Cairns resident Leesa Michaud reveals sexual abuse endured at the hands of Sunshine Coast man Ian Keith Venning
Leesa Michaud was three years old the first time it happened. Over the next 10 years, the Queensland woman would be violated by her stepfather more than 1000 times. Read her moving story of survival here.
News
Don't miss out on the headlines from News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
In death, a sexual sadist escaped punishment – for his victim, the nightmares remain.
Ian Keith Venning violated Leesa Michaud more than 1000 times when she was a child, causing immutable physical and psychological trauma.
Venning died on the Sunshine Coast in January of 2023 – just weeks before he was due to front the Brisbane District Court for trial on 10 child sex abuse charges.
Facing rape, indecent treatment of a child and maintaining a sexual relationship with a child offences, the accused predator’s flight under the radar for almost 50 years is over now that Leesa is finally free to share the story of how her stepfather raped her for 10 years.
From 1972 until 1982, Venning preyed on Leesa, starting to abuse her when she was about three at their home in Renmark, South Australia.
The Cairns woman can recall in detail many of the assaults – including the first time the man she believed to be her natural dad stole her innocence.
She says she told an adult about that attack but Venning claimed he was “putting cream on a rash” when confronted.
The person she told, Leesa says, believed her stepfather.
READ MORE: He shot her three times. No one heard. No one came to help
After that, Venning repeatedly used threats to keep Leesa silent.
“I couldn’t talk about what was happening because he would say my mum would leave us and I’d be left alone with him,” Leesa recalls
“I was terrified of him.
“I didn’t want mum to leave so I didn’t tell her and I didn’t tell my teachers or neighbours what was happening.”
READ MORE: Killer identified in murder of devoted mum and her tiny baby
Three years after the abuse began, Leesa and her family moved to a cane farm outside of Innisfail, where Venning worked in the sugarfields.
Here – cut off from neighbours and extended kin – the family lived an isolated existence. This only emboldened Venning’s brazenness.
‘I WOULD WAKE TO HIM MOLESTING ME’
“Going to sleep was scary as I would often wake to him molesting me – I lived in constant fear,” Leesa says.
“I got a friend (at school) and I tried to spend as many weekends as I could sleeping over at her house.
“I would cry when I had to go home.
“I hated him and was always terrified of him.
“I developed a hunch because I was always leaning my shoulders forward to shield myself.”
Often Venning would creep into Leesa’s room, where he’d use one hand to abuse her while the other held a Winfield Red cigarette.
Leesa recalls the acrid stench of smoke. One evening, she says, Venning was sloppy with the ash – it fell burning a hole in the bedspread her mum had sewn by hand.
“After that I was interrogated and blamed for smoking – Ian even belted me with a strap for smoking when it was him,” she says.
“It was so wrong – he’d belt me with the strap a fair bit.”
Recalling this incident now, Leesa says Venning later admitted to the cigarette burn.
“He said it happened when he was reading me a bedtime story. I don’t know why he admitted to that – it was weird because for all those years he accused me of smoking, belted me for it and then said he did it,” she says.
READ MORE: The lives they lived: Tragic stories of young children taken too soon
Leesa was once mauled by a German Shepherd dog. She suffered cuts and abrasions across her body.
ASSAULTED IN CANE FIELD AFTER DOG ATTACK
After a doctor in the Innisfail township patched her up, Venning drove her towards home but detoured into the cane fields where – despite her obvious agony – he assaulted her repeatedly.
Venning’s violations continued until Leesa fled her home – she was only 13.
“This was when I started becoming aware that his behaviour was wrong,” Leesa says.
“I told him to stop and that I didn’t want him to do this to me anymore, but it didn’t stop him.
“To escape him I ran away to go and live with my grandmother.”
‘NOTHING WORSE THAN WHAT HE DID TO ME’
About a year later, Leesa finally met her real dad and his family. She started to bond with them but life was far from easy for the teenager.
“At high school I burnt the science lab down, was suspended numerous times, would wag school and get drunk,” she recalls.
“No-one could control me – I didn’t care.
“No punishment would be worse than what I had already been through.
“I eventually dropped out of school.
“I think if none of this offending happened to me – I would have achieved the career of my choice – to be a veterinary surgeon.”
Venning and Leesa’s mother divorced while she was young.
It must be stressed, Leesa’s mother was not aware of the abuse and is not accused of any wrongdoing.
Venning remarried. He and his second wife lived in Hughenden in Queensland, where he drove trains for a living.
They finally relocated to Sunshine Coast, operating a small business.
A YOUNG LIFE BROKEN
During her early adult years, Leesa moved from state to state, spending time fruit picking in Victoria, working in Jyndabine and managing a cocktail bar in Griffith.
“After school I worked in chemists and bars, I did cleaning jobs and I travelled Australia,” she says.
“I worked in the roughest pubs on the Gold Coast and handled it well – because I was accustomed to violence
“When I worked as a cleaner, I always had to have another cleaner with me because I was scared to work alone in a client’s house.”
In April of 1999, Leesa married. She and her husband had twin boys and a daughter. Her children became her life’s focus, with the enterprising mum working in the couple’s pawn shop on the Gold Coast and supplementing the income from the business with a raft of jobs to give the kids a settled – and safe life.
“As the mother of young and teenage children I was overly protective – I would have to know the parents before my kids were allowed to go by themselves to their friends’ house,” she says.
GROTESQUE UNRAVELLING OF CRUELTY AND SADISM
Venning’s abuse had far-ranging impacts, including on Leesa’s brother who – unable to live with the trauma of his father’s violations – died by suicide in 2012.
The unhealed wounds from years of abuse continually chipped away at Leesa’s self-worth, confidence and desire for happiness.
Speaking to police about Venning was the only path to closure, but she had to consider how exposing the predator would impact her family, including her paternal grandmother whose frail health could be worsened by the truth.
“If Nana knew how horrible my childhood was … she would have been devastated,” Leesa says.
In November of 2020, Leesa grandmother died and – finally – it was time to seek justice.
Days before Christmas in 2020, Leesa walked into a police station where she spent the next 12 or so hours going over every aspect of her childhood with a detective.
The court document is horrific reading – a grotesque unravelling of cruelty and sadism by a cunning predator against a child who had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Reading the court documents, it is truly impossible to fathom how one so young could survive such a cold calculating monster. Or indeed, how a sick sexual sadist managed to fly under the radar until now.
His attacks often happened while family members were away, but there were times when he violated the girl with unsuspecting adults nearby.
“He abused me at night when everyone was asleep,” Leesa says.
“He abused me in the shower saying we were on tank water and we had to save water by bathing together.”
Sometimes he’d take her into the cane fields and rape her there.
He’d buy her silence with little treats – like letting her eat the Milo straight from the tin.
He’d threaten her if she told anyone.
He groomed her into believing “this was what all daddies did with their daughters”, Leesa says.
RAPIST A ‘LARGER THAN LIFE’ CHARACTER
Leesa has lost count of the rapes and assaults but she says he attacked her multiple times a week, meaning he subjected to her to more than 1000 violations over the decade.
He died before a jury could make a decision as to his guilt.
“We are very sad to learn of the passing of our member Ian Venning,” the Buderim Billiards and Snooker Club posted after his death.
“Ian was a larger than life character and very popular club member, we will miss him around the club.
“Our sincerest condolences go to his wife and his family.”
Leesa’s bid for peace is far from over, with the legacy of her stepfather’s cruelty still raw.
“I’ve developed a sixth sense about others – and I’m fully in tune with any bad vibes I felt around people,” she says.
LISTEN TO THE PREDATORY PODCAST
“I am a very cynical person and I trust no one.
“If I am out and about – especially on a night out – I am over the top aware of my surroundings and terrified of the danger of being raped.
“I am an atheist as how could I believe there is a God who would let something like this happen to me?”
In the end, Venning dodged the law, never paying the price for his monstrosities.
But for Leesa there’s one small ray of light.
“Of course I would have loved to see him be found guilty – there is no doubt in my mind that he was going to be found guilty,” she says.
“But I am grateful that I got to see him charged before he died.”
News Corp’s Sherele Moody has multiple journalism excellence awards for her work highlighting violence in Australia. Sherele is also an Our Watch fellow and the founder of The RED HEART Campaign, the Australian Femicide Watch, the Australian Femicide & Child Death Map, All That Remains: The Memorial to Women and Children Lost to Violence and the She Matters project.
Continue the conversation:
TWITTER: @Sherelemoody
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/sherele.moody/
INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/sherelemoodyfemicidewatch/
More Coverage
Originally published as Cairns resident Leesa Michaud reveals sexual abuse endured at the hands of Sunshine Coast man Ian Keith Venning
20 years behind: Qld students in danger over bus seatbelt lapse
Queensland’s motoring body has slammed the state’s lack of action over a safety feature on school buses, saying it is almost 20 years behind other states, as terrified parents voice their concern.
Read more
Tourists getting more benefits from 50c fares than northern Qlders
Qlders need better transparency about how much the 50c fare relief will cost, who is actually getting the benefits and where else we could spend these public funds, writes economist Colin Dwyer.
Read more