‘Rock bottom’: Parliament weeps as MP reveals heinous child sexual abuse

A Queensland MP will seek a leave of absence after detailing how she was ‘shopped around’ and raped as a child, and later within her church - resulting in her hitting rock bottom when she was found unresponsive earlier this year.

A Queensland MP has given a harrowing account of the child sexual abuse she kept secret for 40 years as she described hitting “rock bottom” after she was found unresponsive on the floor of her home by her own children.

Labor’s Macalister MP Melissa McMahon – a former army major and police officer who has previously spoken of suffering PTSD – gave the moving speech and advised she would seek a leave of absence from the parliament to address her mental health.

A brave Ms McMahon on Thursday revealed she was a survivor of childhood sexual assault – frequently raped and abused from the age of five when she was left in the care of older teenagers.

“Most afternoons I would be shopped around the neighbourhood to other teenagers and often exchanged for a can of soft drink,” she said.

“I could not tell you how many perpetrators were involved.

“I could not even quantify how long it lasted for.”

Queensland member for Macalister Melissa McMahon has detailed shocking details of the child sexual abuse she suffered as a child. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

Ms McMahon said the worst was yet to come when, at the age of nine, she “would look pure evil in the face for the first time” at her local church.

“I came into the company and under the supervision of the last person on earth who should ever be granted such a position – a child sex offender recently released for particularly heinous child sex crime,” she said.

“Again, my hours after school became a personal hell.

“I cannot quite put into words the things that happened to me or what I was made to do. Some of those things are better locked away.”

The Macalister MP, elected in 2017, said she had since worn “a mask” to hide who she was.

“For me, exhaustion reached its limit and my facade cracked last year,” she said.

“Things, feelings and memories that I had meticulously tucked away and locked in a box deep down kept threatening to come to the surface.

“The panic and anxiety that came with that was, in many instances, quite debilitating.

“I felt like my skin was inside out, I felt raw and exposed.”

Member for Macalister Melissa McMahon MP has spoken about hitting ‘rock bottom’ earlier this year. Picture: Josh Woning

She said she hit “rock bottom” earlier this year as her marriage also ended.

“Rock bottom for me looks like walking out of the PA Hospital barefoot with what is left of my prescription medication,” she said.

“It’s giving the answers I knew I had to give to avoid being admitted to a mental health unit.

“My children had found me unresponsive.

“Paramedics and police were called to my home.

“I was resuscitated, I was transported.

“For the unbearable stress this placed on my family late that night, I am truly sorry – for my son who had to call for help, I am also so very sorry I put you in that position.”

She said she had realised that to recover from the shame and guilt of her past, she would need to “bring it into the light”.

“Why do I shine a light on this most uncomfortable topic for me?” she said.

“Because I will recover loudly so others don’t die quietly.”

MPs from across the political divide lauded her courage after, several having wept during her speech.