chronology 3
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| New Zealand Products |
1995
Residence: Tessa initially stayed with friends in Auckland. Then she moved into the staff residence at North Shore Hospital, where I contacted the CAT (Community Assessment and Treatment) team. The first person I spoke to, a woman, seemed to understand the problem, but I made no progress with the two men I spoke to subsequently. I received the impression they saw me as a bit of a nuisance. One breezily asked "What's new?" when I called for the third or fourth time. Of course, I had to say that there was nothing new, but that we were still receiving alarmingly paranoid telephone calls from Tessa. In one, she had snarled "Get out of my life!" — a strange request, in view of the fact she was contacting us, by either telephone or letter, almost every day. Eventually, the team agreed to give Tessa some information on their service. If she wasn't in her room, they would push it under the door, they said. Simultaneously, I tried to persuade Tessa to visit the team's office, which was not far from her room. Somewhat to my surprise, she did visit the office, and later called me to say she had spoken to Roger Thornton (one of the two men mentioned above), who had told her she was "all right". She sounded so happy — so completely normal — that I contemplated calling Roger to congratulate him on "turning her around". But after about an hour she called me again. This time she was angry, caustic and peremptory. And about 11pm she called me for a third time, and poured out a stream of paranoid nonsense. I felt I had reached a dead end, and that there was nothing more I could do — a feeling that was reinforced when, a week or so later, she shifted to a room in a private home. She stayed there for about a month, during which there were no dramatic developments. I received a second-hand report, however, that her landlady had remarked that Tessa was like a door-to-door evangelist, which I took to mean that she had delivered an interminable monologue on the same subject — the Fitness Foundation and/or its persecution of her, no doubt. Her next home was a room in a rundown rented house, surrounded by rank grass and weeds, where she lived with a group of other young people. (When I went to Auckland in September, they told me she was extraordinarily anti-social. She wouldn't attend meetings at which the routine business of the house was discussed, and she wouldn't use the kitchen in the evening until everyone else had finished using it. Once, her door had jammed, they said. But instead of asking someone to fix it, she had spent a whole week "hopping in and out through the window". She was bad-tempered and intolerant. They didn't like her. "Is she stable?" one asked.)
Occupation: Worked from January until July at Sissfill, a chemical supplies company in central Auckland. During the remainder of her time in Auckland, she either had casual work, including an unsuccessful job at a pizza restaurant, or was unemployed. In Sydney, she did some casual work as a telemarketer.
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July: After about six months in her job, Tessa was forced to resign. "She became increasingly entrenched in a defensive position in which she felt she had to justify herself at all costs", her employers told me in September. They added that she had always had a rationale to support her position, but that the rationale, as a whole, hadn't stood up to outside scrutiny. She had eventually became virtually useless as an employee. "It was easier for me to do a job myself than to ask her to do it," one executive said.
September: Tessa called to say that she had fallen out with her flatmates and had fled, fearing for her safety, to a motel. She spent two nights there, before moving on to a cell at the Auckland YWCA — no doubt because the latter place was cheaper. I rushed to Auckland on September 17, and explained our predicament to a Muslim probation officer who, I had been assured, would be able to help me. I then moved into the motel that Tessa had just left. Simultaneously, members of the Muslim community came up with a rescue plan, under which Tessa would be placed in "safe" accommodation. A Muslim woman who was looking for a boarder was prevailed upon to take in a non-Muslim girl. The next morning, at the motel, I called Tessa at the YWCA, and told her, repeatedly and emphatically: "Tessa, you have reached the end of the road." But she refused to seek treatment, and also refused to see me — even for a restaurant meal at which, I promised, I would not raise any of the "issues". She asked me for my British birth certificate, so that she could obtain a British passport and fly to London on a one-way ticket. I refused to give it to her. Then she told me the traffic congestion she had encountered every morning on Auckland Harbour Bridge, earlier in the year, had been part of the conspiracy against her, and that the people at her company had also been involved in the plot. I pleaded with her not to say that. At least three times I told her: "Tessa, you can't maintain that position." But nothing I said had any effect. She droned on about her delusions, and the conversation ended inconclusively — as all conversations with her did in those days. I then called the psychiatric department at Auckland Hospital, and outlined our situation. "Hmm, that's interesting," the man said, when I described our rescue plan. "It won't help her, though." He went on to say that, if I wanted psychiatric help, I would have to go through St Lukes Mental Health Center, which covered the area that Tessa normally lived in. I did that, and had Tessa interviewed at the YWCA by two women from the center. Their verdict: committal was completely out of the question, although Tessa might benefit from "a little medication". After the interview, while the women waited outside the building, I went to Tessa's tiny room, knocked on the door, and went in. Although she had said she didn't want to see me, she didn't react angrily to my presence. In fact, she seemed emotionless. She said: "I know I've changed." And after a moment's reflection, she added: "You would say 'for the worse'." "Yes," I said, "I would say 'for the worse'." Next, I interviewed Tessa's former employers and her flatmates at the rundown house where she lived (see details above). Finally, on the day I left Auckland, I returned to the mental health center to be interviewed by a man who was introduced to me as someone "who has a lot of experience in this area". But I found him smarmy and condescending. I was also increasingly irritated by a line of questioning that seemed to suggest the "problem" was as much mine as it was Tessa's. One of the questions he asked me was: "What kind of outcome do you foresee?" When I replied that I thought Tessa would eventually return to Palmerston North (which she did) and live in a flat (which she did), he asked: "Would that ease your anxiety?" — as though easing my "anxiety" were the objective of the exercise. Furthermore, I knew that the touchy-feely family conference that he envisaged would achieve nothing. Besides, time was running out: Although I could prevent Tessa from flying to England without a return ticket, I could not prevent her from flying to Australia without a return ticket. At one stage of my dealings with the center, I suggested I find out the date and time of her departure, so that I could then apply for a psychiatric assessment and they could pick her up as she entered passport control at Auckland Airport. But they said they couldn't promise to pick her up at any specific time or place. And with that frustrating reply, things came to an end in Auckland. There was nothing more I could do, except visit the police and plead with them to be nice to Tessa if, for any reason, they had to arrest her. They said they would. I then returned to Palmerston North and Tessa returned to her room in the house. (I wasn't sure whether she now thought she was safe there.) But I was determined to ensure that, whatever happened in the future, the smarmy man did not handle Tessa's case. So I sent him a letter in which I said: "Do you have to use that wimpish, condescending tone of voice, or are you genuinely incapable of speaking like a normal man?" and added that I had warned Tessa about him. I was beginning to feel extremely bloody-minded.
September-October: Within days of my return to Palmerston North, Tessa disappeared. After calling her house one evening, and getting no answer, I asked Auckland police to investigate. To my surprise, they called me back in less than an hour to say that there was no one at the house. Via the control room in Auckland police station, I was able to hear the investigating officer report from the scene. Not for the last time, I was impressed by the speed, efficiency and "no-nonsense" attitude of the police. A few days later, when we still hadn't heard from Tessa, I went to Palmerston North police station and filled out a missing person form. As I handed it over to the officer at the desk, I commented: "She's mentally disturbed." "Who says she's mentally disturbed?" the officer shot back. "I say she is," I replied. "And who are you? he demanded." "I'm her father." The officer gave a hopeless shrug, and turned away. His body language said it all: your opinion doesn't mean a damn thing. And he was absolutely right. Despite the fact that I amassed a vast amount of information about Tessa's state of mind, I was, at every stage of her decline, made well aware of how little weight my knowledge carried. I was not only in touch with the police during this period; I was also in touch with former school friends, one of whom I tracked down in Western Australia. As soon as she came to the phone, and I told her who I was, she blurted out: "What on earth happened to Tessa?" She went on to say that when Tessa first told her about the harassment at the Fitness Foundation, she thought: "Poor Tessa! How awful for her! But when she told me her parents had turned against her, I knew something was wrong . . . because you were always so close." We also explored the possibility that Tessa had been raped. I knew that, a year or so earlier, she had joined other members of the Fitness Foundation on an overnight trip. I knew that she had spent the night in a motel room with two others — a man and a woman. I knew that there had been some simulated sexual intercourse on a bed, which Tessa had been forced to watch. Was that all that had happened in the motel room? By saying that I wanted to return some FF gear, I persuaded one of the organization's leaders to visit our house — and then grilled him for about an hour, to no avail. I also called Rape Crisis, and asked a counselor whether she thought that witnessing sexual antics in a motel room might have psychologically damaged Tessa. The woman thought it might have, if Tessa had liked the man and had had "some fantasies about him". Following up this line, I than contacted ACC and drew up a list of "sensitive issues" counselors in Tessa's area of Auckland, so that we would know who to turn to if we found out that Tessa had, indeed, been raped. But all these inquiries came to an abrupt end one evening, when Tessa called us from Sydney. She had disposed of some of her possessions, mainly to second-hand dealers, and flown to Sydney with the rest, we learned later. No, she was not coming back to New Zealand, she confidently told her mother. Brave words. She became destitute after 16 days, was rescued by a friend at our request, and was eventually sent back to New Zealand at a total cost of $1200. (See Article No 3 and Rescue in Australia.) The New Zealand Consulate in Sydney, which was called by a "frightened" Tessa on October 25, refused to help. (Tessa had claimed she was being victimized, and had wanted to know whether the consulate had a legal service.) "We don't repatriate people from Australia," Beryl Keane said. "Maybe from somewhere like Bangkok, but not from Sydney." Thanks, New Zealand. It's a pity your officials can't act responsibly and prevent a mentally sick person from leaving the country in the first place. Continued