My Sister’s Secrets episode three: pain beneath the partying

What does trauma look like? Sometimes it looks like a non-stop party: and that’s what scared Alex Tapp’s friends.

She wasn’t just partying purely for fun, it was so much deeper than that,” says Hannah Devane in episode three of investigative podcast My Sister’s Secrets, published today. Her late friend Alexandra Tapp died at 32 after being abused by men in her own famiy. Picture: Glenn Hunt

Something had happened to Alexandra Tapp in the summer holidays.

The shy, studious girl who’d started studying veterinary science at the University of Queensland completed her first year as a warm and caring young student, with a strong network of close friends and a bright future.

When second-year classes began after the summer holidays, Alex seemed different.

Even though she still performed well academically, outside of classes she had become increasingly reckless.

“Ally lived just across the hall from me at St John’s and was one of the first people I met when I arrived at college,” close friend Hannah Devane said in an interview for episode three of The Australian’s My Sister’s Secrets podcast, which is investigating the mysterious circumstances surrounding Alex’s untimely death.

“I remember me and Ally really hitting it off and within the first couple of weeks we were BFFs. She was probably a little bit like me – like we were both a little bit shy and awkward and trying to fit in and sort of probably drawn to each other a little bit like that. We just, you know, clicked.”

Ms Devane said in their first year Alex was just like everyone else: she loved a drink but knew when to turn it off.

It was when she returned from a family camping trip in their second year that things began to unravel, and Alex took on a self-destructive streak and her drinking only got worse as time wore on.

Only later would Ms Devane find out the truth: Alex had been sexually assaulted by a trusted male family member on the camping holiday.

“There was a reason that she, you know, pushed it so far and (she was) obviously trying so hard to cope with things,” Ms Devane told My Sister’s Secrets. “She wasn’t just partying purely for fun, like it was so much deeper than that.”

Alex’s downward spiral would come to a crashing halt when she was found dead, all alone in a motel room in Newcastle, on the NSW mid-north coast, in June 2020.

“I wish that I had responded differently to a lot of situations where maybe she was just giving little breadcrumbs of information that, if I had pushed more, I might have found out a lot more about what had been going on in her life and why she was always behaving the way she was,” Ms Devane said.

“There’s certainly guilt and regret. The whole course of everything else that could have been so different.”

My Sister’s Secrets, supported by the Judith Neilson Institute, is an eight-part podcast series brought to you by The Australian.

It is an exploration of how abusers operate within families, creating secrets and lies to hide their crimes – and the emotional and societal pressures that keep survivors quiet.

Journalist Virginia Tapscott – Alex’s sister – has vowed to get justice – and this podcast, produced with The Australian’s Steve Jackson, is the first step, bringing scrutiny to Alex’s abusers and exposing the flaws in a justice system that failed to help her.

Courageous family members, friends and colleagues have agreed to break their silence for the podcast, in a bid to help get justice for Alex.

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

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