Andrew Rule: Rape victim’s courage rose above pure evil

THE agony Jess endured at the hands of the serial rapist who abducted her from a Ballarat gift shop would have broken most people. But she refused to let the ordeal define her, writes Andrew Rule.

EVIL goes around in disguise. Jessica, heroine of this story, saw nothing sinister when she glanced at the customer who was planning to abduct her.

He was old enough to be her father — in his late 40s — and seemed what he pretended to be, an average bloke wanting a present for his wife. Jess was 23, with a six-year-old daughter and a lot to live for. She had just started working in the gift shop in Ballarat’s main street, a second job to go with one at a cafe.

The man looked at some nick-knacks then left. He knew what he wanted. He crossed the street to the cheap boarding house where jailbirds hung out, got a knife and returned.

He waited for a customer to leave the shop then held the blade to Jess’s throat and forced her to the floor in the back room, out of sight.

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Jessica survived a horrific 30-hour abduction and multiple rapes after being snatched at knifepoint from a shop in Ballarat. Picture: Rob Leeson

That’s how it began, the 30-hour ordeal that changed Jess’s life. It was about 10am on February 6, 2006, a Monday morning.

To understand how far Jess has come since then, how much grit she has needed to survive, you need to understand what happened next.

He bound and gagged her, locked the door and reversed the sign to indicate the shop was closed. But he couldn’t gag her agile mind. She studied his feet, clothes and hair: anything that might identify him later. He came back, found her keys and asked where her car was. Knife at her throat, she told him: a white Hyundai Excel, past the supermarket. He returned a few minutes later in the car, parked outside, unlocked the front door and marched her out, the knife hidden but so close she could feel the tip. It’s hard to believe no-one saw this strange scene and deciphered it: in fact, someone did see but didn’t say so until days later, when it was too late. They like to mind their own business.

The man drove into the Wombat State Forest and assaulted Jess, the first of many times. She thought she would die.

HORROR NIGHT LASTS A LIFETIME FOR WOREEN KIDNAP VICTIMS

Convicted rapist William Craig Forde.

“At one particular moment, I thought ‘I’m a goner’,” she said last week. Images of her daughter, her mother and sisters flashed through her mind. Afterwards, he cut across country towards the border with Jess trapped in the back of the two-door car.

But despite fear and loathing, she used intelligence to tilt the odds of survival. She told the truth, over and over and in different ways. She told him how much her little girl would be missing her — how there would be no-one to pick her up from school.

(The alarm wasn’t raised in Ballarat until after her daughter walked home to Jess’s mother’s house, when police at first tried to dismiss Jess as a “runaway”).

The rapist drove on, still heading north, but released her hands because she said she wanted to smoke the cigarettes he had in the car. She was building common ground.

In late afternoon, he pulled up at a deserted service station in a sleepy backwater.

While he filled the car she looked at the cashier’s window. If she caught someone’s eye, she decided, she would make a break for it in the few seconds it would take him to hand over cash and get back to the car. But the attendant didn’t look up and Jess slumped back.

Bending the front seat forward, scrambling over it and out the front door seemed too big a risk without anyone close by.

VICTIM: GIVE SERIAL RAPIST NO MERCY

Jessica is hugged by friends after the court hearing when William Craig Forde was given an indefinite sentence for the crimes he committed.

After dark, the abductor drove to the Hume Weir. Again, Jess was certain she would be killed. So certain she told herself the lake was better than the bush because if her body went into the water it might be found. She masked her growing terror by talking about getting back to her girl.

She believes that kept her alive. After driving aimlessly all night, the abductor headed back to Ballarat, Jess talking about her daughter finishing school. When they got to a street near her mother’s house, she asked to be let out, agreeing to give him time to get away. She staggered home, battered and filthy and in shock.

Her sister opened the door. Jess said, “He raped me” and started to weep hysterically. After 30 hours of holding her nerve, it had shattered. It would take her years to put the pieces back and some were missing.

By the time police arrived, others had picked up the man near Maryborough on a routine registration check. The abductor’s name was William Craig Forde. At 49, he had been convicted of rape three times (once of a 13-year-old girl) but had served less than 16 years in jail and had reoffended soon after being released every time. He had been set free on November 7, 2005 and abducted Jess three months later.

That a compulsive rapist like Forde could be repeatedly released after short sentences, unsupervised, exposed a system that turned monsters loose in the streets.

Forde would plead guilty to 11 counts of rape, two of indecent assault and one each of kidnap, unlawful imprisonment and armed robbery. This time he was given an indefinite sentence to be reviewed after 17 years.

Jess wrote a stunning victim impact statement and, bravely, went public with it. It inspired “Jessica’s Law”, a legal change to widen supervision orders to include offenders like Forde after they left jail.

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Jessica, speaks to the media after the court case.

This led, after the murder of Masa Vukotic in 2015, to the Post-Sentence Authority, which formally started work this week. The Authority is meant to monitor sex offenders and violent offenders more rigorously than the parole system that failed Jess and Masa Vukotic and Jill Meagher so catastrophically.

Jess’s victim impact statement was chilling. She unflinchingly stated not just what had happened during those 30 hours, but the long-term effects: a broken relationship, depression, attempted suicide, admissions to a psychiatric hospital. She had survived the physical ordeal but was tormented by despair, anxiety and grief. She still is, but has learned to control her demons.

Forde almost destroyed this sparky, clever, energetic young woman. But she got up again. There was no light-bulb moment, she says. Just gradual improvement, with the help of family and friends. In 2010, after four years of darkness, she enrolled in nursing at university and studied hard. So hard she won awards then lifted her sights higher.

Now she is working as an intensive care nurse. She recently married — to the brother of an old schoolmate she met at a reunion. But she is still studying, this time for a postgraduate certificate. Next she will enrol in a teaching course.

She fills every moment. She concentrates on being a focused, positive woman devoted to her daughter, her family, her career and her husband. But she can’t forget the things she’s suffered. The nightmares won’t let her.

This week Jess turned 36. By the time she turns 40, she thinks, two things will happen. One: she will be a lecturer, teaching nursing. Two: Forde’s sentence will be up for review.

That’s when she will stand up again, to insist one life sentence deserves another. That’s true grit.

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