Naked, bloody and raped, but police couldn’t do anything — Glyn Scott’s courage standing up to her abuser changed Australian history

Glyn Scott endured years of violent abuse at the hands of her first husband — but her courage standing up to her tormentor in the High Court changed Australia’s history.

Domestic violence survivor Glyn Scott, 72, who started her Love Hope and Gratitude Foundation in 2015. Picture: Tom Huntley

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Glyn Scott endured years of violent abuse at the hands of her first husband George Pycroft.

The Adelaide woman was just 17, and pregnant, when they married in 1962.

Over the next seven years she was repeatedly assaulted, raped and hospitalised until a doctor urged her to leave before Pycroft killed her. In 1969 Mrs Scott filed for divorce.

She later remarried and her second husband, Lance Scott, was the only person who had any idea of the torment she had suffered.

When he died in 2003 he urged his wife to tell her story. It was her bravery in standing up to her abuser in Australia’s High Court that changed our history.

And our future.

THIS IS HER STORY: HOW GLYN SCOTT CHANGED HISTORY

It wasn’t until 2006 when Mrs Scott saw a television news story about South Australia’s Mullighan inquiry into child sexual abuse that she decided to open up.

After hearing her account, former Supreme Court Judge Ted Mullighan urged Mrs Scott to make a statement to SA Police.

It took three years but the SA Director of Public Prosecutions was eventually able to charge Pycroft, by then 79, with six offences, including assault and rape.

At the time those incidents occurred, in 1963, it was accepted that a man could not commit rape against his wife because she was considered his property.

The case ended up in Australia’s High Court, where it was eventually decided — five votes to two — that rape in marriage was in fact a crime.