JACK MANNING, community conference convenor
DEREK MILSOM, late 40s
BARBARA MILSOM, mid-40s
LORIN ZEMANEK, early 40s
MICK WILLIAMS, early 20s
CORAL WILLIAMS, late 40s
BOB SHORTER, mid-50s
GAIL WILLIAMS, mid-20s
VOICE OF SCOTT WILLIAMS, mid-20s
Extract (on p.76) from ‘The Sociobiology of Sociopathy: An Integrated Evolutionary Model’ by Linda Mealey in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol.18, No.3, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995, reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.
A hotel conference room. A little on the seedy side. Mid morning. JACK, late thirties, arranges a horseshoe of chairs facing outwards towards the audience. LORIN ZEMANEK, clearly nervous, enters. JACK looks up.
JACK: Lorin, thanks for coming.
LORIN: I nearly didn’t.
There’s an awkward pause.
Can you…?
JACK: What?
LORIN: Can you really be—?
JACK: Be?
LORIN: Do you really have as much faith in this community conferencing thing as you make out. I mean the way you sold it to me, it…
JACK: It what?
LORIN: Wonder cure.
JACK: I didn’t say that.
LORIN: I’ve been thinking this through…
JACK: And?
LORIN: I have to say I have real doubts.
JACK: All I can hope is that what happens here might dispel some of them. Coffee?
LORIN: Thanks. [As JACK pours her coffee] Not to be rude, but have you ever facilitated a conference where the tensions are as extreme as these are going to be?
JACK: No.
LORIN: I have people in therapy for years before there’s change, and in two hours you honestly expect—
JACK: This isn’t therapy.
LORIN:—to get positive outcomes?
JACK: This isn’t therapy.
LORIN: So you said. But I’m still not sure what it is.
JACK: It tries to reduce conflict between people. It doesn’t heal psyches.
LORIN: Tries.
JACK: Yes, tries. Tries to allow people to stop hating or obsessing or being angry and enraged and get on with their lives.
LORIN: It’s going to help the Milsoms get on with their lives?
JACK: I hope so.
LORIN: I remain to be convinced.
She looks sceptical and exhales. JACK makes some marginal adjustments to the seating.
I’m going to be the scapegoat.
JACK: We talked about this.
LORIN: It’s one thing to talk about it in abstract. It’s another thing when it’s just about to happen.
JACK: I know that. I really appreciate the fact you’re here.
LORIN: I did my job to the best of my ability.
JACK: I know.
LORIN: If I’m attacked unfairly I’ll defend myself. I don’t accept that I’m totally to blame.
JACK: I don’t think anyone will think that.
LORIN: Yes they will.
DEREK and BARBARA MILSOM enter. DEREK is in his late forties, BARBARA a little younger. DEREK is agitated and strides ahead of his wife. He sees LORIN, but ignores her and only nods briefly at JACK as he unwraps a large beautifully-framed photograph of a young woman of about twenty. He holds the photo behind his back, face towards the audience, as he ponders where to put it.
JACK: Glad you could come, Derek.
DEREK: Where will they be sitting?
JACK indicates.
JACK: Glad you came, Barbara.
BARBARA: I’m not sure what good it’ll do to rake over all this again.
DEREK: I want them to see the person their son killed. It’s okay if I put daughter’s photo here?
JACK: You do what you feel you want to do.
DEREK: I want them to see her. I want them to see her every second they’re in this room.
BARBARA: It’s provocative, Derek.
DEREK: It’s meant to be.
DEREK props the photo up on the ground in front of the left-hand chairs, using the backing prop attached. BARBARA feels that politeness dictates they can’t ignore LORIN any longer.
BARBARA: Hi Lorin.
LORIN: Hi Barbara, Derek.
DEREK glares at LORIN with patent hostility, then turns to JACK.
DEREK: So where are they? They called this conference, so where are they?
JACK: They’ve got further to come.
DEREK unloads a pile of books and folders from a briefcase he is carrying. JACK looks at him. DEREK looks at JACK.
DEREK: Maybe they stopped off to rob a few houses on the way. [Indicating the pile] I’m going to talk straight on all of this. If anyone tries to dispute what I say I want to have all the facts on hand.
BARBARA: Derek, all the facts in the world aren’t going to bring her back.
DEREK: I want that family to understand what we’ve lost.
JACK: [looking at his watch] Is the traffic bad out there?
LORIN: Yes, terrible.
DEREK: [simultaneously] Traffic’s fine.
There’s an awkward silence as they work out how to deal with this total contradiction.
LORIN: I had to come over the bridge.
DEREK: So did we.
LORIN: Seemed heavy to me, but I don’t usually do this at this time of day.
DEREK: Traffic was fine.
BARBARA: Bumper to bumper, Derek.
DEREK: But flowing. They’re not coming over the bridge in any case. They come from out west.
JACK: [nodding] They’ve got a long way to come.
DEREK: Then they leave earlier. It’s called organising your time.
There’s a silence. Then CORAL WILLIAMS, a woman in her late forties, pokes her head into the room. She’s not dressed well or fashionably.
CORAL: Hey, is this it? Yeah, this is it.
She turns and beckons and MICK WILLIAMS, 22, GAIL WILLIAMS, 26, and BOB SHORTER, 55, enter. There’s an awkward bout of head nodding and a few desultory ‘hi’s. The WILLIAMS family are ill at ease under the hostile glare of DEREK and BARBARA.
BOB: [to CORAL] Call me on your mobile when you’re finished here and I’ll come and get you.
JACK: You’re Bob?
BOB: Yeah.
JACK: Recognised your voice. You’re not staying?
BOB: I thought it over and—no.
JACK: It would help.
BOB: [looking at the MILSOMS] Scott did something I can’t condone in any shape or form. I don’t want to be sitting around here trying to find excuses.
JACK: I don’t think anyone will be trying to find excuses.
CORAL: I didn’t come to make excuses.
BOB: Frankly I can’t see the sense in this and I’ve got a business to run.
JACK: If you stay it’ll help. Believe me.
CORAL: [to BOB] You were his uncle for God’s sake, Bob.
BOB looks at his watch, looks at CORAL, and sighs.
BOB: Okay, but I’m not making excuses.
CORAL: Neither am I. He did what he did and if there’s anyone to blame it’s me.
GAIL: Mum, don’t keep saying that.
JACK: Okay, let’s start. The Williams family—Coral, Gail, would you mind sitting here? Mick, Bob, just there. Barbara, Derek, on the other side of me, and Lorin just here next to where I’ll be. Ground rules. You can get up and move around any time you feel you want to. No violence and secondly this isn’t going to work if anyone walks out before it’s over.
Everyone goes to their allotted seats in silence. JACK sits himself in the middle. He waits thirty seconds while the shuffling segues into total frozen silence. The WILLIAMS family stares at the portrait of Donna.
You all know why we’re here. Coral was told about community conferences by one of her friends and phoned me and asked me to organise one for the two families involved. I’ve spoken to all of you and although some were reluctant at first—
GAIL: You’re not kidding.
CORAL: Gail!
JACK:—you’ve all agreed to come tonight.
GAIL: [looking at the MILSOMS] They’re just going to unload on us again. We’ve been through it once at the trial!
CORAL: Gail, will you just shut your mouth for once in your life.
GAIL: Well, what bloody good will it do?
CORAL: Gail!
JACK: Gail, I’m hoping it will do some good. Your lives have all crossed in a way that’s caused great pain. What we’re attempting tonight is a conversation to hear what happened, to hear how people have been affected, and to see if we can make some sense out of it all.
He waits another ten seconds or so. Again there’s absolute stillness, absolute tension.
Normally the perpetrator of the crime begins by telling us what happened in their own words. I initially suggested that this conference be conducted in prison but Barbara and Derek didn’t want Scott to be there in person.
CORAL: Neither did I.
JACK: But they did agree to let me record Scott telling us his version of events. Scott, as you know, is in the prison hospital at the moment, but he did do the recording on the understanding that what we hear tonight is strictly confidential. Is that agreed?
BARBARA: I’ve thought about this, Jack. I don’t think I want to hear.
DEREK: Neither do I.
JACK: For this to work it’s much better if we do.
DEREK: Why?
JACK: We need to know how Scott feels about what he did, because that usually alters the way we feel about him.
DEREK: He’s made some attempt to justify what he did?
JACK: [nodding] In his own way.
DEREK: I can’t believe that.
BARBARA: Justify?
JACK: In his own way.
There’s another tense pause.
DEREK: Okay, let’s hear it.
JACK: He’s been totally frank. What you’re about to hear isn’t going to be pretty.
DEREK looks at BARBARA who finally nods. JACK turns on the tape.
SCOTT: [voice only] ‘I saw Donna when she came into the supermarket where I had a job lugging boxes and stacking shelves. She didn’t ever see me, but I kept seeing her. I done all those things they taught me in prison. I looked away, went out the back, pulled out the cards. I read how I hated prison, how I never wanted to go back, but I was getting hot. Every night I’m jerking off three or four times. I hold out for a week but it’s getting real bad and I take out the cards ’cause I know they’ve got Lorin’s number on and I’m just about to call her, but I know it’s no use. I go to Donna’s place and follow a guy through the security door with flowers in my hand like I’m delivering them and wait for her behind a corner. As soon as she had the key in the lock I had the knife at her throat. She didn’t make a sound. I taped her mouth and her hands and took off her jeans and undies. I showed her the pictures in the magazines. Chicks with bruises. Tied up and loving it. They said in court I hit her because I was in a rage. It’s bullshit. I wasn’t in a rage. I wanted her to get off on it. Lorin told us that chick’s don’t really like rough stuff, but by now I’m believing what I want to believe, and I start thinkin’ that Lorin is wrong in any case ’cause Donna is comin’ every time I put it in.’
DEREK: I’m out of here.
JACK switches off the tape. DEREK gets up to walk out, beckoning BARBARA. JACK moves in front of him.
JACK: Please.
DEREK: You expect me to listen to that?
LORIN: It happens in lots of rapes, Derek. Sexual arousal is not much different to terror, physiologically.
DEREK: It’s filth. It’s lies.
LORIN: The body is built to respond to certain stimuli. If the levels of arousal are high enough—[there’s nothing she could have done about it.]
BARBARA: What are you telling us, Lorin? She enjoyed being beaten to death?
LORIN: Barbara, it was just a reflex—[She was terrified.]
BARBARA: I can’t listen to that.
LORIN: She was terrified, Barbara. Make no mistake. She was terrified.
DEREK: You want to know how terrified? I’ll tell you. I’ve done research. Lots of it. You want to know what she went through?
JACK: We’ll get to that, Derek. Painful as it is, let’s just finish this.
DEREK: You want to know what she really went through?
JACK: [holding up his hand, palm outward] Derek.
DEREK sits. JACK switches on the tape again.
SCOTT: [voice only] ‘I’m crazy by now and I can’t stop myself giving her more.’
DEREK: Your kid’s a monster. I’m sorry, your kid’s a monster.
JACK switches off the tape.
MICK: You think we don’t know that? Why the fuck do you think we’re here tonight?
GAIL: You’re not here to sell out your brother.
MICK: I’m not here to pretend he was a saint, either.
JACK: Can we try and finish this?
There’s a silence. JACK switches on the tape.
SCOTT: [voice only] ‘But I didn’t ever mean to kill her. Honest. No way. I didn’ realise I was hitting her that hard, you got to believe that. And I swear she was alive when I left. I didn’ know about the bleeding inside. I got just as much a shock as anyone when I heard it on the news. I didn’t mean for her to die. I thought about her every day and night for weeks. She was beautiful. She was my dream girl. I didn’t ever want her dead. You got to believe that. I didn’t mean to take your daughter away. So, sorry.’
There’s a silence as they all digest this.
DEREK: [to JACK] That’s supposed to make us feel better?
BARBARA: That sick, sick story is supposed to make us feel better?
JACK: Coral, who’s been affected by your son’s action?
CORAL: Everyone in this room and many more.
JACK: Who’s been most affected?
CORAL: Mr and Mrs Milsom. That’s the reason I wanted to meet them face to face. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I’ve been wanting to say it ever since the courtroom. I saw them crying day after day. And I cried too. For their girl. I don’t know what I did wrong bringin’ up that boy, but it’s pretty plain I made a bloody mess of it. What he did was shocking beyond words, and a lot of it has to be my fault, so that’s what I’m here for. To say I’m sorry I wasn’t a better mother and I’m sorry for all your pain.
GAIL: We’re all sorry. Really sorry. We hate what Scott did.
CORAL: I thought if we came here tonight then…
JACK: Then what?
CORAL: Mr and Mrs Milsom, I know you probably want my boy to suffer as much as humanly possible, but I thought that maybe…
DEREK: Maybe what?
CORAL: He bloody near died after this attack and when he’s sent back to prison they’ll do it again. I don’t want him out of prison. Ever. But they’re going to kill him and the prison authorities are doing nothing.
GAIL: ’Course they’re doing nothing. They want him dead.
CORAL: They’re saying it was only a one-off thing but we know it’s not. The only way he’s going t’stay alive is if they put him in protective custody.
GAIL: Protective custody costs a fortune. It’s cheaper if he’s dead.
DEREK: What’s this leading to, Coral?
CORAL: I thought if you saw how truly sorry we are about your girl, you might say you’ve no objection to him being put in protective custody. Our lawyer said it’d help his case. He says that if a serious offender’s conditions are going to be changed the victim’s family has to be consulted.
JACK: Coral, this is really not appropriate.
DEREK: [to CORAL] You can’t be serious.
BARBARA: We’d help your son?
CORAL: I thought if you saw how sorry we were—
DEREK: [to CORAL] You honestly think that Barbara and I—
JACK: Coral, this isn’t the agenda we’re here for today.
CORAL: I want him to pay for what he did, but I don’t want him to die. No mother wants their son to die.
JACK: Coral, if you were going to bring this up you should have told me.
CORAL: He was only stabbed last week!
JACK: You should have rung me and told me.
GAIL: Mum, are you crazy? They’re never going to help us.
CORAL: [to BARBARA] I know it’s an awful lot to ask, but no mother ever born can sit round and do nothing if her son’s going t’die.
DEREK: So this meeting’s nothing to do with being sorry?
CORAL: It is, it is. I set this thing up before Scott was stabbed. I set this up to tell you how sorry I was. It’s been preying on my mind and drivin’ me crazy.
GAIL: Mum, get real.
DEREK: Coral, do you want to know how I really feel?
JACK: Let’s not pursue this now.
DEREK: I think the prisoners who stabbed your son deserve a medal. My only regret is that they only half did the job.
GAIL: Mum, let’s just get out’ve here.
CORAL: You’ve lost a daughter. You know how it feels.
DEREK: Your son killed our daughter.
JACK: Coral, let’s not pursue this.
DEREK: Now or ever again. [To CORAL] Have you any idea what a nightmare this has been for us. From the moment we first heard?
JACK: How did you feel when you first heard, Derek?
DEREK: It’s the scene from hell that no parent ever wants to happen. The police. The look. A scream inside you because you know what the cop is there for.
BARBARA: I did scream. I just lost it. For days. I just lost it.
DEREK: You think, ‘No! Please tell me it’s wrong. Please tell me she’s hurt. She’s in the hospital, fine. But not that.’ No parent should ever have to hear that. No one should ever, ever have to hear that.
BARBARA: I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t do anything but cry.
DEREK: I had to support her at the funeral.
BARBARA: I was fine at the funeral. I cried. It’s not a crime.
JACK: How’ve you been since, Barbara?
BARBARA: I still cry every day. Nightmares every night. Derek does too, but he can tell you about that.
JACK: Nightmares every night?
BARBARA nods.
Could you tell us about them?
BARBARA: I’m at the hospital like I was that night. Holding my dead girl’s hand. Looking at her battered body and crying. And suddenly her eyes open and she’s alive. And I’m weeping with joy. Cradling her head in my arms. And I wake up yelling that she’s alive…
JACK: How’s it affected your life? In other ways?
DEREK: In other ways? In every way.
BARBARA: I had to resign my job. I’m a teacher. I was a teacher. I loved my job. I never had a problem. But suddenly I found myself sitting in front of my class with tears pouring down my face. And that was it. I knew I couldn’t teach anymore. I knew I was finished. They shifted me out of the classroom into admin but I couldn’t concentrate for longer than a minute or two. I took anti-depressants but they just made me feel numb—which I already was in any case. I can’t relate to people anymore. They’re not part of my world. I hate them because they haven’t had it happen to them. I’m not part of any world anymore.
CORAL: I’m sorry. I really am.
LORIN: [to BARBARA] You’ve been through an extreme trauma. These things don’t just fade away.
DEREK: Ten years down the track we’re going to be just as screwed up as we are tonight.
LORIN: You need intensive grief counselling. With all due respect, a quick-fix solution like tonight won’t help much.
BARBARA: I’ve had grief counselling up to my ears, Lorin. [To CORAL] Do you know how much I loved Donna? Do you know how much she was part of my life? I see daughter from hell movies everywhere, but this was no daughter from hell—
DEREK: This was a kid who was friendly and loving—
BARBARA: When she was in primary school the teacher said, ‘Yeah she’s bright, but look at this’. And she showed us a sociogram. A graph with arrows showing which kids wanted to be friends with which. And all the arrows—
DEREK: Pointed to Donna.
BARBARA: [illustrating with her hands] These arrows going—whoosh—straight at Donna. And the teacher says, ‘One thing you can be sure of—’
DEREK: ‘—your girl is going to have a very happy life.’
BARBARA: How many mothers have a daughter who’s also your best friend? Who tells you everything? And you tell her everything? I had one. I had one. I used to love watching her laugh. It made me feel better than anything in the world. When my girl was happy, I was over the moon. Yes, I had a career and all that, but the moments that lit up my life were those moments when I saw my daughter laugh.
DEREK: You want us to help save your son when we’ve just heard him telling us that killing Donna was an accident? He only meant to leave her a wreck?
BARBARA: She lit up my life.
DEREK: His dream girl? Dream girl? Well, that’s one hell of a sick dream, and that’s one hell of a sick son. And at the end he tags on two words. ‘So, sorry.’ Hey? ‘So, sorry.’ Are we supposed to take that seriously? Are we supposed to say, ‘Well that’s great, let’s all shake hands’? ‘I’ll sign that petition’?
GAIL: If he gets protective custody he’s still going to spend the rest of his life in jail. Isn’t that enough?
DEREK: Frankly, no.
GAIL: What would make you happy? Hung by the neck by piano wire?
DEREK: If I was given the chance I’d be happy to kill him myself. I’d like to put a gun to his head and shoot him.
CORAL: There’s one dead already. Does it really help to make it two?
BARBARA: He shows her a pornographic S and M magazine when she’s tied up and helpless and thinks it’ll get her excited? Can anyone be that far removed from reality?
DEREK: Does he really deserve to live?
CORAL: I don’t want him to die.
BARBARA: Have you any understanding of just how much this mother misses her daughter, Coral? Have you any understanding?
She breaks down and tears roll down her face.
JACK: You have nightmares too, Derek?
DEREK: [nodding] She’s dead. She’s haemorrhaging blood. But he’s there. Staring at me. And I’m throwing punches. But they’re not quite landing. Never quite landing. And I wake up crying out in rage.
JACK: In what other ways has your life been affected?
DEREK: My life is over. I’m in a moon suit, jumping over barren silver rocks in slow motion. No one else out there.
LORIN: You’ve got each other.
DEREK: We’re filing for divorce. There’s nothing left. I used to love my work. Now I’m just going through the motions.
There’s a silence.
GAIL: Have you ever considered that your work was part of the problem?
CORAL: Gail!
GAIL: Exactly how much do you pay the women you employ?
CORAL: Gail, please.
GAIL: Mum, I didn’t come here to crawl on my belly. A terrible thing happened but Scott wasn’t born a monster. No one is born that way.
If he turned out that way then there’ve got to be reasons.
DEREK: What in the hell has what I pay my workers got to do with my daughter’s death?
GAIL: Mum no sooner gets in the door here tonight and she’s blaming herself. But how in the hell could she be any kind of mother to Scott when she’s working for next to nothing for a non-union industrial cleaning firm sixty-five hours a week to keep us all alive.
DEREK: If that’s the sort of logic you’re going to use we might as well stop the whole exercise.
GAIL: Scott wasn’t born bad. There were factors.
DEREK: And one of them is not what I pay my female workers.
BOB: Gail, I probably pay my girls the same as Derek. It’s the going rate. Are you going to start blaming me?
GAIL: This whole society created Scott and yes, you’re part of it too, Uncle Bob.
CORAL: Gail, don’t talk to your uncle like that. Whenever we had our backs to the wall, who helped us? He did.
BOB: It was my money got you through bloody university, young lady.
GAIL: And I’m grateful, but it nearly made me sick when I heard you boasting at Granny’s funeral how you’d screwed your workers ‘good and proper’ in your latest workplace agreement.
BOB: Everyone tries to do the best for themselves.
GAIL: And how you wouldn’t have anyone who belonged to a union near the place.
BOB: I give you a lift here, ’cause Mick’s pranged his car, I agree to stay, and this is what happens. Typical of you, young lady. If I paid my girls more than anyone else I’d’ve gone bankrupt and where would you be then?
DEREK: If this is going to turn into an exercise of blaming everyone else but Scott then we’re out of here.
CORAL: If there’s anyone to blame it’s me.
GAIL: Mum, there are many, many factors.
BOB: Yeah, well I’m certainly not one of them. Your mother and I had nothing as kids. No education. Nothing. And building a business from that is bloody hard.
CORAL: You’ve always done the right thing by us, Bob.
BOB: No one could’ve done anything for Scott. He was wild from the time he could crawl. You had to tell him twenty times not to do somethin’ an’ it made no damn difference. You’d tell him off and he’d fly into a rage.
GAIL: He had an impulse control problem. So do thousands of other kids and they don’t murder people.
BOB: Exactly. How come Mick didn’t fly off the handle when you told him ‘No!’?
DEREK: Exactly.
CORAL: I didn’t come here tonight to look for excuses. My boy did a terrible thing, but I still love him.
DEREK: Maybe you should listen to what this boy you ‘love’ left out of his little story.
BARBARA: Derek, do we have to?
DEREK: I want them to hear. I want to remind them what their boy actually did! And then ask whether any ‘factors’ can ever excuse it. [He fishes in his pile of documents, holds up the coroner’s report, then reads.] Her spleen was ruptured, her kidneys were bruised, five ribs were cracked, her lung was punctured and she was bleeding internally from at least five different locations. Her rectum was ripped by a Coke bottle, another little detail your boy omitted to tell us. Her skull was also fractured and this is the wound that caused the brain haemorrhage that probably killed her.
He puts down the report and looks at the WILLIAMS family. He picks up another report.
The thing we go through life trusting is that if we don’t provoke someone, they won’t harm us. That if we’re defenceless and we look someone in the eyes they’ll be decent enough not to harm us. We couldn’t live if we didn’t have that much trust. Now here’s someone looking my daughter in the eyes and making it quite clear that despite the fact she’s done absolutely nothing to him, he’s going to kill her. This provokes fear of the most intense kind it is possible for a human being to have. It’s way outside our range of human expectation. [He flicks through the report and reads.] The heart rate spikes up temporarily to three hundred beats a minute and all senses except vision shut down, and vision becomes tunnel vision.
He stops reading and looks at the WILLIAMS family.
Donna would have been faintly aware of the sounds of her own body being broken to bits, but all she would have seen were the eyes of her killer. And all she could do, with her hands bound and her mouth gagged, was hope that the terror in her eyes would strike some chord of compassion. Which of course it didn’t. Thankfully while it was happening she wouldn’t’ve felt pain. At these levels of arousal everything except terror is blotted out, but when your son had had his fun and left her, the pain would have come flooding through her to a degree we can’t even start to imagine. One cracked rib is enough to keep most of us up at night, but her injuries, coming after the terror she’d been through, would have been so intense that her body probably died hours before it had to to spare her the unendurable. That’s the reality. That’s the reality of how my daughter died. That’s the reality to stand alongside the sick fantasy that your son convinced himself was happening. Can any of you sit here and listen to that reality and give us a reason why we shouldn’t feel elated if your son dies? Can you?
GAIL: Okay, it’s horrible. Horrible. But there were factors.
DEREK: To hell with your factors. Look at her photo there and just sit and think about how she died.
GAIL: [quietly, after a pause] There were factors.
There’s a silence. Tears are still flowing from BARBARA’s eyes, but DEREK’s eyes are dry and cold with fury.
JACK: Coral, it must have been hard for you to listen to that?
CORAL: My boy did a terrible, terrible thing. Be easier if I could hate him, but I can’t. I know he’s bad. He was always bad. Always lying an’ stealing, getting into fights. And if he hurt you he’d say he was sorry, but you knew damn well he wasn’t. But there was something you had to like about him. He was funny and full of life.
MICK: [sardonically] Yeah.
CORAL: Mick, I said he did a terrible, terrible thing. I know that. I know.
There’s a pause.
JACK: Lorin, is there anything you’d like to say?
LORIN: I know a lot of you here are blaming me—
DEREK: You were the one who sent him back out onto the streets.
LORIN: That’s not actually—
GAIL: Before he was ready.
LORIN: I didn’t send him back out on the streets. The parole panel made a decision. They heard what I had to say and what two other court-appointed psychiatrists had to say and they made their decision. I wasn’t the only voice they listened to.
DEREK: The two other psychiatrists said it was too risky to release him but you told the panel he was ready.
LORIN: I said what I truly thought and I stressed the risks. The parole board had all the information. They made the decision.
DEREK: You’d been treating Scott for five hundred hours. The other two ‘experts’ had only seen him for two hours each. Of course they were going to give your report more weight.
LORIN: I stressed the risks.
DEREK: [contemptuously] Yeah.
LORIN: I said on balance he should be released but only under strict parole supervision.
CORAL: Strict supervision. What a joke!
MICK: He goes off to the parole officer once a week, tells a few lies and that’s it. Strict supervision?
LORIN: I insisted on three visits a week.
MICK: So how come he only came once?
LORIN: My recommendation was ignored as part of a cost-cutting exercise. But I didn’t know this.
DEREK: Shouldn’t you have?
LORIN: They didn’t notify me.
DEREK: Why didn’t you check?
LORIN: I meant to. I was overworked. But I should have. I should have.
CORAL: In a few days he’s stealing my money and his brother’s money and his uncle’s money and buying more filthy magazines and locking himself in his room. And I don’t need to tell you what he was doin’ in there. The parole officer says, ‘How’s he doing?’ and you can see from his eyes he doesn’t give a damn. And I say, ‘He’s buying those magazines and videos again’, and he says, ‘Well, if he does anything worrying, get in touch’. And I say, ‘It is worrying that he’s buying those things again’, an’ he says, ‘Don’t worry. He’s had therapy. He knows women don’t like that sort of stuff. He’ll be fine.’
LORIN: I should have been told immediately. I was reasonably confident he’d been cured of his obsession with violent sex, but I specifically asked to be told if there was any evidence that it was recurring.
DEREK: And what exactly would you have done?
LORIN: I would’ve realised he needed more intensive therapy.
DEREK: More of the treatment that had done absolutely nothing to change him?
LORIN: It had changed him.
DEREK: If you’d read your own literature you’d have realised that there is no hard evidence that high levels of violent sexual preoccupation are ever cured by the ‘let’s sit down and talk about this’ approach.
LORIN: The studies are inconclusive.
DEREK: You’d want them to be wouldn’t you, or you’d all be out of a job.
LORIN: I believed in the work I did and I did it to the best of my ability.
CORAL: Yeah, and look what happened.
DEREK: [to CORAL, pointing at LORIN] You could have rung Lorin yourself. You could have told her he was buying that porn again.
CORAL: He’d just got out of prison. I didn’ want to do anything that might send him back there.
DEREK: You say Lorin let him out too early, but you wouldn’t put him back? Where’s the logic?
CORAL: I thought I could handle him.
MICK: [to CORAL] You’d yell at him once or twice and then let him do whatever the hell it was he wanted. Same as always.
CORAL: I’ve been workin’ sixty hours a week from the time you were born to give you all a chance in life. How much energy am I supposed to have?
MICK: You didn’t work hard on account of me. You were workin’ long hours so Gail could get a B.A. or Masters or whatever the hell it is.
GAIL: What are saying, Mick? All this happened because I went to uni?
MICK: You didn’ even take a part-time job. Not once. And then what’d you do? Run out on us as soon as you damn well could.
GAIL: I didn’t take a part-time job because I was doing Honours. If you scrape through these days you don’t even get a job. And what am I supposed to do? Stay in the house I was born in the rest of my life?
MICK: You were his older sister. You could’ve helped keep him in line. You blame everyone else, but you’re part of the equation too.
GAIL: You stayed home, and what did you ever do to stop your brother?
MICK: Me? Whoever would’ve listened to me? All those years growin’ up, Scott was the hero in our house.
CORAL: Scott was never a hero. That’s stupid talk.
MICK: [to CORAL] He lies, he cheats, he gets himself half killed in fights. And what do you say? To me? What do you say? ‘No one’s ever gonna push Scott around.’ Like hey, Mick, you poor dork. Stand up for yourself and beat the hell out’ve anyone that looks sideways at you like your brother Scott.
CORAL: I didn’t meant it like that.
MICK: Whenever he’d do something bad, you’d laugh.
CORAL: He had a way of making things sound funny.
MICK: Oh yeah. Like, ‘I hit him an’ he went down and bounced up again, so I hit him again and he went down and bounced up again—’ He puts a guy in hospital and let’s all have a great big laugh.
CORAL: All boys have fights.
MICK: Oh yeah. He puts a guy in hospital so let’s all have a great big laugh.
CORAL: I didn’t know he was in hospital.
MICK: Even when he done his first rape at seventeen, you were full of excuses. ‘Those girls. They lead young boys on.’
CORAL: It wasn’t rape. He wasn’t convicted.
MICK: You know something. You weren’t really mad at him. Ever.
CORAL: I was as mad as hell. But I forgave. He had a way of talkin’ you round. He talked Lorin around and she’s supposed to be a bloody professional.
DEREK: Some professional.
LORIN: Derek, you’ve made your point. Many times.
DEREK: They let him out because you said it was an ‘acceptable’ risk.
LORIN: He was making progress with me. The two psychiatrists just labelled him a paraphiliac and that was it.
DEREK: Lorin, would you tell us exactly what a paraphiliac is?
LORIN: It’s a rapist who acts out violent sexual fantasies. And there’s no doubt that that’s how Scott first presented.
DEREK: And that’s what Scott remained.
LORIN: Reverted to. There’s a difference.
DEREK: Reverted, remained. What difference?
BARBARA: Our daughter’s still dead.
DEREK: Those two clinicians thought he was still a paraphiliac. And they were right.
LORIN: I kept stressing the risks.
DEREK: You told the board how he played the role of someone trying to talk his buddy out of raping a woman, and had tears in his eyes.
LORIN: He did. He finally understood how devastating rape is to a woman. He understood. At that moment he understood.
BARBARA: And you told the board how he did exceptionally well in his empathy training. How he read the police reports of how upset his victims were. And how he cried. And how he sat down and wrote letters of apology to all his four victims. Never mailed of course, but he did it. He did it.
LORIN: They were sincere. His tears were real. I still can’t understand why he didn’t pick up the phone and call me that day.
DEREK: Because he’s compulsively addicted to violent sex. And he’s a sociopath. Which those two clinicians managed to pick up in the space of two hours as against your five hundred. And you sneered at their suggestion of direct behavioural deconditioning.
LORIN: That just treats the symptoms. It doesn’t get to the root cause.
BARBARA: The root cause wasn’t some terrible trauma in childhood. There was no evidence whatsoever that Scott had ever been molested or abused.
MICK: He hadn’t. He was just born bad.
GAIL: Mick!
LORIN: The worst people are ever born with is a predisposition. No one is born bad.
DEREK: No one? Let’s just qualify that a little. [He reaches for a book and opens it at a page marked by a yellow marker strip.] ‘Behavioral and Brain Sciences’. Volume 18, Number 3. [He reads.] In every known culture ‘sociopaths comprise three to four percent of the male population’. They’re ‘egocentric, aggressive, impulsive, and underneath a superficial veneer of sociability and charm, experience no love, shame, empathy, guilt or remorse’. And the evidence shows there’s a strong genetic factor.
LORIN: Some genetic influence.
DEREK: Every twin study that’s been done shows up to half of it is.
LORIN: The other half is what I use my professional skills to work on.
DEREK: There are people who are born bad. Or at least halfway bad. And he was one of them.
LORIN: A predisposition is just that, Derek, a predisposition. Nothing is fixed in concrete by the genes.
GAIL: [to DEREK] If you had had to live where we grew up you’d realise why there was such a high chance Scott would go off the rails.
DEREK: Don’t give me that ‘underprivileged’ garbage. Your brother was a sociopath who became heavily addicted to violent sex. He was a walking time bomb and she [pointing to LORIN] let him back out on the streets.
BARBARA: What you can’t admit, Lorin, is that you misdiagnosed, mistreated and misrepresented your patient.
DEREK: And you were paid five hundred times eighty dollars to do it!
LORIN: Scott had made considerable progress. Then he reverted. And I wasn’t told.
BARBARA: [quietly] Lorin, are you ever going to accept any of the blame?
LORIN: I’ve accepted a lot of blame, believe me.
DEREK: Lorin, how many patients you treat have raped more than once? Before they were twenty-one? [He picks up another folder.] Just let me read you these statistics.
LORIN: I know the statistics, Derek.
DEREK: Let me refresh your memory then. If a rapist has offended against more than one victim then the chance of any therapy working is eight times less than if he’d offended against only one.
LORIN: I was aware of that, and knew it would make my work much harder.
DEREK: If violence is an integral part of the rape the chances are that on subsequent rapes the violence levels will escalate.
LORIN: Yes.
DEREK: No warning bells.
LORIN: Loud warning bells.
DEREK: In your own report—[He holds up the report.] Did you read his cynicism and anti-social scores on the MMPI? Did you read his levels on the attraction to sexual aggression scale?
LORIN: Of course.
DEREK: Very, very loud warning bells I would have thought.
LORIN: Yes. But I still refused to believe that Scott was beyond help. I still refuse to believe it. And I did help him. But he reverted and I should have been told. That’s all I can say. And I’m more sorry than you can imagine about Donna, but I can’t help you anymore here today.
She gets up to go. JACK stands in her way.
JACK: Lorin, they’re saying things they feel they have to say. I know it’s hard on you, but it’ll help enormously if you stay.
LORIN: Tell me how it’s going to help enormously, Jack?
JACK: This process needs everyone integral to all this hurt and anger to be here.
LORIN: Sorry, but I don’t see one skerrick of evidence that anything has or will be achieved here today. Other than that people who are already devastated and angry are getting more devastated and angry. And people who are desperate and guilty are getting more desperate and guilty.
JACK: This process needs all that anger and hate and fear to be expressed. Give it a chance.
LORIN: And risk walking out even more demoralised than it’s already made me? No thanks. [She turns to go again.] None of you will believe, or don’t want to believe, how much I have suffered over this. Scott was making progress, but you’re right. I was over-optimistic. I should have rung up the parole officer and checked. And your daughter is dead. For which I am hugely sorry. Believe me. Hugely sorry. But other times I get it right. I could have given you another folder. One that lists all my successes. Rapists who have never re-offended. Child molesters who have never re-offended—I’ve got one of the highest success rates in this country. I got it wrong in this case.
She turns to go again.
JACK: Lorin, if you walk out the conference is over. Any chance of reducing the anguish all of you are going through is over.
LORIN: Reducing? You call this reducing?
JACK: [toughly] Lorin, you’ve got your particular skills, and you believe in them as you’ve made clear. I’ve got skills too and most of the time they work too. Now okay, this is a tough one. Tougher than I’ve ever had, but at least give me a chance and give the rest of us here a chance. Will you pay me at least that amount of professional respect?
MICK: Everyone’s lookin’ for someone to blame, Lorin, and you’re just a convenient target. For God’s sake, it was Scott who did this thing. Scott’s to blame.
JACK: You didn’t have to come here today, Lorin, but you did. Do you think it could be because you need to be here just as much as anyone else?
LORIN looks at him.
LORIN: Okay. Okay, Jack. I just hope you really do know what you’re doing because right now I’m feeling pretty low.
She resumes her seat.
MICK: [to LORIN] Scott’s to blame. Not you. If he wasn’t such a bastard none of us would be here.
GAIL: Mick.
MICK: It’s true. I got him a job, right? I talked the boss into it. So what does he do? He uses the job to look for his next victim. She’d come into the supermarket and I saw her too and I thought yeah, she’s beautiful, and I remember just how beautiful when I look at that photo there. And then I see Scott looking and I take him and slam him against a wall and say no! And he grins like he always does and says, ‘Hey, I don’t do that stuff anymore’. And here’s where I’m no better than you, Lorin. I half believed. He was such a good liar, I half believed. But when I hear it on the radio I know it’s Scott. No doubt in the world. And I want to kill him. If it’s bad being the brother of a rapist it’s ten times worse being the brother of a killer. A sick killer. Wherever I go I can hear them thinking. Same family. Same blood. Don’t let him near my daughter.
GAIL: Mick, that’s rubbish.
MICK: It’s fine for you, but I’m a bloke. Do you think there’s anyone who knows me or has even heard about me, that thinks of me as Mick? Well I’ll tell you something, they don’t. I’m Scott’s brother. That’s who I am and I hate that.
GAIL: It’s nothing to do with ‘bad blood’.
MICK: Oh yeah, Gail. You’ve been to university. You’re taught it’s never anyone’s fault—there are always ‘factors’. But with Scott the biggest ‘factor’ is that he was born without a heart.
CORAL: Mick!
MICK: I’m five years old. Big bow and arrow. Metal tip right at my chest. Ice cold eyes. Did it every day, Mum, ’til I begged for mercy and pissed my pants. Every day for nearly a year. Scott’s got a heart? Yeah, sure.
CORAL: All kids bully their little brothers!
MICK: You’re still doing it, Mum. Still covering for him. Mr and Mrs Milsom, I don’t know why the rest of my family are here, but I really did come to say I’m sorry. I just want to tell you that I hate my brother as much as you do. I hate him for what he is and what he’s done. Ever since he was little, if he saw something he wanted he took it. To hell with the pain it caused anyone else. If Scott wanted he took. Lorin, you’re not to blame. The little shit fooled you like he fooled so many people. He laughed about those ‘empathy’ sessions. He laughed about how he made tears come out of his eyes when he was writing his ‘apologies’.
LORIN: He was sincere. At the time.
MICK: Yeah, well he forgot it real quick because with me it was the same old shit. ‘Mick, they love the rough stuff. Never admit it, but they do. They come because their boyfriends can’t give it to them like I can.’ I had to scream at him to get him to stop telling me. He is a total liar. He knew what was at stake. The only person who could get him out of prison was Lorin and he did a job on you.
LORIN: His tears were real. He was ashamed he was having them. They were real.
MICK: Look, I believe what he said on that tape. I believe he didn’t want to get hooked back into that stuff. I believe he fought it for a week. I believe he almost rang you, Lorin. But hell, what are we talking about here? He held off killing Donna for a week.
DEREK: Exactly.
MICK: I’m with you one hundred and fifty percent, Mr Milsom. I makes no difference at all. He’s taken your girl’s life and he’s ruined mine, and I hate him and I hope he dies.
GAIL & CORAL: [together] Mick!
MICK: When they’d sentenced him and all those TV cameras were at the court, Mr Milsom, and they asked you how you felt and you said, ‘I wish there was capital punishment’. I said to m’self, ‘Yeah. Right on.’ I think you’ve got a right to feel that way and you’ve got a right to say it.
BARBARA: Thank you, Mick. That really means a lot to me.
GAIL: You hate him that much, Mick. That you want him to die?
MICK: Yeah, I do.
GAIL: Have you forgotten how we grew up, Mick? In a concrete housing commission slum. The stink of uncollected garbage always in the air. Where I couldn’t step outside the front door without being scared stiff I was going to be molested or bashed.
CORAL: Gail, it wasn’t that bad.
GAIL: Mum, it was. And the place you’re living in now isn’t all that much better.
CORAL: It’s a hell of a lot better.
MICK: [to GAIL] You won’t be happy until you’re living in a mansion in bloody Vaucluse.
GAIL: Mick, it was horrible.
CORAL: You always had food in your stomachs and clothes to wear.
GAIL: It was a nightmare.
CORAL: Gail!
GAIL: Mum, it wasn’t your fault!
DEREK: So what are you saying here? Scott wasn’t to blame? It was all due to the fact he wasn’t brought up in the right suburb?
GAIL: You’re very good with research that supports your stance, Derek. Why don’t you read a bit on the other side as well? Weatherburn and Lind, 1998. Parental neglect is the single most important factor in creating criminal behaviour in children.
CORAL: I didn’t neglect any of you.
GAIL: Ma, I’m not blaming you. You had no husband or partner. When you did get home you were exhausted. There were no family support programs of any kind.
CORAL: You weren’t neglected.
GAIL: Scott ran wild. We never saw him. Out all night.
CORAL: I tried to keep him home at night. I tried.
GAIL: I know.
CORAL: I tried. He just laughed and went off.
GAIL: You had no help. Uncle Bob was useless.
BOB: I beg your bloody pardon?
GAIL: When Mum got you across to try and whip him into shape you’d just chuckle and say, ‘Boys will be boys’.
BOB: What? I’m to blame for all this now?
GAIL: Well, you weren’t much bloody help.
BOB: I had kids of my own.
GAIL: If a kid like Scott can roam free at any time of night, who do you think he’s going to be roaming with, given we lived in the suburb with the highest crime rate in the city? If you read the Weatherburn figures, where we lived we were way out there on the graph in a class of our own. One in three kids over eleven, yes eleven, are out on our streets doing exactly what they like every night where we lived. Combine parental neglect with a high crime area and you’ve got an epidemic of young offenders. And that’s exactly the word Weatherburn and Lind use. Epidemic. What kind of attitudes and values do you think Scott was going to pick up?
DEREK: Just be a little careful, Gail. That kind of rhetoric makes me really angry.
GAIL: You think an upbringing like we had has no effect whatsoever?
BOB: Gail, don’t do this number again.
GAIL: You don’t think—?
BOB: I can’t hack that type of whingeing. I built up an equipment hire firm that employs fifty-five people and I started out just as poor as your mother. All you need to do is get off your arse and make an effort.
GAIL: Were you out on the streets at all hours when you were eleven? No, your father would’ve killed you.
CORAL: I didn’t let him out on the streets. He just went.
BOB: Okay, Scott didn’t have a dad, but I did my best with him. Too lenient in hindsight, but I did my best.
CORAL: Hah! First time he got into trouble, you dumped him.
BOB: I can’t have someone dealing with my customers who’s up on a rape charge.
CORAL: That first one was a date that went wrong. He didn’t go to prison and if he’d still had his job with you—
BOB: You know how a business like mine works? Reputation. You make people happy with the service you provide and they come back to you next time.
CORAL: If you’d kept him on your payroll he’d’ve had something to lose. He was hit really bad when you dumped him. He got as bitter as hell.
BOB: I had to do what I had to do. Now can we get on with this and stop trying to blame it all on his damn upbringing.
DEREK: Thank God there’s someone in this room who’s not trying to find excuses.
BARBARA: I just get so sick of all these childhood sob stories. The truth is this is the nearest thing to a classless society on God’s earth.
GAIL: Mrs Milsom, are you joking?
DEREK: It’s true. In this country everyone gets a chance.
GAIL: A bit more research you might read, Derek. Bureau of Statistics. Top ten percent of the population has seventy percent of the wealth, bottom ten percent has one percent. And getting worse every day.
DEREK: So tell me how this killed my daughter, Gail?
GAIL: Contributed, Derek. Not killed, contributed. And I have told you, but I’ll tell you again. Kids in our underclass suburbs with little to no parenting learn their values from the street. School sucks for them and, believe me, in those areas it does. They mightn’t be academic, but they’re not stupid. They know that the good life they see on the movies and television is never going to be for them. Not by any legitimate process. Add to that the fact that they’re treated like shit—
BOB: Gail, come on.
GAIL: Bob, they’re not blind. They know the job interview is over before it starts as soon as the employer sees their tats and hears their accents. They see the sneers on the faces of the rich kids at the K-Mart clothes they’re wearing.
BOB: For God’s sake, Gail. One of my best friends supplies jeans to K-Mart and they have to be made to the highest standards.
GAIL: If you’ve got energy, anger and no legitimate way out it’s an explosive mix. The values they learn are that what you get in this life, you have to take.
BOB: Gail, this is bullshit.
GAIL: Okay, Uncle Bob. You’ve got the gift of the gab and a huge hunger for money so you made it. Not everyone’s like you, and quite frankly thank God. Will you just try and stop swelling up with pride like a toad every time you open your mouth?
BOB: The worst money I ever spent was the money that helped you through university.
GAIL: My mother paid most. As usual you just came in at the end and grabbed all the credit.
BOB: That’s gratitude for you.
GAIL: I’m grateful. I’m grateful.
DEREK: Gail, exactly how did childhood hardship turn your brother into a killer?
GAIL: Childhood poverty and neglect did not ‘turn’ my brother into a killer. But it most certainly contributed. To the anger, the nihilism, the sense that there’s a world out there of things he can never have. Unless you take. And Scott took in the most horrible of all possible ways, and I hate what he did, but there were factors, and I can’t cut him out of my life as if he were some sort of cancer.
BARBARA: Gail, there is no excuse for what he did. None. You and Mick had exactly the same upbringing.
GAIL: I didn’t say every kid who’s neglected is out on the streets. What I said was that in a single parent family where we lived, the chances of kids going wrong go up. Dramatically.
DEREK: God Almighty, Gail! We’re not living in India where there’s real poverty. This is one of the richest countries in the world.
GAIL: And one of the most unequal.
BARBARA: No one judges anyone by what suburb they come from in this country?
GAIL: Are you joking? Look what the media did to Scott’s trial.
BARBARA: Just what did the media do?
GAIL: ‘Savage Westie kid kills beautiful Eastern Suburbs middle-class girl’.
BARBARA: Did anyone ever say that? Even hint it?
GAIL: It was there. Don’t worry it was there. Television crews everywhere every day. And you two would arrive with your entourage of Donna’s private school friends and sit there in the court surrounded by them and stare at us with total hatred.
BARBARA: Donna’s friends wanted to come. We didn’t drag them there.
GAIL: The way you all behaved made me sick. And it made me feel more and more loyal to Scott despite what he did.
CORAL: Our family was suffering in our way, just as much as you were, but everyone was hating us a zillion times more.
GAIL: I can’t sell Scott out like Mick and Bob. They’ve swallowed the media myth that this is a fair and just society like most people do.
BOB: Nobody’s saying there isn’t a rich and a poor, but—
GAIL: Even if Scott did have a sociopathic predisposition that doesn’t mean he had to become what he became. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world test through the roof on N Mach scales.
DEREK: Which are?
GAIL: The Machiavellian scale. The polite way of testing for sociopathy. The difference is that they had parents who had the time and money to make sure their ruthlessness was put to good use.
DEREK: So what do you want us to say, Gail? That we accept that our middle-class indifference to social justice caused all this? That we killed our own daughter?
GAIL: Derek, go and see how the other half do live. Fifty percent youth unemployed. Nothing to do but hang around the streets and wait until the local pushers eventually get them on heroin. Then there’s only three options. Prison, OD or suicide. Some life.
DEREK: So tell me. Not in generalities, but in detail—how did you avoid that fate, Gail?
GAIL: Because I’m not Scott. I don’t have a sociopathic predisposition and neither does Mick. But Scott did.
DEREK: So this tragedy had to happen.
GAIL: No, the tragedy didn’t have to happen. It nearly didn’t happen. Scott started working with Bob and he was doing really well.
BOB: You’re determined to sheet this back to me.
GAIL: You said it yourself. ‘He’s going great guns. He’ll run his own business one day.’
BOB: He was charged with rape. I couldn’t keep him on. I just couldn’t.
DEREK: Can we please get back to the reality? Whatever ‘factors’—and of course there’ll be factors—that contributed to what Scott became, men who’ve raped two or three times and who have violent sexual fantasies are lethal. They have to be either locked up long-term or given proven and effective therapy. Is that really too much to ask? I’ve lost a daughter that I loved more than anything in this world. Can any of you even begin to understand what we’ve been through?!
DEREK hangs his head in great distress, just managing to keep back the tears.
JACK: Yes. Can we try and focus back on Donna?
GAIL: What more is there to say? What Scott did was appalling and it’s screwed up the lives of your family and mine.
BARBARA: There’s more I want to say.
There’s a tense silence.
[To the WILLIAMS family] I came here today to make you understand what your son put us through and I don’t think you’ve even started to.
There’s a tense silence.
He’s your brother, Gail, and he’s your son, Coral, but you haven’t started to understand what he put us through.
GAIL: We’ve heard a lot, Barbara.
BARBARA: You haven’t begun to hear. What Scott did has not only robbed us of Donna’s future. It’s taken away her past. That’s the worst thing. It’s taken away her past.
There’s a silence.
My sister came over a while back and said to me that at least I had twenty wonderful years with Donna. I know she was trying to help, but I wanted to kill her. I literally wanted to claw her eyes out. I can’t even open any photo album with Donna in it because I know there’s a day, the tenth of August 1999, where it’s going to end in indescribable terror, pain and worst of all, aloneness. Because I wasn’t there for her. That’s why Derek and I can’t bear to stay together. Every time we look at each other we know there’s that day in 1999 when it’s all going to end in the most hideous way it could have, and neither of us was there for her. I’m sorry, but whatever the other ‘factors’ involved, and I don’t deny there were other factors, we can’t forgive your brother, ever. The pain he gave me will be with me every day until I die.
Tears start rolling down BARBARA’s face. DEREK fights back tears and succeeds. He reaches out and hugs BARBARA’s shoulder. BARBARA’s speech has affected GAIL, however, and tears appear in her eyes.
CORAL: [quietly] We know.
There’s a silence. BOB squirms in his seat.
BOB: The truth is this whole thing was goin’ t’be a disaster right from the start. Gail’s right. The only thing that was ever going to stop Scott was a father who came down hard on him. I warned Coral that Scott’s dad was hopeless, but she went ahead and married him and he was gone before Mick was ever born.
CORAL: Which is why I asked you to help a bit.
BOB: And I did. And he was doing well working for me. But rape? I can’t understand how any man could ever rape.
CORAL: Bob.
BOB: What?
CORAL: Nothin’.
BOB: What?
CORAL: You used to tell him how women were only good for one thing all the bloody time.
BOB: That was just a joke.
CORAL: You keep saying you knew Scott was bad right from the start—
BOB: He was.
CORAL: Well, you could’ve fooled me. You took him off to junior league so often when he was a kid he could’ve been your own son.
GAIL: ‘Thank God we’ve got a little man in the family’ you kept saying. ‘I was cursed with three daughters.’
BOB: I was jokin’.
GAIL: Didn’t make me laugh.
BOB: What does?
CORAL: You used to tell Scott he could do anything. Praise him to the skies. Brag about the crazy tackles he’d make on boys twice his size. ‘That boy is fearless’, you used to yell. ‘Totally fearless’.
BOB: He was the gutsiest little football player I ever saw. Crazy.
CORAL: So just when was it you got this heavy feeling he was headed for disaster? All I ever remember was you cheerin’ him on. If there was anyone laughing really loud when Scott told his stories it was you!
BOB: A man can’t help liking a kid with no fear, but I could still see the way he was goin’ to turn out.
CORAL: Gail’s right. You never did nothing to haul him into line. Ever.
BOB: He wasn’t my kid.
GAIL: Well, none of us would’ve known. Because that’s the way you treated him.
CORAL: And the one time he really needed you—when he got into trouble about that first girl—you dropped him. Like he didn’t exist. Sacked him from his job when I was in hospital and there wasn’t a dollar in the house. You can all call Scott a monster, but he went out and came home with the hundred and fifty dollars that got us through. And he didn’ rob anyone to get it. He sold the one thing that was really precious to him. His CD collection. There was another side to my boy and you used to love that side of him, Bob, whether you want t’remember it or not.
There’s a silence. JACK keeps looking at BOB.
JACK: Do you think maybe he did need you after that first rape charge, Bob?
BOB: For God’s sake, I had to think of my business.
CORAL: Your business. If we heard you braggin’ about that damn business of yours one more time I would’ve told you to shove it. Right at that time Scott needed you to yell at him and tell him he’d let you down, you dump him. If there was one man in the world he respected it was you.
JACK: Bob, has Coral got a point?
BOB: I did what I could.
BOB stares ahead defiantly. There’s a short silence.
CORAL: Bob won’t tell you but there was a better side to Scott. I’ve just been too bloody scared to say it. He didn’t just tell stories about beating people up. He could take off anyone he ever met. He could do Bob till the tears were streamin’ down our face. And if Gail had’ve ever caught him doing Gail, well! He could’ve been an actor. He could’ve been a footballer and he could’ve run a business just as well as his uncle. We’ve all heard how wonderful Donna was, and I’m sure she was, but my boy wasn’t a monster till near the end and he could’ve been stopped. We’ve got one screwed-up boy and he’s made your life hell, but I guess the real reason I wanted to come here tonight is to tell you he’s made our lives hell too.
MICK: Mum cries herself t’sleep every night.
CORAL: I don’t know your pain like you do, but I know pain.
BOB: And I sure don’t feel great either.
CORAL: Barbara, you don’t have to teach me about pain.
GAIL: Barbara, just because I’m trying to defend Scott, doesn’t mean I approve of what he did. [Pointing to the photo of Donna] It’s just horrible to look at her and think what she went through. Horrible. And it’s awful to have to look in the eyes of my brother and know that he did it. I’ve screamed at him in jail.
CORAL: The guards had to drag her out.
GAIL: And I’m shocked at the pathetic apology he gave.
DEREK: He could apologise till doomsday and it would still do no good! You could all apologise till doomsday and it would do no good.
GAIL: So why are we here? If no amount of us saying we’re sorry is going to ease the hate in your heart, then why are we here?
JACK: Derek?
DEREK: I know now why you’re here. To see if we’ll help you get your son into protective custody. Unbelievable!
CORAL: It was just a thought I had and it was stupid.
DEREK: Yeah, it was. Really, really stupid. And, Coral, I don’t care how much pain you have. The more the better. And the day I hear that your boy has been stabbed to death in prison I’ll open champagne and celebrate.
GAIL: Ma, let’s go. There’s no point.
DEREK: Of course there’s no point. There’s never been a point. There never will be a point. Your mother got herself married to a no-hoper, had kids she couldn’t cope with and put Barbara and I into a living nightmare.
CORAL: [angrily] Yeah, I did. And if I could wind back the clock, would I do it again? Probably. The thing I did get out’ve marrying that no-hoper was two kids I’m bloody proud of. Gail who battled on through everything and got where she is today and Mick who’d never hurt a fly. I couldn’t want those two to never have been born! If you don’t even want to hear that we’re in pain too then there is no bloody point.
There’s a tense silence.
JACK: Do you all think there is no further point?
GAIL: Doesn’t seem to be. Derek’s just too full of hate to hear anything we say.
JACK: Is that true, Derek?
DEREK: Their pain? We’ve been brought here to listen to their pain? Unbelievable.
JACK: You think it’s unbelievable, Barbara?
BARBARA is silent.
Are we all agreed there’s no further point to this?
LORIN: I’ve always doubted there would be.
There’s a silence.
JACK: Nobody’s leaving.
There’s another silence.
DEREK: [to JACK] Don’t you think it’s unbelievable? That they want us to listen to their pain?
JACK: Do you think they are feeling pain?
DEREK: I don’t care. I absolutely do not care.
BARBARA: Derek.
DEREK: What?
BARBARA: You don’t need…
DEREK: What? Need what?
BARBARA: I understand Coral’s pain.
DEREK: It’s not what we’re here for.
BARBARA: What are we here for?
DEREK: To make them feel pain.
CORAL: We have. And hate.
DEREK: What do you expect?
CORAL: Maybe that you’d finally believe we really are sorry.
DEREK: Sorry? Sorry’s too damn easy.
BARBARA: Derek.
DEREK: What good is sorry? A million ‘sorries’ aren’t going to bring her back.
JACK: Do you think there’s no further point to this, Barbara?
BARBARA: If there is, Derek won’t see it.
DEREK: Barbara.
BARBARA: It’s true.
DEREK: What point is there to being here? What?
BARBARA: [angrily] There are other people in pain in this room beside you. Get out of your own head and start to listen!
There’s a silence.
[Quietly] Derek, there are other people in pain.
There’s a silence. GAIL shifts uncomfortably in her chair.
JACK: Gail? Is there anything that you think could move us forward.
GAIL: I’d just like to say how sad it made me to hear what Barbara said. That she’s been robbed of Donna’s past. It’s hard enough for me to cope with the fact my brother took away Donna’s future, but if he’s taken her past too, that’s… awful. Really awful.
BARBARA looks away, tears in her eyes.
I really wish she could open up those albums again.
CORAL: So do I.
There’s a brief silence.
[To BARBARA] Can you talk about her, or is that too hard too?
BARBARA: No, talking is fine. I wanted to talk about her. All the time.
DEREK: You talked too much.
BARBARA: People didn’t want to listen.
There’s a silence.
Derek wouldn’t listen either.
DEREK: Talking about her just upset you.
BARBARA: No, it upset you.
There’s a silence.
JACK: Tell us about her, Barbara.
DEREK: No!
JACK: I think people might like to hear.
CORAL: I’d like to hear.
DEREK: No.
There’s a silence. BARBARA looks at CORAL and nods.
BARBARA: When she was thirteen, she wanted her birthday party at this particular restaurant.
DEREK: How the hell can you talk about Donna to them?
BARBARA: [angrily] Because they want to listen! [To GAIL] It had to be this restaurant and no other. She was always very definite about what she wanted. [She reflects and smiles.] She knew exactly who she wanted invited.
DEREK: Barbara, this is sick. They’re the last people who should hear.
BARBARA: [ignoring him] We did everything she asked. Twenty-eight friends. Went through the menu with her. Got every detail right. And it was wonderful. I was taking far too many photos like I always do—but to hell with it, I think, and use up two rolls, three. There’s so much laughter. Donna just loved being with friends. Loved the jokes. The shared things. And the wonderful thing for me about that day is that I’m allowed to see it all. Allowed to be there while Donna is totally, totally happy. I’ve got tears in my eyes and can hardly take the photos. Then came our surprise. We’d arranged a magician. The best. The most expensive. But the minute he appears Donna’s eyes go black with rage. [She smiles and nods her head.] And I think, ‘Uh-oh. Bad move.’ And Donna sits there stony-faced as the magician does his routine. And he’s good. Really good. And funny. [Thinking] Well, the humour was a little corny. But still funny. But Donna didn’t think so. That’s for sure. Those eyes. She just gave me one furious glance and I knew we were in for it. When we got home she just flounced off to her room, stayed there for an hour, then came down and let us have it.
She smiles, remembering it.
[Imitating her daughter] ‘You ruined it. Totally ruined it. How could you ever think we’d like that pathetic guy and his pathetic tricks?’ Her friends actually loved it. I could tell, but not according to our daughter. [She imitates her again.] ‘Magicians are for babies. Do you know what’s happening now? Do you? Do you? All my friends are calling around saying, “What about that magician? Does Donna really think we go for that sort of stuff? Doesn’t she know that magicians are just sooo uncool.”’ So I said that if her friends were going to drop her because of that then they’re friends who weren’t worth having. Which of course made things worse. [She pauses for a second or two, remembering.] We learned our lesson. We never did anything again without checking it out with her. The truth was she was a regular little control freak.
DEREK: The magician was pathetic. She was right to be mad.
BARBARA: She could twist Derek round her little finger.
DEREK: Will you stop this?
BARBARA: In Derek’s eyes she could do no wrong. But mothers know better. She was a regular little control freak.
CORAL: So’s Gail. Remember the roller blades?
BOB: When I got the wrong brand?
GAIL: Mum, we’re talking about Donna.
CORAL: Sorry.
BARBARA: No, no.
CORAL: When you were talking about her she seemed so real.
BARBARA: It’s funny that. I can talk about her. I could happily talk about her all day, but I just can’t look at the photos. Why would that be?
CORAL: When you see a photo it brings so much more back.
BARBARA: No, I don’t think that’s it. When I tell a story like that I can see her in my mind’s eye just as vividly as any photo. And I can look at that photo of Donna there. [She points.] I just can’t open those albums.
LORIN: Maybe it’s because the photos are in sequence. Leading to—
BARBARA: Yes. Yes of course. Leading to—
GAIL: Take the photos out of the albums. Shuffle them round.
BARBARA: [looking at GAIL] So I never know what’s coming next? You know something? I think that might work.
GAIL: You could always talk about her. So it must be the sequence thing.
BARBARA: [nodding] Right from the start. I wanted to talk about her all the time.
LORIN: People do.
BARBARA: But Derek’s right. No one wanted to listen. The more I wanted to talk, the more no one wanted to listen. They were embarrassed. ‘Try and forget’, they’d say, ‘Put it out of your mind. You’ve got to get on with your life.’
DEREK: You talked about her too much.
BARBARA: I had to.
DEREK: You were driving our friends away.
BARBARA: Yeah, I was. I did. I have.
LORIN: People don’t want to hear. They feel guilty.
BARBARA: Guilty?
LORIN: That their children are still alive. They can’t stop themselves thinking that if someone had to die, they’re glad it was your daughter and not theirs.
BARBARA nods.
It’s normal. People can’t stop themselves feeling that way. But they still should listen. People don’t realise that they should listen. It’s the best thing they can do for you.
There’s a pause.
GAIL: [to BARBARA] I bet she forgave you. For the magician.
BARBARA: [nodding] She could never maintain the rage for very long. There was another time—
DEREK: Barbara that’s enough. We’ve heard enough!
BARBARA: There was another time—
DEREK: Barbara!
BARBARA: [angrily] You’ve spent a year looking up facts and figures and statistics so now you think you own our daughter’s death. Well you don’t. She was my daughter. I bore her. Stop trying to manage my grief!
There’s a brief silence.
I’d been sitting with her in the hospital, holding her hand what—ten minutes? Twenty minutes? And you told me that that was enough. That was enough!
DEREK: She was dead.
BARBARA: You said, ‘Come on. It won’t do any good to stay with her too long.’
DEREK: You’d been with her an hour.
BARBARA: And I just got up and meekly did what I was told. And I’ve been angry with you and myself ever since.
DEREK: I just thought—
BARBARA: I knew how long I wanted to spend with my daughter. You had no right to control that!
DEREK: I’m sorry. I just thought…
He trails off into silence. BARBARA turns back to LORIN, CORAL and GAIL.
BARBARA: There was another time when she came down one morning and looked at the kitchen and said, ‘This kitchen sucks. You painted it the wrong colour.’ So I said, ‘All right, Miss Know-It-All, what colour should it be?’ ‘Daffodil Yellow’, she said. ‘Well’, I said ‘I’ll buy the paint if you do the painting’. I knew of course that she’s never done any painting in her life. But she knew I was calling her bluff and she never backed down from a challenge, so there she was on Saturday, in big work overalls, turning our kitchen Daffodil Yellow.
DEREK: And she looked—
He stops.
BARBARA: [to DEREK] Say it. Talk about her.
DEREK: She looked at it when she’d finished and said, ‘I was wrong’.
BARBARA: It’s still Daffodil Yellow.
DEREK: We all got used to it.
BARBARA: But anyone that’s never seen it before just looks, and we know they’re thinking, ‘Are they colourblind?’. And when Donna was there and saw them looking she’d just smile at me.
DEREK: She was honest enough to admit she was wrong, but too lazy to fix it.
CORAL: Gail never did a thing around the house. ‘I’m studying!’ Like is this the only person in the history of the world that ever went to uni?
GAIL: Mum, we’re not talking about me.
BARBARA: That’s fine.
JACK: Barbara, Derek, thank you for telling us those stories.
BARBARA: I didn’t do it to make anyone feel guilty—
CORAL: We know.
BARBARA: I just want people to know how she was.
There’s a silence.
LORIN: Barbara, I haven’t told the whole truth.
There’s a silence.
The night before I gave testimony I went over all Scott’s test scores again. His Hare, his MMPI, and I remember thinking, ‘This is a text book sociopath. This is a dangerous young man.’ But I saw him again in the morning and…
JACK: And?
LORIN: He could be charming. God knows he could be charming. And funny. He knew I’d been having a hard time with the prison governor. A troglodyte if ever there was one. And he imitated him brilliantly. Brought tears to my eyes.
CORAL: I even used to laugh when he did me.
DEREK: What are you saying, Lorin?
LORIN: I should have known what he was doing. I did know what he was doing.
DEREK: You lost all your objectivity because he charmed you?
LORIN: I lost my objectivity. For whatever reason.
DEREK: You’re paid to be objective. You’re paid to be professional!
BARBARA: Lorin, you don’t forget the basics of your craft because someone makes you laugh.
LORIN: No you don’t.
There’s a silence.
BARBARA: What are you saying? You were infatuated with him? A rapist and killer?
LORIN: I don’t know what I was. All I know is that I wanted to believe in him. More than I should’ve.
BARBARA: Sounds suspiciously like infatuation to me.
LORIN: Call it what you like.
DEREK: Infatuated?
LORIN: Yes probably. And I shouldn’t’ve been. And I’ve ruined your life. What do you want me to do? What exactly do you want me to do? Kill myself? I’ve felt badly enough about this to just about contemplate it. I’ve driven my partner away for good because he couldn’t stand me obsessing about it any longer. I could have stopped this tragedy, but I didn’t.
There’s another total silence.
I’m on compassionate stress leave now, but I won’t be going back. Don’t worry, Jack, it wasn’t this conference. I’d decided that weeks ago. I can’t ever risk this happening again. I’m sorry. To all of you.
There’s another silence.
MICK: [to LORIN] You’re not the only one to blame.
They look at him.
I could’ve saved your daughter, Mrs Milsom. I knew she was goin’ t’ get raped. I saw it building up day after day. I told my brother I’d kill him if he tried it, but he’s not scared of me. He’s not scared of anyone. I’ve seen him pick fights with guys twice his size and get the shit beaten out of him and go back a few days later and do it again. I went up to your daughter and I was goin’ t’say, ‘See that guy over there. Take every bloody precaution. He’s raped two women already and he’s looking at you.’ And then she would’ve phoned you and then you would’ve had her guarded or had her live back home and she’d still be alive. But when I said, ‘Excuse me, can we talk?’, she looked at me, and turned on her heel. It was like ‘Don’t come near me, scum’.
DEREK: She wouldn’t’ve reacted that way.
MICK: She did.
DEREK: She was probably just being cautious.
MICK: I had the wrong kind of accent and the wrong clothes. Simple as that.
DEREK: She wasn’t like that.
MICK: I know I still should have told her, but when I get treated like that it pisses me off, so I said to myself, ‘Fuck you, get yourself raped, you stuck-up bitch’.
DEREK: You callous little shit!
MICK: I never thought he’d kill her.
DEREK: [angrily] You wanted her to be raped? Out of sheer spite? Here you are presenting yourself as better than your brother, and you know what? You’re worse. Ten times worse. He was in the grip of a compulsion. A sick, sick compulsion, but what were you in the grip of, what? Spite. Nothing more than spite. You wanted her to be raped because she turned away? Because she was understandably a little cautious.
MICK: It wasn’t that, she just thought I was shit.
DEREK: Barbara, support me. You know damn well the last thing our daughter was was a snob.
MICK: Sorry. I’ve seen that look a thousand times. ‘Who does this guy think he is, trying to hit on me?’
DEREK: Barbara, tell him. Our daughter was not a snob.
There’s a silence.
BARBARA: Derek, our daughter could be a horrible little snob.
DEREK: For that she deserves to die?
MICK: Of course she didn’t. She deserved to be warned. And I let my anger get the better of me. I’m really sorry. I am.
DEREK: [in a fury] I’ve had all these ‘sorries’. Up to the neck. You knew your brother was a dangerous animal but for the sake of an extra step or two on your part, my daughter is dead.
BOB: If you could make Scott die ten times over it still wouldn’t be good enough for you, would it? What do you bloody want? Our whole family dead? Would that make you feel better?
There’s a silence.
There’s thousands of things that could’ve happened that could’ve changed things, Derek. If you go down that road too far you go mad. Yeah sure, I shouldn’t’ve fired him after that first rape charge. I was thinkin’ of my wallet, not him. And there’s other things keep me awake at night too.
JACK: Such as?
BOB: Thinkin’ what turned him onto violent sex in the first place.
JACK: Do you have any thoughts on that, Bob?
BOB: Yes. And I hope to hell they’re not right because I miss what that kid could’ve been. Sure he had no guilt, but you have to love a little kid that’ll take risks and talk his way out’ve anything. Let’s face it. Most of the millionaires in this country are full-on sociopaths.
GAIL: Like I said before. If you’ve been born to a privileged background, having no fear and no guilt can be very profitable.
JACK: The violent sex? Bob?
BOB: Okay. His first few girlfriends wouldn’t do it and I told him…
JACK: What?
BOB: That some girls say no when they really mean yes. It’s just a thing you say.
CORAL: It’s a thing no man should say. Especially not when a kid worships him.
BOB: A few months later he said something to me when we’re driving some equipment out to a customer. But I’m thinking business and I only half hear it. And I just say, ‘yeah’. And at the end of the day I think, ‘What? What did he say?’ And it comes back to me jus’ as if it’s tape recorded in my brain. ‘It’s more fun when they struggle.’ And I think, ‘Shit, I’ve got to talk to this kid’, but of course business, embarrassment—whatever. I didn’t. So. Derek. I guess I’m one of Gail’s ‘factors’. Just like all the rest of this family. Get a gun and shoot us.
DEREK: That’s not going to bring her back.
MICK: Nothin’s going to bring her back, Mr Milsom. Or bring back my best mate Jimmy Griffiths. Knifed to death in Pitt Street by a junkie ’cause he only had seven dollars on him. What would’ve kept him alive? Twenty dollars, the price of a fix. A human life for thirteen dollars. That’s pretty scary shit. Can’t sleep at nights thinking ’bout it. His dad Neil is my boss at the supermarket. And Neil seemed okay. Copin’ with it all. But two days back I went out to the dispatch bay, and there he was crouched over the bushes dry retching and crying like a baby. Frankly, workin’ out what life’s about is beyond me. It’s a total mystery. All I can do from here on in is keep goin’. There’s got to be some good along with all this shit eventually.
CORAL: Some people sail through an’ never experience a day’s misery in their life. And don’t I jus’ hate ’em. But some people get the worst. It’s like a bloody lottery. Yeah, I worked long hours and yeah, I was exhausted, but I still could’ve stood up and screamed at him and stopped trying to find excuses for everything he did. A blind fool could’ve seen where he was headed and I should’ve tried to plant m’self square in his path and said ‘no’. Your kids are the scariest bloody lottery of all. My number came up and I got a hell of a tough one, an’ I tried, but I should’ve tried harder. Don’t know whether it would’ve done much good but I should’ve tried. If there’s anything I can do to make life easier for you both, I’ll do it. I mean it. I really do. I mean it.
BARBARA: Thank you.
GAIL: Barbara, just so you know, I’m never, ever going to be able to cope with what my brother did. Never. I grew up with only a thin bit of plaster separating my room from his, and that gives me nightmares of my own and I don’t have to tell you what those nightmares are, but they’re truly horrible. But I can’t just cut my brother out of my life.
BARBARA nods.
If there was anything I could do to help, like Mum, I’d do it too. I don’t know what, but I’d do it.
The tears are now streaming out of her eyes. BARBARA goes and picks up the photo of Donna and returns to her seat and looks down at it. There’s a silence.
JACK: Barbara, is there anything else you’d like to say?
BARBARA: Yes. [She looks down at the photo again.] Maybe if any of you believe in God… you could pray for her. In your own time. In your own way.
CORAL: I will.
DEREK shifts uncomfortably.
JACK: Derek. Is there anything you want to say?
DEREK nods.
DEREK: She was followed once before. About six months before she… I promised I would get her one of those panic buttons. Little pendants you can hang around your neck. They look like a real necklace. You press and it’s radio relayed and it goes straight to a patrolling security firm. But I didn’t do it, did I? I was too busy with my bloody useless career. She wanted her boyfriend to move in with her and I told her I didn’t think she should make that sort of commitment just yet. ‘Give yourself some freedom. Give yourself some time’, that’s what I said. My real objection? He was a musician in a rock band. And he hadn’t been to a private school and he hadn’t been to university. If there’s a bit of the snob in our daughter then I guess she got it from me.
There’s a silence.
I knew she was at risk living alone in that area. Barbara kept asking me if I’d arranged for that panic button, and I kept getting irritated and saying, ‘I’ll do it soon’.
DEREK still has tears rolling down his face. There’s a silence.
JACK: Is there anything else anyone would like to say?
CORAL: I know it wasn’t on the agenda, but if Scott isn’t granted protective custody he’s as good as dead.
DEREK: [irritated] If he’s in real danger they’ll grant it.
GAIL: That’s not how jails work, Derek.
CORAL: Our lawyer says there’s still no certainty the application’ll be granted even if you two did sign. But it’d help. A lot.
DEREK: Coral, I know you’re a decent human being. I know the dice fell the wrong way for you. But just don’t ask me to do that. There are boundaries to compassion and your boy’s crossed them. If I signed I’d feel like I’d betrayed my daughter. Don’t you see that?
BARBARA: Scott’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison, Derek. Isn’t that enough?
DEREK: You’re going to sign? Is that what you’re saying?
BARBARA: If Scott is killed I’m not sure I’d sleep easily.
DEREK: Why not, for God’s sake?
BARBARA: Because Coral’s a mother, just like I am.
DEREK: You’d be betraying Donna.
BARBARA: She’s dead, Derek.
GAIL: Barbara, Derek won’t change.
DEREK: [pointing at MICK] Your own brother wants him dead! How can you possibly expect forgiveness out of me? Your own brother wants him dead.
MICK: [shaking his head] No. Not because I don’t hate him. Because it’d finish Mum.
CORAL: [angrily] You don’t want him dead because he’s your brother!
MICK: [shaking his head] I don’t want him dead ’cause of you.
BARBARA: I’m sorry, Derek, but I feel that way too.
DEREK: You’re going to sign?
BARBARA: Yes I am.
CORAL: Bless you, Barbara. Bless you. He’s bad, always was, but he’s my son.
DEREK: Sorry. I can’t.
There’s a pause. The silence grows. The pressure on DEREK grows.
I can’t. Not here. Not now.
There’s a pause.
JACK: Anything else anyone wants to say?
GAIL: Derek, I know how upset you are and I don’t want to rub salt into the wounds, but this is going to happen again and again as long as there are families who grow up like we did and, Mum, I’m not pointing the finger at you. I’m pointing the finger at governments that do everything they can to help the rich get richer and to ghettoise the poor, and who—
BOB: Gail, get off the bloody soapbox.
GAIL:—and who cut social services and education to the bone so there’s no family support systems and no community services of any kind.
BOB: Gail!
GAIL: Executives granting themselves huge bonuses so they can fly around in their own private jets are the very same ones who bray loudest for ‘law and order’. The only law they obey is the law of greed.
BOB: Gail!
GAIL: All done, Uncle Bob. But you’ll hear it again.
BOB: Don’t I know it.
JACK: No one else?
Silence.
Okay, but don’t feel you have to go. Talk to each other as long as you like.
They all look at each other. Some of them get out of their seats but they all want to stay and talk. We hear some of the talk as the lights begin to fade.
BARBARA: [to GAIL] I’m going to try that thing. Mixing the photos up. Where are you living?
GAIL: Canberra.
BARBARA: You must miss her.
CORAL: Sure, but in one way it’s a blessing. She and Mick [shaking her head] … won’t ever get rid of the violence in the world if those two are in the same house.
BARBARA: What are you doing in Canberra, Gail?
GAIL: Policy adviser to a shadow minister.
CORAL: God help those MPs.
GAIL: I’m on a plane back there in the morning.
BOB: Thank you, Lord.
BARBARA: Coral, thank you for setting this up. We’ll share the cost.
CORAL: Oh no you bloody well won’t.
BARBARA: Thank you.
LORIN gets up out of her seat.
LORIN: Thank you, Jack.
JACK: Thank you. I know it was hard.
LORIN: I’m never going to be a total convert. But—I am glad I was here.
She leaves.
CORAL: [to DEREK] I understand how you feel, Derek. But if you could find it in your heart to help, I’d be so grateful.
DEREK nods. The WILLIAMS family exits. BARBARA stays behind waiting for DEREK who is still sitting.
DEREK: [to BARBARA and JACK] I don’t think I can. I just don’t think I can.
JACK: You don’t have to decide now.
BARBARA: [to JACK, shaking her head] You do this for a living?
JACK: [smiling] They’re not all as tough as today. [To DEREK] I hope you got something out of this, Derek?
DEREK: [nodding] There’s a weight of some kind been lifted.
JACK: Good.
DEREK finally gets up and moves towards BARBARA who has her hand held out for him. They exit. JACK stands there watching them go.
THE END