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SHOCKING Story/ Little girl created 2,500 personalities to survive her father's abuse from the age of 4

2024-08-25 15:20:45Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

SHOCKING Story/ Little girl created 2,500 personalities to survive her

There was only one woman on the witness stand that day, but from her came six people prepared to testify about the extreme abuse she had suffered.

"I walked into the court, sat down, took the oath and then a few hours later I got into my body and out of it," Jeni Haynes told the BBC.

Jeni was repeatedly raped and tortured by her father, Richard Haynes, in what Australian police say is one of Australia's worst cases of child abuse.

To cope with the horror, her mind used an extraordinary tactic – creating new identities so that she could detach herself from the pain. The abuse was so extreme and so constant that she says she ultimately created 2,500 personalities to survive.

And in the landmark trial in March, Jeni confronted her father to present evidence against him through her personalities, including a four-year-old daughter named Symphony.

It is believed to be the first case in Australia, and possibly the world, where a victim with diagnosed Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) – or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) – has testified to their other personalities.

"We were not afraid. "We had waited so long to tell everyone exactly what he did to us and now he couldn't shut us up," she said.

On September 6, 2019, Richard Haynes, now 74, was sentenced to 45 years in prison by a Sydney court.

"I wasn't sure in my head"

The Haynes family moved from Bexleyheath in London to Australia in 1974. Jeni was four, but her father had already begun his abuse and in Sydney it escalated almost daily.

"My father's abuse was calculated and planned. It was intentional and he enjoyed every minute of it,” Jeni told the court in a victim impact statement in May. She waived her right to anonymity as a victim of abuse so that her father could be identified.

"He heard me begging him to stop, he heard me cry, he saw the pain and terror he was causing me, he saw the blood and the physical damage he caused. And the next day he chose to do it all over again.”

Haynes also threatened to kill her mother, brother and sister if she spoke about the abuse.

"My inner life was taken over by my father. I couldn't even feel safe in my head," Jeni said. "I could no longer examine what was happening to me and draw my own conclusions."

Her father limited her social activities at school to minimize adult supervision. Jen learned to stay quiet and in the shadows because if she was "seen"—like when her swimming coach approached her father to encourage her talent—she would be punished.

Jeni was also denied medical care for her injuries from beatings and sexual abuse, which developed under severe lifelong conditions.

Now aged 49, Jeni has irreparable damage to her eyesight, jaw, intestines, anus and coccyx. These have required extensive operations including a colostomy operation in 2011.

The abuse would continue until Jeni was 11, when the family returned to the UK. Her parents divorced shortly after, in 1984. She believes that no one, not even her mother, was aware of what she was going through.

"He was actually abusing the Symphony"

Contemporary Australian experts refer to Jen's condition as Dissociative Identity Disorder and say it is closely related to experiences of extreme abuse of a child in what is supposed to be a safe environment.

"DID is really a survival strategy," told the BBC Dr. Pam Stavropoulos, a childhood trauma expert.

“It serves as a very sophisticated coping strategy that is widely considered extreme. But you have to remember, it's the response to the extreme abuse and trauma that the child has suffered."

The earlier the trauma and the more extreme the abuse, the more likely a child will rely on dissociation to cope, leading to these "multiple self-states."

The first personality Jeni says she developed was Symphony, the four-year-old girl who, she says, exists in her temporal reality.

"She suffered every minute of her father's abuse and when he abused me, his daughter Jeni, he was actually abusing Symphony," Jeni told the BBC.

Over the years, Symphony created other personas of her own to endure the abuse. Each of the hundreds and hundreds of personalities had a special role in remembering some element of the abuse, whether it was a particularly horrific attack, or a sight and smell.

"My changes have been my defense against my father."

During the interview, Jeni warns when one of the personalities appears.

“Hello, I'm Symphony. I'll come and tell you all about it if you don't mind," she says.

The voice of the Symphony is higher, its tone brighter, more girlish and breathless.

"What I did was I took everything I thought was precious to me, everything important and beautiful, and I hid it from my father, so that when he abused me, he wouldn't abuse a thinking human being," she said. Symphony.

Jen's Personality:

Mussles – a teenager styled like Billy Idol. He is tall and wears clothes that show off his strong arms. He is calm and protective.
Volcan is very tall and strong, and clad from head to foot in black leather. He has bleach blonde hair.
Ricky is only eight years old but wears an old gray suit. His hair is short and bright red.
Judah is short with red hair. He wears plain gray school pants and a bright green T-shirt.
Linda/Maggot is tall and slim, wearing a 1950s skirt. Her hair is in a stylish bun and she has thin eyebrows.
Rick wears big glasses – the same kind that Richard Haynes wore.

In March, Jeni was allowed to testify in court like Symphony and five other personalities, each of whom would have shared different aspects of the abuse. The trial was heard by only one judge because lawyers considered the case too traumatic for a jury.

Haynes initially faced 367 charges, including multiple counts of rape, indecent assault. Jeni, in her person, would have been able to provide detailed evidence of each offense in court. Separate identities have helped her preserve memories that might otherwise have been lost to trauma.

Prosecutors had also lined up a number of psychologists and DID experts to testify about the condition and reliability of what Jeni was saying.

"My memories as a person with MPD are as pristine today as they were the day they were formed," she told the BBC, before briefly switching to the plural. "Our memories are frozen in time - if I need them, I just go and get them."

Symphony aimed to relive "in excruciating detail" seven years of crime records in Australia. Muscles, a burly 18-year-old man, would have given evidence of physical abuse, while Linda, an elegant young woman, would have testified about the impact on Jen's education and relationships.

The symphony "hoped to use the testimony to grow as well," says Jeni.

About two and a half hours into Symphony's testimony on the second day of the trial, her father changed his statement. Dozens more were counted in his sentence.

'MPD saved my soul'

"It's a historic case because, as far as we know, it's the first time that testimony from different parts of a person with DID has been taken into account in the court system and has led to a conviction," says Dr. Cathy Kezelman, president of the Blue Knot Foundation, an Australian organization that helps survivors of childhood trauma.

Jeni first reported the abuse in 2009. It took 10 years for a police investigation to culminate in the conviction and imprisonment of Richard Hayne.

He was extradited from Darlington in northeast England in 2017, where he had served a seven-year sentence for another crime.

Since learning of the abuse, Jen's mother – who divorced Haynes in 1984 – has become her staunchest supporter in her pursuit of justice.

But for decades, Jeni had struggled to get help for her trauma. She says that counselors and therapists turned her away because her story inspired distrust, or was too traumatic for them to handle.

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