Real Housewives of Sydney star Lisa Oldfield reveals sexual assault horror
REAL Housewives of Sydneystar Lisa Oldfield has revealed how she was sexually assaulted by a taxi driver on the way home from a client’s work Christmas party.
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EXCLUSIVE
Real Housewives of Sydney star, Lisa Oldfield, has revealed for the first time how she was sexually assaulted by a taxi driver on the way home from a client’s work Christmas party over a year ago leaving her so frozen with fear she dreams of leaving Australia.
A tearful and shattered Lisa has exclusively told News Local the shocking attack has robbed her of the woman she once was and almost destroyed her 16 year marriage to One Nation politician and founder David Oldfield.
Lisa was prompted to divulge the couple’s bedroom secrets after David revealed yesterday the couple were in a sexless marriage and had not had sex for over a year and that they slept in separate beds following the most recent episode of the Foxtel series which saw a frustrated Lisa discussing divorce.
Breaking into tears throughout an emotional conversation, the usually loud and outspoken Housewife star said the incident, which was investigated by police at the time, had rocked her to the core and she was no longer the woman she used to be. She was instead left with a version of herself racked by self-doubt and fear who vomited constantly and was filled with anxiety and depression. She had also shut down physically and emotionally.
“He has destroyed the woman I was. The attacker knocked the wind out of me. I have become a victim, not the strong brave fearless Lisa I was before the attack,” she said choking on tears.
“I try to tell myself he is not the boogie man, but I see his face on top of me many nights before I fall asleep, like those dreams other people have about falling, I dream about him just before I nod off. It never leaves me.”
Lisa, who has always been a confident and incredibly competent woman, says she feels self-doubt for the first time ever in her life and is afraid even to perform the most basic tasks.
“I feel self doubt and I’m not comfortable doing basic things like jumping in a cab anymore. For a woman who has to travel around the world by herself for business that can be really destabilising.
“I get so anxious jumping into a cab that I’ll find myself calling a work colleague or someone I barely know because I can’t get in a cab. Most of the time now I use a regular driver and I wouldn’t do Uber.
“I never doubted myself before this. I doubt myself all the time now. And because it happened in broad daylight, it’s not like I am scared of the dark. It was so low risk so I keep asking myself how did this happen to me? And could it happen again?
“I‘ve been through some crazy shit in my life, but I tell myself I don’t deserve this. That’s what rocks me so much about it.”
Oldfield says the incident has affected her life so dramatically that she dreams of leaving Australia.
“David and I took a holiday to New Zealand and for ten days I felt like my old self. And it was amazing. I wasn’t scared, it was the one place I felt safe, and the one place I could truly feel at peace since this happened.”
Detailing the incident, Oldfield said she had been at a Christmas party for a client in December of 2015 when she hailed a taxi to take to her Northern Beaches home at 5pm.
She had opted not to drive because she was having a few drinks.
It was half an hour into the drive home she nodded off and woke up with the driver on top of her in the back seat groping her breasts and the cab pulled over on the side of the road.
“He was groping my breasts he had pulled the whole top of my dress down so my breasts were exposed. He was ripping at me and it was so violent he tore my rotator cuff [shoulder muscle].
“I was covered in scratch and bite marks and bruises. I said in this really strong voice: ‘You can’t touch me, get off me’. I still hear my voice, it’s like an out of body experience.”
The driver panicked and returned to the driver’s seat.
“He made out he was trying to wake me up,” she says.
She ordered him to drive her home and even paid him, thinking at the time she did not want him to the use the fact she had absconded as justification for what he had done.
When they got to the front of her house he wouldn’t drive in the gate and she admits she didn’t want David to face him. She didn’t want him to do something erratic.
“I was in shock. I didn’t realise the extent of my injuries and it takes a few minutes for something like that to process.”
David immediately called the police who came around and interviewed Lisa and photographed her injuries.
But because the driver hadn’t logged into the system, and she had hailed him down on the side of the road, there was no record of who he was and she was told that as she couldn’t identify him there was nothing they could do. Difficult to identify police eventually did track him down to charge him.
Police later dropped the charges as she wouldn’t go through the court system.
“I wasn’t brave enough to face my attacker in court,” she says. “I had been told as there was no witnesses it was my word against his and I felt like I was going to be attacked all over again.”
She says the police investigation was the hardest part of the experience. She felt like she was being attacked and grilled again in the process of trying to give a watertight version of the account.
Since that fateful day, Lisa says she has never been the same. She likens the anxiety and depression she felt to her friend Charlotte Dawson’s before her suicide. The incident, she says, brought back feelings of guilt about not being able to help her friend, and being naive to think she could make Charlotte forget her problems with a simple laugh.
“I should have recognised the warning signs,” she said, admitting watching Sunday night’s episode of Housewives was incredibly difficult to watch, brining back terrible memories of Charlotte’s passing.
“I miss her every day,” Oldfield says in her blog. “And I will go to the grave with my guilt that I didn’t do enough to reach out to her, to be there for her in her time of need.”
Instead of processing it, Lisa shut down. She threw herself into work, hoping it would be a distraction, and she withdrew from family life.”
“For me I nearly destroyed myself by bottling it up and trying to compartmentalise it. I should of gotten help. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.“
She didn’t want to speak with a psychologist as reliving the event made her feel worse. She began grinding her teeth to stumps and vomiting continually with anxiety. And she couldn’t stand anyone, even David, touching her.
“I pushed people away because I’m so stubborn,” she said. “It didn’t make sense to people why I was having a breakdown and David — who was very sympathetic and kind initially — got sick of living with someone who wasn’t the wife and mother he knew and loved.
“I took on too many work projects and distanced myself from family … I worked ridiculous hours and I drank heavily and I slept until noon on weekends and let him cope with our two little boys alone.”
She says this is why David — desperate for a reaction — began pointing out her faults and criticising.
“I left shoes lying around the house. I wasn’t there to put the boys to bed. I’d left my keys at work and locked myself out of the house,” she said.
But his nagging and anger only made Lisa withdraw further and the problems became compounded.
The couple realise the decision to film the Foxtel reality series may “make or break” their marriage, and was the impetus for doing the show.
“A TV show like Housewives is akin to holding up a mirror to your life.
“It’s only when you do this type of show with 10 hour interviews at a time that you realise things like maybe I do need to get some help. When my dad said to me I had become closed off and wouldn’t let people in, that’s when it hit home I had to do something. And I also saw things from David’s perspective.”
For now, Lisa is trying to mend herself and her family.
“I’m trying to give it a go,” she says of counselling. “I’ve made some headway. I now understand if I can’t help myself I can’t help my family.”
She says she also thinks daily of the fact her attacker is still out there.
“I have nightmares worrying about the women he may attack. This was in broad daylight, and I’m a 40-year-old business woman. Imagine how helpless an older lady or a young girl at 3am will be?”
Lisa also admits that while her and David “are a work in progress” they will try to stay together as a family for the sake of their two young children Harry, 6, and Bert, 4.
“Whilst things weren’t great for Harry and Bertie with their parents at each other’s throats, would it be worse for them if we were divorced and the family broken up?”
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