My Sister’s Secrets podcast: How a woman trapped her evil stepfather after years of sexual abuse

Abused for years, woman was told by police she had to get her stepfather to confess in a taped phone call.

The young woman glanced tentatively at the small microphone as she prepared to launch into the most harrowing confrontation of her life.

The next few moments would decide whether a monster was locked away in prison or allowed to roam free to attack other girls.

The detectives had been quite clear: she needed to capture every single word he uttered on “the wire” with which she had been fitted.

“It’s not like how you see it in the movies,” she tells The Australian’s investigative podcast My Sister’s Secrets, which is exploring the consequences of familial sexual abuse.

The young woman is interviewed in Episode 8, released on Friday afternoon, as part of the podcast’s examination of how perpetrators can be brought to justice.

“The police told me I had to be alone in the room. I had to do everything alone … (or) it would all be null and void.

“So I rang and it’s ringing and ringing and ringing. I’m thinking he is not going to pick up.

“But then he did.”

The call had been decades in the making.

The woman, whom The Australian has chosen not to identify, had been subjected to years of horrific sexual abuse by the man after he started dating her single mother.

“It was either just before I turned seven or just after I was seven,” she says. “The only reason I can remember that is … my birthday is in July. And when it first happened, I was wearing winter pyjamas.”

Like many other young victims, it began with groping after she was asked to sit on his lap.

“I don’t know why I was on his lap but, at that time, he was like my dad,” she says.

“He was the only dad I knew and I was cuddling up to him and that’s when he started.

“The next time I remember being assaulted I was in my bed and he came into my bedroom when my mum was in the shower.

“I just pretended like I was asleep. I kept my eyes closed and it was kind of like, ‘If you just pretend you’re asleep, it’ll stop. It’ll go away. You will go, he’ll go.’

And that’s the start of my nightmares.”

In the years that followed, the abuse progressed to rape before she eventually disclosed the abuse during a heated family argument.

Despite his fierce protestations, she says her mother immediately knew she was telling the truth and sent her boyfriend packing.

As they worked through the lifelong damage the man had caused, her mother posed a difficult question.

“Mum asked me what I wanted to do and I said I wanted to tell the police but I didn’t want to press charges,” she says.

“I was 14 and said, ‘I have literally been abused for half my life. I’m not ready to go into a courtroom and to stand up and to try and be the strong one. I just want to be a kid.’ I wasn’t ready.”

And she wouldn’t be for more than a decade. It was only after she had started a young family of her own that she decided she needed to seek justice for childhood of which she had been robbed and approached the police about having him charged.

Like all historic sex abuse allegations, she was told her claims would be difficult to prove in court – although, there was a way.

“The detective expressed to me that sometimes witness will get a warrant. to wear a wire,” she says. “And I said, ‘Can you do that?’ She said, ‘Yeah.’ And I said, ‘Put a wire on me, I’ll get you a confession.”

And that’s exactly want she did. Her stepfather is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty.

The woman reveals the full details of the dramatic call and how her legal case has played out in the latest instalment of My Sister’s Secrets – and how she wants other survivors to take strength in her story.

“I have to live with (what he did) for the rest of my life, as does everybody else in these situations,” she says. “It changes you. I don’t know who I could have become.

“But now there’s something of his I can take – and I’m going to take it.”

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• My Sister’s Secrets is the new investigative podcast from The Australian. Episode 8 is released on Friday afternoon in the Podcasts section of our app or at mysisterssecrets.com.au
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