Tortoise and the hare: child sexual abuse survivor spent decades trying to outrun his pain

For decades, child sexual abuse survivor Robert Boost tried to outrun his pain. He’s now come forward publicly, saying it’s time we stop putting the feelings of adults above the safety of children. HIS STORY >>

IT WAS like a game of tortoise and the hare.

Every time Robert Boost would try to outrun the trauma he’d suffered as a child, the tortoise would always catch up to him – eventually.

On Monday, Mr Boost told the child sexual abuse commission of inquiry that he spent decades holding in the secret that a trusted family friend – and senior staff member at his school – had sexually abused him over two years.

As a young boy about age five, his family had migrated from Belgium and was struggling with learning English.

They struck up a friendship with a local family, with the father in that family “charismatic, very in charge”.

In 1992, when Mr Boost was aged about nine, that man suggested Mr Boost come study at his school, “because I was still struggling with English”.

“He’d be able to keep an eye on me and make sure that things went smoothly,” Mr Boost said.

But instead, that man sexually abused him.

“I guess at the time, it didn’t feel like abuse,” Mr Boost, who now works as a firefighter, said.

“I was really torn.”

He kept quiet the whole time, not knowing who to turn to.

“Where do you break through to talk to someone about the perpetrator? Here’s someone who is a man in a powerful position at a school, someone your family trusts, someone who’s quite charismatic, very in charge. As a kid, how do you break past? There was just no way of doing that,” he said.

“Then post-abuse, the shame, the guilt and the fear of the perpetrator stopped me.”

As Mr Boost started growing up, he realised what had happened to him had been wrong.

“I really split into two different people, and since then I’ve basically been living two separate lives – one where I try and put on a facade and work through my life and become a firefighter, and the other one where I’m basically damaged and trying to keep it together enough to survive.”

Mr Boost turned to setting goals, and achieving them, to run away from his pain.

“I initially thought if I get a girlfriend, I will not feel this way anymore, and then for a moment, everything’s good,” he said.

“Then it’s tortoise and the hare – I run away and the tortoise catches up. And then it’s still there, I get a job, do my apprenticeship, become a builder, start teaching at TAFE – and every time the tortoise comes around and it’s like a black cloud around me.”

When Mr Boost achieved his goal of working with the Tasmania Fire Service, he thought the tortoise would be stopped forever.

“Then next minute the black cloud came back around me. I think at that point I really decided that I needed to do something, that it wasn’t going away.”

Mr Boost sought help from the Sexual Assault Support Service, and had a positive experience when he reported the abuse to Tasmania Police in 2020.

But his experience with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions wasn’t as positive, with his abuser never prosecuted due to a lack of corroborating evidence.

Mr Boost said the power imbalance he experienced as a child happened again, feeling his perpetrator was “protected by the system”.

“He did what he did when I was a little kid, and all that’s worked in his advantage and favour,” he said.

Mr Boost said he’d come forward to the commission because it was time to stop worrying about the feelings of adults at the expense of child safety.

“A lot gets said about protecting anonymity and making sure that people’s reputations aren’t hurt – and God forbid, someone might lose a job. But what’s not getting spoken about enough is that we need to protect the kids, and that’s our number one priority.”

If you or anyone you know needs help:

Lifeline: 13 11 14

Sexual Assault Support Service: 1800 697 877

Rural Alive and Well: 1300 4357 6283

Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636

Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800

Follow @ambervwilson