Why do grandfathers abuse

Two years ago Amy assured an investigations team Thomas never did anything to hurt her. Now she's told her boyfriend a different story.

Two years have passed since Amy assured the investigations team that Thomas never did anything to hurt her. But tonight she's told Daniel a different story, opening up for the first time about the years of sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her Opa.

With Daniel's support and urging, she's finally ready to tell her mother. Not only that, but the abuse has continued — via secret texts and meetings initiated by Thomas — in the two years since she and Nick thought they had stopped the children visiting their grandparents. Within minutes Maria is on the phone to the local police; an hour later, she and Amy are at the station, where Amy is taken into a private room and interviewed. A few hours later, Detective Senior Constable Jane Prior, a seasoned Sydney-based detective with more than 12 years' experience investigating sexual assault, receives an early-morning call from her superior.

The next day, and in numerous, subsequent interviews, Amy sits down with Prior to tell her story. At first she's withdrawn, not psychologically ready to express what she lived through.

But she slowly opens up, explaining that it all began when she was a toddler, when Thomas began touching her inappropriately and blowing hot air between her legs. She tells Prior of the first time he had "full sex" with her: it was , she was about nine years old, they were in his white Nissan Patrol. She describes the strong prescription medication he gave her every time he saw her, so that she would not say "no" or feel any pain.

Her Opa, she tells Prior, liked to treat her as if they were "dating". The abuse was so constant, over such a long period, that she has difficulty remembering specific days or incidents because he had "always done it". She hasn't, however, forgotten the room in which a lot of it happened, a children's cubby in the roof of Thomas's house which he custom-built when the kids were little.

It was here that Thomas filmed Amy and Sam in various sexual poses and acts. Forensic crime-scene investigator Ian Bennett is the first officer inside the cubby, the day a search warrant for Thomas's house is executed. Up a narrow ladder and through a trapdoor in the garage ceiling that Thomas usually kept locked, he discovers everything Amy described: mattress, lighting, cameras.

Bennett has seen many grisly scenes in his seven years on the job, but nothing like this. He and his team seize a memory card from Thomas's car that contains three pornographic films depicting Amy and Sam. Police investigators are confident there would be many others.

The alleged abuse is so immense, so twisted, that Bennett and Prior are not alone in wondering how it could all be true: the drugging, the films, the tunnel to a secret cubby in the attic of a waterfront home.

Six days after Amy tells Prior her story, her by now year-old brother Sam tells his mother that he, too, had been preyed on by his Opa.

As Amy and Sam grew older and more likely to question their grandfather, he developed a new set of tricks to manipulate them. As Amy and Sam grew older and more likely to question their grandfather, he developed a new set of tricks to manipulate them, based around a trio of people who didn't exist.

Bob, Lyn and Toey, purported friends of Opa, would send Amy and Sam texts, threatening to send the video clips they'd already made to friends and family if they didn't participate in more. The three characters would frequently argue among themselves, or insult one another.

They were such believable and compelling personas that it would be 12 months into the investigation before police were able to convince the siblings that Bob, Lyn and Toey weren't real. The year-old is handcuffed and taken to the local police station, where he's presented with one of the most heinous child sex charge sheets the state has ever recorded.

His victims include not only Amy and Sam but Patrick's two daughters, and the niece of another stepdaughter. The indictment numbers 77 counts, with offences occurring from at least through to It details the grooming, manipulation and blackmail of six alleged child victims in his home, his car, his caravan and a South Coast motel.

And it canvasses the spectrum of sexual abuse inflicted on them, the supply of drugs and alcohol, and the false promises of modelling contracts to coerce them into sitting for nude photos. Prior is sitting in a small conference room at the back of Bankstown police station, where she is based. She's tough but approachable, with an air that suggests she's a good listener. She calls Thomas a master manipulator, grooming the children's families as much as his victims.

We were able to corroborate absolutely everything. When she considers the numbers, Prior can hardly believe the scale of the case against Thomas, and the task she had in building it. Six alleged victims, 50 volumes of evidence, more than 80 prosecution witnesses, 10 of them from interstate. At trial, when not in the witness box she sat behind the prosecution, second-guessing her every move. If you lose your crime-scene warrant, you lose your crime scene. You lose your evidence. Thomas pleaded not guilty to all 77 charges against him.

When you've got offences carrying 10 years, 25 years, carrying life The investigation was Prior's final one in almost 13 years with the NSW Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad; after it, she requested a transfer to another unit, and has since been promoted to detective sergeant. Maria now understands just how taboo a topic is intra-familial sexual abuse, despite it being considered the most common type of child sexual abuse in Australia.

Credit: Getty Images. The page judgment takes two days to be read to the court. It is a damning assessment of a man described by consultant forensic psychiatrist Jeremy O'Dea as "relatively physically fit and healthy" but "vague, contradictory and eluding" in his denial of the abuse, with "apparently self-serving explanations displaying limited empathy for the victims".

In court, O'Dea recounted a prison interview he conducted with Thomas in early , in which Thomas told him that "most of it didn't happen He argued that "all the kids lied in court I can only guess who. When an individual who is loved or admired sexually harms a child, the powerful sense of betrayal is felt not just by the child, but also by everyone else who trusted or respected that person. For both children and adults, acknowledging such a betrayal can threaten their overall sense of safety in the world.

Many children who have been exploited or abused face a tragic choice — between accepting the frightening new reality of betrayal and uncertainty, on the one hand, and what feels like the comparative safety of denying that anything has changed, on the other.

Understandably, vulnerable children may choose denial. Yet the same is true for many adults who could protect children from the terrible betrayals of sexual exploitation or abuse.

Guilt or shame about previous silence. Oddly, guilt or shame about not speaking up sooner can be another powerful factor that keeps people from acting, even once they let themselves recognize that something is not right. Imagine you get a new job and in the first week you ask your boss about a minor but questionable expense on his expense account. People who want to be open-minded about sexual matters sometimes distrust their own discomfort when they suspect sexually harmful behaviors.

By focusing on their own feelings about sex, they sometimes miss real signals of harm or power imbalances that make consent impossible, and end up overlooking abusive or exploitive sexual behavior. People who have experienced abuse or violence themselves are often highly attuned to the slightest hint of a harmful interaction. But that hyperawareness or hypervigilance can be a double-edged sword. Most people are reluctant to accuse someone else — especially about something as charged as sexual abuse — unless they have solid proof.

An imperfect child protection system and a criminal justice system that harshly punishes nearly all people who are convicted of sexual offenses even children , often leads family members not to report someone they care about. Fear of devastating lifelong legal and other consequences are especially powerful when the person sexually misusing or abusing a child is another child or adolescent.

Adolescents and young children, almost always in response to being abused themselves, commit more than a third of all reported sexual abuse of children. Many adults wrongly assume a child would tell if they experienced a traumatic sexual interaction.

Even when exploitation or abuse is known, if there is no visible impact on the child, or only minor effects are noticed, adults may believe the experience will be forgotten and have no lasting negative effects. In many cultures, faith communities and families, the act of forgiveness is held up as the highest ideal, and for good reasons. Some acts of forgiveness are truly genuine on the part of the person doing the forgiving, truly justified by the attitudes and actions of the person receiving forgiveness, and truly emotionally, morally and spiritually beneficial for everyone involved.

But others are not. Unfortunately, forgiveness can be false and destructive. This happens when it is demanded or forced — by outside pressure from others, including those who mostly want to avoid conflict and genuinely dealing with the problem, or by internal pressure, including a felt obligation to forgive in order to be a good person.

This happens when someone and his or her actions are not yet worthy of forgiveness, at least not worthy of forgiveness as the only or main response to the harmful behavior. Finally, giving in to such a demand for forgiveness also means dismissing the feelings of those who have been harmed, and for them it usually feels, rightly so, like an extension of the abuse.

We hope the perspectives and information on this page have been enlightening and helpful for you. In closing, we want to emphasize a few things:. While any or all of these reasons may be real, even legitimate roadblocks to protecting a child, none of them free adults from the responsibility of doing everything they can to keep children safe and help them heal from harm they have already suffered.

We hope that, by being aware of these complicated obstacles, and having a sober if grudging respect for their roots in inescapable human limitations and tragic social circumstances, we can all support one another more effectively in overcoming the very real barriers to protecting children.

Also, depending on your personal situation, understanding what might have gotten in the way may — or may not — reduce your feelings of disappointment, betrayal, or anger toward a person or group who failed to protect you or someone you love. For excellent child sexual abuse prevention information and resources, including guidebooks on how to talk with other adults about potential or definite sexual abuse situations, visit the website of Stop It Now.

All groups are facilitated by a counselor. They function just like a chat room: choose an anonymous screen name, enter the group, and start typing. There's no audio or video, and we don't collect any personal information. Add to Gmail Calendar. Add to Outlook Calendar. Why do adults fail to protect children from sexual abuse? Helpline to ask important questions, express their concerns and take extraordinary steps to protect their grandchildren.

Life experience and a position outside the immediate family gives grandparents unique advantages when it comes to facilitating conversations and encouraging action to prevent sexual abuse.

Whether a grandchild is suspected of being sexually abused by an adult or another adolescent or child, grandparents can encourage family members to speak up to prevent further abuse and to get help for a family member who may have a sexual behavior problem. Grandparents, as "next of kin," can offer temporary or permanent care for a child who may be unsafe in their own home. If sexual behavior problems exist between two children in the home, a grandparent may be perceived as someone who will be compassionate towards both children.

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For more information and guidance, please visit our Online Help Center. The Facts About Child Sexual Abuse Surveys of adults reveal that as many as one in three girls and one in six boys have been sexually abused before the age of eighteen. Information Especially for Grandparents Because a significant percentage of children are sexually abused by someone in their immediate or extended family, grandparents can play an invaluable part in addressing these sexual behavior concerns.