A Childhood Horror Story Finds it’s Voice, at Last

     To call Karen emilson’s first book, Where Children Run (Nordheim Books, 19.95) a chronicle of child abuse would be a grievous understatement. The atrocities carried out at the Ashern-area farm where twins Dennis and David Pischke were raised with eight other children make “abuse” seem woefully inadequate.

“It was beyond horror. There is no words to describe it. The things I saw was just unreal. I saw more blood, more violence,” Dennis Pischke says today.

     The twins, who celebrated their 49th birthday a few weeks ago, spent more than 10 years under their mentally ill stepfather Boleslaw Domko’s iron-fisted rule. Beaten mercilessly, starved and kept from school so they could be worked like slaves, it’s a small miracle they survived.

“It was over 4,000 and some days we were with him and I could tell you two or three stores for every day,” Dennis says. “There could have been two books.”

     Still, telling their story in one book has been both cathartic and a vindication. It’s been a good project and it’s sure helped us out, too,” Dennis says, speaking in the sing-song stammer both brothers retain as a legacy of their childhood.
     When the twins initially approached Emilson, then working as a reporter at the Interlake Spectator, there were still many people in the Ashern area who believed they were just bad kids. Domko, a paranoid schizophrenic who refused to stay on his medication, told anyone who’d listen that the boys were thieves and liars who ran away to avoid work.

“Even to this day we’re finding a lot of people who believed him. He blamed everything on us,” Dennis says.

     To make matters worse, the boys’ mother, Caroline, was persuaded by members of the Jehovah’s Witness church to keep her disastrously dysfunctional family together instead of sending the boys to safety in a foster home. Trapped, they spent nights hiding out in the bush, an abandoned barn or a nearby church, often going to neighbours to beg food. Because Domko’s episodes of extreme violence peaked in winter, Dennis says David now makes a point of taking a winter holiday at a warm destination.

“This time of year is the worst time for us. Everything happened on our birthday, it was the peak. Weather like this really brings back memories, even now,” he says. “We helped each other. If it was 40 below outside we took turns to keep the fire going. Otherwise we would have froze.”

     Since escaping home as teens, the brothers have had stable working and home lives. Dennis, at the same job for 29 years and married for 26, says they’ve raised families without even spanking their kids. He’s happy. But he’s also angry at those who could have helped, particularly members of the church. Grateful to Emilson for telling their story, Dennis says he wants to put the past behind him now. But it’s not easy to forget.

“Deep, deep down, your childhood is gone,” he says. “Shattered.”

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