Katherine Knight - Early Life

Early Life

Knight’s father Ken was an alcoholic who openly used violence and intimidation to rape her mother up to ten times a day. Barbara, in turn, often told her daughters intimate details of her sex life and how much she hated sex and men (Later, when Knight complained to her mother that one of her partners wanted her to take part in a sex act she didn't want to do, Barbara told her to "put up with it and stop complaining"). Knight claims she was frequently sexually abused by several members of her family (though not by her father), which continued until she was 11. Although they have minor doubts about the details, psychiatrists accept her claim as all her family members confirmed the abuse did happen.

Katherine was, by all accounts, a pleasant girl who experienced uncontrollably "murderous rages" in response to minor upsets. When she attended Muswellbrook high school, she became a loner and is remembered by classmates as a bully who stood over smaller children. She assaulted at least one boy at school with a weapon and was once injured by a teacher who was found to have acted in self-defense. By contrast, when not in a rage, Knight was a model student and often earned awards for her good behavior. Upon leaving school at 15, without having learned to read or write, she gained employment as a cutter in a clothing factory. Twelve months later, she left to start what she referred to as her "dream job", cutting up offal at the local abattoir from where she was quickly promoted to boning and given her own set of butcher knives. At home, she hung the knives over her bed so that they "would always be handy if I needed them", a habit she continued - until her incarceration - everywhere she lived.