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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This podcast contains accounts of child sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie. In 2019, Dr Jenny Haynes gave evidence in court against her father, who was charged with various sex crimes committed against Jenny throughout her childhood.
In the history-making trial, Dr Jenny was the first person in the world allowed to present evidence on the stand from several of her personalities. Dr Jenny lives with a condition known as dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder. She has over 2,000 personalities, whom she refers to as alters.
She's the subject of a new documentary streaming on SBS called We Are Jenny, and she joins us to talk about life as she lives it today. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.
When you popped up on the screen, like who's in the, you know, waiting to come into the call, it was Symphony. That's right, yes. Is that your most common alter or is that?
Chapter 2: What legal history did Dr. Jeni Haynes make in 2019?
Yeah. Yeah, she's the one that created all of us. So it's us honoring the little girl that made everybody else. For the lived experience of having DID, my experience is we have a doorway and whoever is sitting in the doorway is in the body. Okay. Nice and simple. And it's a doorway. You just sit down and there you go. However.
When somebody wants to come along, you just get moved ever so slightly sideways. And then they sit down and then they're in the body. And if two of us are in the body at the same time, we have what is known as co-consciousness. Wow. So you can actually have an outside conversation with, say, you, and at the same time we're having an inside conversation with whoever's just sat down with us.
When you look at the diagnosis of MPD, MPD is considered a mental illness. We are dysfunctional, apparently, but we're not. We are small children surviving the worst the world has to offer in the only way we can.
Chapter 3: How does Dr. Haynes describe living with dissociative identity disorder?
I mean, most of the trauma that results in MPD or DID occurs when we are pre-verbal. So we don't know that we're making alter personalities. We just have a need and someone rocks up to fill that need. And it just so happens you've created an alter personality. 2,682 times.
And your doctor, Dr. George Blair-West, he says that part of it too, part of the evolution of NPD, DID, is a very young child feeling like no one is coming to help them. That most obviously the two people they expect should take care of them, their two parents, have made it clear to them that they're not going to come and rescue them. And in fact, they're inflicting the trauma.
In your case, your dad was inflicting the trauma and so you needed to invent people to rescue you.
Chapter 4: What is the significance of Dr. Haynes' documentary 'We Are Jeni'?
Yes, we make people to rescue us, yes.
But what I did... Hi, I'm Symphony. Oh, hello. This is my question. So I understood that I had to help Daddy. And we're not going to talk about anything, any details. We're just going to talk around it so that I don't traumatize anybody. And if we get tricky, Boris will come and give everybody a trigger warning. If you hear a Russian voice, it's Boris. So I made...
people to do the jobs that made it hard for me to deal with daddy. So daddy smells. So I made people that could not smell daddy.
So is that what you mean, Symphony, by saying that you had to help daddy? Okay, well, need trigger warning.
When we talk of helping daddy, she's talking about being abused. He pitched it as only she could help him. Okay.
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Chapter 5: How does Dr. Haynes explain the concept of alters in dissociative identity disorder?
But it turns out that what it was was rape and childhood sexual abuse and very unpleasant. So we tried to use euphemisms. And so what he told her was that she had to help him.
So that's his word, his terminology.
His word, yes. Okay, I see. Okay, I think that's end trigger warning. Thank you. In many ways, I guess I'm the one that he... I think is the current term for it. I'm the one that he harmed every day for 14 years. And my alters are people that came and did everything else. So they went to school, they read books, they played, they did the things that I didn't have that time or energy to do.
Yeah, absolutely. So symphony... In a way, you know, you're so young, but you're a leader, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah. Is there a fundamental Jenny? Is there one person who's Jenny and then all these others as well? Or is Jenny an amalgam? There's a fundamental person, Symphony, and then there's the rest of us.
Right. Wow. Okay. There is nobody inside that is a Jenny. Jenny is the label. Like you go shopping and you need to buy a coat. you go and you buy a coat. We, Jenny is like the coat. Okay. And we all wear Jenny, but the actual person that is the most important person, the one that we all radiate around is symphony. So there is an essential symphony. Yeah. If after people have watched
We are Jenny. They come away with an understanding that a person who has multiple personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder, we are not crazy. We are victims of crime. My job here is done because if people start looking at people with DID as victims of crime, then we can actually help how people are treated because we're not oddities. We're not bizarre and we're not mentally ill.
We are people. Humans who have experienced the worst kinds of trauma, the worst kinds of abuse at the hands of people who were supposed to protect us. And if I can get everybody to understand that, then the world is a different place.
If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or contact 1-800-RESPECT on 1-800-737-732 or 1800respect.org.au. Indigenous Australians can contact 13 Yarn on 13 9276 or 13yarn.org.au.
The producers of this podcast recognise the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded. They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present and those emerging.
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