Former NHL player Patrick O’Sullivan was on Dean Blundell & Co. Tuesday where he talked about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father growing up.
O’Sullivan credited the therapy he received after retiring and how putting his story in print with his new book, Breaking Away: A Harrowing True Story of Resilience, Courage and Triumph, has helped him move forward.
“Basically, up until I retired from playing hockey I was a hockey robot, that’s all I did, that’s all I knew, the on-ice hockey performance for me completely dictated how I was off the ice as a person,” he said. “And [the book] was definitely a process that has been nothing but helpful, selfishly.”
O’Sullivan mentioned that the abuse he received started from when he was only five years old. He said he can remember being kicked out of the car and having to run around with his equipment.
“As a little kid you don’t realize that what is going on in your house isn’t going on in the house next door,” he said. “It took a long time to even realize that what I was dealing with was bad.
“Maybe around 12, 13 [years old] I knew that something was really not right for me. And basically I just had to wait until I was physically comfortable enough to do something about it because it was clear to me at that point that there had been years of this stuff going on, plenty of people, including my own mother who knew exactly what was going on and they did nothing.”
O’Sullivan would finally be able to distance himself from his parents while playing in the Ontario Hockey League, and he has since ceased communication with both of them.
“It got to the point where I was playing in the OHL, where if it didn’t stop, somebody was going to die and I didn’t know who it was going to be,” he said. “It was really bad at that point.”
In writing his book, O’Sullivan hopes other parents in all sports can change either their own abusive behaviour, or step in should they believe a child is being abused.
“If you as a coach, or as another parent you have to tell the police or social services because they’re the only ones that can go right to somebody’s door and do something about it,” he said.
“Most people are smart people and they need to trust their own instincts if they think that something is going on. You go to the authorities, you go to social services, and you know what, the best possible scenario is you’re wrong and that means the kid is not being hit, not being abused at home.”
O’Sullivan, who scored 161 points in 334 games with five NHL teams, is now a father himself, and hopes to use his experience to make himself a better parent than he ever had.
“My kids are by far the best thing in my life,” he said. “It’s hard for me to look at them and try to see how my dad treated me, that’s the hardest part for me at this point.
“I’m just excited to be able to give my kids everything I didn’t have and that’s just support and love and that’s all it is. It’s that simple, and whatever they want to do in their lives, I’ll be there to watch.
“It’s as simple as it gets.”
