Cat
“The people of the State of New York call Ronan Soult,” Darren Cooley begins at shortly after eight-thirty this morning, and I swear one could hear a pin drop.
I’m wired, my nerves frayed. And I’m not the only one. Today, we’re all here—even Shane, Zack, and Steve—my closest friends, my mom, and of course Penny and Frank. We’re all occupying the entire second row behind the prosecutor’s desk with a perfect view of the witness stand.
We’re all equally as fidgety, yet none of us are in the mood to talk. I mean, what is there to say, really? We’re all just waiting for the gut-wrenching testimony Ronan is about to give. Today is the day when everyone will finally learn what Ronan has had to endure. We’ll find out the details, and we’ll hear them directly from Ronan. Ugh, I might be sick.
It takes a good minute before I hear the courtroom doors open. The bailiff walks in with Ronan right behind him followed by a young woman. If what’s coming wasn’t so agonizing, I’d just sit here and act like a swoony little fangirl at the sight of my boyfriend. Ronan looks incredibly handsome in black pants and a heather-blue crewneck sweater, the collar of his white undershirt peeking through the slightest bit. His dark-blond hair, tightly cropped on the sides and back of his head, is perfectly tousled on top.
He’s gorgeous as always, but it’s immediately obvious how anxious he is. His head is lowered, his shoulders and jaw are tense, and it seems to take all his willpower to just keep walking. I so badly want him to look up and make eye contact with me so he knows I’m here, remembers he’s not alone, but he doesn’t. Not until he gets to the back of the courtroom well. His eyes find his mother and he tenses.
It must be absolute terror to be in the same room as the person who hurt you for so long. When Ronan finally makes it to the stand, Mr. Cooley positions himself to block Ronan’s mother’s view of him. I thank the universe for this insightful lawyer.
If I didn’t know how experienced Darren Cooley was after witnessing his expertise these past few days, I’d certainly begin to understand it now as he gently yet skillfully gets Ronan to begin talking.
Ronan visibly relaxes while Mr. Cooley offers glimpses to the jury of just how incredible Ronan is. Mr. Cooley asks Ronan about hockey, his work at Murphy’s, and school, extracting appreciative oohs and aahs from the jury members when they hear about Ronan’s accolades. Even his mother looks up when Ronan’s early admission into Columbia comes to light. I bet she didn’t expect her son to get into an Ivy League school after everything she put him through.
“What are you planning on majoring in?” Mr. Cooley asks.
Ronan shrugs. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve never really thought about what I want to do with my life.”
“Why not?”
“Because… because I was always more worried about surviving the day, the week, the month, the year… I had never actually envisioned myself at college.”
“Aside from Columbia University, where else did you apply?” Mr. Cooley asks.
“Nowhere,” Ronan says matter-of-factly. “I submitted my early admission application to Columbia in August. My plan was to submit some additional applications to some other schools later last fall, but… I obviously didn’t get around to it. My head just wasn’t in the right place. I didn’t… I couldn’t focus on that.” Ronan swallows hard.
Mr. Cooley nods. “Where else were you going to apply?”
“UC San Diego and UC Berkeley in California, the University of Montana, and maybe a couple more schools in New York.”
“California and Montana?”
“Yeah. I wanted… For a while there my plan was to get as far away from New York as possible once I turned eighteen.” Ronan sighs.
“Why?”
“To get away from my mother.”
“You make it sound like your plans changed?”
“Yeah, well, once I met my girlfriend I started second-guessing that plan. I really don’t want to be that far away from her,” Ronan says sweetly, though his voice is heavy. I wish I could go up to him and hug him, even just call out his name and let him know I’m here.
The more I listen to Ronan, the more I realize how much of his life, his everyday decisions, were shaped by his home life. When asked about why he began playing ice hockey, Ronan tells the story of his neighbor openly asking Rica about Ronan’s black eye. The very next day, Ronan’s mom signed him up for hockey.
“Hockey is an extremely physical sport. Black eyes, broken noses, busted teeth, that’s pretty much a given when you play hockey,” Ronan tells the attorney. “It’s a great excuse for injuries.”
I have an aha moment when Ronan is asked about his job at Murphy’s and why he began working at only fifteen. I always figured it was because Shane’s parents own the place and Ronan would naturally want to work with his best friend. Turns out, Ronan’s decision to pick up a job when his brother never did was once again guided by his desire to spend as little time around his mother as possible, and his fierce yearning to pay for his own things and be independent from his parents.
“You look like you work out a lot. Is that a fair conclusion?” Mr. Cooley asks.
“Yes.”
“What do you do?”
“When I work out?”
“Yes. Do you go to a gym? Lift weights? What do you do?”
Ronan nods. “Yeah, at the gym. Lots of weightlifting, cardio, all of that.”
“Ronan, how tall are you?”
“Uh, last time I checked I was six-two.”
“And how much do you weigh?”
“Not totally sure. Probably around a hundred and seventy-five pounds?” Ronan wavers. “I haven’t stepped on a scale in a while. Not really a priority.”
“You’re obviously really in shape,” the attorney says with an air of admiration. “How often do you work out?”
“Five to six times a week. If I can’t make that happen, I try to at least go for a run.”
“What is the reason you work out so much?”
Ronan takes a deep breath in, then exhales. “I had this idea that if I got bigger, stronger, maybe my mom wouldn’t hurt me so much,” he says, causing my breath to hitch.
“Did it work?”
“No. But it still provided me with an escape, and honestly, it’s a great way to get all the negative emotions out of your system.”
“How would you describe your stature growing up? Were you always tall?”
“No, not really. I was pretty small growing up, but then I sort of shot up when I hit puberty. My dad, brother, and grandfather are tall, so I guess it’s not a surprise, although out of the four of us, I’m still the shortest. I’m the runt,” Ronan says with a tiny smile on his lips.
“Okay, so let me clarify this. You’re a straight-A student. You work, you play varsity and club hockey, you work out, and you maintain a pretty active social life with your friends and girlfriend. Did I sum that up right?”
Ronan nods. “Yeah. I mean, I haven’t played hockey since I got hurt last August; I haven’t been back to school. And I only just started picking up shifts at Murphy’s again, so…”
“And why is that, Ronan?” I can tell we’re moving toward the cliff, inching toward the inevitable.
“Because I was in Montana.”
“Is there a reason why you were in Montana instead of here in New York?”
Ronan closes his eyes as we arrive at the point of no return. “My dad sent me there,” he says, still skirting the issue, still fighting having to talk about it.
“Do you know why your dad sent you there?”
Ronan nods. “Yeah.”
“Why did your dad send you to Montana?”
“Because… because I was suicidal.” Ronan drops his head.
“When did you first begin having thoughts of suicide, Ronan?”
“When I got to the rehab hospital a couple of weeks after waking up from the coma. When the nightmares started,” he says, his voice low.
“Ronan,” Mr. Cooley says. Ronan looks at him. “Why were you in a coma?”
Ronan doesn’t answer right away.
“Ronan?” the attorney says gently.
“Because my mother beat me within an inch of my life.”
A thick, heavy silence blankets the courtroom as Ronan begins testifying about the reason everyone has gathered here today. It doesn’t take long before the faces next to me are tear-stained and quiet sniffles echo through the courtroom with Ronan’s vivid descriptions of the abuse his mother inflicted when he was just a child. His earliest recollection of abuse seems to be when he was two, maybe three, and still lived in Montana, and the images in my head of a tiny Ronan being hurt by his mother threaten to rip my heart right out of my chest.
“How often has your mom hurt you physically?” the attorney asks.
“I can’t give you a number.”
“More than ten times?”
Ronan laughs dryly. “More than a thousand times. Look, you have to understand, she didn’t always push me down a flight of stairs or punch me in the face. Some days it was just a kick or a slap or a hard shove…”
“And other times?”
“Other times she’d break my collarbone with a frying pan or force me to hold my hand against the doorframe while she slammed the door shut, or choke me until I’d pass out. She had no problem coming up with new ways to punish me,” Ronan says so matter-of-factly it shocks me to the core.
“When did she break your collarbone?”
“When I was eight or nine. Honestly though, I never went to a doctor for any of this, so I can’t even really say it was broken—well, I know it was because it was displaced and my mother set it, but there aren’t medical records to back it up. Just like I can’t truly say whether my right hand was broken or that my ribs were broken. The only time I ever went to the doctor, aside from August 28th, obviously, was when I broke my elbow after she pushed me down our stairs. She has a thing for pushing me,” he says quietly.
I can’t take my eyes off Ronan. My own tears now drench my face as he recalls the violence. I had no idea, and looking down the row at Frank, Steve, Zack, Summer, Shane, Tori, and Vada, they didn’t know either, had not even a hint of an idea of how bad it really was for Ronan.
Mr. Cooley picks up on a detail Ronan just divulged. “Ronan, you just said something about your mom setting your collarbone. What did you mean by that?”
“It’s what she’d do,” Ronan says, his voice thick. His breathing is off, like he’s verging on an anxiety attack. “She’d usually just take care of any injuries that needed treatment. She’s an ER nurse, so she knows what she’s doing, right?” His voice cracks.
“She’d set your broken bones?”
“Yeah. Or she’d glue a deep laceration or ice an injury or provide whatever treatment she could provide, I guess. When I dislocated my shoulder last year, she relocated it. When I broke my collarbone and displaced it, she set it. She has set and relocated I don’t know how many of my fingers.”
“She would do this at home?”
“Yes.”
“Before doing this, would she give you pain medication or a sedative?”
Ronan shakes his head. “No.”
“To clarify,” the attorney says, glancing at the notes he took, “your mom would inflict an injury on you that would require setting or relocating, and then she would set the broken bone or relocate whatever joint was dislocated, in your home, without any sedative or anesthesia or pain medication?”
“Yeah,” Ronan says heavily.
A few seats down from me, Frank drops his face into his hands with a pained groan.
“Jesus,” Mr. Cooley mutters with a small shake of his head.
My gaze sweeps to Rica. I want to know if Ronan’s recollection of these horrible things is jarring to her, if she recognizes what a monster she is, how much pain she inflicted on her own child. What I see angers me. She just sits there, seemingly devoid of all emotion, her eyes directed at no one, head bowed. Is she so cold? So unfeeling?
It’s once again striking how small she looks in her seat, her shoulders hunched. If I was a juror, I’m not sure I could believe this petite and stunningly beautiful woman is capable of the horror Ronan has only just begun to describe. I glance at the jury box and am relieved to find expressions of disgust, pain, incredulity, and anger on the faces of the strangers tasked with deciding whether Rica is guilty of abusing her son. They don’t seem indifferent at all. They look appropriately enraged.
Mr. Cooley studies Ronan’s face for a moment before he continues, allowing the jury to take in the impact of Ronan’s testimony thus far. Ronan already looks like he just ran a marathon, his shoulders heavy, defeat etched into his perfect features. He looks like a boy sitting in that chair, everyone watching him as he recalls some of the most painful memories of his life.
Finally, the attorney continues his questioning, meticulously uncovering incidents buried deep in the past.
“When I was four, my dad left for three months to go to Germany. I remember begging him not to leave because I knew what would happen if he wasn’t around. But he left anyway,” Ronan says, his head dipped down, gaze trained on his hands rather than the attorney. I turn my head to glance at Frank, who’s squeezing his own eyes shut, pain on his face at the realization that his absence meant pain for his boy. “I cried when he walked out the door and I watched him drive away. There was this hallway window with a side table underneath it. I climbed on it and watched my dad drive off. As soon as he was out of sight, my mom yanked me off that table and dragged me into the kitchen, yelling at me to stop crying, which just made me cry harder. She finally shut me up when she put her belt around my neck and choked me until I passed out.”
I have a strong urge to leave the courtroom and run away. Part of me feels unable to continue listening to what Ronan has been through. I never truly understood the horror. Hearing it from him is jarring. I want to do what he asked me to do: run away with him. But I don’t. I stay firmly seated in my seat, determined to hear every detail, share every bit of his pain, shoulder some of the burden.
“Was it just your mom and you at home?” Mr. Cooley asks.
Ronan shakes his head. “No. My brother was home, too. I’m pretty sure he was in the living room, watching TV while my mom and I were in the kitchen.”
A strangled sound escapes Steve as Frank moves his arm around his oldest son’s shoulder.
“Did you tell anyone about that incident?” the attorney asks, and I know it’s a question the jurors are probably wondering about, too.
“No,” Ronan says with a small shake of his head.
“Why not?”
“Because I knew better than to tell. I knew if I told someone, my mom would’ve hurt me even more.”
“Did your mom ever tell you not to tell someone or she would hurt you more?” the prosecutor asks.
“I don’t remember a specific conversation like that, but… I don’t know.” Ronan sighs heavily.
“Explain it to the jury, Ronan. Why didn’t you tell anyone about your mom choking you when you were four?”
“I don’t know. I mean…” Ronan stops and thinks. “I was scared of her. I was scared of the pain, scared of the yelling. I don’t know…” he says wearily. “I just knew that if I told someone, I’d get in trouble because I got in trouble for everything. Telling someone just wasn’t an option,” he says through gritted teeth, frustrated at the attorney’s seeming inability to understand the psychological impact of Rica’s abuse. But I understand that Mr. Cooley has to ask these questions. I know that most people who haven’t experienced the kind of trauma Ronan has would think that the simple solution to the ongoing abuse was to rat on the abuser.
The attorney nods, letting Ronan’s words sink in before he continues his careful questioning, his tone compassionate, empathetic, warm. I can tell he’s trying to be as gentle as possible, mindful of the fact that this, right here, is exceptionally difficult for Ronan.
“What other incidents do you recall from when you lived in New York prior to moving to Tennessee at the age of five?”
“Not a ton, to be honest. I do have a memory of my mom hitting me with her shoe when I refused to take some box down into the basement,” Ronan says, his gaze unfocused.
“Do you know whether that incident occurred before or after the time she choked you with her belt?”
“No idea.”
“But you do recall this happening when you were around four or five? Prior to you moving to Tennessee?”
“Pretty sure that’s when it happened. We didn’t have our dog yet, so, yeah.”
“Okay. Why did you refuse to take the box into the basement, Ronan?”
“Because I hated going down there. Don’t ask me why; it was just scary to me.”
“What was down in the basement?”
“My dad uses it mainly for storage, so really just boxes and random stuff.”
“Did your mom know that you were scared of going down to the basement?”
Ronan nods. “I begged her not to make me go down there because I was scared.”
My heart squeezes in my chest.
“She kept yelling at me to take the damn box to the basement, and I was just standing in front of her, that stupid box in my hands, looking up at her, crying, shaking my head, asking her to please not send me down there. I remember her telling me I was worthless and a scared piece of shit.”
“Then what did she do?”
“Eventually, when she realized I really wasn’t going to do what she told me to do, she grabbed the box from me and took it to the basement herself. I just stood in the kitchen, frozen to the spot. I knew I was in trouble. When she came back upstairs, she took one of her shoes and started hitting me with it,” Ronan says, his voice cracking.
“What type of shoe was it?”
“My mom was in nursing school then, and she started wearing these wooden clogs when she was doing her clinicals at the hospital. They hurt like a bitch,” Ronan says quietly.
“Wooden shoes?” the attorney asks, his eyes big.
“Yeah.”
“Where did she hit you with that shoe?”
“All over. My head, my face, my shoulders, my arms…” Ronan trails off, sounding utterly exhausted.
“Did she say anything to you while she was hitting you?”
“She yelled at me like she always did, telling me I was a waste of space, no good, a piece of shit, worthless, whatever.” Ronan sighs and runs his left hand over his face.
It continues like this, with the attorney slowly but steadily extracting the incriminating evidence, the painful, unbearable details about Ronan’s earliest years. Ronan readily admits that his memory of that time is blurred, partially because he was so little, but also because he finds himself with significant memory gaps that, according to his therapist, are a protective mechanism employed by Ronan’s brain.
“There are things I should be able to remember vividly, like my first kiss, for example,” Ronan says. “And, I mean, I know these things happened, obviously. But I just can’t remember when or where or any details. My therapist said there are strategies I could try to recall those things, but then I’d also risk remembering all the other things, the things that are the reason for my memory loss in the first place. So I choose to just not remember.”
I’m saddened that to protect himself, Ronan has to forego happy memories, too.
“Do you have any recollection of any occasions during that timeframe when your mom was physically hurting you and your brother, Steve, walked in and interrupted the incident?”
Ronan furrows his brow. “Um, Steve actually interrupted my mom a handful of times over the years. I don’t know if he’s even aware that he did, but…”
“But?”
“But I don’t specifically remember Stevie interrupting… Or, wait… actually, I think he did one time when I was maybe four. I think I spilled my milk and my mom was mad because I wasn’t cleaning it up right or something. She was hitting me and Stevie walked in. That was one of the only times I heard my mom yell at him.”
“What happened when your brother walked in?”
“I’m pretty sure she yelled at him to go up to his room, which he did. She finished beating my ass and then told me to go to my own room, I think. It’s… God, sorry, it’s really hazy.” Ronan sighs heavily.
“You said your brother interrupted a beating a handful of times; what other times did that occur?”
“When I was older. Once when I was maybe twelve, then at around fifteen or sixteen, and one time last summer.”
“Okay, I want to come back to that a little bit later. For now, would you be able to tell me how often, on average, your mother hit you while you lived in New York during the time period when you were four and before moving to Tennessee?”
“I don’t know,” Ronan says. “My whole life… It wasn’t like she always just beat me. It was little run-ins all the time; shoves or a slap. A lot of yelling…”
Ronan’s voice is heavy. The sadness emanates from him, and it’s infectious. The impact of Ronan’s words is evident on the jurors’ faces and those of my friends, my mom, and Ronan’s family.
“Do you remember sustaining any injuries when you were three and four, before moving to Tennessee?”
“Yeah, there was one time when my mom pushed me and I tripped and hit my head on the corner of the dining table. I had a pretty good-size gash on the back of my head,” Ronan says. “That’s when I learned that head wounds bleed really badly.”
“Did that gash require stitches?”
“My mom glued it,” Ronan says matter-of-factly, and my breath hitches.
“Did she take you to see a doctor for your head wound?”
Ronan shakes his head. “No. She never took me to see a doctor except when I broke my elbow.”
Mr. Cooley digs deeper. “Do you ever recall your dad asking you about any bruises or other injuries?”
“Only twice. Once when I broke my elbow when I was thirteen. He came home for a few days and obviously wanted to know what happened.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. My mom told him I broke it playing ice hockey and I didn’t elaborate on that.”
“What other time did your dad ask about an injury?”
“I had a bruised cheekbone and a cut on my nose when I was maybe seven. My mom told him I had gotten into a fight at school.”
“Did your dad question either explanation provided by your mother, as far as you know?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Ronan says.
“Okay. You testified earlier that you moved to Tennessee when you were five, is that right?”
“Yeah. My dad was moving around a bit at that point, and we spent like four months in Tennessee, four months in Virginia, and four months in Georgia before moving back to New York.”
“Ronan, I don’t think I’ve asked you. What does your dad do for work?”
“He’s a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force.”
“Do you know what he does for the Air Force?”
“Uh, I know he’s in intelligence, but that’s about it,” Ronan says truthfully.
“Did you ever live on an Air Force base with your dad?”
“No, never. We mostly stayed in New York, occasionally Montana, while my dad was mostly gone.”
“Mostly gone. What do you mean by that?”
“My dad was rarely ever home. He was deployed a few times, or he lived on base in a different state. He was based in Montana for a brief period, and we lived with my grandparents then, but he still didn’t come home very much,” Ronan says with a deep exhale.
“Were you able to see your dad pretty frequently while you were growing up?”
“No, not really. I’d say I probably saw him a total of maybe six weeks in a year. He’d come home for a few days, then leave again and we wouldn’t see him for weeks or months at a time, especially when he was overseas. I didn’t see him at all for about a year and a half when I was eight and he was stationed in Japan.”
“That must have been difficult for you to have your dad gone so much.”
Ronan just shrugs. “I never knew any different.”
Frank sighs heavily, his face contorted in pain.
“Ronan, has your dad ever physically hurt you?” Mr. Cooley asks.
Ronan doesn’t hesitate even slightly. “No. I don’t even remember him ever raising his voice at me or my brother.”
“How would you describe your relationship with your dad?”
“Umm, well, he was gone the vast majority of my life and… when I was little, I loved spending time with my dad. He’d take us camping or fishing or whatever when he was home for more than a couple of days. He taught me how to work on cars and stuff. He’s honestly pretty badass. He’s just… to me, he was like Superman. But he was gone so much and that always meant pain for me. I’d cry whenever he left, begging him not to go. But he always did, and my crying would always get me into more trouble, so eventually I stopped throwing a tantrum when he’d leave, and things at home were just what they were. I think… I just built a wall, honestly. Whether my dad was gone or not didn’t really affect me anymore, especially once I got older. I was out of the house so much, just trying to be home as little as possible. I started doing my own thing. And now… it’s like we’re getting to know each other again, if that makes any sense,” Ronan says, a crease on his brow.
“It does,” the attorney says with a head nod before continuing to question Ronan about the twelve months he spent moving around from Tennessee to Virginia, then Georgia, before finally returning to New York. He skillfully draws out the details of the violence Rica inflicted on her son, picking up on little details, pushing deeper into Ronan’s memories as he continues to recall incident after incident, beating after beating, hit after hit.
I watch Ronan intently, his shoulders heavy as emotions cross his face. I’m surprised he hasn’t broken down yet, though I can tell he’s struggling to hold it all together as he testifies about the physical and emotional abuse he endured before finally returning to New York.
“How long did you live in New York after moving back when you were six?” the attorney asks.
“We moved back to Montana when I was ten, so about four years that go-around.”
“Did you live in the same house in New York?”
“Yeah, same house. My mom’s parents had helped my parents buy it, so that’s where we’ve been living any time we’re in the city.”
“Do you remember any times your mom hit you when you lived in New York during that time?”
Ronan sighs, nodding. “Right after we moved, we got our dog, Onyx. My mom caught me feeding my leftover dinner to Onyx. That night, she pulled me out of bed and took me downstairs where she beat me. I remember it was a Friday and she didn’t let me eat anything all weekend as punishment for giving my food to the dog.” Ronan runs his hands roughly through his hair as he grits his teeth. “I remember going back to school on Monday and just feeling so weak. I ate anything and everything I could get my hands on. One of my teachers commented that I must be growing.” He chuckles wryly.
Ronan answers Mr. Cooley’s questions for hours, describing horrific abuse, and I feel sick to my stomach when Ronan talks about his mother forcing him to hold his hand against the doorframe before she slammed the door shut, likely breaking his right hand.
“Did your mother take you to the doctor for that injury?” Mr. Cooley asks.
“No,” Ronan says. “She just bandaged it up.”
“How do you know your right hand was broken if you didn’t go to the doctor?”
“I mean, it was black and blue, and I couldn’t move it without excruciating pain. So I’m about ninety-nine percent certain it was broken.”
“Did anyone ask you about the injury?”
“Yeah, my hockey coach did.”
“And what did you tell your coach about how you sustained the injury, if anything?”
“I told him I accidentally got my hand stuck in the door.”
“How long did that injury take to heal?”
“I don’t remember. Maybe six weeks or so?”
“Did it affect your ability to do schoolwork or play hockey?”
“Not really. I’m left-handed, so I still did all my chores and stuff.”
Ronan’s mention of chores causes the attorney to shift focus. “Tell me about those chores, Ronan. What things did you do at home?”
“Pretty much everything,” Ronan says dryly. “I started doing the laundry when I was maybe six or seven. I did the dishes, vacuumed, mopped, fed our dog, cleaned up after her, and took her for walks. I did whatever my mom told me to do. I always tried to make sure the house was clean and tidy.”
"Why?"
“I just… I did whatever I could to keep my mom from being mad at me,” Ronan says, his voice cracking. “I did my homework immediately after coming home from school, tried to always get good grades, I worked my ass off at hockey. I just tried to keep things as civil as possible, but…”
"But what?"
“It was never enough,” Ronan says heavily. “She still found reasons to pick me apart.”
“Ronan, you testified earlier this morning that you broke your collarbone and your mother set it. Do you recall that?”
Ronan nods. “Yes.”
“And remind me again how old you were when that happened?”
“I was eight or nine. It was when my dad was stationed in Japan.”
“How did you break your collarbone?”
“My mom beat me with the frying pan because I was too noisy coming down the stairs. She started just hammering the damn pan into me.”
“Did you go to the doctor for this injury?”
Ronan responds in the negative.
“If you didn’t go to a doctor, how do you know your collarbone was broken?” Mr. Cooley asks, not with a tone of dismissiveness but inquisitiveness.
“It was very obviously displaced. When she was done hitting me, she sent me to my room. I went upstairs, tried to calm down, but the pain just wouldn’t go away. Eventually I looked in the mirror and things just didn’t look right. I tried to suck it up, but… it wasn’t getting better, no matter what I did. After maybe an hour or so I went back downstairs and told my mom my shoulder felt weird,” Ronan chokes. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have to seek help from the person who inflicted the pain in the first place.
“What did your mother do?”
“She looked at my shoulder. She said my collarbone was displaced, that she needed to set it. I had no idea what that meant, but… I figured it out quickly.”
“And you testified earlier that your mother would set or relocate bones and joints at home, without any anesthesia or pain medication or any sedatives. Was that the case when she set your collarbone?”
“Yep,” Ronan says through gritted teeth. “I almost passed out from the pain.”
“What happened after your mother set the bone?”
“She put my arm in a sling and gave me some pain meds and ice. There isn’t much you can do for a broken collarbone, honestly. Just minimize movement and alleviate pain.” Ronan shrugs.
“How long was your arm in the sling?”
“A couple of weeks, maybe.”
“Ronan, when your mom would hurt you, did you ever ask her to stop?” the attorney asks, solidly rooted to the spot he has been in, continuing to block Rica’s view of Ronan.
“When I was little, yeah.” Ronan nods. “I’d beg her to stop hurting me, but it just made her angrier and would draw out the punishment. So, I stopped. I stopped begging, I stopped crying, I just… let it happen. I let her do what she was going to do, just hoping she’d get it over with quickly.”
“How old were you when you stopped asking her not to hurt you?”
“Seven or eight, probably.”
“When was the last time you cried, Ronan? In general. When was the last time you cried?”
“Probably around the same time. Seven or eight,” Ronan says, shocking me.
“Why?”
“I just… It’s useless. Doesn’t help me. Never did. Crying made things worse. It just made me vulnerable.”
“And you wanted to avoid being vulnerable?”
“Being vulnerable would expose me to pain, so, yeah, I tried to avoid it at all costs.”
“Did it work?”
“Nope,” Ronan says against gritted teeth. “Nothing worked. Nothing.”