She had not been surprised to receive Lizzie’s letter as she sat waiting to catch the boat from Perth to Broome with her small baby. She now understood her need to become a prostitute and marvelled at her great courage in this awful time, it only fuelled her own rage further. And her admiration for her friend grew as time went by, the higher the adversity the higher Lizzie climbed. She knew she would succeed in whatever she did, that was the nature of Lizzie’s courage.
It came as no surprise when Lizzie wrote to her in early 1970, soon after as she begun as a journalist, telling her that she had fled yet again from these awful men, and had taken refuge in the desert, their arrogance and misogyny knew no bounds. Now when Lizzie told her of her intention to stop running and confront this evil, she knew her own time for action had come too.
Now she had a specific purpose and four names to follow. She set to work. She was sure there were other victims. Now she must locate them, hear their stories, record their details then encourage them to testify.
Within a month she had a name, a Newcastle girl whose mother had worked in the head office of the Wallis shipping business, in Newcastle. It had happened five years ago and. on hearing through the women’s rights grapevine of Julie’s investigation, the mother had come to Julie with her own suspicions.
Back then she was a mother of two children, a seventeen year old boy and a fourteen year old girl. She told an overly familiar story.
Her fourteen year old daughter, Miranda, had started to come to the office to help her on Saturdays sometimes. She was a beautiful girl whose body had just matured; she was sweet and innocent about men.
Martin, who mostly worked Saturdays, had asked Miranda to start doing jobs for him, just odd little things, but he had paid her and she had been flattered by the attention of this good looking man in his twenties. He was now married to a local girl with a young child and a veneer of respectability. Dan and Will still worked in the firm and were often with Martin though their jobs were unclear.
Then the mother had to go to Sydney for a few days, leaving her daughter and son at home together. Since she had returned the daughter had never been the same, she flatly refused to go near the office, she stayed in her room and cried a lot, she was moody and bad tempered and had dropped out of school.
Now she was in Kings Cross, a nineteen year old prostitute, addicted to heroin.
Her mother had tried to find out the reason; she had asked her daughter, but got just tears, door slamming and stony silences. She had asked the son, but all he knew was something happened on that Saturday, the day that Miranda normally went to work at the office. She had gone in that morning as usual, and he was out at the beach for the day with his mates. When he came home that night she was locked in her room and had barely spoken to him since.
So the mother suspected something awful had happened to her daughter that Saturday, she had tried to make discrete inquiries, but could get nothing useful. But the word of her interest must have got around, because within a month the company dismissed her, despite having told her, just before, what a valuable employee she was. She had worked even harder after this thing had happened to Miranda, but they sacked her anyway.
It felt bad and it smelt bad. The mother knew something bad had happened which had destroyed her daughter’s life. But the cause was only speculation.
So Julie had her lead, she found the girl in Kings Cross, now calling herself Mimi, looking half stoned and sitting in a gutter. She was resentful and distrustful of talking to Julie. The first time Julie tried to talk to her she told her to get lost. Then she just ignored her. But Julie kept coming back, day after day, week after week, trying to make friends.
One day Mimi did not tell her to go away or look the other way. Today she did not seem stoned and looked at her with something like friendly curiosity. “You are very persistent,” Mimi said, “Why don’t you tell me what you want?
So they went and sat together over an ice-cream in a café. After five minutes Julie said to Mimi, “Can I tell you a story?” Mimi shrugged, feigning disinterest.
So she told her about her friend Lizzie and how Lizzie trusted her, then about the party, then the rape, then the baby, and now how Lizzie had got her life together but then the men had pursued her again. So now Julie was determined to pursue these men. “I want them to feel the fear they have dished out. One day I will go and say hello to them through the bars of Long Bay Jail, and know they can’t hurt others” she said.
As she talked she watched the face opposite, at first it was mildly bored, but when she said the name Martin she had total attention. Then, when she described the beach rape, the tears trickled down Mimi’s cheeks, and they kept coming with the baby and what continued. When she talked about the men coming after Lizzie again she knew she had her; she was Witness Two.
Now the girl was nodding and talking, her tongue and mind freed from years of paralysis, “Yes, that’s what they do, rotten scum, they still come to see me every time they come to Sydney, often they don’t even pay, and I still have to give them what they forced on me as a little girl. It was bad enough, what happened when I was fourteen, but to keep having to relive it again and again, even now, it is like a horror story that never goes away.
So now Julie had sworn testimony from Mimi. She had managed to get her onto methadone and found her a part time job out of the game. It was very fragile but Mimi was holding it together, just.
The third girl was remarkably similar but this had happened only a few months earlier, this time in the Sydney office of Newcastle Transport. This girl, Alicia, who was then also fourteen was an office casual who did cleaning and tidying jobs, after school, at weekends and in school holidays. Her Mum was on a disability pension and Alicia needed the money to help support her family.
And this time there was a fourth player, a man named Jack Mackenzie, who had been there on a visit from Melbourne. The girl thought he knew what happened, and maybe had done it too, but at the time she had been blindfolded and had not seen his face, though she knew the other men were there, both from before it started and from their voices.
On a Saturday afternoon, when no one else was around, she had been called into Martin’s office to tidy up. Will and Dan had been there. As she bent over to pick up the bin, one had put his hand up her skirt from behind. She had tried to push him away but then the other two had come and started to fondle and feel her too. At first she had tried to fight back but then they had put a cloth bag over her head, making it hard to breath and threatening to tie it up tight if she started to scream. Then she had felt them pull her dress up and take her panties off before they did it to her, the others laughing as each took a turn. She had also felt them push other things inside her, laughing all the while.
For her one of the worst things was, when they finished, that they had given her an envelope with five hundred dollars. They said it was to pay for services rendered, just so there were no hard feelings. Alicia had kept the money, her Mum needed things so badly because they were so poor, but now she felt both bought and abused. She knew it would be so much harder to try to say no next time when there was another envelope of desperately needed money on offer, and could see that soon they would take it when they wanted without even bothering to pay as she would have no-where else to go.
Despite the anger and hurt Alicia had kept going there to work, she did not have any other job to go to and she knew her family could not get by without the money. A month later, this man Jack, who she thought was there that first time, came back on another visit.
That day he was laughing and joking with the others, and sometimes pointing to her, like he had seen what happened to her before and had enjoyed it. He had a folder sitting on his desk, and he left it there when he went out to lunch with the others. So she had opened the folder to see what was there. Everyone else was in the lunch room.
She saw a pile of photos, they were naked photos of herself from when it happened, some were close ups where the men had put things inside her
, her head was covered but it was still clearly her, even down to a scar on her leg from when she cut it as a kid.
The photos also clearly showed the other three men, Martin, Dan and Will doing things to her and laughing as they did. There were none of Jack, but then he had the photos, he was probably the photographer. At the time the rape happened she did not know what to do, it had been her word against all these men, and she did not want to give back the money.
But now, maybe, there was some real evidence to nail them. She was terrified but really angry, and most of all she wanted to get them and get even. She knew they were planning to do it again. There was talk of Jack coming again to visit next month; she had heard Dan say that they would have a party on the Saturday night at the office where they invited some good friends, while he gave her a sick grin and wink.
They had asked her to come in to the office on that next Saturday afternoon, when no one else was there, to make sure the office was really tidy for that evening, when the caterers would be coming to serve their guests. She knew they would be waiting for her, perhaps with another fat envelope of money.
Alicia said she was happy to let nothing happen until that weekend so long as she did not have to go in alone, she just did not want the money enough for that. She thought that they would probably have the photos there then to gloat over, so maybe someone could do a search and catch Jack with the photos or something similar.
Julie knew this was as near to a smoking gun as she would ever get, she had Witness Three and she had photo evidence to prove what the three men had done to this fourteen year old girl.
Her lawyer brain had charges of rape, carnal knowledge and indecent assault mapped out. Her journalist brain had a scoop planned for the day after a trial verdict giving the full story of these sexual predators and the way they abused peoples trust to get access to these under aged and vulnerable girls, then terrorised them into silence.
But she knew she still had much work to do to put it together into a brief of evidence, something strong enough to convince prosecutors to go forward, and in the end ensure all these men received their rightful date with justice and got nailed.
Chapter 22 - Back to the Old Balmain House
Just before Christmas of 1971 a TAA Boeing 737 landed in Sydney. From the door stepped three people, a tall sun darkened man who walked with a limp, a woman wearing a soft floral dress, with short dark hair cut in a bob, who appeared to be about six months pregnant and a dark haired girl who looked about seven or eight.
Behind them came three aboriginal people, well dressed but with an awkward sense of the self-consciousness in these foreign clothes. Inside waiting for them was a veritable crowd.
As Lizzie, Robbie and Catherine walked into the terminal, flashbulbs were popping. Julie and her photographer friend were there. Then there was Lizzie’s mum, older looking but still herself, and a teenage gangly kid, David, with quite a few of his father’s mannerisms.
Others in the crowd included some of the gang from Broome, Alec and Elena with a tribe of children, Alice, Ruby, and Tom from the restaurant, and a few from pearl boat crew.
Then there was Robbie’s Mum, Madam Lavinia, even Becky and her family had made an appearance. There was also a whole hotchpotch of people she knew from Balmain, neighbours, school friends, teachers, and some of her friends from the factory in Pyrmont.
They formed an honour guard of welcome. Julie had assiduously tracked them all down and arranged for this day, determined that Lizzie’s return after eight years away would be a whole of community and friends welcome home for this amazing lady, who she felt proud to call her friend
Julie was also doing a feature story on Lizzie which was called “Sophie’s Story”. Lizzie did not want her name or Catherine’s name appearing directly, so they had decided that the by-line would give Sophie the credit. Lizzie was just referred to as “my friend”.
The story started with “This is story of my dearest friend, and of her own childhood friend, Sophie. Yesterday her family and friends gathered at Sydney airport to welcome my friend home after eight years of living in the furthest desert of Western Australia. Tomorrow she marries her true love Robbie. She first met him in Melbourne, but then he lost her when she ran away to protect her child from being taken. Lizzie was then only fifteen. It took more than five years of searching before Robbie found her at the furthest side of the country and it only happened with the help of her childhood friend Sophie, so this is Sophie’s Story too. It is also the story of my friend’s six year old daughter who led them to safety.”
It was mostly a story about her rescue in the desert and a love story about her finding her true love, Robbie, who she has returned to marry. Lizzie was concerned it was a bit soppy, but Julie insisted that her readers would love it. And it would introduce her friend for what she hoped would be a much more significant feature article, after the rape case came to trial and some real details could be released. It was Julie’ hope that the way her friend had triumphed through adversity would give courage to other victims to also come forward.
It did not go into the all the details of her earlier life, apart from the baby, but said she had gone to live in Broome after having her baby in Melbourne, to ensure that she was not forced to give her child up for adoption. There she had been driving in the desert and had got lost. She would have died of thirst, if not for a childhood friend, Sophie who had lived in the same room in her Balmain House half a century earlier. When they were desperately thirsty in the desert Sophie had come to her daughter in a dream and guided them to water. Then three days later people from the local aboriginal tribe had found her and her daughter and adopted her into the tribe. Then to make the whole story complete, the man who had met her and fallen in love with her in Melbourne, just after her baby was born had tracked her down and crossed the country on his motorbike to find her, smashed leg notwithstanding. So now they had returned to the family home to get married. They would first have a Christian ceremony in the church followed by an aboriginal ceremony, standing next to the harbour where desert sand and ocean water would mingle. Tonight her friend would stay in Sophie’s room once again.
The following day the story ran as planned. Reader interest was huge, but who was this amazing mystery woman?
After a first night welcome home dinner with all their extended families and friends, tonight Lizzie, Robbie and Cathy were staying with her mother and brother in the old Balmain House. Lizzie and Robbie were sharing her childhood room, along with their soon to be born child. Cathy had a bunk in the attic, at the other end from David. She wasn’t quite sure about sleeping in the same room as a boy but it was only for a night.
Lizzie and Robbie lay together, arms around each other and talked late into the night. They wondered if Sophie could hear them. They both felt so lucky and grateful to this child of fifty years past for their new lives together. Tomorrow they would be married.
It felt like a dream. In a way it was a dream, like that first dream. It was something they had both dreamed of over and over in years of nights alone, but it was real.
Chapter 23 – The Court Case
Almost two further years passed, Lizzie and Robbie returned to their life in the west. Now they divided their time between Broome and the desert. The business in Broome was booming, but the desert was their true love and they spent at least half of each year there.
Now there were two more children, a rising two year old cheeky boy, Stephen, with tousled blond hair, and another dark haired girl, Sarah, little more than a baby, colours like Cathy and Lizzie but with a face full of Robbie, his mischievous grin. Now Cathy spent the school terms in town, she was good with her lessons, smart just like her Mum, Robbie said. But she came back to the desert on her holidays and she loved it still, speaking a fluent mixture of two languages and with favourite pastimes of digging yams and hunting goannas.
Then one day the call came. The court case was set down for next Monday, a week away. There had been so many delays and adjournme
nts over the last two years that it was impossible to believe it would ever come to trial. But now it had. It involved a prosecution for rape for three men, each on three separate rape charges. And a fourth man who had aided and abetted in the concealment of evidence after the fact was charged as an accessory to one count of rape, along with upcoming charges for other sexual crimes in Melbourne.
Lizzie marvelled at the courage of the other two women, both having agreed to attend and give their evidence as well. It had been hard enough for her, but she known Julie all her life and trusted her. And now, with Robbie in her corner, she knew she could do whatever it took. But these girls’ lives were still a mess, neither had really got over this experience and dragging it all up through court would be really hard for them, she knew how dirty the barristers doing the cross examination would play, and wished she could do more to help them.
But the die was cast and on Monday it would begin.
In Sydney Julie sat thinking about the momentous last three years of her life, that bright day of Lizzie’s wedding and the tremendous public sympathy it generated; but also all those hard years before and after, with many times when she felt the threads holding all these cases together would unravel into an unusable tangle.
It had not worked out quite as planned but in the end they had Alicia’s testimony along with Lizzie’s and Mimi’s, plus they had a copy of the photos as evidence for what had happened. These were found in Jack’s possession, following a Victorian search warrant looking for child pornography, at his house in Melbourne. With this find the Director of Public Prosecutions said there was more than enough to convict them and send them all to prison for a good long time.
While the case against Jack for rape was not strong and they had decided not to proceed with this charge, they had an excellent case against him for being an accessory after the fact, and the Melbourne police had also found other pornographic images to investigate, which they had now linked indecent assault of other girls in that city.
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