The 2,500 personalities that Jeni Haynes developed to survive her father's abuses

That day, there was only one woman on the witness stand. But six other people are ready to testify about the extreme violence he has suffered.

"I went to court, sat down, swore an oath, and a few hours later returned to my body and left," Jeni Haynes told the BBC.

As a child, Jeni was repeatedly raped and tortured by her father, Richard Haynes. Australian police say it is one of the worst cases of child abuse in this country.

To cope with the horror, Jeni's mind has created an extraordinary tactic: new identities have been invented to escape the pain.

The violence was so extreme and persistent that the woman claimed to have finally created 2,500 different personalities to survive.

And in the landmark trial that began in March, Jeni asked her father to present evidence against her personalities, including a four-year-old girl called Symphony.

It would be the first case in Australia, and perhaps even in the world, where a victim with a dissociative identity disorder testified with his other personalities, thereby obtaining a conviction of the same. accused.

"We were not scared, we had waited so long to tell everyone exactly what he had done to us and now he could not shut us down anymore," Jeni said.

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

Warning: this article contains descriptions of child abuse and violence

"I was not sure of myself"

The Haynes family moved from Bexleyheath, outside of London, Australia in 1974. Jeni was only four years old, but her father was already abusing her, but almost daily sadistic rapes began in Sydney.

"My father's abuse was planned, calculated and deliberate, and he appreciated every minute," Jeni told the court in a shocking statement in May of this year.

The woman waived her right to anonymity as a victim of abuse so that her father could be identified.

"He heard me begging him to stop, he heard me cry, he saw the pain and terror that was inflicting me, he saw the blood and the physical damage that caused me, and the next day I decided to start all over again. "

According to Jeni, his father washed his head and said he could "read his thoughts". He threatened to kill his mother, brother and sister if she even thought about the badault or if she was telling them something.

"My father invaded my inner life, I could not even feel safe in my head," said Jeni.

"I could not badyze what was happening and draw my own conclusions."

Songs to forget

Jeni Haynes has expressed her thoughts in lyrics to try to hide them:

"It's not heavy / he's my brother" when he's busy with his brothers.

"Do you really want to hurt me? / Do you really want to make me cry?", When I thought about his terrible experience.

His father limited his social activities to the school in order to minimize the supervision of other adults.

She learned to go unnoticed, to shut up because if anyone noticed her – like when her swim coach approached her father to encourage her natural talent – she was punished.

Despite the serious injuries caused by beatings and badual abuse, Richard Haynes never took Jeni to the doctor.

And today, at age 49, Jeni has permanent injuries to the eyes, jaw, intestines, anus, and tailbone. These required numerous surgeries, including a colostomy operation in 2011.

The abuse continued until Jeni was 11 when the family returned to the UK.

Her parents divorced shortly after, in 1984. She thinks no one, not even her mother, knew what was going on.

"I really abused Symphony"

Experts describe Jeni's disease as a dissociative identity disorder and say that it is closely linked to the experiences of extreme abuse of a child in an environment that is supposed to be safe.

"It was really a survival strategy," Pam Stavropoulos, a child trauma specialist, told the BBC.

"This disorder is a very sophisticated and widely considered extreme coping strategy, but it must be remembered that it is the answer to the abuse and extreme trauma suffered by the youth." child, "added Stavropoulos.

The earlier the trauma, the more extreme the violence, the more likely a child is to rely on dissociation to cope with it, leading to the creation of these "multiple states of self".

The first personality that Jeni says she developed is that of Symphony, the four-year-old girl who, according to her, still exists in her own reality.

"She suffered every minute of violence from her father and when he abused me, his daughter Jeni really abused Symphony," Jeni told the BBC.

Over the years, Symphony has created other personalities to resist abuse, hundreds and hundreds in reality.

Each of them had a special role to play in controlling an element of violence, be it a particularly horrific attack or an unbearable pain.

"An alter ego has gone out of Symphony's head and is busy with the distraction," Jeni told the BBC.

"My personalities were my defenses against my father," he added.

About half an hour after our conversation, and while Jeni was talking about their personalities, Symphony arrived. Jeni warned me that this could happen and that there is a sign when this happens: before making the transition, she strives to formulate an answer.

"Hi, I'm Symphony, Jeni is in a bind, I'll tell you all that if you do not mind," he said quickly.

The voice of Symphony is stronger and her tone is more feminine. We talked for 15 minutes and his microscopic memory of the events that occurred several decades ago around "dad's sickness" is incredible.

"What I did was save everything I thought was precious, all that was important and charming, and I hid it from Dad so that he would not abuse it. not a thinking human being, "said Symphony.

The "people" who helped Jeni survive

• Muscles: a teenager with the style of British musician Billy Idol. He is tall and wears clothes that show his strong arms. It's calm and protective.
• Volcano: He is very tall and strong and he is dressed in black leather from top to bottom. He has faded blonde hair.
• Ricky: He's only eight but he's wearing an old gray suit. His hair is short and bright red.
• Judas: He is small with red hair. He is wearing gray school pants and a light green sweater.
• Linda: She's tall and slim, wearing a 50's skirt. She's wearing her hair in an elegant bun and has sharp eyebrows.
• Rick: He wears huge glbades, the same type that his father, Richard Haynes, wore before.

In March, Jeni was allowed to testify in court as a Symphony and five other personalities, all of whom would have been victims of abuse.

He did it in front of a single judge because the lawyers found the case too traumatic for a full jury.

Initially, Haynes faced 367 charges, including several counts of rape, bad bad, indecent badault and badual intercourse with a girl under 10 years of age.

Jeni, through her multiple personalities, was able to provide detailed evidence of each crime in court.

Separate identities have helped preserve memories that would otherwise have been lost due to trauma.

Prosecutors called psychologists and experts in dissociative identity disorder to testify to the state and reliability of Jeni's remarks.

"Today, my memories as a person with this disorder are as immaculate as they were on the day of their training," Jeni told the BBC before turning to the plural .

"Our memories are frozen in time, if I need them, I look for them."

Symphony has revived "with intense detail" the peculiarities of the crimes he has suffered during the seven years spent in Australia.

"Muscles", a stocky 18-year-old man, presented evidence of physical abuse, while "Linda", an elegant young woman, testified about Jeni's impact on education and relationships.

During the second day of trial and about two and a half hours after Symphony's testimony, his father changed his guilty plea for 25 counts, "the worst," Jeni said.

Dozens of others have been added for his sentence.

"The disorder saved my soul"

"This is a historical case. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the testimonies of different personalities of a person with dissociative identity disorders have been taken literally by the judicial system and resulted in a conviction. "

That's what Cathy Kezelman, president of the Blue Knot Foundation, an Australian organization that helps victims of childhood trauma, said.

Jeni denounced the violence for the first time in 2009. The police investigation took 10 years to culminate in the sentencing and imprisonment of Richard Hayne.

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

He lived with the distant family of Jeni, whom he describes as a liar and manipulator.

Since she learned about this violence, Jeni's mother – who divorced Haynes in 1984 – has become her greatest ally in the pursuit of justice.

But for decades, Jeni was struggling to get help for her trauma.

She says the counselors and therapists rejected her because her story was disbelief or was so traumatic that she could not deal with it.

Dissociative Disorder of Identity

• Dissociation – disconnection from oneself or the world – is considered a normal response to trauma.
• The disorder can be triggered if a person, especially a child, has to survive for a long time with complex trauma.
• Not having the support of an adult, or an adult who says that the trauma was not real, can contribute to the development of the disease.
• A person with this disorder may feel that they have multiple beings who think, act or speak differently, or even conflicting memories and experiences.
• There is no specific pharmacological treatment. Specialists primarily use conversation therapies to help patients.

Source: spirit

Although today it is a widely accepted and evidence-based diagnosis, dissociative identity disorder generally raises doubts in the general population and even in some medical settings.

"The nature of the disease is such that it generates disbelief and discomfort because of its causes, in part because it's hard for people to believe that children can be subjected to such extreme abuse, "said Dr. Pam Stavropoulos.

"This is why Jeni's case is so important, because it gives a greater awareness of this so difficult disease that is not uncommon and has not yet been sufficiently addressed." -he adds.

Jeni says that her disorder saved her life and soul. But the same condition and its underlying trauma have also caused great difficulties.

Although he spent a lifetime studying, obtaining a master's degree and a doctorate in legal studies and philosophy, Jeni struggled to work full-time.

He lives today with his mother and both depend on their pensions to survive.

"We spend our lives being cautious and constantly on our guard," Jeni said about her and her personality during the trial.

"We must hide our multiplicity and fight for consistency of behavior, attitude, conversation and beliefs often impossible," he added.

"It's extremely difficult to handle 2,500 different voices, opinions and attitudes."

"But I should not have to live like this – make no mistake, it's my father who caused my multiple personality disorder."

"Disturbing" and "perverse" crimes

On September 6th, Jeni sits a few feet from his father in court to see him sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Haynes, who suffers from health problems, must be at least 33 years old to be eligible for probation.

Judge Sarah Huggett said that she would probably die in jail.

His crimes were "deeply troubling and perverse" and "completely abominable and heinous".

Judge Huggett also added that it was "impossible" for the sentence to reflect the seriousness of the injury.

"I pbadionately want to tell my story," Jeni told the BBC before his sentence. "I want my ten years of struggle because justice is made to be like a fire sweeping a field, so that the people behind me have a much easier path."

"If someone has a dissociative identity disorder as a result of abuse, he can now do justice, he can go see him and tell the police who will believe him." is no longer an obstacle to justice. "

If you or a member of your family is abused, contact local authorities and aid agencies.