The Australian Women's Weekly, August 1989 by Susan Duncan:
I Want Justice For Our Daughter says Andy Gibb's Ex-Wife KimKim Gibb wonders if she will ever be able to put her marriage behind her.It is nearly 12 years now since she and singer Andy Gibb were divorced but the legacy of that teenage romance remains.
"I think Andy will haunt me for the rest of my life," Kim said. "I always thought we would eventually get back together. But now, he's dead. And the story will never be resolved. I will never know what might have happened."
It is painfully clear that Kim is still in love with the young man she split with after two years of marriage - a man she always believed would come after her to reclaim her. "Even back then, we only argued about drugs - that's why we broke up. I told Andy it was drugs or me. I believed he loved me more than drugs and one day he'd be able to kick them and come home," Kim said.
"We were never out of touch - not through all the years we were apart. He would ring me from whatever part of the world he was in and sometimes talk for hours. I'm sure he loved me as much as I loved him. But now the story can never have a happy ending."
Kim, 31, was 16 when she met Andy Gibb, the youngest of the Gibb brothers. At the time, Andy's brothers - Barry, Robin and Maurice were forging ahead as a new singing sensation known as the Bee Gees.
Andy, 16, was the youngest brother - a cheery faced kid who "always had to be up and doing something." He died in March last year after what newspapers called a massive drug overdose. The family, though, says he died of natural causes after years of drug and alcohol abuse. Andy's brother, Robin, has explained he's suffered heart damage from four seizures and he wasn't "in good tuck" physically.
Another report is that Andy was depressed and had virtually lost all will to live. He'd lost his confidence as a performer and was suicidal even though he'd been "clean" for a couple of years. It is said that Andy slipped back into his old drinking habits after the Christmas of 1987 and his body just couldn't take it. At Andy's funeral, friends said that his face and the palms of his hands, were bright orange from liver damage.
Kim has lived at home with her parents since her divorce. When she goesout, it's usually with her twin sister or her mother.
"I know," she said, "that I will never find anyone who will love me as much as Andy did. People think that I have a glamorous life - going to parties and meeting rock stars. But I spend most evenings at home with Mum and Dad and my sister and I lead a pretty ordinary life. I can't remember the last time I bought tickets to a rock concert."
There is one other legacy of the marriage that Kim is grateful for - her 11 year-old daughter, Peta, who looks so much like her father, it's eerie. Peta is aghast at the thought; "I never thought he was good looking. I'd rather look like Mum".
"Peta is special," Kim said. "She's bright, always at the top of her class, she's a great little poet and she loves to write songs and sing and dance. I'm not that happy about the song and dance part but I'd never stop her from doing whatever she wants. The only thing that I'm adamant about is that she get an education. I don't want her to be forced into a career she doesn't want because she doesn't have the right qualifications."
Peta is the focus of Kim's life and the reason Kim is gearing up to fight for what is rightfully her daughter's property. "I have never been interested in money - especially Andy's money. After we split up, I lived at home on the Dole for five years until Peta was old enough to go to school and I could go to work. At the time, Andy was making millions, but I never asked him for a Penney.
"But Peta is older now, and her needs have grown. And she is the only heir to Andy's estate. I want justice for her. I want to establish what Andy left - if anything (he was declared a bankrupt in 1986 although he became a discharged bankrupt in 1987) - and I want her to receive what is rightfully hers."
Kim doesn't want a battle. She is hoping the executors of Andy's estate will be ableto sort out the financial maze that Andy left behind - royalties, real estate, personal effects - without the situation ending up in a legal morass. She knows better than anyone, that legal battles can sometimes be more beneficial to the lawyers than the clients.
When papers were filed for their divorce in 1978, stating that there were no children from the marriage, Kim - who was pregnant at the time - fought to have her child recognized as legal issue from the marriage.
"Everyone thought, back then, that I was after money - they always think that. But it was the principle I was fighting for, not money. The divorce lawyers in America were trying to pretend Andy and I didn't have a child. They were trying to pretend she didn't exist. I couldn't accept that so I fought long and hard and it nearly killed me. My weight dropped to 45 kg and I believe I had a breakdown.
"There I was, sitting at home with Mum and Dad, pregnant, believing Andy would be with me for the baby's birth because he'd promised, no matter what, he would be there, and suddenly the Sydney press were calling me telling me a press release had gone out saying that Andy and I were getting a divorce. The divorce papers arrived 2 weeks before Peta was due. I don't think I stopped crying until her birth."
Exhausted, weak, and pitifully vulnerable, Kim and her family hauled down the phone book after Kim came home from the hospital with her new baby, and went through the Yellow Pages looking for a lawyer to defend her.
Then her parents mortgaged the family home to finance the battle for Peta's rights in the U.S. When it was all over, Kim was awarded $US 225,000 - $US 60,000 of which went into trust for Peta (today, the earnings of the trust fund barely pay the expenses of the trustees who manage it). Out of the balance, Kim had to pay three international lawyers and the Australian QC representing her. The expenses were enormous and there were times when Kim felt that when anyone looked at her they saw only dollars and cents.
"I tell that story so that people will know what really happens to money when you have to get involved with lawyers," Kim said. "There was very little left after all the expenses. And you know, I really didn't mind. I'd made my point - Peta was officially recognized. That's all that mattered to me."
That experience is the major reason Kim is hoping she won't have to fight once more for what is rightfully her daughter's. "All that is left is bitterness." That doesn't mean she isn't prepared to fight again - no matter what the cost. "There comes a time when enough is enough. I just hope we don't reach that point."
What's so extraordinary about this tall, striking blond is that, despite all the intervening years, despite Andy's bouts with drug and alcohol abuse, she never lost faith in him and she never stopped loving him.
"When we were together, we did really simple things - we'd go to dog shows, the movies, we'd go fishing at four o'clock in the morning. When he was living in Australia, he never seemed to want or to need drugs," said Kim.
"And he was just so loving. He sort of latched onto our family in those early days like a lifeline. None of us was impressed with his brothers or his background. I mean, my dad is a bricklayer and my mum was a machinist. It's hard to impress people like us, so we loved Andy for what he was - a bright, enthusiastic and considerate person."
Kim and Andy met at a dog show - Kim's mother breeds Staffordshire bull terriers and is one of the top breeders in Australia. Over the next two years, they dated, and Andy looked after Kim as though she were a fragile piece of china.
"I never thought about marriage except to think that one day we would Probably do it, but Andy got a call from his brother, Barry, telling him to go to America. It was time for Andy's career to be launched in a big way. He'd been singing around the clubs to get experience.
"The Gibb family mapped their careers with precision and great Professionalism. They never made a move that wasn't thought out. When Andy told me he'd been summoned, he said we'd have to get married before he left so I could go with him."
He gave me the money from his Christmas club account to buy a wedding dress. I'd shown him how to work those accounts the year before and taught him to save money for the first time in his life. Later, when we were living in Los Angeles on a stipend of $200 a week from Robert Stigwood, who was managing Andy, I still managed to get Andy to save."
The marriage was perfectly happy until drugs started appearing in their lives. "The hangers-on in the rock industry are like piranhas," Kim said. "They hang around stars and offer drugs as a way of making friendships. I suppose they think the stars will become dependent on them for drugs." It took Kim a while to understand what was happening. "I kept finding buckets of bleach around the flat. I finally understood that's how cocaine was tested for purity. If a substance floated to the top, then talcum powder had been added. If the drug sank, it was pure.
"So we argued. But he was trapped so quickly. Some people have addictive personalities and he was one of them. He wasn't a bad person, he was a wonderful person. I just don't think he could handle the fame, the pace - everything - so quickly. It all happened so fast. He seemed to have it all, but really, he had nothing." Fed up with Andy's drug taking, Kim returned to Australia.
As Andy's star kept rising in the U.S., Kim raised her baby and suffered through a depression that she thought would never lift. He had been her first and only love, and she continued to dream like young girls do, that one day he would charge in, scoop her up, and they'd ride off to live happily ever after.
It was only with his death that Kim understood, for the first time, that it would never happen. "If we hadn't kept in touch over the years, I suppose it would have been easier to accept that the relationship was over. But he would call so often, and when Peta was old enough to talk, he'd ask to speak to her. Ten years later, when Andy was shown pictures of his daughter, he remarked: "God, she's like Kim but I see a lot of me in her, too."
"There were times when he thought I might have turned her against him" Kim said, but I never dreamed of doing that. I wanted her to love him. And I wanted her to know that Andy loved her".
Not even Andy's much publicized relationship with actress Victoria Principal shook Kim's belief that, one day, he would come back to her. "He never remarried, did he?" Kim said. "Neither did I. I just wish some times, that he'd never had anything to do with the music industry. He wanted to be a pilot, and he was bright. He could have done anything that he wanted to. But his career was decided for him. I believe it killed him."
Peta, pert, pretty, with a mop of curly hair, sat beside her mother on the sofa as Kim talked. She's an immaculately behaved child with beautiful manners and a great sense of fun. She has experienced the exhilaration of performing - as Little Red Riding Hood in the school play - and remembers frankly that what she loved more than anything, was the applause. "I loved it," she said, lisping slightly and trying not smile because she'd just lost her baby teeth. "I'd like to be a performer....I suppose. What I'd really like, though, is to be a history professor. I can tell you everything there is to know about Henry VIII."
Kim dreads the idea of Peta following in her father's footsteps. Kim saw the pop industry closely enough to know that there's far more heartbreak, pain and even danger than there is fun and glamour.
"But I won't stand in her way if that's what she chooses," Kim said. "I'd just be frightened for her all the time. All I can do is give her an education and instill as much commonsense in her as possible."
Peta, with the impatience of an 11 year-old, admitted she sometimes got tired of talking about Andy, but she remembers her phone conversations with him vividly. They only met physically once, when Kim called into Los Angeles on her way to dog shows in England. Peta was just two.
"He was just like my friends," Peta said. "He asked me what groups I liked, who were my favorite celebrities, and he promised to introduce me to them when I visited him in Los Angeles. He was really nice."
Hugh Gibb was the one who insisted Kim be told of Andy's death. "He said he didn't think it would have been right for me to read about it in the paper," Kim said. "I'll always be grateful to him for that."
The moment Andy's death was public knowledge, Kim's phone began ringing on the outskirts of Sydney.
"It was all so long ago and yet the interest in Andy has never faded. Why? I know Andy worshipped his older brother, Barry, but I always thought that Andy had the greatest potential of the lot. Maybe that's why he still generates so much interest."
As lawyers on both sides of the world struggle to untangle Andy's affairs, Kim has booked her daughter into a top Sydney school, hoping she will be able to at least pay the fees out of Andy's estate. She is obsessive about seeing Peta gets a first-class education - perhaps because she left school very young.
"The one thing I remember out of the divorce proceedings is a line my QC said to me. He said Andy and I didn't matter, that a child takes precedence over everything. Peta is the most important person in my life and I intend to take care of her to the best of my ability. And if it means going through the horrors of another legal battle, I'll do it. I just hope it doesn't come to that. This may sound odd, but I believe Andy would have wanted me to do battle for Peta. I feel this is the last thing I can do for him, the last wish I can fulfill."
