Shadow of Doubt podcast: timeline of a family’s disintegration
From the moment troubled teen Emily Johnson returned from an overseas trip, her family’s life was on a path to irrevocable schism.
They were branded ‘evil’ – a mother and father convicted of torturing and abusing their daughter as a sex slave. The pair, jailed in one of Australia’s most shocking child abuse cases, are now seeking a review of their convictions, backed by medical experts who believe the case was based on the ‘repressed memories’ of their daughter. Shadow of Doubt is a new podcast investigation by The Australian that’s uncovered new evidence not presented at the couple’s trial.
The first allegation
Emily Johnson, a troubled 17 year-old sports star from country NSW, returns from an overseas competition in a distraught state. She tells friends that since returning she has remembered being raped by a sports official in her hotel room.
The second allegation
While undergoing counselling for the alleged rape, Emily discloses that her father, Martin Johnson, has in the past conducted sports massages which felt inappropriate. After self-harming, she agrees to treatment in a psychiatric hospital.
Police notified
Emily’s counselling team notify police that she is disclosing “ongoing abuse” by her father, although in fact she has denied her father sexually abused her. Emily tells police about the overseas rape, but they decline to press charges on either report.
Hospital treatment
After escaping from the psychiatric ward, Emily is forcibly detained there for several months and heavily sedated. She self-harms and escapes on multiple occasions. Her mother, Susan, expresses concern about her treatment.
Return home
Four months after entering the hospital, Emily sends a letter to her mother saying she can’t wait to return home, adding “you are a wonderful mum”. Her psychiatrist approves her discharge.
More allegations
Six weeks after returning home, Emily discovers a secret about her father, and takes an overdose. In the psychiatric ward, she begins having memories of her father raping and assaulting her from the age of seven. She ceases contact with her parents.
Another accusation
While Emily is back in hospital, her sister Sarah tells their mother that she, too, has been sexually assaulted. Sarah tells police the perpetrator was a family friend who lived with the Johnsons when she was in her early teens.
Sister’s support
Emily undergoes months of intensive counselling in which she experiences dissociative flashbacks of extraordinary violence and sexual assault by her father extending over 10 years. She reveals some details to Sarah, who cuts off contact with her parents.
The first statements
A year after Emily was first hospitalised, she and Sarah tell police their father has sexually abused them for years. Sarah alleges her father molested her when he massaged her and was terrifyingly violent. Emily says her father brutally raped her in a carpark only days earlier, although a medical examination is normal and police again do not press any charges.
The first police interview
Martin and Susan Johnson speak to police, saying they are desperately worried after losing contact with Emily for more than a year. They say they are considering approaching the media about her mental health treatment. Police don’t tell them that Emily has made sexual assault allegations.
The second statements
After nearly two years of treatment, Emily gives police a detailed account of her memories of abuse, which now extend from age five to 18. She says her mother participated in the abuse, and her father tortured her with tools. The statement takes three months to complete and totals 78 pages.
The tools
While giving her statement, Emily provides police with a handwritten diary she says she wrote when she was 14. One entry describes her burying the tools her father used to torture her.
The raid
A month after Emily finishes her statement, police raid the Johnson family home and locate tools buried on the property, and a pair of girl’s underpants in a shed. Susan Johnson is charged with sexually abusing Emily and Sarah; Martin Johnson is living overseas.
More arrests
Nearly three years into her treatment, Emily leaves a counselling session in a daze after recalling a disturbing new memory about her mother, who by chance encounters Emily two hours later, wandering along a road towards their home. Police arrest Susan Johnson and Emily’s sister Rebecca, charging them both with interfering with a witness.
Father arrested
Martin Johnson is extradited from overseas nearly four years after his daughter first entered the mental health system. He is charged with 117 counts of abuse and refused bail.
Committed for trial
Committal proceedings begin in a local magistrate’s court, and lawyers for Martin and Susan Johnson request permission to question Emily. A magistrate refuses the request and they are committed for trial. The magistrate later befriends Emily and visits her in hospital.
Bankruptcy
The Johnsons wage a prolonged legal battle to get separate trials, and to gain access to their daughter’s counselling notes. They are denied separate trials, and the drawn-out proceedings bankrupt them. Legal Aid assigns them new lawyers only weeks before their trial is due to start.
The trial
The Johnsons’ trial begins in the NSW District Court, more than six years after their daughter first entered the mental health system. Emily has now been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, an illness which causes her to suffer multiple personality states. She and her sister Sarah testify for 20 days, detailing their allegations of abuse. Martin Johnson is found guilty on all counts and sentenced to 48 years in prison. Susan Johnson is found guilty of 13 charges and sentenced to 16 years’ jail. Their appeals are later rejected by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal and the High Court.
*The images used with this podcast investigation are for illustrative purposes only and bear no resemblance to the real people in this story, who cannot be identified for legal reasons.
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