When I was seven years old, I witnessed my father kill my mom. Upon his prison release, I had to make a tough decision.

I woke to the sound of shouting. It was early Saturday morning, but the walls of our house were already shaking with my parents’ voices.

Curiosity got the best of me. While my older sister remained in bed, I pried myself away from mine, wiping away the remnants of sleep from my seven-year-old eyes. Reaching for the bedroom door handle on my tiptoes, I opened it – only to freeze in shock.

Suddenly, my mum dashed past me, her face contorted with fear as she sprinted from their bedroom towards the spiral staircase. An alarming sight followed as my dad chased after her, a glinting knife clenched in his hand, accusing her with a howl, ‘How could you betray me?’

What could mum have possibly done? Why was dad so angry he wanted to hurt her?

Silently bewildered, I trailed after them as they rushed downstairs. The commotion had startled my older brothers from their slumber, and they stumbled out of their rooms. At the foot of the staircase, mum made a direct path for the sliding front door, a look of desperation in her eyes, yearning to flee.

But she didn’t make it.

As she yanked the door open, dad lunged forward, stabbing her in the back. The force sent her staggering through the doorway, and she fell face-first on to the ground with a sickening thud. Blood pooled and pulsed from her body. It was a scene no child should ever witness.

We didn’t understand what had just happened – not fully. It was over so fast. Mum lay motionless, and dad was already sprinting back upstairs.

The neighbours came running, drawn by the commotion. They rushed to shield us from the grim reality at our front door. My siblings and I were hurried away to a relative’s house. I was too shocked to speak.

I thought I would never speak again. 

Later that morning, I heard the news on the radio. A woman had been murdered in Avondale. I thought to myself: that’s mum.

My mother Alison died on August 23, 1973, in Auckland, New Zealand, at the age of 36. She was a nurse, had a great sense of humour, and loved her family more than anything. My father Stanley was a few years older and the opposite.

They were married for 15 years. I would later discover my mum was having an affair – and my father discovering the relationship was what sealed her fate.

To me, dad was a kind and caring man. He wasn’t cruel or harsh. Sure, he and my mum had their arguments – what couple doesn’t? – but he spent hours tending to his garden, teaching me about the fruits and vegetables we grew together in the backyard. I never imagined he was capable of something so awful.

The murder tore our family apart, and effectively made orphans of my siblings and I.

With mum gone and dad facing prison, we were taken into foster care. My twin brother and I stayed together, but we were separated from our older siblings. Our family, once whole, was scattered to the wind. It was a complete mess.

I hated my father for what he had done – to mum, to all of us. The confusion and anger churned inside me. I didn’t know where he was – the concept of prison was beyond my young mind – so I believed he’d just abandoned us to start a new life.

I cried for days, my emotions spilling out in tantrums I couldn’t control. The loss of my mum, the absence of my dad, and the shattering of our home left me feeling lost in a world that no longer made sense.

How could he do this? I wondered constantly. 

Arriving at a foster home was an unsettling experience: sleeping in a bed that wasn’t yours, having to find new places for your belongings, living with people who were complete strangers. It was overwhelming for a seven-year-old to process. 

‘I just want mum. I just want to go home,’ I wept to myself as I cuddled my teddy on the first night. The only saving grace was having my twin brother by my side. He was my sole connection to the life we’d lost. 

Over the next five years, I was shuffled through 13 different foster homes – a damning reflection of a broken system. Each move deepened my feelings of being unwanted, unloved and abandoned. I was desperately lonely. 

We were never offered counselling or any kind of mental health support – a sign of the times during the 1970s. We just had to soldier on and deal with it. 

Only one foster home felt like a refuge. A kind foster mother would read to me at night, her voice momentarily drowning out the pain of my past. Those evenings, with a book in my hands and her comforting presence, planted a seed of hope in me. They inspired me to become a children’s author years later, creating stories to give other kids the escape I once craved. 

Meanwhile, dad spent just three and a half years in prison for killing mum. He was released on a good behaviour bond and, shockingly, granted visitation rights.

I remember the first time I saw him again. My sister, brother and I met him at a park, accompanied by a social worker. We had one hour. 

Seeing him stirred a strange cocktail of emotions. He looked like the same man who had once lovingly tended our garden, but I couldn’t reconcile that image with the person who had taken mum from us. When he said, ‘I missed my little girl,’ it tugged at my heart, but my anger burned hotter. How could I love him? How could I ever forgive him? 

By the time I was 12, life had only become harder. I was still in foster care and was being bullied at school for being the perpetual ‘new girl’ with no friends. My past was a secret I carried like a heavy weight, too ashamed to share with anyone.

Other kids whispered about my old house, calling it the ‘haunted house’. They had no idea how true that was – or that it was my mother who had been brutally murdered there by her own husband. 

AN UNTHINKABLE CHOICE 

One day, a social welfare officer visited and handed me a decision that no 12-year-old should ever have to make.

‘You can remain [in care] until you’re 18,’ she said, ‘or you can go back and live with your dad.’

Looking back, it’s surreal that the choice was mine to make. At that age, I couldn’t comprehend the gravity of it, but even then, I knew it was a lose-lose situation.

I missed my siblings. I missed the feeling of being under one roof, no matter how fractured that roof might be. So, I chose to move back in with dad – the man who had murdered my mum.

We returned to our old house. The ‘haunted house’. The scene of the crime.

The day we moved back felt surreal, like stepping into a time warp. As I crossed the threshold, the memories of that morning came flooding back. My eyes locked on the spiral staircase, and I could almost hear the footsteps, the screams, the chaos.

The house felt hollow and tired, like it carried the weight of what had happened there. It had been leased out, and our furniture was gone, but the smell of the wallpaper remained – a haunting reminder of the past.

We never spoke about mum or what had happened. It was an unspoken rule, like we were constantly walking on eggshells. We lived in fear of dad’s temper. He was unpredictable, mentally unwell, and kept a knife on his bedside table – a reminder of what he was capable of.

At night, I dreamed of the wallpaper closing in on me as I screamed, trapped. The nightmares came so often that I began to feel delirious.

Every day, walking past the spot where mum had died was unbearable. For months, it brought tears to my eyes, but I stayed because I couldn’t leave my siblings. This was our home, no matter how broken it felt.

Most afternoons, I’d come home from school to hear dad’s German records blaring through the walls. He was drunk again. The sound filled me with dread.

And yet, dad wasn’t all bad. He had moments of kindness, tucking us into bed or showing flashes of generosity. But the trust was gone. Now, as an adult, I can recognise his narcissistic traits, but back then, I was just trying to survive.

By the time I was 17, my father’s drinking had caught up with him. He drank himself to death, ignoring doctors’ warnings about his heart disease. When he passed, I felt a tidal wave of emotions – grief, relief, sadness. Once again, I was abandoned. But for the first time, I felt a glimmer of freedom.

At 18, I landed my first job, though I lost it a few months later. My twenties became a time of reckoning. Through counselling, I began to untangle the years of trauma and figure out what I wanted from life.

At 28, I hit a turning point. I called Lifeline for support, and the woman on the other end was overwhelmed by my story. Later that year, an opportunity arose to move to Australia and work with Lifeline as a face-to-face counsellor. It was the best decision I ever made.

Now, at 58, I’m a married mother of two. The story of my past still sends chills down my spine, but I’ve made peace with it. It shaped me into the person I am today, and I’ve turned my pain into purpose by helping others.

• As told to Carina Stathis