Sarah Kopp was groomed by her teacher, Paul Grealy, as a teen
Sarah Kopp was a sporty teenager in Queensland when she was groomed by a teacher more than twice her age. They married and had kids — then she held him accountable | VIDEO
Sarah Kopp was a sporty teenager with good grades and dreams of being a future school captain and professional dancer when she fell into the thrall of her physical education teacher.
Groomed into a sexual relationship with a man more than twice her age, she was cut off from friends and peers and missed the chance of a normal teenage life.
Almost a quarter of a century later, in May this year, Kopp gave evidence against the teacher, Paul Edward Grealy, in Queensland’s District Court. It resulted in a jury convicting Grealy that month of five counts of indecent treatment and one of maintaining a relationship with her as a child.
For Kopp, now 39 and a teacher herself, the verdicts were a relief after a journey complicated by her childhood abuser also being her former husband and the father of two of her children.
“When I sat there and I heard that there’s 12 people there who found him guilty of all these various charges, I can’t put into words how validating that was for me,” Kopp says. “To finally feel like people heard me and believed that, and also believed that he should be held accountable too, the emotions that swept over me, it took my breath away.”
The case has striking similarities to the successful prosecution of former PE teacher Chris Dawson for unlawful sex with a teenage student he later married and had a child with. Dawson’s obsession with the teenager drove him to murder his first wife, Lyn.
Kopp wasn’t influenced by that case – she went to police three months before the launch of The Teacher’s Pet podcast that exposed Dawson and other teachers as preying on teenage girls at schools on Sydney’s northern beaches in the 1970s and ’80s.
She says there was no specific catalyst for her going to police, just a gradual regaining of strength following the marriage, a growing understanding of how her life had been affected and a nagging fear there could be more girls like her.
Waiving her legal right to anonymity so her story can be told, Kopp said she was torn between wanting to bring Grealy, now 55, to justice and trying to protect her children from the harm and distress of a trial. As a result, it took “a good long while” to make the leap of going to police.
In the meantime, Grealy was still working as a teacher. “I really thought about it, and for me, I couldn’t ever live with myself if potentially more children were harmed by the same kind of thing that I went through,” Kopp says.
Kopp was 15 and in grade 10 at Urangan State High in Hervey Bay, 300km north of Brisbane, when Grealy became her PE teacher in 2000. She enjoyed school, had a close-knit group of friends and was a dancer and cheerleader at the time. She’d dated about three boys but had never had sex.
Grealy was new to the school and there was a buzz about him. He was thought of as attractive and dressed nicely, she recalls.
In her police and victim impact statements and interviews with The Australian, Kopp reveals Grealy started off complimenting her on her natural ability in gymnastics, then became increasingly flirtatious. His textbook grooming behaviour should serve as a powerful reminder of the red flags for parents, school authorities and students themselves to look out for. He’d often refer to her sporty physique and said he loved that she was a dancer. She had a “good muscle bum”, he told her once, adding: “You can see it through your shorts.”
In gym classes, his hand would graze against her bottom and breasts in a way that appeared accidental, but there were obvious ways to avoid it or it would happen too often, she says. She was invited to his house for help with an assignment, and joined him for extra one-on-one lessons in triple jump in the early mornings.
Flattered by the attention that also calmed her teenage insecurities, she developed a “huge crush” on the sports teacher. She learned only later he was not 21, as he claimed; he was 31.
He started showing up at basketball when she was cheerleading, she says, and when they were briefly alone at one game he kissed her hand. She kept the game’s program as a special memory; it was dated August 5, 2000.
Later the same month the only significant male in her life, her grandfather, died. She had never known her father, and Grealy was there to give her a hug. Soon after, he had another male PE teacher approach her at an athletics carnival and arrange a weekend meeting. It was the first example of another adult being complicit, but not the last. The three of them and another young woman met at Shelley Beach around midday. Grealy pulled her in close in the water, then while drying off they kissed for the first time.
Home sick from school one day, she texted him a message that said everything about her age and immaturity: “invu4uraqt” (I envy you for you’re a cutie). Grealy saw an opportunity, phoning to say he’d visit. He arrived with chicken soup and the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Their sexual relationship began that day, about six months before she turned 16, the legal age of consent in Queensland. “I remember that I was shocked at what had happened but that also on some level that it was exciting. I recall feeling that I was equally involved in having done the wrong thing,” Kopp told police.
Her mum started inviting Grealy over for dinner. As the night wore on the teacher and student would be left alone.
Grealy eventually confided to her mum that they were in a relationship, not knowing Kopp had already told her.
In her police statement, her mum recalled feeling overwhelmed, devastated and confused, adding: “I didn’t know what to do, and to my eternal shame did not tell anyone. In fact, this statement is the first time that I have told anyone about it. It still haunts me that I didn’t and I wish I could go back in time and turn the clock back so that it never happened.”
Kopp believes her introverted mother, like many victims’ parents, was groomed by Grealy just as she was.
“I think she must have thought that he was someone that was going to be good for me, and didn’t realise the impact that kind of relationship would have. She has apologised to me a million times,” she says.
No one else was meant to know, but rumours spread like wildfire. Kopp insisted to school and dance friends nothing was going on and that Grealy was her mother’s “special friend”. Few bought it. A female PE teacher pulled Kopp aside in year 10 and told her to be very careful around Grealy. Her mum was contacted by the school the same year, but said he was “a family friend who comes over for dinner”.
Kopp’s dance teacher – an important figure in her life since the age of three – pulled her aside, asking questions. One of her mum’s colleagues even asked about it.
As the pressure mounted, the teenager cried a lot in her room. Her grades worsened and she dropped out of extension classes.
“I started feeling very isolated from people, having to deny anything was going on. I felt like my whole life was hidden away and I remember feeling constantly angry. I became so sick of having to answer questions,” she told police.
Early in year 11 she prepared a time capsule for a school project. A young female teacher opened it, concerned for her, and discovered Kopp had written about a secret.
Kopp believes it contributed to a school investigation into Grealy.
She turned 16 in March 2001, taking photos the day before and the day of her birthday with her tongue poking out, in a reference to the milestone’s significance. It meant she had reached the age of consent. Grealy, under increasing scrutiny, left town in mid-2001. Sick of the questions and focus on her, Kopp followed Grealy to Brisbane a couple of months later, staying with an aunt and attending school at Coorparoo until her mother moved down as well. At the end of year 12, Grealy said he was breaking off the relationship for her own good. Within weeks she found out he was seeing a student teacher, whom he became engaged to.
Despite the engagement Grealy and Kopp continued to see each other, then got back together and married in April 2006. Kopp was 21 and Grealy was 35.
Friends at the wedding were told not to discuss how they really knew each other, she says.
“That controlling, coercive nature that he had when I was a child, it just continued. That didn’t stop,” she says. “He still had complete control over everything about me, and it just got worse and worse and worse as the years went on. I didn’t have any of my own finances. I wasn’t allowed to go and do the things that I wanted. I had to ask permission for everything, and I felt like a child continually.”
They separated in September 2014, and Kopp went to police in February 2018.
“Due to the control that he had over me, it is only since our separation that I have gained the confidence to go to police regarding this matter. I have nothing to gain personally from making a complaint, other than I feel that Paul should be accountable for what he did to me when I was a child,” her statement reads.
“Looking back, I realise how innocent I was. I believe it was wrong of Paul to use his power imbalance in terms of both maturity and his authority as a teacher to commence a sexual relationship with me. Additionally, now as a parent, I feel a responsibility to other parents to report this matter because of Paul’s profession.”
Kopp’s understanding of the damage has developed over time. She says she was “completely swept away” by Grealy.
“Looking back now, I just think, gosh, that was so obviously a grooming experience. But as a 15-year-old you would never recognise that.”
Grealy denied there was sexual contact until after Kopp turned 16.
At the trial, she was portrayed by the defence as an obsessive teenager with an infatuation, and the relationship as a misguided love affair, she says.
The jury weighed up the evidence including compelling testimony from Kopp’s mother and her best friend, Amanda French. Kopp had described her sexual encounters with Grealy to French decades ago, when they were both 15.
District Court judge Brad Farr jailed Grealy for two years and six months, to be suspended after he serves half that time.
In the marriage, the charming and charismatic Grealy portrayed her as the aggressor, she says. She says she believes some people see her as “the disgruntled wife”, not understanding the impact the relationship had on her.
“It’s almost like the marriage forgives that situation, which is crazy to me,” she says.
Her father’s absence made her particularly vulnerable to Grealy’s attention, as she was always looking for approval from older men. She says she believes that as a teenager she wanted Grealy’s companionship, but he sexualised it. The onus has to be on figures of authority to ensure boundaries aren’t crossed, she says.
On this front, the Queensland government announced a new offence in May, outlawing sexual acts with a child aged 16 or 17 under the person’s care, supervision or authority. Queensland laws have lagged the rest of the country, and the offence will bring the state into line with almost every other jurisdiction, but it has yet to pass through parliament.
“Without stronger legal protection for young girls, these crimes will persist, inflicting lasting mental, financial and physical harm. National laws are needed to better protect students from sexual predators,” Kopp says.
In her victim impact statement, Kopp said she had been a funny, vibrant and hopeful teenager who was also naive and had no sense of the dangers in the world. She has been left with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. “I felt overwhelmed and completely in over my head. The events that unfolded shattered my sense of innocence and security, irrevocably altering the course of my life,” she says.
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