When I was a child, the murderer Bevan Spencer Von Einem had a profound psychological effect on me. I can’t remember if I saw him on the news or what it was, but his face was crystal clear in my mind. I had horrific nightmares, as well as a deep-seated response to just the name.
I also had a number of behavioural problems myself. For example, one day I came home from school extremely distressed and told my parents I thought I was possessed by the devil.
I became hysterical and got into such a state that I was physically sick and vomited everywhere. I was still under the age of ten, and it kind of freaks me out that I even knew about this, but I begged my parents to get me a Catholic priest because I wanted to go and live in a church.
Mum tried to carry me into the bathroom to wash my face, but I was just kicking and screaming to high hell. I refused to look in the mirror because I kept telling her I thought I would see the Virgin Mary crying blood.
At school, a friend of mine—Emma—and I used to hang around the back gate at lunch every day. And the same car was always parked there around the same time.
We could always see a shadow in the back seat, so we pretty much monitored this car, based on fears tied to my obsession with Von Einem.
I know I didn’t think I physically saw him, but one day I could see his face in my mind. So we got a piece of paper and wrote down the number plate of the car.
We took the number plate to our teacher and told her we saw two people having sex in the back of the car. I don’t think we actually conspired to lie, but I know we both knew it was a lie—and it was mostly driven by me.
The teacher called the police, and I do know that this time we planned it. We lied point-blank to their faces, and just kept talking about sex and our general fears we’d heard about Von Einem, who was incarcerated at the time.
The lie that Emma and I told the police was discovered because they went to the address registered to the number plate. Every day, a middle-aged cleaning lady from St Andrew’s School used to park her car there and eat her lunch.
I remember when the police—or someone—called my parents to tell them. I was watching television, and my dad came rushing in and absolutely lost his mind, yelling at me, demanding to know why I had lied to the police.
In an incomprehensible state of absolute fury, he told me that when the police went to that lady’s house, she had family over—and how upsetting and embarrassing it had been for her.
Thinking about it now, I hope it wasn’t as bad as I’d always imagined it might have been—and believe me, I did think about it a lot. But as I got older, I liked to think there must be some process for that kind of thing—some level of discretion in how questioning is handled.
Emma is the daughter of the man who exposed himself to me and another friend that night at her house. After the other girl - Melanie - told her parents, they went off their tree and called the police. And after they did that, both of Emma’s parents—including the perpetrator of the crime—came over to our house and blackmailed my parents, using their public profile against them.
To support their objective, they used the fact that I had been the key player in lying to the police with their daughter. I don’t know what happened financially—I only found out bits of all that years later—but it was pretty serious.
After the exposure incident, a lot of kids at school were talking about it. I didn’t tell anyone, and I have no idea how they found out, but one day my teacher got wind of what was being said in the schoolyard.
And—no joke—I still can’t believe a teacher thought to do this, even if her accusations had been true. She got Melanie and me up in front of the class and asked us why we were lying about Emma’s father.
We didn’t say anything—first of all because we were so upset, crying, and second of all because it was pretty hard to know what to say, since the teacher made a number of points about how I’d already lied to the police and now I was doing it again, this time about my friend’s father.
I did tell my parents about that, and I think some of the other kids told their parents too. That teacher got into a monumental amount of trouble and was nearly sacked for it.
But thinking about it now—although God knows what part of that woman thought to tick "Junior Primary School Teacher" on her university preferences—it’s very easy to see why she thought I was lying. Standing in front of the class that day has stuck with me throughout my life. I’ve always been waiting for someone to come forward and say, “Well actually, she’s a phoney. She did this,” or “She said that.”
And now, with my flaw, my worst fears could come true at any time—someone could expose me for who I really am. In my next life, I want to be the sort of person who is known for “what you see is what you get.” It’s just... in this life, I feel like I’m too far gone.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. It’s this blog, I’m telling you. After writing about my time at the courts, I’ve pretty much relived all of that uncharacteristic attraction to the judge—and the humiliation. It’s 14 years on, but I can feel it like it was just yesterday.
After I’d written to the judge, I found myself writing about it to a barrister who was informally advising me on the matter. During one of the cases before that judge, there was relevance to a crocodile. That inspired me to write the following:
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always had a general interest in the way crocodiles kill their prey in such a calculated, systematic way.
They first kill you in a brutal, elongated attack involving pain, blood, suffocation, and eventual death by either puncture wounds or drowning. But what gets me is that the crocodile obviously enjoys the act of killing like that—and takes personal pride in its conquest.
What leads me to believe this is more than just a natural appetite is the fact that once you’re dead, they don’t eat you straight away. They have the forethought to take the body and store it under a log for a few days—as well as the sense and motivation to refer back to it, as though for further sadistic pleasure.
Not only did they torture you in the slow, painful death you’ve already had—they do it again once you’ve died, by eating you gradually, while your body is left alone to rot in the elements, undetected by anyone above the water who might even care.
The existence of your half-eaten carcass remains in play to serve its true post-death purpose: an unconventional avenue—which, in another circumstance, I would salute—for reliving the pleasure some animals take in extinguishing life.
It’s similar in principle to your fellow lawyer and hopefully not hero—the love-deprived Mr Ted Bundy.
An exit from a not-much-better life that would not only be horrific, but so incredibly degrading and cruel.
That death was preferable to ever discovering what the judge thought about my letters.
I know it’s pretty dark, and I can’t judge my own work objectively, but I just sent it to my brother and asked him what he thought. I asked, “Do you think it’s good writing?” He said no—it wasn’t, and that it was factually inaccurate.
But that’s wrong. It is factually accurate. Crocodiles do that—it’s called “death rolling” and “caching.” They kill their prey and often store it underwater for later. I don’t even like the topic, but I still think it’s vivid, descriptive, and true to the feeling I was trying to express.
Fuck my brother for once again trying to dampen my spirit.
