Teenager’s court win after diary reveals baby born to stepfather
A man who repeatedly raped his young stepdaughter and got her pregnant when she was just 15 years old has been ordered to pay her $850,000 after the full extent of the torture she suffered was revealed in court 14 years later.
Police & Courts
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More than two decades of horror has finally come to an end for a brave young woman who was forced to keep a hideous family secret and protect a revolting predator.
This week, her stepfather was ordered by a judge in the NSW Supreme Court to pay her $835,000 in damages, after the full extent of the torture she suffered was revealed.
It included sexual assaults that began while she was still at primary school, becoming pregnant to him when aged just 15 — and being forced to play happy families, call her rapist “Dad”, pretend her baby was not his and cover up his sickening attacks for another 14 years.
The young woman, then aged in her 20s, finally reported him to police in 2015. After pleading guilty to aggravated sexual assault and sex with a minor, he was sentenced to seven years and six months in jail.
Five years later, now aged in her 30s, the woman sued her former stepfather in a civil case relating to three sexual assaults and one physical assault. She was forced to relive those years in harrowing detail.
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The girl, her mother and the stepfather began to live together in the mid-1990s. The first assault occurred in either 1995 or 1996 when she woke up on the couch of their Port Stephens home to find him sexually assaulting her, the court heard.
She told her mother, who confronted the man. The court heard that he told the mother: “I have been drinking. I thought it was you.”
The girl was not even in high school at that stage.
Then, when the daughter fell pregnant in 2001, she told her mother it was the result of a one- night stand with a boy at a party.
Less than a month before the baby was born, the mother stumbled upon her daughter’s diary, which revealed the father of the baby was the mother’s partner and the girl’s stepfather.
Following the discovery, the stepfather fled with the heavily pregnant girl to a Port Macquarie motel where he again sexually assaulted her.
The baby was born that same month and the birth certificate listed the father’s identity as “unknown”, the court heard.
The stepfather returned to the Port Stephens home with the girl and her newborn.
Inexplicably he resumed a relationship with the girl’s mother and they all lived together for the next 11 years, the court heard.
The court was shown photographs of family holidays, outings and excursions.
The young woman told the court: “There were good times.”
But, by 2012, the relations in the house had turned “toxic” and the stepfather assaulted the young woman.
As she slept in bed, the stepfather grabbed her by the ankle, and dragged her from the bed, shouting abuse at her, which included: “Get your shit and get out”, the court heard.
On another occasion, he threatened to shoot her dog.
The stepfather defended the claim, but Acting Judge Carolyn Simpson found the woman to be a credible witness in her recollection of the incidents and found they were proven.
Acting Judge Simpson told the court the “good times” over the years did nothing to diminish the woman’s account.
“That damage was not ameliorated by ‘the good times’,” Acting Judge Simpson told the court. “Nor do the plaintiff’s affectionate letters and cards to the defendant undermine the damage that was done.
“What the defendant cannot escape is that, at the age of 16, as a result of one of the sexual assaults, the plaintiff gave birth to a baby of which he was the father.”
Acting Judge Simpson ordered the stepfather pay the woman $500,000 for general damages and $275,000 for aggravated damage.
Interest, other damages and economic loss took the amount up to $853,550.