But that didn’t happen.

Instead, while the Brittany Higgins/Bruce Lehrmann case was devouring the time, focus and resources of the DPP, the man who violated Sophie and five other young girls negotiated himself a deal to escape the most egregious charges against him.

The Higgins case got the Rolls-Royce ride. Sophie says her treatment at the hands of the prosecutor could not have been more different.

“There were just so many things that were running in parallel that made me so upset, because we’re talking about child victims, but because it didn’t happen in Parliament House, because it didn’t have a motive to bring down a prime minister, we all just go, ‘Oh, well, yeah’,” Sophie tells The Weekend Australian. “It makes me very angry.”

In the nation’s highest-profile criminal case in decades, chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold was throwing everything he legally could – and some he couldn’t – at convicting a suspect whom police investigators thought should never have been charged due to a lack of evidence.

In the same criminal justice system, but far from the television cameras, a series of much less senior prosecutors were finalising a case against serial paedophile Stephen Leonard Mitchell, with evidence police were confident was watertight, including the testimony of all six victims.

Mitchell would ultimately be convicted and sent to prison. But not for the most heinous of the crimes that Sophie claims he committed against her.

The senior police officer originally leading the investigation would be re-assigned – to the ­Higgins case.

There would be no desperate attempts to stop Sophie’s counselling records falling into the hands of the defence.

No move by the prosecution to put up an expert witness to counter the defence’s witness.

No supportive court appearances by Victims of Crime Commissioner Heidi Yates. Not even a phone call, as far as Sophie can ­remember.

And definitely no multi-million-dollar payout by the commonwealth – despite a claim being lodged years ago.

‘Everyone thought he had some magic secret’

Sophie Vivian was 11 when “Mitch” introduced himself.

The young gymnast had just emerged from a notoriously brutal training regime at the Australian Institute of Sport where she ­endured physical and emotional abuse at the hands of overzealous coaches from the age of seven. She left the AIS, broken, in 1995.

Stephen Mitchell was then in his late 30s, working as a bus driver at the AIS. He’d probably spotted Sophie there earlier, but made his first approach at a Canberra youth centre, putting himself out as an AIS coach and as someone who had been training ex-gymnasts in rock climbing: did she want to ­develop her interest in the sport?

Rock climbing was then in its infancy as a sport and Sophie was looking for something new to fill the void in her life.

Like many ex-gymnasts, she proved to be a natural at climbing – strong and fearless – and quickly started winning competitions. It’s an achievement that now causes her great conflict.

“The painful part for me is that he set up his role and identity as a climbing coach based on my success. And everyone thought he had some magic secret. His magic ­secret was just that he recruited gymnasts – that was it. He was a complete charlatan.”

Sophie spent four years under Mitchell’s spell. She left him, and Canberra, when she was 15, after gathering up all her medals and trophies and throwing them in Lake Burley Griffin.

The charismatic Mitchell would eventually meet and groom five of his six acknowledged victims through rock climbing or his work with the Police Community Youth Club in Canberra. At least four more suspected victims did not give evidence.

Mitchell devoted his entire professional life to obtaining positions where he could have access to children. At various times he worked for the AIS, the Australian Sports Commission, the Australian Federal Police as a sport and recreation officer based at the Police and Citizens Youth Club, and Sport Climbing Australia.

Sophie describes Mitchell’s ­relationships with young girls as like crossing monkey bars. “He’d grab hold of the next girl before he’d let go of the previous girl, and so there’s an overlap between each of the six victims.”

At least one child complained in the early 2000s but the AFP ­investigation appears to have stopped in 2004. Sophie says, ­incredulously, she was never ­approached by police at the time.

“No one ever interviewed me, which in itself is horrendous. Like if you conducted a proper investigation at the time, all you would have had to have done was go, ‘OK, who is this guy’s favourites?’”

“When the heat was on, he’d just be moved on, over and over again. He was moved on from the AIS, moved on from Sport Climbing Australia, moved on from the AFP and the PCYC. Like everyone just kind of knew, everyone knew this is the f..king worst secret in the world.”

More recently, Mitchell was employed by the Department of Home Affairs in an executive ­security position and had somehow managed to obtain a high-level security clearance. He was posted to Indonesia.

“I think often about how our neighbour – a country that struggles to fight a serious problem with child sex-trafficking – must feel about Home Affairs delivering a documented paedophile to their door,” Sophie says.

“How many more victims are there because of these failures?”

With new allegations from ­Sophie and another woman, a fresh investigation commenced in 2020. The previous debacle by the AFP meant many victims were ­reluctant to put their hands up the second time around.

“In 2003 they interviewed four of the complainants in our case – four of the six. They had evidence from all of them and they didn’t proceed,” Sophie says.

For Sophie, there was another dimension. Like so many abuse victims, she struggled with feelings of guilt over her relationship with her abuser. “Then my daughter turned the same age that I was when the ­offending happened. And it was like a light switch went off in me and my total attitude changed ­towards him.

“It was her 12th birthday, and she came in and I looked at her and you suddenly understand that you were a child. Like it’s not real before then for some strange reason. And it’s sort of like, oh my gosh, if anyone tried to do anything like that to you, I would have killed them and wrung their neck, you know? But it took me many years to get to that point.”

The net was closing in on Mitchell, but he was now living in ­Indonesia after landing the plum posting with Home Affairs.

‘It was infuriating to watch the behaviour of Brittany Higgins’

The six women obeyed police requests to stay quiet about the case, in order not to jeopardise the investigation – or tip off Mitchell and cause him to disappear.

“That was horrible because we knew he was living in Indonesia. Where do you go if you’re a paedophile that’s been ratted out in Australia? That’s where you go. And so we spent over a year knowing he was out there doing whatever he was doing and having to keep our mouths shut about it.”

They realised their caution was justified as they watched the criminal case against Lehrmann teeter on the brink of collapse because of repeated prejudicial statements by Higgins and her supporters.

“It was infuriating to watch the behaviour of Brittany Higgins and those buzzing about her, in contrast,” says Sophie.

“It just felt very obvious that there was a total disregard for due process. I mean if you really want a proper criminal outcome, why would you be ­behaving that way?”

Mitchell was recalled to ­Australia by the department on a pretext and immediately arrested.

“I was told that the AFP had put their most experienced team on it,” Sophie says. “They were taking it very seriously. And then I was ­informed that most senior ­officer had been taken off it to go on the Brittany Higgins case.”

Sophie was disappointed but quickly came to trust the new chief investigator, Senior Constable Paul Calatzis of the ACT ­Policing Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Team.

The SACAT unit would come in for much criticism by the DPP during the Sofronoff inquiry into possible misconduct by the DPP and the AFP, but Sophie has nothing but praise for the detectives handling her case.

“Paul [Calatzis] was fantastic – I have no complaints about the AFP,” she says. Over the following months, Calatzis and his team painstak­ingly put together the brief of evidence, which was then handed to the DPP. It would be decisive in forcing Mitchell to plead guilty.

When Sophie met with the prosecutors, she was greeted with what appeared to be great news.

“The way it was presented was, ‘He’s pleaded guilty. Isn’t that fantastic?’ We wouldn’t have to go to trial,” she recalls. “And then sort of tagged on to the end was: but he’s not pleading guilty to this aspect of it. And my immediate response was, ‘No, I’m not OK with that’.”

In her interviews with police, Sophie had disclosed that Mitchell had digitally penetrated her on several occasions. Although she was not to know it – all the women had agreed not to share their stories in order to avoid contaminating evidence – one of Mitchell’s other victims had revealed the same experience. But the prosecutors were insistent a deal be done on the lesser charges. “The pressure was clearly on to accept the guilty plea,” Sophie says.

She was told that if she wanted to pursue the more serious charges, “This will mean you’ll have to go through a trial, this will mean you may be cross-examined, this will mean some of the other girls may have to give evidence.”

“So it’s like guilt placed about that,” she says.

But Sophie was determined that Mitchell not be given a free pass on the more serious abuse.

“I know why he did it, why he disputed it, and it’s because he had a firm line that was a moral boundary in himself, that he didn’t cross – until he did (cross it) a few times,” Sophie says.

“His guilty plea was quite meaningless, because I know he doesn’t feel guilt about the portion of the offending that he pleaded guilty to – which was masturbating on us basically. He doesn’t see that as a crime.

“So he pleaded guilty because he had to. We backed him into a corner and that was the best way he could get the lowest sentence. But I know psychologically – ­because I know him – that wasn’t really an admission of harm.

“So to me, it felt very important to push that, because it was a line that he did cross.”

But her insistence that Mitchell be held fully to account meant there had to be a “disputed facts hearing” at which she would have to give evidence.

Sophie says police supported prosecuting Mitchell for these charges. The Weekend Australian understands that Sophie’s credibility was never an issue for the police as they pulled together the evidence against Mitchell.

The attention paid to Higgins by Drumgold, as revealed by the Sofronoff inquiry, could not have been a more stark contrast for ­Sophie. In Sophie’s case, a string of prosecutors arrived and left.

The first prosecutor assigned to the case was redeployed; the second was already pregnant when she arrived and left soon after; the third hadn’t met her or even had a conversation with her until the day before the disputed facts hearing.

“When we did finally have a conversation it became apparent to me that he did not possess much familiarity with the facts of the case, asking me questions that he certainly should have ­already known the answers to,” Sophie says.

“So I went into the disputed facts hearing with no relationship with him at all.”

More alarming for Sophie, she was told in this meeting that ­Mitchell’s defence had organised an expert witness to argue she was suffering from “false memory ­syndrome” but that the prosecution would not be countering that with its own expert witness.

Added to that, she learned for the first time that her private counselling notes were likely to be subpoenaed, potentially exposing her and her children to danger ­because she had shared with her therapist details of sensitive matters that had nothing to do with Mitchell or the investigation.

Sophie says that her concerns about this were echoed by Paul Calatzis. Then the prosecutor claimed he had only been handed a crucial document the day before the hearing. Sophie knew the AFP had been trying to get the DPP to ­accept the document for weeks and had previously raised the issue with prosecutors. “The cops were just like, ‘What? You’ve known about this for months!’”

Chasing Drumgold

Sophie says her own lawyer, a senior counsel, advised her: Get out, stop. Dismayed, Sophie withdrew from the disputed facts hearing, telling Shane Drumgold in an email the next morning: “I no longer believe the DPP is acting in my interests.”

Sophie explained to Drumgold her concerns that her private counselling notes were at risk of being shared. She believed that if unrelated and highly sensitive ­information was made public her life, and the lives of her children, would be at risk.

Sophie says that she was told by the prosecutor on the case, “Well, if you want to withdraw, you can withdraw.”

Drumgold didn’t respond until three weeks later, when Sophie sent him another email, demanding answers about her treatment at the hands of the DPP. By then Drumgold was on extended leave after his disastrous appearance at the Sofronoff inquiry. In a two-sentence reply he said he had ­referred her correspondence to another prosecutor.

Caught up in the maelstrom that has engulfed the criminal justice system in Canberra for at least the last three years, Sophie offers this view from the inside: “The level of dysfunction is just palpable and the most charitable explanation is that it’s the DPP that is incompetent and police are actually doing an all-right job at the ­moment. But it seems that if the police care about a case, the DPP doesn’t; if the DPP cares about a case, the police don’t.”

The result of that internecine warfare extends far beyond the ill-fated Lehrmann trial.

Last month Mitchell was ­sentenced to a non-parole period of nine years, after pleading guilty to six counts of child sexual assault between 1994 and 2008.

It should have been a moment of quiet celebration or, at least, closure. Not for Sophie. Nor for Claire (a pseudonym), one of the first girls in Mitchell’s sinister chain, who does not wish to be identified.

‘I’m utterly devastated’

Claire met Mitchell when she was nine. The abuse continued for five years. Claire was the other victim who told police she was digitally penetrated by Mitchell.

“There were girls that he would casually abuse, and then he had a girlfriends or wives kind of thing – and Sophie and I had that experience,” Claire says.

Claire had also wanted Mitchell prosecuted for everything he had done – not just the bits he felt comfortable about admitting.

“When they called me up in November, they said he will plead guilty to maintaining a sexual relationship with a child. And I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing.’ And then they said, ‘Oh, just one more thing. You have to drop the penetration part of your charge.’

“And I was like, ‘What?’ My exact words were: ‘I don’t f..king care, f..king fine’.”

But Sophie was not fine with the more serious charges being dropped. “I’m utterly devastated,” she says now.

It’s harder for both women now they know each other’s story: the two entirely independent ­accounts corroborated each other.

“Not just the same allegations but very, very similar descriptions of the same topic – the level of concurrence was very high,” says ­Sophie, visibly angry.

Claire is still torn by her ­decision.“ I’m kind of glad I gave it away, but at the same time, we would’ve had so much more if there were two of us,” she says. “There’s power in numbers ­because it’s the truth – the same thing happened to both of us.”

For both women, sitting in court hearing the judge describe Mitchell’s conduct as being of “mid-range seriousness” was a cruel blow.

“The physical acts involved in the offending did not involve what is often understood to be the more serious sexual interactions,” judge David Mossop stated during the sentencing. “The offender restrained himself, persuading himself that what he was doing was less ­damaging.”

“Sophie’s incredibly angry with the DPP, and I totally get why. It was just horrible,” says Claire.

Sophie says it was difficult watching Drumgold’s outrage at the Sofronoff inquiry over the way Higgins’ counselling notes had been inadvertently sent to the ­defence lawyers.

“It’s like, I just emailed you, mate, and told you that I think my life and my children’s lives have been in danger by proceedings, and you haven’t responded? Over the same issue – counselling notes.

“It’s very, very hard to square that level of hypocrisy. Which I suppose at the end of the day, that’s why I’m talking to you, ­because that was just a slap in the face. My husband and I were watching him on TV and he just stood up and went: ‘You’re what?’ It’s like, ‘How can you get on TV and claim to care so much about these issues when behind the scenes a significant event is going on and you’ve got your head in the sand?’”

Drumgold is still on leave and did not respond to questions from The Weekend Australian. The acting DPP also declined to ­comment.

Sophie is angry, too, that she was never offered any support from Victims of Crime Commissioner Heidi Yates, who regularly appeared at the side of Higgins during her court appearances.

“We never received a call from the Victims of Crime Commissioner,” she says. “She never showed up to any of our hearings, or any of the board dates like she did with Brittany. I’m sorry, but a couple of girls in our group were suicidal throughout this process. One had to be institutionalised for a little while. And we didn’t get a call. We didn’t get anyone ­showing up.”

That’s not the way it works, a spokesman for the ACT Human Rights Commission told The Weekend Australian.

“Victim Support ACT does not have automatic access to the ­details of individuals who report crimes to the police and, as such, cannot proactively contact such individuals.”

Police or the DPP would normally refer victims to the service, the spokesman said.

Sophie has written to the ­Sofronoff inquiry into potential misconduct by the DPP and AFP, complaining about her treatment by the DPP. She remains aghast at the differences between her case and that involving Higgins.

“In contrast to Brittany Higgins, we followed the AFP and DPP advice completely regarding the media,” she says. The story ­remained under wraps for a year to allow the investigation to progress unimpeded.

“This was extremely difficult, as our abuser was still living in ­Indonesia and potentially offending against other children, and the #MeToo moment was occurring in sport, but we did what we were told and stayed silent so that we did not in any way hamper a successful prosecution.”

Sophie and other victims of Mitchell have lodged a claim for compensation from the commonwealth. She has watched while Higgins received a fast and reportedly multi-million-dollar payout.

“Our civil claim has sat there untouched by the commonwealth for years,” Sophie says, “despite multiple victims, a guilty plea, and a conviction. No, our abuser didn’t work at Parliament House.” But he did work for a number of commonwealth organisations that have long known about accusations against him.

In recent years Sophie has completed a Master’s degree in neurology and a PhD in philosophy. Her neuroscience thesis was on the effects of trauma on gymnasts.

As strong and resolute as ­Sophie appears, there is immense sadness as she reflects on the many contrasts with the Higgins-Lehrmann saga, on abuse at the hands of Mitchell and trauma enabled by commonwealth agencies.

“We might look fine but we’re not a representative sample of the population,” she says of the former gymnasts.

“You don’t survive in that sport unless you are pretty strong mentally. And I look at us all and we’re all a bit broken by our childhoods.

“You know, you’ve got the kids who can be yelled at, screamed at, hit. We were picked out of the bunch because we could take it. But at the end of the day the same damage was done.”