Gang rape victim becomes first Tasmanian to speak out following gag law reform

From today, sexual assault survivors in Tasmania can speak under their real names, following the success of the #LetHerSpeak campaign.

EXCLUSIVE

Twenty-seven years after she was abducted, bashed and gang-raped as a 16-year-old schoolgirl, Janelle O’Connor is finally able to tell her own story.

Today, she becomes the first person in the state of Tasmania to exercise her right to be named as a rape survivor under new laws which no longer criminalise sexual assault victims who wish to self-identify in media.

Since 2018, news.com.au has been driving the #LetHerSpeak campaign to reform the state’s archaic victim gag laws, in partnership with End Rape On Campus Australia, Marque Lawyers and The Hobart Mercury.

The legislation has now been amended, to allow sexual assault survivors to use their real names in media, provided they are over 18, consent to be named in writing, and there are no other outstanding legal issues.

Now, Janelle is revealing her full name and story for the first time.

THE NIGHT THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

The year was 1993. Janelle O’Connor had recently finished year 10 and was working part-time at a bakery, in the small seaside town of Burnie, Tasmania, population 13,000.

“I was looking forward to going into year 11 and spending my summer with friends” she tells news.com.au.

A school report written by her principal just three weeks prior to that night described her as “a polite and friendly young lady with a cheerful personality and good humour”.

But on Christmas Eve, her life would change forever.

“I was out with some friends, I got into a car with a group of men, two of them that I knew.”

The driver, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had known Janelle since she was a baby, and another passenger, Glen Last, was a good friend.

“We were all meant to be going to a party but when we got to the house and the driver didn’t stop, my stomach just flipped.”

Also in the ute that night were three men Janelle had not met before. Among them was a convicted killer.

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Janelle O’Connor has been waiting 27 years to tell her own story. Picture: David Caird

Minutes later the vehicle came to a halt in a secluded farming area.

The man riding shotgun then yelled out: “We should all jump her.”

His name was Geoffrey Michael Haywood, then aged 29. Six years earlier he had killed a woman in Burnie and was later charged with manslaughter. He’d been in and out of jail ever since.

Not that Janelle had any idea of the man’s criminal history. Indeed, his lengthy seven-page police record was only obtained this year after a 12-month investigation by news.com.au. It shows Haywood’s escalating criminal conduct from petty theft and traffic violations to stealing vehicles and attacking women.

On that particular Christmas Eve, he had come prepared with a hunting knife.

“I was sitting in the back of the ute, on Glen’s knee. When the car stopped, Glen opened the door and told me to run,” says Janelle.

But it was too late. Haywood had grabbed Janelle by the hair, holding the blade to her throat, before striking her repeatedly.

Glen Last was then pulled from the vehicle and repeatedly bashed by Haywood and another man who was present.

“That’s when I turned to the driver,” Janelle says. “I begged him to drive off and not to let them rape me. I pulled out everything I could. I said: ‘Have you got a daughter mate? Think of me as her.’ But he didn’t move. He said they would kill him if he did. I looked at him and said ‘well, what do you think they will do to me?’”

Haywood and a second man then re-entered the vehicle, leaving Glen Last’s unconscious body on the side of the road. Janelle was driven to a second location, where the driver scurried from the scene, leaving her entirely unprotected with Haywood and the two other men, Timothy John Marshall, 22 and Leon Roy Roughley, 27.

Court documents show the crying schoolgirl was then dragged from the vehicle and repeatedly bashed and brutalised. As she huddled on the side of the road, weeping, Haywood kicked her in the temple.

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Janelle was just 16 years old when she was subjected to a horrific gang rape and torture. Picture: Supplied

“I remember looking around. I was never a good runner and the closest houses were too far away to reach,” she says.

“I knew what was going to happen next. And I knew I had to say the words ‘no’ and that I ‘didn’t want it’.

“Then they raped me. Haywood was in charge. He was the ringleader. During it all, it was like I was outside my body hovering above looking down and seeing this done to me.

“As a child I was molested over many years by an older family member and I’d learnt to detach. In that moment that same survival instinct kicked in.

“When it was finally over, Haywood sat across my chest, and put a knife to my throat and said ‘I should kill you, you sl*t and dump you in the woods.”

“They told me to get dressed and they put me back in the ute. Then Haywood said: ‘Now you’re going to dig your own f**king grave you b*tch. Because you will never tell anyone about this.’”

CHRISTMAS DAY ESCAPE

Janelle was looking out the window of the car, trying to work out whether she would survive jumping from it while it was moving when the vehicle crashed and rolled.

When Janelle regained consciousness, Haywood was nowhere to be seen. Smelling petrol, she pulled herself from the upturned vehicle and fled.

“If they hadn’t have crashed the car I wouldn’t be here with you now,” she says.

Hours later, when she made it home, she showered and collapsed, completely exhausted. It was Christmas Day.

When she eventually woke, the first person she told was a close friend, Adam Brownrigg.

“He came and got me and we went for a drive” says Janelle.

“We actually went back to where it had happened. We could see the grass in the paddock all pushed down from where the rapes were. That’s when the reality of it all hit me.

“I didn’t want my mum and dad to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. But Adam helped me tell a friend’s mum and I ended up spending that whole Christmas Day making a report and then undergoing a medical exam.”

Karen Willis, Executive Officer of Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia says that how a “first responder” reacts to a disclosure is critical.

“We know that how a person responds in that moment is a major factor in shaping how a person will recover” Ms Willis says.

“When a person is believed and supported, that dramatically increases their capacity to recover.”

However, by Boxing Day, the story had made the news and gossip of who the victim was had made it’s way around the small town.

“The first initial question, I guess, was ‘Why did you get in the car? Why did you do this, and what were you wearing?’ which back in the 90s were probably very common questions. In fact they still are today,” Janelle says.

“I was told I deserved it, I asked for it, I was a sl*t, I got what was coming, that I made the story up for attention. When the trial was on, I would get prank phone calls in the middle of the night and I was told their friends wanted to kill me.”

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Until recently, Janelle would still see the ute that abducted her around town. Picture: David Caird

“When a sexual assault happens in a rural town, the community will often become divided,” Karen Willis says. “There will be those who blame the victim and support the boys and the victim may find she can never walk away from that incident. Even if the offenders go to jail, they will often eventually come back to the same town.”

Small towns are not only filled with gossip. They are filled with frequent reminders.

“Up until a few years ago, I would see the same Ute I was abducted in that night, driving around town,” Janelle says.

DETERMINED TO GET JUSTICE

Despite all this, the schoolgirl was determined to pursue justice.

“I didn’t want those men to get away with what they did to me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I had not reported it and they did it again to someone else” Janelle says.

In total, she gave evidence in court five times across three trials, after the first two cases both resulted in retrials.

“Back then, it was an open court and anyone off the street could walk in and sit down and watch while I was giving evidence.

“At 16, it was embarrassing because I had to go into details of what was done to me, and there would be one side of the courtroom filled up with their family and friends, and one side filled up with my family and friends, and people from Burnie who would just walk in and watch.

“It was brutal. It was like being raped all over again. I then spent all day on my 18th birthday on the witness stand being questioned by three criminal lawyers. They wanted to break me that day because I kept taking it back to court.

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Newspaper clippings showing coverage of Janelle's case in the 1990s. Picture: Supplied

“At one point during it all, I became suicidal,” Janelle says. “I was abusing alcohol and drugs by then. I wasn’t sleeping and I wasn’t eating.

“At the time you just want the pain to go. I didn’t want to die, but I was sick of having to go through court, and of my family being abused.

“I thought if I die I won’t have to go through court again, they might get away with it, but I won’t know because I won’t be here.

“But I survived that night and I did go back to court again. And eventually I won.”

At the conclusion of the third trial in 1995, Haywood and Roughley were both found guilty of rape. Charges against Marshall were eventually dropped.

The judge slammed the men saying: “Those barbaric individuals in the community who see themselves as having some right to subjugate and brutalise weaker members of society must be brought face-to-face with the severe consequences which await them on conviction. The ocker attitude that women are fair game if they accept a lift in a motor car or move about unprotected at night has no place in modern society and must be firmly denounced and rejected.”

I WANT TO SPEAK OUT NOW

After 27 years of silence, Janelle says that she wants to speak out under her real name now to help challenge victim-blaming attitudes in the community. She also wants to educate others on the behavioural signs that children may be being sexually abused.

This is because she sees the abuse she suffered as a young child as intrinsically linked to the re-victimisation she suffered as a teenager.

“From the age of six I was abused by a family member and that changed my whole childhood and it changed my teen years,” she says.

“By the time I was 12 I was acting up and getting into trouble because of that abuse. I told someone, but wasn’t believed. I was just seen as creating more drama to get out of other trouble.

Research into child sexual abuse shows this is a sad paradox: the same behaviours which directly result from being abused are often misconstrued by others as insolence and acting out.

“If we had a better understanding of trauma, we would see those behaviours as evidence of abuse,” says Ms Willis. “Instead we judge them and disbelieve the child by labelling them a ‘trouble maker’ and an ‘attention seeker’.”

As a result, the child can become even more isolated and vulnerable to re-victimisation by other offenders who “zero in” on that person during their teen and adult years.

Indeed, according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies the risk of sexual violence in adulthood doubles for women who were abused as children and approximately 54 per cent of girls who are sexually abused as children will experience further sexual violence in adulthood.

This re-victimisation is not inevitable, but understanding how perpetrators target and exploit pre-existing vulnerabilities created by other offenders and a lack of social support is important.

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Janelle wants to use her voice to educate others on the behavioural signs that children may be being sexually abused. Picture: David Caird

For Janelle, these links are evident: “What happened to me in my early childhood made me vulnerable to a lot of other things over my whole life, including what happened to me at 16. That’s what I need people to understand in order to break this cycle.

“If I’d been believed as a child, I might not have been in the car that night at 16.”

Janelle, now intends to write a book about her life, and says she is relieved to be able to finally reveal her identity.

“Not being able to speak under my real name has been really frustrating,” she says. “It’s heartbreaking because you want to be able to talk to people and share what you’ve been through.

“So it feels amazing to be part of this law reform. For me, it means freedom to talk about my story and use my identity.

“I grew up knowing a lot of people who were sexually abused and molested. And I guess if they see me doing this it will help them come forward. At the end of the day it’s about supporting one another. Through sharing our stories we can come together and get through this.”

Janelle with her family, 27 years after her horrific attack. Picture: Supplied

Janelle now has a loving family and has gone back to study. She says she wants others to know that help is available.

“Don’t be ashamed of your story. Never ever feel ashamed if you’ve been sexually abused, molested as a child, or beaten. Speak up. Find someone to talk to … because you can get through it. It’s hard but with the right support you can live on and have a good life.

“Twenty seven years later here I am. Those men don’t hurt me anymore. I took that power back from them. I took my own power back.”

Nina Funnell is the creator of the #LetHerSpeak campaign in partnership with news.com.au, End Rape On Campus Australia and Marque Lawyers.

This reporting was partly funded with assistance from the Walkley Public Fund and the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas through a Walkley Grant for Freelance Journalism.