AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

TERRY SWEETMAN THE SUNDAY MAIL (QLD) MARCH 22, 2014

MAYBE it’s a defence mechanism, but lots of bad-taste bloke jokes in pubs revolve around dirty old men offering boiled lollies to children.

It’s a simplistic and stereotypical view that doesn’t stack up against reality but what if the man was not so old and not so dirty and was offering love and security instead of sweets?

That was the experience of a reader whose worst memories have been fuelled rather than quenched by the royal commission into child abuse. The inquiry might bring relief, vindication, justice, revenge or even the elusive closure to some, but for our reader it reopened the windows to her private hell.

It (and my questions about childhood memories a few weeks back) forced her to confront events she had been trying to put behind her for maybe 50 years.

“Does the…