First a predator, and then booze, came for me

Shanna Whan’s story of recovering from sexual abuse and alcohol addiction has inspired countless people in the bush — including tragic vet Alexandra Tapp.

Narrabri’s Shanna Whan has been honoured as 2022’s Local Hero for her work helping support sobriety in the bush, and in a new episode of My Sister’s Secrets she reveals an approach from Alexandra Tapp, who was to die by overdose.

As Alexandra Tapp felt her life spiralling out of control, she made a last-ditch plea for help.

Raped and abused by two different trusted members of her extended family – once as a young girl and again as a young woman – she had turned to hard drinking and drugs to try to dull the memories of her painful past.

While she did her best to hide her addictions from those closest to her, secretly she knew it was a struggle she could not win alone.

It was then, she turned to the one person in her town she thought would understand: Shanna Whan.

Like Alex, Ms Whan had been raped by a man she trusted when she was just 18 and, like Alex, she had turned to drinking in a bid to wash away her feelings of guilt and self-loathing.

“I know her story because it was my story,” she tells My Sister’s Secrets, The Australian’s new podcast series re-examining Alex’s short life and the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death.

“I share her story in the sense that alcohol was involved, a trusted person was involved and the complete shock of what’s happening, being unable to comprehend what is happening.

“Then along comes guilt. What did I do to contribute to this? ‘I was drunk’, you know, ‘I’ve got to have done something to have caused this’.”

Fresh out of an all-girls boarding school, Ms Whan, a self-confessed ‘hopelessly naive’ and trusting young woman, had taken a gap year adventure out jillarooing on a remote property when she was the victim of date-rape.

As the evening wore on she became increasingly intoxicated and, when they returned to the property, the situation deteriorated further.

‘’What started as fun, flirting, and banter ended in something that I did not consent to. And it’s taken me most of my adult life to realise the impact it had,’’ Shanna explains.

“I was literally frozen like a deer in the headlights, frozen solid,” she remembers. “And all I was capable of doing was crying and saying, ‘Please don’t; no’,” she says. “But it didn’t stop … that night ended in me losing my virginity to a date rape situation.

“Then, as is the case of so many people who’ve been through that scenario, I brushed it off and decided that it was not an issue, or at least a bigger issue in my mind … because I had been drunk, see, I had had a crush on this person and so I’d asked for it, so to speak.”

‘’Unfortunately for me the worst was yet to come, in the form of further harassment and predation on the same property by an older man, which was clearly premeditated and therefore worse.’’

Again, like Alex, and so many other rape victims, she felt she had nowhere to turn and, so ultimately, she turned to the bottle.

“I was just a kid (and) I knew the implications that would have for my dad, my mum, my family, you know that if you open that can of worms, it can never be closed,” she says.

“I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. I’m just saying the psychology of a very young, naive person is so complex. You’re frightened of what in the name of God would my dad do?

“So what I did was I used alcohol for courage, I started to develop an alter ego of a wild, promiscuous risk-taking drinking kid from the country.

“As the years progressed and as that trauma was never, ever, ever dealt with my drinking sort of went from being occasional to a couple off to work to wind down … to blackout drinking.

“I became one of those drinkers who, once I started, I could not stop. I could not guarantee what would happen as soon as that bottle had been opened.”

When Shanna eventually crashed, she crashed hard and found herself in hospital and at a crossroads.

She decided it was time to face her demons, quit drinking and work through her trauma.

Determined to help other women dealing with similar experiences, particularly in remote and regional towns, she launched her own alcohol awareness support network, which has since progressed to a national charity, Sober in the Country, in 2015.

Early last year, she received a message from Alex.

“I got a really sweet message one day just saying, ‘Hey, Shanna, I really admire what you’re doing. It’s very powerful and it’s really positive. And I should look at maybe signing up and joining your group’,” Ms Whan says.

“She didn’t go into more detail than that. It was pretty brave. But I saw the call. I saw the call and I just said, ‘Hey stranger, long time, no speak.’

“I learned the hard way that I need to keep it simple and welcoming and warm and sweet and not to go too fast because you want to; you want to race over in your car with your emergency lights flashing to scoop somebody up when they reach out. You really do, because you know there’s a reason they’re reaching out.

“But I also know it doesn’t work like that. And people have to come of their own accord when they are ready. So I said, ‘Mate, please come and join us. Please feel so welcome. I would love it.’ It was that simple. I said, ‘Any time.’”

Sadly, time was already running out. And within months, Alex was dead.

In the Australia Day honours this year Ms Whan was named 2022 Local Hero. She wishes, to this day, she’d been able to sit with Alex Tapp, face-to-face.

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My Sister’s Secrets is the new investigative podcast from The Australian. Episode 3 is live now in the podcasts section of our app or at mysisterssecrets.com.au

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