No child should ever have to go through what former NHL player Patrick O'Sullivan did as a kid.
O'Sullivan, 30, penned a heartbreaking and revealing post entitled "Black & Blue" in which he describes the shocking and terrifying ordeal he went through as a kid when his father used to abuse him, which he shared on the Players' Tribune. The ex-NHLer said his father, a 6-foot-2, 250 pound former hockey player, used to beat him mercilessly "every single day" from age five to 16.
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In the gripping, yet disturbing essay, O'Sullivan bares his soul not so that people can pity his plight, but so he can spread awareness about child abuse so that no kid has to go through what he did as a child.
"By the time I was 10, it got worse," O'Sullivan wrote. "He would put cigarettes out on me. Choke me. Throw full soda cans at my head... I knew that my play would determine just how bad I got it when we got home. I'd score a hat trick, and afterward we'd get in the car and he would tell me that I played 'like a f----' (that was his favorite term, which says a lot)."
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O'Sullivan said he used the ice as a place to escape because he knew he was safe from his father's wrath. He knew that if he played well, he'd be in for less abuse than normal.
While his sadistic dad believed that it was his "tough love" methods that eventually got O'Sullivan into the NHL, the former center knows it was his commitment to practicing that helped propel him to the draft. O'Sullivan finally had enough at age 16 and fought back, leading to his father's arrest, but he eventually got out of jail.
The former second-round pick believes that people need to act if they think a child is abused instead of trying to ignore it. O'Sullivan said even his own mother didn't help him when his dad would beat on him.
"I'll never forget this moment when I was 10 years old," he wrote. "I was about to leave the house for a game when my mother pulled me aside and whispered, 'You better play well out there today, because if you don't, it's going to be bad tonight.'"
O'Sullivan played 334 NHL games in his career with the Kings, Oilers, Hurricanes, Wild and Coyotes, and he hopes that sharing his story will encourage others to help children in need of protecting as they fulfill their dreams of playing hockey.
"It just takes one person to act on their instinct and stand up for that child," he wrote. "That's real courage. The kind we don't always glorify in the hockey world."
The hockey world is in full support of O'Sullivan's courageous essay as past and present NHL stars tweeted about the article:
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