Howdy dear availees...had a real shocker this week, not unlike many others I'm sure relative to the bizarre George Pell High Court Appeal...given my extensive experience of the way that 'Authorities' genuinely act on issues of Institutionalised Paedophile Corruption in Australia...(as opposed to their definably disingenuous deceits about how terrible it all is and how they're concerned for Abuse Survivors, etc?-Ed)...exactly, I personally find it hard to believe that this 'Appeal' is anything other than another/further deliberate abuse designed to cause distress and trauma...(I was reading some stuff about how in any ordinary circumstance an Appeal for a 'Sexual Assault' conviction would never get anywhere near the High Court, in fact, that this is the precedent-Ed)...yeah, I've seen that reported/claimed, but I ain't no lawyer so can't say definitively either way, but again, wouldn't surprise me in the least...I know how badly this constant re-hashing of the Pell case re-traumatises the survivors of the Institutionalised Paedophile Network that is the Catholic Church, and many, many others who have been abused within the equally corrupt Paedophile Networks of the Anglican Church or the Lutheran Church or the Pentecostal Church, etc, etc, etc, et al...
I refer to the immediate previous post, and the article from The Age about a Morrison Jazz Academy student charged with raping another student and out on bail, etc, and one specific line I didn't actually cover in that post...it was whilst going back to re-check that stuff that I somehow stumbled across this letter (below) and it blew a hole in my universe that will forever remain...(I'm just stunned mate-Ed)...I'm gutted, completely gutted...I'm gutted, rabidly furious, seething with rage and a sense of wanton retribution...and because I'm not naturally like that, all that anger folds back on me and makes me feel worse...and then there's the guilt, great scything swathes of guilt that I have failed Ms Duncan and the other students who potentially have been abused at Generations In Jazz and/or the Morrison Jazz Academy, whatevs...(mate, ya' gotta' let go of this guilt stuff-Ed)...never gunna' happen mate...(this is not your crime, you are not responsible-Ed)...no, but I let this slide when it first happened, I was too involved in my own stuff, and let others dissuade me from acting because 'the jazz stuff's too important for Mt Gambier', and/or 'if you go after this stuff it'll damage the credibility of the blog and the blog's too important'...(well that last bit is actually quite sage advice and relatively accurate, ya' know? 'oo oo, now that arsehole Nick Fletcher's using his horrid blog to attack that wonderful James Morrison'-Ed)...mate, I guarantee you that that's happening right now...
Furthermore, I'd like to think that that rancidly corrupt betrayer and 'alleged' lawyer Bill DeGaris, who is complicitly involved with Graeme Lyall and James Morrison and GIJ, etc, my mate Bouncin' Billy who is intimately complicit in the St Martins Lutheran School Child Abuse Cover-up, I'd reckon that Billy is reading this and then screeching his hypocritical sanctimony at The Googles, tryin' to have this post removed...so, dear The Googles, yet again I pre-emptively request that you review the facts of this 'ere content, and review the various other posts and/or websites, and allow me my opinion about what 'Organised Religion' really is, etc, etc, and leave this post exactly as it is, where it is...
Anyhoos, I missed one line in that The Age article that referred to the rape of former GIJ/Jazz Academy student Ms Matilda Duncan by teacher/lecturer Graeme Lyall, namely...
In 2017, the academy pledged to identify ways to prevent and respond to
sexual harassment
and sexual assault after separate allegations were
raised against a staff member.
...(well you hope that that's about that specific case-Ed)...well quite, and having said that, and given my personal belief, and particularly having read the letter below, it becomes a question of hoping that that reference is about Ms Duncan and not yet another student...
Here below is a copy of Ms Matilda Duncan's Open Letter as copy/pasted from the website listenlistenlisten.org/music-lessons, where it appeared
There was an Australian music industry campaign last year entitled #meNOmore. Along with hundreds of others, I signed the open letter, in which the first story mentioned was mine.
There I was, a young musician. There he was, the nationally-lauded
musician and teacher. So many years have passed, yet I continue to work
at shaking off the shame of letting my voice be taken from me as a teen.
My teacher became a friend, a mentor, and a father figure to me. I
met him when I was 15, after winning an award at a national music event.
He told me repeatedly I would pursue music to the highest levels, that I
had the most potential he had ever heard in a young musician. When I
returned to the event, he again selected me for more awards. For him I
had soon built a pedestal; I took on every shred of his advice, and I
trusted.
At 19 I moved cities to study with him. I was coming off two years of
illness, following a medical accident that almost took my life, and I
was especially looking forward to dedicating myself to music full-time.
After six months, hugging was normal: with all of his students. On the
night of a gig, it was only a tiny step further for him to press his
crotch into my leg. Not long after, he grabbed my shoulder in his
office, kissed me with his stale mouth, then sent me off to class. On my
way I passed people I knew in the hallway and immediately felt
distanced from them. Alone with a secret.
Those first episodes marked the beginning of months of abuse,
progressing into incidents in cars, classrooms, his office, a storeroom.
As the abuse intensified, my young life dipped into a destructive
downwards spiral. I withdrew from learning and ceased to eat enough. I
began to believe suicide to be the only logical response. He threatened
my career, or at least the hope of a career I had believed achievable
before he touched me. He told me he loved me, that I couldn’t tell
anyone. And so I didn’t.
My health worsened. I told him I wanted to move back home to repair
my health but he kept convincing me to stay, telling me to “put my
troubles on the backburner”, to put music first. One morning when the
urge to take my own life felt out of control I disclosed my
deteriorating state to him; he assaulted me later that day. To him, I
can only assume, my little life meant nothing.
Towards the years end he must have said something, finally, to
another staff member, because school counselors came round to my house
and took my intended method for taking my own life from my hands. Yet
rather than seeking help for me, the director called my mother and told
her I was to leave, saying I was “no longer [the schools] problem”. So I
packed up. I drove alone for six hours up the highway. I was crying so
much I didn’t notice I’d swerved onto the other side of the road and
narrowly missed a head-on with a truck.
You might want a neat narrative arc about how I’ve defied ruin, how I
went to court and found justice; perhaps you want to hear that I was
able to build a thriving music career despite what happened or that the
man showed remorse and apologised. The reality is murkier: in the years
that followed, as many survivors do, I became dysfunctional and
struggled to choke down my trauma enough to participate in daily life,
though I might have looked outwardly productive. I came to feel
isolated, no matter who I was with, and I kept fleeing, never
comfortable sitting within myself, no matter where I was. Years have
passed and the teacher has had plenty of opportunities to apologise or
show even a sliver of remorse, but, similar to many perpetrators, he has
not. I walked away from music—I couldn’t help but see him, and hear his
criticisms of my ability and my body, whenever I played.
Through my years of rage and depression burned the question:why did he hurt me? How
could somebody be that cruel? Was he hurting himself, with a deep need
to take it out on another? Did he genuinely believe he had been teaching
me, helping me? Was this type of behaviour with a student accepted by
the circles within which he had previously moved? Had he never been
called out before? Was he a psychopath with a deeply-rooted intent to
harm? Was he bored of teaching, bored of his marriage, and using me for
entertainment? Or was what he did soul-crushingly normal, something I
should have expected, just another unremarkable piece of our culture?
For so long I wanted concrete answers; now I’ve accepted they aren’t
ever coming.
Others reached out. Some were nasty: that a person could be
duplicitous, managing to maintain multiple roles as a wonderful educator
to some and a mean-spirited abuser to others, fell outside of their
comprehension. What has been equal to the abuse itself is the way people
have denied my truth, and moved to silence me to ensure their own
agendas kept advancing without trouble; they let the powerful sail
through unchallenged, because it benefitted their bottom line. But when
abusers and their enablers travel through life without consequence they
receive the message that their behaviour is permissible. Inaction means
their disregard for others is allowed an even greater stand.
Some were kind, some consolatory: we all knew he was like that. I have a friend who. For years we knew. Back in the day, people used to say. The
comments came as a revelation, because, finally, I was not alone nor
was I going crazy. And yet. I had been in contact with some of these
musicians in my younger years, when they knew I was heading towards
study with this person. Why was nothing said? To me they seemed
complicit, but then, I also understood what it was to have a career
threatened and taken away.
My abuser and the peers who have protected him—some of whom are
famous, and work internationally—continue to be celebrated. Their names
continue to be etched into national history through awards, recordings,
teaching posts, positions in halls of fame, and adoring press articles.
Their charming fronts are accepted unblinkingly by the nation, and so on
rolls another cycle of abuse, similar to the ones that are ongoing in
our schools and gyms and homes, without an end in sight.
As long as abusive behaviour is permitted to thrive it will continue
to fall to survivors to speak, though we’ve already been through pain
enough, though sexual assault and rape are never the fleeting actions
they are portrayed as, never merely “twenty minutes of action”. They
live on in possibilities that can be visited upon the survivor: physical
injuries, mental illness, trauma, isolation, self-doubt, an inability
to trust, difficulty maintaining employment, relationships and
friendships, and in some cases, pregnancy, abortion, and the fraught
journey of raising a child resembling an attacker. These possibilities
spread outwards to the lives of families and friends, through our
communities, senselessly. But lately, in these watershed months, so many
are united in wanting a safer culture and in that there is hope.
My identity as a survivor is one that nobody would choose but it has
connected me with people who I wouldn’t have otherwise met. I assume I
have defied whatever future that troubled man intended for me, because I
am still here. And I will continue to be here, listening, if and when
you raise your voice—your story is important.
***...I've read this through several times now and it only makes me angrier and sadder and more committed to fighting my own traumas and suffering...(how does the song go? "strumming my pain with her fingers, singing my life with her words, killing me softly with her song, killing me softly, with her song, tellin' my whole life, with her words, killing me softly, with her song"-Ed)...indeed, she perfectly identifies the self-interest of others, perfectly expresses that which drives the guilt that I feel because I looked away...worse, her story about being recruited and groomed confirms for me my concerns that this was/is not a one-off, but actually just one episode in a series of similar situations/incidents...
This letter leaves me literally sobbing for what Ms Duncan has been through, and yet I am simultaneously inspired by her courage and clarity and at how she completely identifies so many of the issues of inequality and trauma, etc...(particularly that paragraph about how these abusers and their protectors/supporters, et al, how these people continue their careers and get awards, etc-Ed)...exactly, and that we can all contribute to rectifying these gross inequalities and dealing with abuses, etc...the whole letter is amazing in it's honesty and bravery, but the last paragraph is just extraordinary...for all she has been through, from the grooming and assaults, then through the conflict with the Catholics and Morrison and DeGaris, et al, as she was (is still) forced to fight for recognition of the realities that all these people knew about, for what she openly acknowledges as her ongoing personal struggles, for all of that, after all of that, her last thoughts, concerns and words are for others...extraordinary...
Ms Duncan, in appropriate context, I unashamedly admit to being a bit of a fanboy...what you have been through and what you've achieved and how you continue to fight-back and turn your trauma to positive action and support and improvement for others, etc, etc, it's everything I'd like to think I can be and that I can do...your story makes me rabidly furious but then helps me ride through my anger and trauma and all that shizzle because you've clearly identified that there's a bigger picture...you are absolutely right, nobody would choose this, but here we all are, and I will continue to be here because your story is not just important, it is inspiring...you are important, you are inspirational...cheers...
Tomorrow: I'll Think Of Something
I am Nick Fletcher and this is my blog...cheers and laters...
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