How Grace Tame’s sexual abuse unfolded and how she broke out

Grace Tame had just turned 15 when her teacher began grooming her. This is her harrowing story of sexual abuse and courage to turn her life around. WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Grace Tame had just turned 15-years-old, when her 58-year-old teacher, Nicolaas Bester, began grooming her, later committing between 20 and 30 penetrative sexual assaults against the school girl.

HOW GRACE TAME SECURED THE RIGHT TO SHARE HER STORY

A talented student and duel-scholarship holder at the elite St Michael’s Collegiate Girls’ school in Hobart, Grace had recently been hospitalized with anorexia, and was suffering from depression and low self esteem.

In the playground she had been bullied, and at home, normal routine was disrupted by the impending arrival of a new baby brother.

Now aged 24, Grace remembers the exact moment that the grooming began.

Tasmanian Grace Tame has won the right to release her name and speak about sexual abuse. Picture: PATRICK GEE

Following a morning medical appointment in April 2010, she had arrived to school late.

Her year 10 classmates were on a school excursion and as Grace wandered the playground alone, Nicolaas Bester - the head of Maths and Science - spotted her.

“We talked for a long time and after that day he became a confidant. He would give me advice about my anorexia and let me stay in his office whenever I wanted,” she said.

Gradually as Grace began to place more trust in him, he began to sexualize the relationship. He showed her movies featuring relationships with large age gaps including The Graduate and in both April and June 2010 he advised Grace to draw a nude sketch of herself as “therapy” for her low self-esteem.

Reluctantly Grace complied.

“Everything just snowballed from there,” she said.

“He also knew I’d been sexually abused as a child by an older child in a wardrobe closet.

“I told him because I trusted him. Instead he took that knowledge and used it against me in the most sick and sinister, cruel way.”

Tasmanian Grace Tame has won the right to release her name and speak about sexual abuse. Picture: PATRICK GEE

Bester recreated a scene reminiscent of the initial abuse and what followed after that was months of escalating sexual abuse - culminating in 20 to 30 instances of unlawful intercourse. The abuse often occurred on school grounds and at one point in the Principal’s own chair.

“I hated it. It was repulsive. I always closed my eyes. I didn’t want it to be real. I didn’t want to be doing and saying the things I was either, but I felt trapped,” she said.

“At the back of my mind were stories he’d told me about being in the army and killing people and feeling no regret.”

Bester was a South African soldier in the Angolan civil war

“He would also constantly say ‘you don’t want me to lose my job do you?’,” she said.

Grace began self harming and drinking.

To maintain the secrecy, Bester set up fake Facebook accounts - including one as a woman - and instructed Grace to tell anyone who saw them together that he was her father.

Meanwhile at home, Grace’s family were beside themselves with worry as they watched self-harming scars appear on her body.

“We were trying desperately to work it out and help her but we had no idea that abuse was happening during school hours when we assumed she was safe,” Grace’s mother Penny Plaschke said.

Nicolaas Ockert Bester being lead from the Supreme court.

Documents obtained under Right to Information show throughout the abuse numerous teachers at the school held concerns - including one teacher who had seen Grace and Bester at the school on the weekend in the science area and another who raised her concerns after witnessing Bester at Grace’s weekend workplace.

Tragically, in April 2010, before any sexual contact had ever occurred, Grace’s own parents had organised an urgent meeting with the school to discuss the escalating attention Bester was bestowing on their daughter.

The documents show that in that meeting Grace’s parents alerted the former Principal Robyn Kronenberg that Bester had given Grace a key to his office and was spending hours alone with their daughter unsupervised.

Following that meeting the Principal warned Bester that “his conduct was not professional and that he should not see Grace at all”.

At first Bester kept his distance as per the Principal’s directive.

But by June he had re-initiated contact and the sexual abuse then continued until December.

In the end, it was Grace herself who finally sounded the alarm and in April 2011 police became involved.

Grace’s father, Michael Tame, then confronted Bester who responded by saying “she wanted it”.

An arrest followed, upon which time police found 28 pieces of child pornography on Bester’s computer.

Bester was sentenced to two years and ten months jail for the crimes against Grace and the child pornography offense.

However in February 2015, following an early release, he re-offended by making child exploitation material.

He was sentenced to a further four months jail.

Grace says she refuses to be defined by these crimes.

After initially dropping out of school, she returned to complete Year 12 at a different school in Hobart where she achieved an ATAR of 98.3.

She has since completed two associate degrees in theatre arts and liberal arts from Santa Barbara City College.

She is now a distinguished artist, with high profile clients including comedian John Cleese, and said she intends to use her new-found voice to campaign for the rights of other sexual abuse survivors.

“Perpetrators thrive on victim’s silence and community misconceptions of these crimes. We need to shatter that stigma and silence.”

Grace’s full story will appear on the ABC’s 7.30 Report tonight.

IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW HAS BEEN IMPACTED BY SEXUAL ASSAULT SUPPORT IS AVAILABLE BY CALLING 1800 RESPECT ON 1800 737 732.

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Journalist Nina Funnell behind the #Letherspeak campaign in Hobart. Picture: PATRICK GEE