but
also really inspiring is to hear each of you reflect
on the level of awareness you've accumulated about how this
(32:27):
is impacting your lives now, and how that awareness is
even though it's the experiences like your joys being terrified
up there, getting lost, even though that's horrible, you're able
to kind of step back and move through it and
like you learned from it. Wow, ladies, I mean seriously, no,
(32:53):
I mean, every time I talk to you, it's just
I'm blown away by you. Probably hear this all the time,
but I'm going to say I'm going to say I'm
going to say it anyway. I mean, Jesus, it's just
so inspiring, really, you know, and this this new audio
(33:13):
book you what you've done is I think it's it's amazing,
and believe in it. I feel like, yeah, I mean,
I feel like you're you're you're giving people the wealth
of your experience, your hard won experience, and I love
(33:35):
the way you're just you're open and honest and raw,
and you know you're not professing to be experts, of course,
I mean, you're just sharing your own experience, and I
think we all learn from that. So thank you.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
And I think we never really celebrate any of our
achievements like book one and Book two, and you haven't.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Really celebrated this one either.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
But there's a deep knowing within each of us, a
surety that this is absolutely going to help people. There's
no doubt whatsoever. And I don't care how long it takes.
I don't care if we're even dead when it happens.
We've put it out there and it is absolutely going
to help people because it really brings a home what
it looks like, how the emotional impact on the psychological
(34:25):
harm of the sexual abuse plays out in your life,
and how the huge levels of self hatred. But are
such obstacles in your life in every direction, and.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Most of the time you're unaware of them. Yeah, and
it's the tragedy of it.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
And when you actually move past you can you can
see how it sounds. It sounds like it's not the
right way to say, but it sounds like all of
that suffering if you've given the right information at the
right time, all of that, not all of it. Maybe
you can't, you can't take away from the facts of
what might have happened to you. But a huge portion
(35:04):
of that self hatred could be removed from victims. There's
no need for them to go to the levels of
hell that victims do go to internally, and the negative
self talk that never turns off like that is not necessary.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
But nobody tells you.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
You know, right right, Well, as we wind down here,
what's the best way for people to learn more about you,
to get in touch with you, and to check out
the audiobook?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Well, everything that you need to know about was is
on our website, the Cabinet Systems dot com.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Can't be simpler than that.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
And anything we've ever done and anything we've ever said,
any podcasts is all up on our web page.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
And the book you can download from Spotify.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Okay, we'll have that link.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
The link actually on their website to Spotify. So everything
that you need to know is on the website. And
it's called The Grip Child Sexual Abuse. But the audio
is very gripping. I don't think you'll be able to
stop once you start listening to I know.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
But I do.
Speaker 5 (36:13):
Guy, I would suggest you just actually listen to the
first section yourself, which is only about abuse how the
abuse came out. But if you listen to that section,
you'll see exactly what we're talking about, including other people's
voices and how it makes it.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
It's different, is different, but absolutely water listen.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
So once again, the kavanaughsisters dot Com will have that
link up here at the show notes page at the
Trauma Theaprist podcast dot com. As always, you ladies are
welcome back here anytime. And I just want to close
out by saying, you know, sometimes sometimes we don't know
(36:55):
the impact we have on other people, but you, the
three of you, are so friggin inspiring. I mean, no,
I'm not, I'm not. I'm saying this is truthful. You are.
I'm gonna get off of this interview and I'm just
gonna go Jesus freaking Christ. You're amazing. You really are
(37:17):
just the strength you know, and you might not think
it's true, but the impact you have it's I want
to thank you so much for being here. We'll be
in touch, all right, take care, Bye bye bye
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