Speaker 1: I didn't have the language at the time to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know this is wrong, or because it felt good
Speaker 1: to be loved and appreciated and to as a thirteen
Speaker 1: year old boy to have sex. You know, it was
Speaker 1: I thought I was the king of the world. And
Speaker 1: you've got this societal sort of grooming outside of that
Speaker 1: as well, where you've got porn categories like stepmom or
Speaker 1: teen and you think, oh, but it's in the media,
Speaker 1: and it's in you know, like I got lucky. I
Speaker 1: was better than any kid at school, you know, because
Speaker 1: I was scoring an older woman.
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm Kate lane Brook, host of No Filter. Today's
Speaker 2: guest is Harrison. James. Harrison has lived through a story
Speaker 2: that is almost impossible to comprehend. At thirteen years old,
Speaker 2: after years of upheaval in his family life, Harrison moved
Speaker 2: in with his father, hoping to reconnect with him and
Speaker 2: find the stability he'd been missing. Instead, he found himself
Speaker 2: at the center of a situation no child should ever
Speaker 2: have to navigate. Between the ages of thirteen and sixteen,
Speaker 2: Harrison was sexually abused by his stepmother, But one of
Speaker 2: the most confronting aspects of his story is that for
Speaker 2: years afterwards, he didn't fully understand what had happened to
Speaker 2: him was abuse. Like many survivors of grooming, Harrison believed
Speaker 2: he was in a relationship. At fifteen, his stepmother gave
Speaker 2: birth to a daughter who was biologically his child. For years,
Speaker 2: Harrison lived with the secret that the little girl everyone
Speaker 2: believed was his sister was actually his daughter. In this conversation,
Speaker 2: Harrison speaks openly about grooming, trauma, abuse, fatherhood, family estrangement,
Speaker 2: mental health, and the long journey towards understanding what happened
Speaker 2: to him. We also talk about the daughter he has
Speaker 2: scene for years, the father who still doesn't believe him,
Speaker 2: and how he transformed his own experience into a campaign
Speaker 2: that helped change laws across Australia. While we don't discuss
Speaker 2: child sexual abuse in graphic detail, it is central to
Speaker 2: this conversation. So please this and mindfully. This is Harrison
Speaker 2: James on No Filter. Harrison James, welcome to No Filter.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me on Cake.
Speaker 2: I have read your book, and well thank you for
Speaker 2: writing this. The book is called Transform Your Pain into Purpose.
Speaker 2: You need to have pain to transform in order to
Speaker 2: transform it into purpose, and that certainly you have had
Speaker 2: plenty of in your kind of relatively short life. And
Speaker 2: it started when you were a young boy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I was thirteen. I'm twenty six now, by
Speaker 1: the way.
Speaker 2: Okay, so even if I was to take you further back,
Speaker 2: or you were to take us further back to your
Speaker 2: growing up, what was Harrison like then?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, No, I was quite a reserved and shy
Speaker 1: kid and I but I was also super creative and
Speaker 1: I think you know, I love drawing. I loved all
Speaker 1: of that. But there was also a facade. I learned
Speaker 1: from a very early age what a tumultual household was like,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what primed me for the sexual
Speaker 1: abuse that I ended up experiencing at thirty because there was.
Speaker 2: Always a violence in your home. Yeah, so I've traded
Speaker 2: by your father.
Speaker 1: Correct, Yeah, so my father was physically abusive towards your mother,
Speaker 1: towards and the kids.
Speaker 2: And also okay, and there were four.
Speaker 1: Four there's four children. I'm the eldest of four. So
Speaker 1: I can't speak for the other kids because they're going
Speaker 1: their own way about things, which is more fine. But
Speaker 1: for me, I experienced you know, physical abuse, emotional abused,
Speaker 1: mental abuse, all those things. He was a very violent man.
Speaker 1: He would come through the house like a hurricane most
Speaker 1: of the time. You know, I talk about it in
Speaker 1: the book. You know, there was this notion of I
Speaker 1: wasn't good enough because I was into acting and art,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was sort of that sort of kid.
Speaker 1: And I remember my father and Fury one time, like
Speaker 1: he would throw his full weight onto my neck and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be able to breathe. Sometimes he catapulted a
Speaker 1: fork across the room. It landed in my eye. And
Speaker 1: so there was a myriad of things where it was
Speaker 1: a very violent household and it was like stepping on
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you're in a minefield essentially.
Speaker 2: Because I think you can you can break a child
Speaker 2: more easily than you can make a child. Yes, so
Speaker 2: you learn at a very young age too, do what
Speaker 2: retreating to your sell for to always be on guard?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and it's also it's a phenomenon. So we
Speaker 1: hear about flight and fight all the time. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: there's this other phenomenon called fawning. And I was constantly fawning,
Speaker 1: which is where you retreat into yourself and sort of
Speaker 1: cater to the adults around you or the people around you,
Speaker 1: I should say, to keep them having to keep the peace.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and like I was always preempting, you know,
Speaker 1: a violent blow up or you know, the worst possible
Speaker 1: thing that could happen. So I was always ten steps ahead,
Speaker 1: even as a child, and that formed into you know,
Speaker 1: anxiety and all these awful things where you're constantly preempting
Speaker 1: the worst possible outcome to save yourself. And you would
Speaker 1: I was constantly reverse engineering my next move.
Speaker 2: Right of course, Yeah, because you even though the pattern
Speaker 2: is unpredictable, you know that it's coming. So you are
Speaker 2: living in this state of anticipation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and fear.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And you know that's common amongst survivors of domestic and
Speaker 1: family violence. It's you know, not just amongst children too,
Speaker 1: but amongst women in domestic violence relationships. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a common fawning is a common you know, retreat practice
Speaker 1: to ensure that you're safe. Yeah, and that's how I
Speaker 1: was raised. And I think that's sort of that progression
Speaker 1: and that slow erosion of my own identity. I didn't
Speaker 1: have my own identity, but that sort of primed me
Speaker 1: for the sexual abuse I went on to experience.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, when you were. So you're talking in your book
Speaker 2: about when you were eight, one of many incidents with
Speaker 2: your mum where you tried to come to her aid,
Speaker 2: what was that feeling for you as a little boy,
Speaker 2: because you knew that you would obviously incur the wrath
Speaker 2: and fury of your dad, but your loyalty and your.
Speaker 1: Love for my mom. Yeah, for your mom, it just
Speaker 1: came through and I remember, yeah, I was on the
Speaker 1: thing that you're talking about with in the book was
Speaker 1: when I was sitting on the top the top bunk
Speaker 1: and my mother. My dad came home in this drunken
Speaker 1: rage of fury and his head was like bright red.
Speaker 1: I remember it being like bee troop red almost, and
Speaker 1: he was abusing Mum and Mum I think mum has
Speaker 1: felt Mum was pregnant, and I felt as though she
Speaker 1: thought coming into our room would put him at bay.
Speaker 1: But then he took his belt off corner and went
Speaker 1: to but I jumped on his back from the top bunk,
Speaker 1: and I remember, I don't remember what like, I don't
Speaker 1: remember a specific you know, memory or thought that went
Speaker 1: processed through my head to want me to do that.
Speaker 1: I think it was just more instinctual that I wanted
Speaker 1: to protect my mother, and people would always tell me,
Speaker 1: even from a very young age, oh, you're so, you're
Speaker 1: so wise beyond your years. You're this, you're very mature.
Speaker 1: And looking back on that now with hindsight, it's all
Speaker 1: just you know, that fawning that as I was talking
Speaker 1: about that preempting of abuse, that you know, had that
Speaker 1: thing of survival. I had to survive. It was a
Speaker 1: survival mechanism to be like that, because it was the
Speaker 1: only way you could get through those moments.
Speaker 2: But even in even though you had learned what by
Speaker 2: the age of eight, what the outcome would be, you
Speaker 2: still showed this instinctive bravery, which I'm going to say
Speaker 2: I think has proven to be kind of a template
Speaker 2: for you in life.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you.
Speaker 2: But it's amazing, isn't it, Because it's not always the
Speaker 2: case and you're talking. Also, you mentioned this in your book,
Speaker 2: and this is well known that a lot of people
Speaker 2: who have lived with abuse, sexual abuse, because of the
Speaker 2: shame that's attached to it in a myriad of reasons,
Speaker 2: take a long time to come out, to say it
Speaker 2: out loud, to walk in the light.
Speaker 1: It's an average of twenty one and a half years
Speaker 1: before a survivor of child sexual abuse will ever come
Speaker 1: forward with what they've experienced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we understand why. Yeah, but for you, that
Speaker 2: was not the path.
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't. I think it wasn't the path because
Speaker 1: of circumstances outside of my control. Really, after experiencing child
Speaker 1: sexual abuse from the ages of thirteen to sixteen, and
Speaker 1: then you know, staying quiet about it because my daughter
Speaker 1: was involved as well, which we'll get into, I didn't
Speaker 1: even know it was abuse what I was experiencing, even
Speaker 1: at nineteen, after all those years, I thought I was
Speaker 1: complicit in the relationship with my stepmother.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's go back a little bit. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: the by this stage, your mum has four children with
Speaker 2: your dad. Yes, they divorced when your team at that point,
Speaker 2: did the divorce almost feel like a relief?
Speaker 1: No, because there were moments my father would just come
Speaker 1: around unannounced and bang on the glass, and we mom
Speaker 1: would just draw the curtains and we'd be watching TV
Speaker 1: and we turn off the volume so it would drown
Speaker 1: out my dad banging on the glass and hurling abuse
Speaker 1: at my mother.
Speaker 2: Right, So there was no sense of safety or release, No,
Speaker 2: nothing like that. It was always acrimonious between them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and it wasn't my mother as well. You know,
Speaker 1: she was subjected to violence for many, many years and
Speaker 1: post that divorce, you know, there was a moment where
Speaker 1: on my twelfth birthday where I woke up to my
Speaker 1: mum she was bruised and beaten and taken to a hospital.
Speaker 1: And you know, from your dad, from my dad, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he followed her home one night. She was at a
Speaker 1: party and he followed her and she couldn't get in
Speaker 1: the front door us four kids with my auntie, so
Speaker 1: she went down into the granny flat at the back
Speaker 1: and he followed it in the granny flat and beat
Speaker 1: her to a pulp. And that was the case that
Speaker 1: went to court where he got good character references.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll get to that as well. So then you're thirteen,
Speaker 2: your dad remarries a woman from the Philippines. Where did
Speaker 2: they meet?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. He would travel to the Philippines
Speaker 1: regularly during that period of divorce, I believe, and they
Speaker 1: met over there and he brought her back to Australia
Speaker 1: and married her, and she got a visa and everything
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: And then so that from that period from when you
Speaker 2: were ten to thirteen, you weren't living with your dad.
Speaker 1: No, No, I'd see him on occasion if he was
Speaker 1: picking up like my siblings, but they'd come back within
Speaker 1: the within the next few hours because he would he
Speaker 1: would do something that would upset them.
Speaker 2: Right, So you pick up your siblings but not pick
Speaker 2: up you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I just refused to go. I've always felt
Speaker 1: uncomfortable going and stuff like that. And then by the
Speaker 1: time I was thirteen, oh, you know, I was in
Speaker 1: year eight. I you know, I had no I was
Speaker 1: raised by my mother, my grandmother and all my aunties,
Speaker 1: so it was very you know, it was a maternal
Speaker 1: sort of environment that I was in constantly. So I
Speaker 1: was really striving for some male you know.
Speaker 2: Yes, of a young boy emerging into manhood. The hunger
Speaker 2: for a man.
Speaker 1: Is is it's real?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's real, and I think it's underestimated.
Speaker 1: Yes. So, And because my father had gone, I hadn't
Speaker 1: seen him for so long by that point, or I
Speaker 1: saw him sparingly. I felt as though that was my
Speaker 1: only option and or maybe he's changed. So then we
Speaker 1: started going to the gym together. And I hate any
Speaker 1: sort of physical activity. I don't do sport or anything
Speaker 1: that he's into. But going to the gym together was
Speaker 1: a way for us to connect, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: he's been really nice to me. Now, how nice is this?
Speaker 1: This is all I've ever wanted. Our dad really has changed.
Speaker 1: And then that's when I decided to move in with him.
Speaker 1: And you know, being the eldest of four in a household,
Speaker 1: you know, it's quite an attractive offer to go live
Speaker 1: with my dad, have my own bedroom, be right near
Speaker 1: the beach, one bus away from school, like it was.
Speaker 1: It was sort of a no brainer at that time.
Speaker 1: And I had this sense of freedom away from my
Speaker 1: siblings and I was with dad. He's been really nice
Speaker 1: to me. Things have changed. But his wife was in
Speaker 1: the house, and initially I didn't have that. I didn't
Speaker 1: have any interaction with her.
Speaker 2: Really, did you know her at all before?
Speaker 1: Not before?
Speaker 2: So you weren't at the wedding or no, it was nothing, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was nothing like that, right, So she was a
Speaker 2: fae to complay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is my new wife.
Speaker 2: So when you're move in a stranger, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And she was just very unassuming. She was sweet and
Speaker 1: soft spoken and just sort of kept to herself really
Speaker 1: and then eventually she wanted to sort of she offered
Speaker 1: to take me to the movies.
Speaker 2: How long how long have you been living there.
Speaker 1: At the last, oh a fortnight? Not that much of all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: less than a month. I could definitely say that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she often to take me to the movies, and
Speaker 1: I went, oh, okay, you know, my stepmother as she's
Speaker 1: trying to reach out and establish a relationship because I'll
Speaker 1: be living here now, she wants to do something friendly
Speaker 1: and nice. And we went to a movie theater and
Speaker 1: saw A Step Up. Yeah, And we were watching that
Speaker 1: and then that's when the sort of touching on the
Speaker 1: leg and the hand holding and the I remember her
Speaker 1: rubbing my legs throughout the film, like going inside my
Speaker 1: leg yeah, yeah, and and and then you know, we
Speaker 1: were hugging. And when we got the bus home and
Speaker 1: walked there's a hill that we had to walk up
Speaker 1: to get to the apartment that we were living in
Speaker 1: with my dad in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney, and
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, I was putting my arm around
Speaker 1: her and she was hugging me. And then the first
Speaker 1: thing I remember her specifically saying, oh, do you you
Speaker 1: hug your real mum like this, and it was just
Speaker 1: now with hindsight, I understand it was that she was
Speaker 1: trying to establish that feeling of the fact that I
Speaker 1: was complicit in the in the touching, and it was
Speaker 1: just a little thing.
Speaker 2: But that you're doing it. Yeah, you're the one that's hugging.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, And then soon after that it progressed
Speaker 1: to kissing, and then you know, more explicit things and
Speaker 1: then yeah, obviously sexual abuse as well.
Speaker 2: So wow.
Speaker 1: So but it's a gradual erosion of boundaries. And that's
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to get at. It's not this when
Speaker 1: people say sexual abuse or sexual assault, people think of
Speaker 1: this really hyper dramatic, which sometimes sometimes it is, and
Speaker 1: I never deny that, but.
Speaker 2: Usual context of this, it's classic.
Speaker 1: Grooming, yes, exactly, and especially with child sexual abuse. You know,
Speaker 1: these perpetrators, they're experts, are what they do. It's a
Speaker 1: gradual erosion of boundaries, making the victim feel complicit. And
Speaker 1: that's why when a victim finally speaks out, there was
Speaker 1: so much shame shrouded around it because they're grappling with
Speaker 1: the fact, or even I was grappling with the fact,
Speaker 1: Oh no, I wanted this as well. Yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: You don't have a vocabulary. You don't have a sexual
Speaker 2: or an emotional vocabulary for any of this.
Speaker 1: At this point, I don't even have a developed mind yet,
Speaker 1: let alone the language to be able to speak about it.
Speaker 2: How much older was she than you?
Speaker 1: Yep, so she was in her mid to late twenties
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 2: And how was her relationship with your dad? Was that
Speaker 2: like marked by violence as well?
Speaker 1: She would tell me that it was, and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprised if it was. But part of me thinks,
Speaker 1: was she telling me that for me to feel a
Speaker 1: sort of you know, sensitivity towards her, feel like I
Speaker 1: need to help it, like keep me in the loop.
Speaker 1: So I can't verify, but I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: it was either, because I'm Dad's history as well.
Speaker 2: So now you're in this position that you're basically living
Speaker 2: with someone who has predatory sexual intent towards you, but
Speaker 2: you're being double gained because you're a thirteen year old
Speaker 2: old boy, freshly pubescent with all of the confusion and
Speaker 2: those attendant urges and whatever. And it's well documented that
Speaker 2: that's one of the things that's often attributed I think
Speaker 2: with shame of sexual assault survivors sexual abuse survivors, is
Speaker 2: that because there's a certain degree of pleasure. Of course
Speaker 2: there is, that's the whole point of you know, especially.
Speaker 1: For young boys, there's actually a physical sort of embodiment
Speaker 1: of pleasure, which is, you know, yes, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be crashed, but like in the peanis and you
Speaker 1: start to feel that guilt and shame. Well, how was
Speaker 1: I aroused? You know if it wasn't sexual abuse, And
Speaker 1: that's a common trope, but the abuse part is the
Speaker 1: coercion and the grooming to get to that point as
Speaker 1: well as the physical aspect. But there's so many elements.
Speaker 2: To it in that So when you came back for
Speaker 2: it from the movies that night and you go into
Speaker 2: the house, how is she? How is she the next morning?
Speaker 2: Like when you're in front of your dad, how is
Speaker 2: she towards you?
Speaker 1: Well, it was interesting because my dad was starting his
Speaker 1: company at the time that he runs at the moment,
Speaker 1: and it was at the time of establishing that company
Speaker 1: he was gone from early hours of the morning till
Speaker 1: late hours of the evening. So the sexual abuse occurred,
Speaker 1: you know, before and after school, and my dad wasn't
Speaker 1: in the house. When my dad was in the house,
Speaker 1: we would just be it was normal. It wasn't like, yeah,
Speaker 1: of facade essentially to play pretend in front of my dad.
Speaker 1: And we were having this illicit affair behind my dad's back,
Speaker 1: and it was true love and you know, nobody else
Speaker 1: will understand it, so we can't tell anyone. And she
Speaker 1: would tell me, you know, if you say anything, you
Speaker 1: and I can both go to jail. And I remember
Speaker 1: when a police car would go buy me in my
Speaker 1: school uniform in my backpack as a thirteen year old,
Speaker 1: fourteen year old kid, my stomach would drop because I think, oh,
Speaker 1: the cops are going to find out I've done the
Speaker 1: wrong thing. And you know, it was it was an
Speaker 1: awful experience.
Speaker 2: How long between the initial the movie yep and the
Speaker 2: first kind of sexual Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was a matter of two weeks. Yeah, So it
Speaker 1: went from the movies the next morning. You know. My
Speaker 1: stepmother was a cleaner for my dad's company, and she
Speaker 1: would get the bus to the city and I would
Speaker 1: get on the same bus because my school was on
Speaker 1: the way, my high school, so we'd get on the
Speaker 1: bus together and we'd make sure to go to the
Speaker 1: back row, so no one could see her holding my
Speaker 1: hand or touching my leg or kissing me in the
Speaker 1: backseat of the bus. And that's what the next morning was.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if you can answer this or that,
Speaker 2: but do you think a part of the part of
Speaker 2: the reason that it made it possible for her to
Speaker 2: pray on you, aside from the fact that she had
Speaker 2: the power in this house anyway, was because of what
Speaker 2: you had experienced at the hands of your dad.
Speaker 1: Oh, undoubtedly. Yeah, what I experienced, the violence that I experienced,
Speaker 1: And I want to remind you as well, by this point,
Speaker 1: my dad already become violent again. Right, Yeah, So like
Speaker 1: that feeling of oh, my dad's change, that went away
Speaker 1: very quickly.
Speaker 2: Right, But what was the first can you remember the first?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: I can't recall the experience where you went, Oh, I'd
Speaker 2: get screened out and called a puff and you know,
Speaker 2: an idiot every day, or you know, he'd thrown me
Speaker 2: about or hit me or whatever like it was.
Speaker 1: It was just back to usual how it was when
Speaker 1: I was a kid.
Speaker 2: You were still a kid.
Speaker 1: I still was a kid.
Speaker 2: He's still a kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But the thing is, well, the violence that I
Speaker 1: experienced it in my household as a younger boy. Primed
Speaker 1: me for the sexual abuse, and my parents' divorce primed
Speaker 1: me for my stepmother to interject and groom me because
Speaker 1: as a kid, you know, I felt as though I
Speaker 1: needed to take a side in my parents' divorce when
Speaker 1: my dad's telling me my mother's the worst in the world,
Speaker 1: and my mom's you know, going through this violence and
Speaker 1: expressing frustration at my father. You know, one day I
Speaker 1: think he's not a great dad. The next day I
Speaker 1: think my mother's awful. And it's this pendulum and there's
Speaker 1: no middle middle ground where I can hold both truths
Speaker 1: at one time. Because I'm being different. Messaging is coming
Speaker 1: to me all the time, your disputed territory. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, I felt as though I had to be
Speaker 1: absolutist in choosing which side I was on. So when
Speaker 1: I moved in with my dad, I cut my mother off.
Speaker 1: And that's why my mother didn't see so much of
Speaker 1: this for so long, you know, my biological mother.
Speaker 2: Yes, and so how much contact would you have with her?
Speaker 1: It was very minimal during this period of time, and
Speaker 1: you know, I would just constantly cut her off as well.
Speaker 1: I keep things to a minimum. Short, I would shun
Speaker 1: her off because I knew if my mum got me,
Speaker 1: she would pick up on something. She knows who her
Speaker 1: son is. And yeah, So that that feeling of having
Speaker 1: to choose a side and not feeling loved in any
Speaker 1: way and feeling abandoned, that was I was primed for
Speaker 1: my stepmother to come in and make me feel loved
Speaker 1: and seen and heard. And for the first time in
Speaker 1: a very long time, I did feel that. I felt
Speaker 1: like an adult really loves me. Now I'm loved, I'm appreciated.
Speaker 2: But it was Yeah, when with the sexual nature of
Speaker 2: the relationship that she initiated with you, what what was
Speaker 2: the confusion within that or was there none? Did it
Speaker 2: feel like an extension of what she was saying that
Speaker 2: she loved you and you felt this love for her?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Or did you sometimes feel that you were like you
Speaker 2: obviously knew it wasn't right.
Speaker 1: Yes, well I knew it wasn't right, but not from
Speaker 1: the point of an older woman's abusing me or having
Speaker 1: sex with me what I thought. But I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: we're doing something behind dad's back. We're having an affair
Speaker 1: behind dad's back. And that's because I was so young
Speaker 1: and didn't have the language to explain what the hell
Speaker 1: was going on as a child, you simplify it, you know,
Speaker 1: you say, oh, yeah, this is love, or you say
Speaker 1: this is an affair, or you say these simple time
Speaker 1: to try and make sense of it, because you don't
Speaker 1: have I didn't have the language at the time to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, this is wrong, or because it felt good
Speaker 1: to be loved and appreciated and to as a thirteen
Speaker 1: year old boy to have sex, you know it. It
Speaker 1: was like I thought I was the king of the world.
Speaker 1: And you've got this societal sort of grooming outside of
Speaker 1: that as well, where you've got porn categories like step
Speaker 1: mum or teen and you think, oh, but it's in
Speaker 1: the media, and it's in you know, like I got lucky.
Speaker 1: I was I was better than any kid at school,
Speaker 1: you know, because I was I was scoring an older woman.
Speaker 1: And that's the sort of societal grooming aspect of it
Speaker 1: as well. There's societal pressure on men specifically. I feel
Speaker 1: to feel as though that any form of you know,
Speaker 1: anything that's sexually loaded, whether it be abuse or a
Speaker 1: comment or whatever, is the ultimate form of social currency
Speaker 1: for men.
Speaker 2: Because there wasn't a There wasn't a toe for you,
Speaker 2: not like a constant when you felt like you were
Speaker 2: in love with your stepmother, did you feel that you
Speaker 2: were somehow asserting yourself against your dad.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And that was it was this thing of you know, oh,
Speaker 1: we have a relationship, we have a thing of true
Speaker 1: love that no one else will be able to understand
Speaker 1: because if dad finds out, he's going to he's going
Speaker 1: to abuse us or hit us and be violent. So
Speaker 1: we can't tell him. And by the time on eighteen
Speaker 1: we can figure it out and run away and have
Speaker 1: our own lives.
Speaker 2: And which what you thought was going to happen, because
Speaker 2: she was the love of your life.
Speaker 1: Yes, she was so calculating and telling me all these things.
Speaker 2: And what would she say to you?
Speaker 1: Oh, she was everything that you would gain from a
Speaker 1: from a normal sort of romantic relationship. It was just
Speaker 1: it was same sort of dynamic I remember, Kate, there
Speaker 1: was whenever my dad was around and we hadn't sort
Speaker 1: of because we were putting on this facade and not
Speaker 1: being interacting in front of my dad. If we were
Speaker 1: sitting down and watching TV, altogether as a family. I
Speaker 1: say in loose terms, but she would like put her
Speaker 1: She would trace two to four E on my on
Speaker 1: my back or my arm or something too. Two meant
Speaker 1: love you for E meant forever. So it was just
Speaker 1: like this constant thing.
Speaker 2: Of while your dad's sitting on the Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: I'm here, I'm not going anywhere. You're still in the loop.
Speaker 1: It's just like those little things like that just kept
Speaker 1: you hooked and kept you with Yeah.
Speaker 2: Of course, because these the illicit nature of itself is
Speaker 2: also thrilling, yes, terrifying, but thrilling yes.
Speaker 1: And also there's she's you know she you'd lies this
Speaker 1: sort of image of or me or like, your dad's
Speaker 1: not very nice to me, so I feel like I
Speaker 1: have to stick up for her. So that puts tension
Speaker 1: between my dad and I or further is it?
Speaker 2: And did you do that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, without a doubt, I was jealous of my father.
Speaker 1: Wives here living in my position, right, but that should
Speaker 1: be me, yes, And so that there was this constant
Speaker 1: state of rivalry between my dad and I. It was
Speaker 1: never spoken about that I hated him because of how
Speaker 1: he treated my stepmother. For example, what she was telling
Speaker 1: me how he treated right. Again, I can't verify if
Speaker 1: it was true.
Speaker 2: And also, there were just three of you living in
Speaker 2: an apartment or a house.
Speaker 1: To an apartment a flat.
Speaker 2: Did you hear them having sex or you were aware
Speaker 2: of their sexual relation? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like I knew when the when their bedroom door was closed,
Speaker 1: something was going on, right. So, like there's this fury
Speaker 1: that's invigorating in me because I know what's going on
Speaker 1: there with someone I love good jealous, but I had to.
Speaker 1: I had to. I had to, you know, save face
Speaker 1: and keep the story going so her secret didn't get out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's incredibly an intense environment. And you know, I
Speaker 1: was getting messages on Facebook Messenger from her, you know,
Speaker 1: saying she would always she would always finish off by
Speaker 1: saying I love you, and then I would say I
Speaker 1: love you too, and then she go, now delete these messages.
Speaker 1: So every message was deleted because I thought I was
Speaker 1: saving the woman I loved. And then when my daughter
Speaker 1: gets involved, which will get into you know, that just
Speaker 1: creates another layer of assertion as to why I need
Speaker 1: to remain silent and protect my stepmother and my daughter.
Speaker 2: I'll be back with Harrison after this short break. Tell
Speaker 2: me about when she tells you that she's pregnant.
Speaker 1: So, as I speak about in the book, I was
Speaker 1: on the bus home from school. My dad and stepmother
Speaker 1: went on a holiday to Thailand, so not the Philippines
Speaker 1: where she's from, but Thailand, and they were on a
Speaker 1: holiday and she found out she was pregnant. Over there.
Speaker 1: I get a text on Facebook messager saying I'm pregnant.
Speaker 1: I'm on the school bus, like literally in my school
Speaker 1: uniform going home. I'm passing Waverley College in Bronte, which
Speaker 1: is not my school, but I remember being there. There's
Speaker 1: the East Leagues Club and the netball courts that I
Speaker 1: was literally on the bus at the back. Every kids
Speaker 1: are carrying on, throwing shit at each other and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I'm there looking at my phone. I'm pregnant, and
Speaker 1: my stomach jobs. I respond, don't tell dad. She goes,
Speaker 1: I already have. He thinks it's his. And then I went, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: well that's probably the best outcome, and then yeah, and
Speaker 1: then I had to. Then I just when they came
Speaker 1: home eventually, yeah, just pretended, oh my god, well I'm
Speaker 1: having a little half sister and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: just played along with it to avoid being caught out
Speaker 1: once again.
Speaker 2: You must have had every single emotion conflicting with every
Speaker 2: other single emotion.
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, without a doubt. It was a very confusing time,
Speaker 1: an incredibly difficult time. But also, Kate, I knew that
Speaker 1: I even then, So I found out my stepmother was
Speaker 1: pregnant when I was at the start, when I just
Speaker 1: turned fifteen, and my daughter was born just before a
Speaker 1: few months before I turned sixteen, So that was the
Speaker 1: year where we found out. My daughter was born in
Speaker 1: December of twenty fifteen, and I turned sixteen on the
Speaker 1: seventh of January in twenty sixteen, which is where the
Speaker 1: last act of sexual abuse happened. But for those years
Speaker 1: when my daughter, when my daughter was for when my
Speaker 1: stepmother was pregnant, when my daughter was first born, it
Speaker 1: was just that constant state of playing pretend and keeping
Speaker 1: face and keeping the story going of you know, half
Speaker 1: sisters on the way really excited about it, I let
Speaker 1: I wasn't. My stepmother didn't allow me to go to
Speaker 1: any of the appointments like during the pregnancy because that
Speaker 1: would be too suspicious. Is he there? Yes? Did your
Speaker 1: dad go to those appointments? Oh? Here and that my
Speaker 1: dad's not very Yeah, he's not like that at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it was just a corruption of truth, but also
Speaker 1: was a corruption of my experience of fatherhood. I mean,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have been experiencing fatherhood at fifteen years old.
Speaker 1: In the first place. I didn't really have a choice
Speaker 1: in it. My stepmother told me for years that she
Speaker 1: couldn't fall pregnant, and that gave me reassurances when the
Speaker 1: sexual abuse was occurring, but then she did end up
Speaker 1: falling pregnant, and essentially, yeah, it was. It corrupted my
Speaker 1: experience of fatherhood. It corrupted my experience of love and
Speaker 1: safety and choice and those are you know, have far
Speaker 1: reaching ramifications that I've still been dealing with to this
Speaker 1: day and I've only just come to terms with. Really.
Speaker 2: So the day that your daughter was born.
Speaker 1: Yes, I was doing an electrician apprenticeship. I was on
Speaker 1: a ladder hanging up a sign on Cloverly Road and
Speaker 1: I got a text saying with a photo of my daughter.
Speaker 2: And who sent that you're at mother?
Speaker 1: Yeah right, and yeah, as soon as soon as I
Speaker 1: finished my shift, I went straight to the hospital to
Speaker 1: go see her.
Speaker 2: And was your dad there?
Speaker 1: Yeah? He was there, So you met your daughter, but
Speaker 1: pretended it was my half sister with.
Speaker 2: Them in front of the man who also believed it
Speaker 2: was his daughter who was also your father.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's very confusing. It's a multi layered story. And
Speaker 1: how did you.
Speaker 2: How did you compartmentalize all of that?
Speaker 1: Again, just that childlike sort of way of saying, this
Speaker 1: is a secret I've got to keep.
Speaker 2: I've just safety first, going to be.
Speaker 1: Everything else was just noise. It was just keep quiet, yeah,
Speaker 1: safe face. This is my half sister. When dad is
Speaker 1: out of the picture, when he's out of the house. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's my daughter. This is the love of my life
Speaker 1: that I'm with as well. So that was the dynamic
Speaker 1: when my dad was away the real family was here.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of anxiety.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course there was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did your stepmother feel any of that anxiety or.
Speaker 1: To an extent that was projected onto me? And that's
Speaker 1: why I felt that I had to keep that secret.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there was definitely that feeling from her, But
Speaker 1: also there's I can say there's that feeling emanating from her,
Speaker 1: which is true to an extent, but there's also just
Speaker 1: an audacity to be able to do it as well,
Speaker 1: which you can't deny, there's a there's a there's a
Speaker 1: blatant dismissal of Yeah, care say like all of that.
Speaker 2: And to embroil a child in your what what whatever,
Speaker 2: however she whatever game she's playing, whatever that is. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but how was the moment when you saw your daughter?
Speaker 1: I had to hold tears back because I knew that
Speaker 1: if I cried too much it would be suspicious, Like
Speaker 1: my mind is constantly operating in that way. Can I
Speaker 1: act like this right now or is that? Is that
Speaker 1: going to unravel?
Speaker 2: Did you get to hold her?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I got to hold her, and that was special. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wanted to burst into tears, but as I said,
Speaker 1: I couldn't. But yeah, I also remember her my dad's
Speaker 1: Can I get my height from my mother? My biological mother?
Speaker 1: My dad's short ass? I remember my daughter actually had
Speaker 1: exceptionally long arms and legs. And that wasn't even to
Speaker 1: tell tale signed for my dad. He was so buried
Speaker 1: in ego and yeah, just buried his head in the
Speaker 1: sand with it that he didn't Yeah, he's a fool.
Speaker 2: So you go back to the family home. It's a
Speaker 2: family of four. Now, what role do you play there?
Speaker 1: I'm just the I'm just the heavily involved older brother, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: just in love with his half sister.
Speaker 2: And what's going on between you and your stepmother when?
Speaker 1: So the sexual abuse ceased for a while. So, as
Speaker 1: I said, my daughter was born in early December of
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. My birthday was on the seventh of January
Speaker 1: twenty sixteenth, and that's when the last act of sexual
Speaker 1: abuse occurred. And then it.
Speaker 2: Ceased there And why did it cease?
Speaker 1: So because it was my birthday. My stepmother performed a
Speaker 1: sexual act on me, and it just happened to stop there.
Speaker 1: We like in the kitchen, in the kitchen, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the kitchen, as I said in the book.
Speaker 1: And essentially, eventually, you know, a little bit after that,
Speaker 1: we ended up going to the Philippines to show the
Speaker 1: baby off to my stepmother's side of the family, right,
Speaker 1: And I went along on that trip. It was the
Speaker 1: first time to the Philippines. And you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: nearly sixteen year old boy, and you know, my father
Speaker 1: went out drinking and I went along with him. I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, he allowed me to go to
Speaker 1: the clubs and stuff like that with him. And anyway,
Speaker 1: my stepmother would stay at the hotel with the baby
Speaker 1: most of the time. I remember, you know, I'd never
Speaker 1: really drank before. This is the first time I drank
Speaker 1: in clubs, and you know, I remember being so drunk
Speaker 1: that I ended up, you know, in the bathroom and
Speaker 1: vomiting and spewing, and and yeah, it was just no
Speaker 1: place that a sixteen year old should be. And there
Speaker 1: was my stepmother's sister brought along a friend, and the
Speaker 1: sister and the friend, my dad, his friend and me
Speaker 1: would all go clubbing all night for these two weeks
Speaker 1: we were in the Philippines and I was there and essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, throughout the span of that two weeks, my
Speaker 1: stepmother's sister's friend who came along, ended up ended up
Speaker 1: raping me twice. I was sexually assaulted twice by that woman.
Speaker 1: So essentially, so yeah, I was sexually assaulted by that
Speaker 1: woman twice throughout that trip. Again, because I've been through
Speaker 1: the sexual abuse. I was sixteen, I thought I was
Speaker 1: the king of the world. I thought I got lucky,
Speaker 1: how good this And then my stepmother found out about
Speaker 1: it and said, you cheated on me. To me, she said,
Speaker 1: you cheated on me. You did the wrong thing. I'm
Speaker 1: cutting it off now. I don't think she instigated that
Speaker 1: woman to sexually assault me, but I think there was.
Speaker 1: I think there was a perfect opportunity for an out
Speaker 1: for my step mother. Yeah, do you think she was.
Speaker 2: Sexually interested in you because of your age?
Speaker 1: So that Yeah, I've been struggling with that. You know,
Speaker 1: there's is it a case of you know, look, she's
Speaker 1: a child sex offender. Whether she is pedophilic in her affiliation,
Speaker 1: I'm not one hundred percent sure. There's an element that
Speaker 1: has been raised of my stepmother wanted sort of an
Speaker 1: insurance policy to be with my dad so she could
Speaker 1: get because my dad was very wealthy, she could have
Speaker 1: access to the money. So she needed a child to
Speaker 1: be a sort of anchor for her to be there.
Speaker 1: And obviously my dad had a eseected me after my
Speaker 1: youngest sibling, My actual sibling was born with your mom,
Speaker 1: with my mom, So that's weirder as to why he
Speaker 1: didn't pick up on Yeah, if he just was really strange. Yeah, essentially, So,
Speaker 1: whether my mother actually was a pedophile, I'm not one
Speaker 1: hundred percent sure, but she was a child sex offender.
Speaker 1: Was she attracted to me because of my age, or
Speaker 1: because she liked the power. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: All I know is what happened to me, and it
Speaker 1: was awful and I'm still dealing with the ramifications of
Speaker 1: it to this day.
Speaker 2: How could you not be when you so you're very
Speaker 2: close to your daughter, who the world believes to be
Speaker 2: your sister at that time. You don't tell anyone anything
Speaker 2: at any point?
Speaker 1: No, Ok, I didn't go to house parties like a
Speaker 1: normal sixteen year old. I didn't go. I hardly hung
Speaker 1: out with my friends. I didn't want to do that
Speaker 1: because I knew if anyone got too close to me, yes,
Speaker 1: they'd be Susan something.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that you might if you were you had
Speaker 2: a dream.
Speaker 1: Or you go slip sink yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I
Speaker 1: avoided all of that because.
Speaker 2: You looked after you your daughter, Oh yeah, quite a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and even after you moved out.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. So I ended up once my stepmother
Speaker 1: pointed the finger and said I was cheating on her,
Speaker 1: I ended up moving out of the.
Speaker 2: House, right, because how was it when after that that's
Speaker 2: very hard to come back from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah it is. So I moved out and ended
Speaker 1: up living with my maternal grandmother.
Speaker 2: And were you heartbroken, because of course I was. She
Speaker 2: you believed her, I thought I broke up with the
Speaker 2: love of my life. Yeah, I broke up with the
Speaker 2: mother of my child. And how was she towards you
Speaker 2: at that time?
Speaker 1: Quite quite resentful and bitter. I think she wanted to
Speaker 1: create that distance on purpose. But I would go over
Speaker 1: just to be with my daughter, So it was like
Speaker 1: we were co parenting in a way, and I would
Speaker 1: go there. I'd take my daughter for ice cream and
Speaker 1: I'd take her for fish and chips, or we go
Speaker 1: down to the beach near where my where the apartment
Speaker 1: was where we lived.
Speaker 2: Did you ever tell her like even when when she
Speaker 2: was a baby, Oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd say things like but like it wasn't in
Speaker 1: it at a stage where she was able to comprehend.
Speaker 2: No, that's what I made. You could tell her any
Speaker 2: truth thing when she was, you know, any.
Speaker 1: Effant, but there was you know, won't than anything. The
Speaker 1: thing that I treasured and cherished was that time with her,
Speaker 1: that one on one time because in those moments where
Speaker 1: it was just me and my daughter and we would
Speaker 1: go out ice cream or whatever it was, you know,
Speaker 1: it was just pure bliss. There was no facade, There
Speaker 1: was no upkeep of Avasad, just her and I in
Speaker 1: the moment at the beach or in the park or
Speaker 1: pushing her on a swing or whatever.
Speaker 2: Did anyone, I mean, you were still so young, But
Speaker 2: did anyone ever think you were her dad? Like strangers?
Speaker 1: Oh no, I don't remember.
Speaker 2: You were so young at that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was so young. I was sixteen. I was
Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen eighteen when I was taking care of my
Speaker 1: daughter like that. But I remember I was working two jobs.
Speaker 1: I was working at a fish and chip shop and
Speaker 1: I was working at like a painting place at the
Speaker 1: entertainment quarter. And I remember using the money to buy nappies.
Speaker 1: And I would go to school do my work after
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, and on the weekends while my dad
Speaker 1: was away or at work or something, I would come
Speaker 1: over with things for the baby. And you know, I
Speaker 1: was just committed to being a father. And I think
Speaker 1: I grew up overnight really because of the abuse I experienced. Sorry,
Speaker 1: And essentially I knew from the outset that I wanted
Speaker 1: to be the father that my father wasn't for me.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so that was just a driving factor to
Speaker 1: one keep the secret, but two also have that consistent
Speaker 1: sort of contact with my daughter as.
Speaker 2: Well, because you say in the book my father was
Speaker 2: not a father, he was a sperm doner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope he reads that.
Speaker 2: Do you think he will? Do you know where he is?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know what he is, but I haven't spoken
Speaker 1: to him in years. Yeah, look, I think he will.
Speaker 1: I don't know really how to. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think the thing with my father is outside out of mind.
Speaker 1: Might just ignore it. He tells everyone I'm a liar.
Speaker 1: Of course, he goes around telling everyone I'm a liar.
Speaker 1: He'll probably just maintain what he says.
Speaker 2: But it surely must have shaken the foundations of his certainty. No,
Speaker 2: having the revelations about your daughter.
Speaker 1: He denounces what I've experienced. He doesn't believe me. He
Speaker 1: still flies to the Philippines.
Speaker 2: To see he must have mother. Okay, so tell me when,
Speaker 2: which is such a terrible day when you got to
Speaker 2: the apartment.
Speaker 1: Yes, so at this point I was living in my
Speaker 1: own apartment. Yeah, and I deliberately chosen apartment around the
Speaker 1: corner from where my daughter lives. Yes, I was in
Speaker 1: close contact. Yeah, Yeah, my daughter would come to stay
Speaker 1: with me. Sometimes I would frame it as, oh, you,
Speaker 1: you and my stepmother have have a night off, I'll
Speaker 1: take the baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was eighteen at this point. Yeah, living in my
Speaker 1: own studio apartment in Clovelly. My daughter would come around
Speaker 1: every now and then. Anyway, there was one day my
Speaker 1: dad was away for business in Queensland and he said
Speaker 1: he called me up and he said, there's been some
Speaker 1: transactions on the credit card and you know, your stepmother's
Speaker 1: not answering her phone. Can you go around and check
Speaker 1: on the baby and her. Okay, Sure, walk into the
Speaker 1: house and it's completely empty. The apartment's completely empty. Drawers
Speaker 1: have been taken out, you know, doors not even locked
Speaker 1: or anything. So my stepmother's just taken off with my daughter.
Speaker 1: I had no inclination that was. He sent them in
Speaker 1: the day before, saw saw my daughter the day before. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I picked my daughter up from preschool the evening before,
Speaker 1: and yeah, they were gone, and I told my dad
Speaker 1: he was figuring out where they were. Anyway, he eventually
Speaker 1: found out that they went to the Philippines. And yeah,
Speaker 1: from that day I haven't seen my daughter since. And
Speaker 1: that was the day as well, where my stepmother wanted
Speaker 1: to throw my dad's focus off her leave in the country,
Speaker 1: and she sent an email to my dad saying that
Speaker 1: I raped her. And then that's when my dad forwarded
Speaker 1: it to me. I read it fell on the floor.
Speaker 1: He's obviously forwarded it to my biological mother as well,
Speaker 1: and she's called me saying what's happening? And I went
Speaker 1: like I couldn't breathe, and I was crying into the phone.
Speaker 1: Mom's come and picked me up, and I was sitting
Speaker 1: in the passenger seat of the car. My mum was driving,
Speaker 1: and she said, Harry, do you want to tell me
Speaker 1: what's going on? Like, what's what's happened? And that's when
Speaker 1: I came forward and said, for all these years I've
Speaker 1: been in a relationship with my stepmother, the words you use, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I didn't know it.
Speaker 2: Could you look at her now?
Speaker 1: I couldn't look at her. I was straight on in
Speaker 1: the past sea.
Speaker 2: And how is was she driving or.
Speaker 1: She I probably should have in hindsight, Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: remember my mother's face dropped. Yeah, and the silence sort
Speaker 1: of just wrapped around us.
Speaker 2: And what did she say?
Speaker 1: She believed me, She's she said, right, you're not going
Speaker 1: to stay in that apartment by yourself. You're going to
Speaker 1: come stay with me, and mum gave me my own bedroom,
Speaker 1: and yeah, wow, my mum is an amazing human being.
Speaker 1: She is an amazing human being. I mean when push
Speaker 1: came to shove and she was confronted with this for
Speaker 1: the first time, she was just action, you know, just
Speaker 1: straight onto it. You stay with me, don't worry about
Speaker 1: your father. I'll deal with him. Teed me up to
Speaker 1: go to a mental health facility, just like put me
Speaker 1: into therapists and stuff like that, like mental My mum's superstar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the mental health thing was interesting. So, as I talked
Speaker 1: about in the book as well, I came up with
Speaker 1: a plan to in my life because you know, as
Speaker 1: a nineteen year old kid, I was falsely accused of rape.
Speaker 1: My daughter's been taken from me, and sort of after
Speaker 1: seeing a handful of therapist, they're telling me that I've
Speaker 1: experienced sexual abuse. So I'm dealing with all of that
Speaker 1: as well. It's not an easy run. Did that come
Speaker 1: as It was a real shock to me? Yeah, a
Speaker 1: real shop.
Speaker 2: I didn't Who was the therapist that said it to you?
Speaker 1: Can you remember, well, I can't remember the specific therapist.
Speaker 1: I remember who it was. I don't remember his name
Speaker 1: or anything, but he was He was quite like one
Speaker 1: of the best in Sydney that we could see because
Speaker 1: my mum spared no expense of wanting to get me
Speaker 1: help and I'm very lucky for that. I remember telling
Speaker 1: him what I went through and even his face dropped
Speaker 1: and he couldn't comprehend it. He went like he was shocked.
Speaker 1: He was taken back. This bloke's probably heard the worst story.
Speaker 1: He's imaginable. Yeah, and yeah, he was just taken aback
Speaker 1: by it, didn't he It was, yeah, befuddled by it really.
Speaker 1: But eventually I ended up going to a mental health clinic,
Speaker 1: like a facility in patient yeah, in patient facility where
Speaker 1: I spent about a month and a half, almost two months,
Speaker 1: and that was where you know, there was every day
Speaker 1: it was individual psychologists, group therapy with other patients in
Speaker 1: there and stuff like that. And that was sort of
Speaker 1: where I came to the realization that this was actually abuse.
Speaker 1: I was groomed and a victim and all this.
Speaker 2: How interesting that because your own mirror was so clouded
Speaker 2: that when you would say it to people, it was
Speaker 2: from seeing their reactions that you realize, Yes, the enormity
Speaker 2: of what had happened.
Speaker 1: Well, that's how that's how groomed. And I was so,
Speaker 1: I was in deep with it. I was so yeah,
Speaker 1: conditioned to feel as though I wash the problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, that's that's what predators rely on.
Speaker 1: They rely on. They rely on the assurance that the
Speaker 1: victim will stay complicit, that they'll stay silent, they can
Speaker 1: get away with it. And for all those years she did.
Speaker 2: Okay, but you haven't stayed silent. No, stay with us.
Speaker 2: My conversation with Harrison continues after this break. You know
Speaker 2: you were saying earlier, the twenty one years is normally
Speaker 2: how long it takes a victim survivor of sexual abuse
Speaker 2: to come out and speak about it. Why do you
Speaker 2: think your emergence and your voice has not to be
Speaker 2: silenced for that long?
Speaker 1: Well, I think when I was in hospital the Mental
Speaker 1: Health Faciety, I came out and that sort of started.
Speaker 1: The next year after that is when Grace came won
Speaker 1: the Australia of the Year and I remember seeing her
Speaker 1: on stage arguably the nation's biggest stage, saying child sexual abuse.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's like really took me back, and
Speaker 1: I think I've always had this, you know, this notion
Speaker 1: instilled within me that you know from the hospital that
Speaker 1: it's not my fault what happened to me, but it
Speaker 1: is my responsibility to do something great with it. And
Speaker 1: I think I've always had this drive to want to
Speaker 1: help other people I've had. I think what I've experienced
Speaker 1: has instilled a real sense of empathy within me to
Speaker 1: want to understand that, you know, this really is an
Speaker 1: injustice and stemic thing as well that we need to
Speaker 1: fix because you know, in Australia, child sexual abuse is rife.
Speaker 1: Twenty eight point five percent of the population has experienced it.
Speaker 1: It's one in three girls, one in five boys will
Speaker 1: experience child sexual abuse before.
Speaker 2: Do you think that is Why do you think it's
Speaker 2: so prevalent.
Speaker 1: I think I think there's a myriad of things. I
Speaker 1: think it's you know, there's hardly any consequences for it.
Speaker 2: Very hard to prose existing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you know, survivors. Some I'd argue that a
Speaker 1: lot of survivors, you know, can't comprehend that what they've
Speaker 1: experienced is abuse. And I know that firsthand. You know,
Speaker 1: I was like that for.
Speaker 2: Many years, internalized.
Speaker 1: All of that but the fact of the matter is,
Speaker 1: there's just it is rife, and we do need to
Speaker 1: take it seriously and start having really genuine conversations about
Speaker 1: why we're why. And I think also, okay, sorry I'm
Speaker 1: rambling on a bit, but I think it's so difficult
Speaker 1: when people are faced with that concept, with those statistics,
Speaker 1: because it's so awful to actually think about and fathom.
Speaker 1: People sort of need your responses to turn away from
Speaker 1: it and ignore it, yes, and go that no, that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen, because if you're saying those numbers, then people
Speaker 1: actually have to reflect on who they know in their lives.
Speaker 1: And no one wants to think that they've come across
Speaker 1: a child sex offender. It's you know, the boogeyman, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist. It's easier to turn a blind eye
Speaker 1: to these things for most people. And I just think
Speaker 1: we've got to get to a point where these conversations,
Speaker 1: you know, where we get comfortable with the uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: we acknowledge it head on and we do the work
Speaker 1: too well.
Speaker 2: You've had to do some really deep digging as well,
Speaker 2: and also to shine light in your own dark places.
Speaker 2: Like I find it very interesting and important that you
Speaker 2: acknowledge the pleasurable aspects of what happened and why that
Speaker 2: muddies the waters so much as well. It's there are
Speaker 2: many ways of making someone a victim.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes there's there's there's many ways of predator can
Speaker 1: perpetrate as well, Yes there's not it. But while whilst
Speaker 1: there is a playbook of predation, and you know there
Speaker 1: usually is, there's a lot of similarities in a lot
Speaker 1: of the stories that you hear about child sex offenders
Speaker 1: and survivors and our experiences and stuff. But you know,
Speaker 1: the most devastating thing about child sexual abuse or abuse
Speaker 1: in general, violence in general is that it doesn't discriminate.
Speaker 1: It can happen to anyone and come from anyone as well.
Speaker 2: Are you worried about your daughter being with your step
Speaker 2: mother in the Philippines?
Speaker 1: See, that's a question I get a lot, and I think, look,
Speaker 1: so many options have been laid out to me about
Speaker 1: bringing my daughter back to Australia, for example, there's so
Speaker 1: many international you know, loopholes and things. But my stepmother
Speaker 1: before she fled the country, she ensured that my daughter
Speaker 1: had a Filipino passport as well. I remember going to
Speaker 1: the Filipino Embassy in Sydney with them so my daughter
Speaker 1: could get her photo taken for the passport. And I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I was just a symbolic thing, you know, she wanted
Speaker 1: her daughter to be a Filipino citizen because she's proud
Speaker 1: of her heritage in her country. But no, it was
Speaker 1: all part of the plan to get out of Dodge.
Speaker 1: And look, my daughter's over there, her mother, my stepmother.
Speaker 1: Whilst she is an awful human being, I think there's
Speaker 1: also my stepmother's family there who aren't awful people. And
Speaker 1: I think my daughter she's a victim in all of
Speaker 1: this as well. I'm not here to speak for my daughter,
Speaker 1: but I think I can objectively say that that's the truth.
Speaker 1: She was a victim in this, as I was a
Speaker 1: victim in this too. And the one thing that my
Speaker 1: daughter needs right now is an adult to put her
Speaker 1: needs before their own. And that's what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do with the decision that I've taken to not pursue
Speaker 1: that right now, because she turns eleven this year, my daughter,
Speaker 1: and last time she was in Australia, she was three
Speaker 1: years old. Now imagine me going over there. She probably
Speaker 1: has no memory of who I am and I say, oh,
Speaker 1: remember me, that guy you thought was your brother, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm actually a father. It's just such a corruption of
Speaker 1: that little girl's child or she doesn't deserve any of that.
Speaker 1: So whilst there's there's that aspect that I'm concerned about
Speaker 1: as well, what what do I do, Like I don't
Speaker 1: want to, you know, like, what do I actually do practically?
Speaker 1: I do I corrupt a child's life?
Speaker 2: Is your feeling about it that she's safe?
Speaker 1: I hope?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't get any information back because i'd
Speaker 1: have to go through my stepmother.
Speaker 2: But what you know about your step mother?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And my dad flies over there, and look, my
Speaker 1: dad's not a great person. I would never rely on
Speaker 1: his assessment of what's coming on over there. But from
Speaker 1: what I hear, you know through my siblings and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, who still have interactions with my father? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've been on FaceTime with my daughter and stuff.
Speaker 2: And your siblings know this is your daughter?
Speaker 1: Well now they do, Yeah, because I'm very public about
Speaker 1: what's happened, but they you know, they you know, there's
Speaker 1: just such it's so complex, and I think the thing
Speaker 1: that I'm trying to do, Kate is just book my
Speaker 1: daughter's knees before my own, and I hope more than
Speaker 1: anything that will be able to reconnect and make up
Speaker 1: for the lost time that was so heinless heinously taken
Speaker 1: from us. But that's got to be a bridge that
Speaker 1: we cross when she's a lot older and able to
Speaker 1: comprehend the complexity of it, because you can't instill that
Speaker 1: into a ten year old girl. No, No, it's not fair.
Speaker 2: No, and nor would you have any chance of, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: procuring her or being out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I'm in between a rock and a hard
Speaker 1: place really when it comes to that, because I'd love
Speaker 1: nothing more than my daughter to be here with me
Speaker 1: right now, but it's just not a reality at the moment.
Speaker 1: And I think it's easy for people on Instagram and
Speaker 1: social media to write comments calling me a deadbeat dad
Speaker 1: and I don't go find my daughter and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people say that all the time, really, But I fight
Speaker 1: the urge every single morning to get on a plane
Speaker 1: to the Philippines. The father and the parent in me
Speaker 1: wants to cot to Tellbraine and get an airplane to
Speaker 1: the Philippines and pick up my daughter and bring it
Speaker 1: to safety. But I can't do that because there's so
Speaker 1: many you know, I can't bring it back. I'd be
Speaker 1: done for kidnapping or something properly.
Speaker 2: So when you had had this time with your mum
Speaker 2: and really started to pay attention to your mental health, yes,
Speaker 2: and you were coming out the other side, was it
Speaker 2: a sense that you were coming out into some clarish
Speaker 2: clear clearer, air clearer thinking.
Speaker 1: I think the thing with healing, like, there's no there's
Speaker 1: People like to frame a healing journey as a beginning, middle,
Speaker 1: and end, but really the thing with healing journeys, there
Speaker 1: is no end. You just I understand full well that
Speaker 1: I'll be dealing with this for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: You don't. You don't reach a point of like total
Speaker 1: prosperity where you're over it. You just garner the tools
Speaker 1: to be able to manage life with it.
Speaker 2: Other times that unexpected things throw.
Speaker 1: Course for you, of course, Like you know, I have
Speaker 1: a beautiful fiance, Bella, and she's pregnant at the moment,
Speaker 1: and she's you know, baby's jew in September. Yeah, little
Speaker 1: girl in September, which I'm incredibly thrilled about. But I'd
Speaker 1: be lying if I said I wasn't shooting myself as well.
Speaker 1: Like all these triggers have come up and I've had
Speaker 1: to acknowledge them. And I think, as a survivor of
Speaker 1: child sexual abuse, who's becoming a father again? You know,
Speaker 1: you don't, you don't. There's a fear, not a fear
Speaker 1: that you'll become your abuser in any way, but a
Speaker 1: fear that you'll unintentionally pass on trauma that hasn't actually
Speaker 1: been dealt with you.
Speaker 2: But you almost need to stand visual on yourself almost too.
Speaker 1: So I speak with therapist about that to this day.
Speaker 2: And you know, cruel too, isn't it. They like that
Speaker 2: about yourself?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's that's that's what I was trying to
Speaker 1: get at before with my whole experience of fatherhood was
Speaker 1: corrupted as well, my sexuality, my my experience with fatherhood,
Speaker 1: my life. So many aspects of my life have been
Speaker 1: affected by the sexual abuse I in Jewett And you know,
Speaker 1: fatherhood's one example. Sexual relationships obviously, dating, all these everyday
Speaker 1: sort of normal things that the.
Speaker 2: Rights of passage were all taken corrupted. Yea. When you
Speaker 2: met Bella, Yeah, so she's in Australian but you met
Speaker 2: her when she was overseas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I flew to Italy to be with her. She
Speaker 1: was dming me. She was on the Bachelor, she was
Speaker 1: a contestant on the Bachelor, and she started dming me
Speaker 1: when I sort of got into advocacy and started to
Speaker 1: make a bit of a name for myself in the
Speaker 1: in the campaigning world. And she saw a newspaper article
Speaker 1: about the Good Character Reference Reform, which we talk about it.
Speaker 1: She put it on her story and someone replied to
Speaker 1: her story saying, oh, Harrison James runs that campaign. You
Speaker 1: should reach out to him. So she reached out, and
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, it's lovely, ladies just reaching out to
Speaker 1: say thank you for all your campaigning. I went and cheers,
Speaker 1: And because of the position I'm in as a survivor advocate,
Speaker 1: I didn't think much more of it. I didn't pick
Speaker 1: up on her flirting with me or anything like that.
Speaker 1: And then she just kept she Yeah, she was like
Speaker 1: a dog with a bone. She just didn't let up
Speaker 1: and kept messaging me, kept messaging me. And then I
Speaker 1: sort of finally picked up on I think this woman's
Speaker 1: yeah interested in me. And then we talked for three
Speaker 1: months online and I said, when are you coming back?
Speaker 1: To Australia because I'd love to meet you, And she said,
Speaker 1: I'm not planning on coming back, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll have to come meet you. So I
Speaker 1: got a plane to a plane ticket to Italy and
Speaker 1: we had our first date in Rome for three weeks.
Speaker 2: And then how do you So she knew enough about you?
Speaker 2: But still when you say there are hurdles that present themselves?
Speaker 2: Is that trust? Is it physical?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: How does it? How does it manifest itself when you're trying.
Speaker 1: To Actually because Bello knew who I was and knew
Speaker 1: my story, all that sort of melted away because she
Speaker 1: accepted me even with that, she saw beyond the story.
Speaker 1: I remember before Bella when I was dating Kate, like
Speaker 1: there was all these barriers that they say, what do
Speaker 1: you do for work? I work in political reform or
Speaker 1: what do you do there? Well, I'm trying to change
Speaker 1: this law, what law wants to do with character references
Speaker 1: for child sex offenders? What inspired you to do that? Well,
Speaker 1: I am a survivor of child sexual people. Off from
Speaker 1: wanting to engage with me at all, and dating was
Speaker 1: very difficult for me because I was in that position
Speaker 1: of advocacy and I didn't want to overstep the market anyway.
Speaker 1: I think I was apprehensive to sort of engage with
Speaker 1: dating as well, and there was this reservation for me.
Speaker 1: And I think when Bella saw me for the human
Speaker 1: being I was beyond my story and wanted to get
Speaker 1: to know me, that sort of initial hurdle of having
Speaker 1: to explain who I was and what I did was obliterated.
Speaker 2: You know, well, the advocacy is extraordinary, thank you, also
Speaker 2: in its simplicity.
Speaker 1: Yes, And.
Speaker 2: I guess it's like out of the mouths of babes,
Speaker 2: isn't it really, Because you saw with your innocence and
Speaker 2: your innocence that have been destroyed. When court cases would
Speaker 2: come around, you saw just the most grievous injustice being
Speaker 2: perpetrated against victim survivors again, which was what they would
Speaker 2: have to stand in court, And when someone had been convicted, Yep,
Speaker 2: they would still have to sit there and listen to
Speaker 2: someone else come in and attest to what great character
Speaker 2: they were.
Speaker 1: Yes, and this was a part of my lived experience,
Speaker 1: not my personal story, because my stepmother never went to
Speaker 1: court in the traditional sense, but when my father assaulted
Speaker 1: my mother, that went to court and he had a
Speaker 1: parade of good character references. And I remember being like
Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen year old boy when my mother first told
Speaker 1: me that he had those references, and it just stuck
Speaker 1: with me and it's never left me.
Speaker 2: And it is an extraordinary thing.
Speaker 1: It's an injustice.
Speaker 2: Piled on more injustice. Yes, but that you went, I'm
Speaker 2: going to see if I can change that. Yes, And
Speaker 2: along your way, and you met Jared Grice, who's all
Speaker 2: I worked for the same cause. And you say something
Speaker 2: in your book that is so like true and brilliant,
Speaker 2: but it seems like it should be so apparent. So
Speaker 2: one of the main problems with particularly in cases of
Speaker 2: child sexual abuse, is it says it's talking about the
Speaker 2: predatory nature of the crime, how grooming and manipulation are
Speaker 2: baked into the offense, and argued that so called good
Speaker 2: character is not separate from the harm, but often a
Speaker 2: tool used to commit it. And I thought when I
Speaker 2: read that, I thought of just the amount of cases
Speaker 2: that I know, some of them personally, of teachers, of
Speaker 2: you know, people who have taken advantage of their position
Speaker 2: and their good name. They've cultivated the good name to
Speaker 2: perpetrate the crime.
Speaker 1: It is a part of the crime. It's a tactic
Speaker 1: that perpetrators utilize what you've mentioned there, People of out
Speaker 1: a good standing utilize that good character to ingratiate children
Speaker 1: or victims into their care, to facilitate the abuse, to
Speaker 1: get parents to trust. My stepmother used it. My stepmother
Speaker 1: used her a good character to form my mother, my grandmother,
Speaker 1: even my father to some extent that she was a
Speaker 1: safe person for me being the care of Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's why she was able to, you know, sexually abused
Speaker 1: me for all those years. So I knew full well
Speaker 1: as a victim survivor that good character references these letters
Speaker 1: that people that perpetrators utilized to sort of mitigate their sentence.
Speaker 1: So it's postconviction, as.
Speaker 2: You say, so the facts have been established.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they've been found unequivocally guilty of the crime.
Speaker 2: So this was always just to so someone would get
Speaker 2: time off these scenes.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So yeah, it's mitigating fact. And it's been
Speaker 1: an established mitigating factor since you know, this eighteenth and
Speaker 1: nineteenth century in England when sort of the justice system
Speaker 1: in the way we see it today in modern justice
Speaker 1: system was sort of established. It's been a trope ever
Speaker 1: since then. Men of good character. So yeah, and essentially
Speaker 1: Jared Grice who you mentioned, and we started a campaign
Speaker 1: called your Reference Aint Relevant. And essentially we lobbied the
Speaker 1: New South Wales government first to abolish the provision of
Speaker 1: good character references for convicted child sex offenders because that
Speaker 1: was our lived experience and we knew that child sex
Speaker 1: offenders specifically groom and use that good character to cultivate
Speaker 1: this image of their trustworthy and say for kids to
Speaker 1: be in the care of And essentially we lobbied in
Speaker 1: New South Wales for four years and we extended that
Speaker 1: too of the state's entirety.
Speaker 2: Not very long, no is it, And I'm sure to
Speaker 2: you it felt long. But in the and it may
Speaker 2: think that you have some whatever at the time, you
Speaker 2: were working jobs to.
Speaker 1: Pay for Yeah, I was working in uber eats. I
Speaker 1: took out a bank loan to start the campaign. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I worked uber Eats. I poured beers behind the bar
Speaker 1: till midnight. I what else did I do? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was cleaning, scrubbing toilets, all of it, just to be
Speaker 1: able to pay off the loan so I could continue
Speaker 1: to advocate.
Speaker 2: And then in was it Canberra where the law got
Speaker 2: changed first.
Speaker 1: Yes, so yeah, so we extended our campaign to the Act.
Speaker 1: So from New South Wales we went to the Act.
Speaker 1: Then South Australia, then WA and all the other states
Speaker 1: followed eventually. And yeah, in December of twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: the Australian Capital Territory introduced legislation abolishing the provision of
Speaker 1: good character references for child sex offenders, which was such
Speaker 1: a great thing. And then as of recording this, only
Speaker 1: last week New South Wales introduced past legislation, so it's
Speaker 1: all done, it's now law. They abolished the provision of
Speaker 1: good character references for all offenses, so for domestic violence murderers,
Speaker 1: more than I ever asked for, which is very rare
Speaker 1: in legislative change. In campaigning for example, when you see,
Speaker 1: like as you said, four years is a very short
Speaker 1: time in this sort of world, people advocate for changes
Speaker 1: for a lifetime and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no longer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't even see half of the reform that we saw.
Speaker 1: For example, you know, there's been a big discussion about
Speaker 1: around the banning of gambling ads in federal politics, and
Speaker 1: the government introduced sort of these measures that would were
Speaker 1: sort of half measures. They were gambling ads could only
Speaker 1: be banned between a certain period of time and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So that's sort of an example of what
Speaker 1: people push for, but they only end up going getting
Speaker 1: half measures. We push for a very specific thing, ended
Speaker 1: up getting more than what we asked for in New
Speaker 1: South Wales and now it's set sort of a precedent
Speaker 1: for the rest of the country to be able to
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: What do you hope what's your wish for your unborn daughter.
Speaker 1: I wish for my unborn daughter. Well, all I know
Speaker 1: is that she's going to have the best mother and
Speaker 1: father duo in the world. Bella is an individual like
Speaker 1: me who hates injustice and advocates to leave the better
Speaker 1: the world a better place than when she entered it,
Speaker 1: as do I, and I think our daughter is going
Speaker 1: to have that instilled in her from the get go
Speaker 1: as well. She's going to be surrounded by love, I
Speaker 1: hope my daughter. My wish for my daughter is a
Speaker 1: childhood and a life of abundance and prosperity, a house
Speaker 1: full of warmth and love and safety and choice and
Speaker 1: individuality and autonomy, things that I never had. I want
Speaker 1: to ensure that my daughter has that environment around her.
Speaker 1: And look, my daughter is not an extension of you know,
Speaker 1: she's not a tool for healing for me. That's not
Speaker 1: to be put on her. It's not her role. But
Speaker 1: she will heal so many things in me just by
Speaker 1: nature of who she is, her existence. I'm so excited
Speaker 1: for her to be part of the world. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited to hold her.
Speaker 2: The beauty of innocence.
Speaker 1: Oh so God. And we did, my partner and I
Speaker 1: we had an ultrasound, our twenty week scan. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: only two days ago. And you can see the profiles.
Speaker 1: She's got my nose and everything. Yeah, it's so exciting.
Speaker 2: I'm very sorry that your innocence was tarnished, but I'm
Speaker 2: very thankful for your contribution.
Speaker 1: To the Thank you, and I really appreciate it. And
Speaker 1: also the thing that I wanted to do with the advocacy,
Speaker 1: and I think more than you know, sure, changing laws
Speaker 1: and writing a book, all these wonderful things that have
Speaker 1: come from my pain and I have turned it into
Speaker 1: purpose and it's lovely. But to any victim survivor that
Speaker 1: sees this or reads the book, I never want them
Speaker 1: to feel as though that they have to do these
Speaker 1: stravagant sort of things of making a difference in their
Speaker 1: lives in order to be deemed worthy. I think inherently
Speaker 1: by who you are and the nature of what you survived,
Speaker 1: you are worthy and you deserve a life that is
Speaker 1: abundant and prosperous and full of love and safety. Every
Speaker 1: victim survived, everyone deserves that. So don't feel as though
Speaker 1: that you have to strive to make a statement about
Speaker 1: your pain. Purpose is definable in whatever way you see fit,
Speaker 1: and that's a beautiful thing of purpose. We're all seeking.
Speaker 1: It's part of the human condition to want to seek purpose,
Speaker 1: but it's totally up to you how that's defined. So
Speaker 1: trust your inst your gut instinct. Go for what you love.
Speaker 1: Because now that I've achieved advocacy, it's great to be
Speaker 1: able to do it, but there's a lot of pain
Speaker 1: and strife that comes with it, a lot of backlash
Speaker 1: that comes.
Speaker 2: Almost you need to recognize that that has played its role. Yes,
Speaker 2: and and move on.
Speaker 1: Yes, because there's no point in being a victim survivor
Speaker 1: and then feeling as though for the rest of your
Speaker 1: life that you have to Yes. Yes, you have to
Speaker 1: fight to prove what you went through, what it wasn't
Speaker 1: in vain. You didn't ask for what happened to you.
Speaker 1: You have to come to terms with that. And you know,
Speaker 1: my goal now, after all this, is to be able
Speaker 1: to sit down at my kitchen table each morning and
Speaker 1: feel a sense of peace. I want victim survivors to
Speaker 1: strive for that. I hope that they'll strive for that,
Speaker 1: because advocacy. It's nice to have all these lovely things
Speaker 1: and be on covers and stuff, but it's not that's
Speaker 1: not that's not being content. That's not what a life is.
Speaker 1: A life is filled with family and love and whatever
Speaker 1: you defind.
Speaker 2: Because that's still defining your life, isn't it. By if
Speaker 2: you could go back to yourself, that little Harrison in
Speaker 2: the mailstream, maybe when he was teen and and you know,
Speaker 2: witnessing violence, or maybe when he was thirteen, what would
Speaker 2: you say to yourself? Then?
Speaker 1: Funny, I don't think i'd say anything. I do what
Speaker 1: no one did at the time, and listen. I have listened.
Speaker 1: I'd listened to that little boy what he has to say,
Speaker 1: and I would tell him that I would nurture sort
Speaker 1: of who he is. I wouldn't drown him in. You know,
Speaker 1: I think what I'm getting at is the adults in
Speaker 1: my life aside from my mother and my grandmother, but
Speaker 1: the adults that were in my life, my stepmother and
Speaker 1: my father, put their own interests ahead of.
Speaker 2: Mine, and they didn't see they didn't see me. Just
Speaker 2: what would they have seen? What should they have seen?
Speaker 1: Oh, they should have seen a kid that was just expressive.
Speaker 1: They should have seen a kid that was right and
Speaker 1: loving and gentle, intelligent. I mean, they should have seen
Speaker 1: a child basically. I mean, I don't know what human
Speaker 1: being sees a child and wants to inflict violence on them.
Speaker 1: Maybe I just got delt a rough hand, but I
Speaker 1: know that's not the case because it's a prevalent thing.
Speaker 1: A lot of people experience it. And I think, now
Speaker 1: what I see is I have a responsibility to pay
Speaker 1: forward to my daughter on the way, you know, a
Speaker 1: childhood that I never received. And I look forward to
Speaker 1: doing that because I've done a lot of hard work
Speaker 1: to be able to do that now, and I think
Speaker 1: I'll be pretty good. Yeah, exactly. It's incredibly exciting.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much so, Harrison, because the statistics are
Speaker 2: horrifying because of a lot of the listeners to this
Speaker 2: podcast are women, and women have been entrusted in many
Speaker 2: ways to beat the eyes and the ears and the
Speaker 2: beating heart of you know, loving children, not exclusively, but
Speaker 2: what should what should we be looking out for?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a myriad of things that we can be
Speaker 1: looking at for. I think I think as well, it's
Speaker 1: not solely the responsibility of women or girls to be
Speaker 1: able to point out the signs, but I think we
Speaker 1: all have a responsibility to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: Of course, pick up on things. And also I just
Speaker 1: want to acknowledge that as a male survivor who you know,
Speaker 1: experienced female perpetrated sexual abuse, I think it's very easy
Speaker 1: for people to turn around and say, oh, you went
Speaker 1: through that as a man. Women keep saying they went
Speaker 1: through all this, but your evidence that it happens to
Speaker 1: men too. And sure you know, the statistic show that
Speaker 1: abuse disproportionately occurs to women and girls. So we can
Speaker 1: acknowledge the exceptions without discounting the problem that is presented
Speaker 1: in front of us, without discountying the truth. And I
Speaker 1: just want to tell you a story that picks up
Speaker 1: on that, because I remember I spoke at a New
Speaker 1: South Wales police conference and I was in a room
Speaker 1: full of you know, head constables from every police station
Speaker 1: in the state. And I was on a panel with
Speaker 1: two other women, and I spoke about my experience of
Speaker 1: going to the police station and how I was instantly
Speaker 1: believed because I was this you know, I was twenty
Speaker 1: at the time. Part of me was over six foot,
Speaker 1: walked in and told told what happened to me, and
Speaker 1: I was believed straight away. The two women who spoke
Speaker 1: on the panel with me talked about the disbelief that
Speaker 1: they experienced and that they faced from police. And when
Speaker 1: we got off the stage, obviously, you know, the police
Speaker 1: come up and say, oh, thanks for speaking, really appreciate
Speaker 1: it and stuff. There was this head constable who came
Speaker 1: up to me. He was a man, and he said, ah,
Speaker 1: it's just so difficult because you're a bloke, so when
Speaker 1: you walk into a police station, it's just so much
Speaker 1: more believable. And my stomach dropped, and I thought, it's
Speaker 1: that the culture that women and girls are up against,
Speaker 1: is that the systemic sort of dismissal of the violence
Speaker 1: that women and girls experienced.
Speaker 2: Why did he think that? Did he elucidate or.
Speaker 1: No, he didn't. He just said it and he was
Speaker 1: so fun.
Speaker 2: Yes, like it was just it was just a statement
Speaker 2: of facts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's just it was so baffling for me
Speaker 1: to have to hear that, and it just stated not
Speaker 1: only what victim the sort of walls and hurdles that
Speaker 1: victim survivors are up against, but what women and girls
Speaker 1: are up against with our system. There's so many changes
Speaker 1: that we have to see. We've spoken about good character references.
Speaker 1: That's one, that's what I've you know, pushed to change.
Speaker 1: Is only one out of a million things that need
Speaker 1: to be changed within the system.
Speaker 2: If you want to be vigilant with children that you love,
Speaker 2: whatever they may be to you, you know, nieces, nephews,
Speaker 2: your children. What are the signs that something is amiss
Speaker 2: with a child?
Speaker 1: Look, I think I think stereotypically people's first sort of
Speaker 1: idea would be, oh, the quiet, shy kid in the
Speaker 1: corner that doesn't speak out. But that's not necessarily the case.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, what parents and carers and people
Speaker 1: who have children in their lives can do is create
Speaker 1: an open and safe space for kids to come forward
Speaker 1: with anything and believing the child in the moment as well.
Speaker 1: I think I've got a notion that my partner and
Speaker 1: I are going to instill with our daughter when she's
Speaker 1: on the way. And it's this idea of surprises, not secrets.
Speaker 1: We don't have secrets. We have surprises because the truth
Speaker 1: is always going to come out no matter what. Secrets
Speaker 1: are never meant to be told, but surprises, the truth
Speaker 1: always unveils itself. So I think just that mindset of
Speaker 1: creating that environment for your children to be able to
Speaker 1: come forward with anything, they're not going to be met with,
Speaker 1: you know, violence or anger for saying something. I know
Speaker 1: that part of the reason I never came forward with
Speaker 1: anything was because of the fear, the choke hold fear
Speaker 1: had over me that if I said something, my dad
Speaker 1: would would choke me or do something awful to me.
Speaker 2: And that you seem like you were so intent on
Speaker 2: being a good kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So what incentive did I have to come forward?
Speaker 1: Because I would have just been met with abuse anyway.
Speaker 1: So it's better to be quiet. So I think creating
Speaker 1: that environment where kids know they will be supported and
Speaker 1: believed when they speak up about anything. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be devastating, but anything. And just remember that kids
Speaker 1: soak up information like a sponge. And I think once
Speaker 1: you give them any inclination that it's not safe for
Speaker 1: them to come forward, they're going to take that and
Speaker 1: they'll internalize that their antena. Yeah, yeah, thanks Harrison.
Speaker 2: I've thought about this conversation a lot since we recorded it,
Speaker 2: not only because of the extraordinary circumstances of Harrison's story,
Speaker 2: but because of the honesty he brings to telling it.
Speaker 2: What stayed with me most wasn't the advocacy or even
Speaker 2: the lead just live change he's helped create. It was
Speaker 2: the little boy at the center of the story, a
Speaker 2: boy who wanted to be loved, who spent years carrying
Speaker 2: secrets that no child should ever have to carry, and
Speaker 2: who somehow found the courage to tell the truth. I
Speaker 2: was also deeply moved by the way Harrison speaks about
Speaker 2: his daughter, the grief, the longing, the love, and the
Speaker 2: hope that one day she might understand who he is
Speaker 2: and what happened. Harrison's book is called Transform Your Pain
Speaker 2: Into Purpose, and it's out now. We've also included support
Speaker 2: services in the show notes. If this conversation has brought
Speaker 2: anything up for you, If you'd like to hear more
Speaker 2: conversations like this one, follow no Filter wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. I'm Kate Lanebrook and I look forward to
Speaker 2: seeing you next Monday with another incredible conversation