Daughter recovered memories after learning Dad ‘groomed’ schoolgirls

Episode 3 of our podcast investigation is live now, with the revelation daughter ‘Emily’ began recovering memories of abuse after learning her father had an earlier brush with scandal.

A young woman whose parents were jailed after she accused them of 13 years of sadistic abuse remembered the crimes only after learning that her father had faced grooming allegations 30 years earlier, according to medical files in the case.

The young woman had previously recovered memories of a sexual assault by another man, and she was undergoing treatment for that when she began recovering separate memories about her father, according to three people who spoke to her.

The Australian’s Shadow Of Doubt podcast reveals this week that the young woman’s father, a former high school teacher, was accused by at least four students in the 1980s of grooming and sexual offences.

Sisters we’re calling Sarah, Rebecca and Emily are at the centre of our podcast investigation Shadow of Doubt: Illustration by Emilia Tortorella

At one school, three female students made allegations which were found to be substantially true, but the father was allowed to resign and no charges were laid. He was later the subject of allegations at another school and was again allowed to resign, before quitting school teaching.

The father denies committing sexual offences but admits he placed himself in compromising situations with students. For legal reasons, The Australian is unable to reveal details about the allegations.

He and his wife were sentenced to long prison terms after their 17 year-old daughter told the NSW District Court she had been raped and tortured in the family home from kindergarten to her late teens. The couple are seeking a review of their convictions, arguing that the allegations were based on false memories elicited by counsellors.

The daughter was 17 when she first sought psychiatric treatment, after accusing a sports coach of sexually assaulting her in a hotel room overseas. Her memory of that assault only came back to her more than week after it allegedly happened, according to two friends who have spoken to the podcast.

Six months later, while still in psychiatric care, she began remembering that her father had violently raped her at the age of seven. Doctors noted that she had recently learned about her father’s history as a teacher in the 1980s, and had taken an overdose.

Her former boyfriend has told the podcast the couple’s daughter may have learned about her father’s past from a police officer who was looking into her overseas rape allegations, who visited her in hospital and started investigating her father.

The daughter was providing a statement to her lawyers about that overseas incident when she began remembering incidents of sexual abuse by her father, according to the boyfriend and two other people who have spoken to the podcast.

Mother ‘Susan Johnson’.

Father ‘Martin Johnson’.

Within 18 months she would tell her psychiatrist that her father had violently sexually abused her from the age of five, and had repeatedly tortured her with tools in a dilapidated shed on the family property. She later remembered her mother had also sexually abused her.

The young woman’s psychiatrist testified during the parents’ trial that their daughter blocked out her memories of abuse for years because she suffered from a condition known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. This caused her to compartmentalise her memories into different personality states.

The reliability of such memories has been controversial in psychiatry since the 1980s, when there was an explosion in case of people experiencing repressed memories of childhood abuse.

The young woman’s father was convicted on 73 counts of abuse and is serving a 48 year jail sentence, the lengthiest jail term for child abuse in Australian history. His wife was sentenced to 16 years and will not be eligible for parole until 2027.