My Sister’s Secrets podcast: ‘The most courageous thing I’ve ever heard’
Beautiful vet Alexandra Tapp stole horse trainer Damien Hunter’s heart – but he knew there was something beneath her smile, he says in a new episode of podcast My Sister’s Secrets.
Damien Hunter still carries a picture of Alexandra Tapp with him wherever he goes – he cannot bear to let go of the memories of the only woman he says he will ever love.
Mr Hunter’s deeply moving story is featured in episode three of The Australian’s gripping new investigative podcast My Sister’s Secrets, which will be released on Friday afternoon for The Australian’s subscribers.
The podcast, supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas, is investigating the precursors to Alex Tapp’s death by overdose in 2020. Her sister Virginia Tapscott and fellow journalist Steve Jackson are exploring the men in Alex’s family who sexually abused her, and how they got away with their crimes for so long.
Mr Hunter, a country horse trainer, first met Alex Tapp during a visit to his equine vet surgery in Ballarat eight years ago and instantly knew there was something special about Alex, a veterinarian.
To his surprise – and delight – it appeared she felt the same way about him too.
“I was there with one of my horses getting a tendon scan,” he says. “We’d just started the scan when Alex appeared.
“She was just standing there with her arms crossed and looking at the screen and she sort of caught my eye. The whole time I thought, ‘God there’s something about that girl that I just like.’
“I didn’t know if I should say anything to her or not though and I was kicking myself when I didn’t. Then, the next day, she added me on Facebook and I thought, ‘I cannot believe this. This can’t be happening’.
“Then the following weekend she asks me out for a drink. That’s how it all began to start with.”
Between their shared love of horses and travelling, a romance quickly blossomed but, just as Mr Hunter felt he was starting to get to know the real Alex, he felt her pull away.
“It was probably about four months into the relationship,” he tells My Sister’s Secrets.
“I just felt she was a bit different … and I’ll never forget: it was a Monday morning and she was getting ready for work and she was putting mascara on in the mirror in the bathroom.
“I walked in and said, ‘Alex, is everything all right between you and me?’ And she wouldn’t answer me. My heart was beating and I was thinking, ‘Shit, she doesn’t like me anymore.’
“I said, ‘You know, I can handle the truth, you know. It’s okay.’ And with that a tear ran down her cheek and she said, ‘I was sexually abused by my grandfather.’
“She’d hear her grandfather coming down the hallway or then come into the room and she would pretend she’s asleep. And wouldn’t move and then she said he would sexually abuse her … and he would sexually abuse her sister, Virginia, as well. And she’d have to watch in the shadows.
“It just blew me away I just couldn’t imagine that was the problem. I was like, ‘Oh shit, I don’t know what to say.’”
He quietly reassured Alex that no matter what horrors her past contained, they would be able to forge a new future together. Within a year, they were engaged.
But it was not long before he felt Alex slipping away once more; coming home from work one day in 2016 he found his new fiancee had overdosed on prescription medication in their living room.
He rushed her to hospital and watched in terror as medics fought to save her life.
She was still in a drug-induced delirium when she disclosed to him it was not just her grandfather who had taken advantage of her – she had also been raped by another trusted member of her family years later when she was at university.
“She didn’t have to tell me who. I knew. (Our) first Christmas together, I knew something was wrong. I said the man’s name, she said, ‘Yes’. I just knew something had happened. I was very angry.”
Like so many others in Alex’s life, Mr Hunter says he agreed to keep the assaults his fiancee had endured a secret as she feared the devastating repercussions disclosing them would have on her family.
A big, burly country bloke, he cannot help shedding tears when he thinks about Alex dying, all by herself, in a Newcastle motel room, hours away from her family, and blames himself for not being able to do more to help lay her demons to rest.
“She was braver than anyone else I have ever known,” he says. “But ultimately she couldn’t fight it alone and she couldn’t let anyone else fight for her.
“I can’t even comprehend what it must have been like for her as a child to have to tell her mum that she and her little sister were being abused by Granddad. She was always proud of having the courage to put a stop to that.
“There’s this one special moment … I’ll never forget. (When) she turned to me and said: ‘I was brave for saving Virginia.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you were.’ It’s a very special memory to me.
“It’s probably the most courageous thing you’ve ever heard of … I still wake up and the first thing I think about is that.”
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My Sister’s Secrets is the new investigative podcast from The Australian. Episode three will be released on Friday afternoon in the podcasts section of our app or at mysisterssecrets.com.au
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Subscribers hear episodes first and get access to all Virginia Tapscott and Steve Jackson’s groundbreaking journalism on this topic, plus much more. To check out our subscription packages, visit theaustralian.com.au/subscribe
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