‘See what I made him do’—Attempted mass-murder, antecedents, and aftermath (e-poster)

One Saturday morning long ago, a deranged 52-year-old man attempted to shoot the family of a suburban squash centre manager at their home, and then to destroy the nearby crowd-filled centre using his car's jerry-can-laden cabin and brimming fuel tank as an improvised explosive device. Through the combination of an over-ambitious endgame, the extraordinary courage and decisiveness of several bystanders, and blind serendipity, only the perpetrator himself was killed.

'Armed man amok, dies in car blaze', screamed the tabloid headline.

Precipitating this rampage was a seemingly minor (squash-related) disagreement between the man and his fifteen-year-old son—the principal intended target.

I am that son. I became (but for mental health reasons am no longer) a medical doctor.

For my siblings and me, trauma ensued less from the day of denouement than from our preceding early-life subjection to unremitting domestic tyranny ever hidden from the wider world. We had faced incessant hostile scrutiny from a singularly paranoid, misanthropic monster—our father. His intractable and increasingly murderous hatred pervaded our home. Devoid of psychotherapy-seeking insight and (notwithstanding occasional police interventions) never crossing the criminal sanction threshold, he evaded mental health and judicial system constraints. While he lived, my physical survival necessitated continuous self-surveillance and self-straitjacketing, despite which the inevitability of mortal violence crescendoed.

And the aftermath? Receiving inadequate early support following my father's ostentatious demise, my self-doubts have been perpetuated by the shame of cascading failures in attaining rites of passage, life skills and personal goals. Complex post-traumatic stress, anxiety/depression, and avoidant personality traits have merged in a morass of chronic psychological disability. And yet ...

Enduring an act of overt ultraviolence may constitute the 'iceberg-tip' in family/domestic abuse survivors' experiential journey. Lifelong vulnerability to further (including occupational) trauma—along with healing opportunities—potentially follows. My story illustrates missed chances for an 'at-risk' individual and family.