Graeme Simpfendorfer, Detective Sergeant with Victoria Police, on the day he realised that he was an alleged sexual abuse victim
Graeme Simpfendorfer began to shake as he walked past the officers working for him at the police station in Wodonga.
“I literally started crying in the office, sobbing and shaking,” recalls Simpfendorfer, who was then the detective sergeant in charge of the sex crimes unit. “A malfunction.”
Just then a senior detective passed us. “Are you okay, boss?” asked Simpfendorfer, who had just heard about the predator case and the grooming of the alleged victim. “He had no idea what was going on. All I thought was, ‘I need help.'”
The year was 2013. And almost two decades before then, Simpfendorfer, then 38, felt he was exactly where he needed to be. He first realized he wanted to be a police officer at the age of 19, when he witnessed an armed robbery behind the service counter of a bank where he worked in rural NSW.
“It was a real cops and robbers thing, and I got good at it,” he recalls.
Simpfendorfer also found some of the greatest meaning in her life by helping victims or family members of victims get through the worst days of their lives. After being torn apart by violent robberies, murders and sexual assaults.
But a truth that emerged about a year before he entered the police station began to unravel him.
He sat in a Victorian police academy classroom in Melbourne, surrounded by his fellow officers, listening to a lecturer talk about common tactics sexual predators use to groom their victims.
They were all training to be part of the Sexual Offenses and Child Abuse Investigation Team.
Simpfendorfer says the lecturer mentioned one particular case in which a predator began tickling the victim as a way to groom the victim and make it more accustomed to being touched. “And that affected me a lot,” he says. “It took me back to my own childhood and resentment.
“I was in shock. I remember thinking, ‘Everyone in this room will see my reaction to this and pick on it.'”
While Simpfendorfer’s body was in the classroom in Melbourne, her mind had wandered back to 1988, when she was standing in the living room of a family friend. Simpfendorfer was 14 years old. Family friends were not there. But allegedly it was a teacher he knew.
Recalling the incident now, Simpfendorfer claims: “And before we left, I don’t know the exact details but I ended up being tickled on the floor and then he mistreated me, put his hands down my trousers and [he] He started touching me.”
For almost a year after that lesson in Melbourne, Simpfendorfer’s condition worsened day by day. He drank too much and was careless at work; He was making sure he was the first to arrive at the scene of the crime.
“I almost dare the world to hurt me,” he says. “It would be easier to leave work due to an injury that is a physical injury [than admitting to his trauma].”
He was filled with shame.
“You know, [I was thinking] ‘Why me?’ A little shame, a lot of shame. There’s a lot of guilt around it. And it’s just ‘How did I keep this secret?’ And then, you know, the trauma that comes with that. How did this happen to me as a man? You know, we need to be strong. We want to do this, you know, these things shouldn’t happen to us. We are protectors, aren’t we?”
He left the police in 2021.
It is unfortunately necessary for Simpfendorfer to start speaking publicly about his experiences.
Because although child sexual abuse is shockingly common here – almost one in four Australians report having experienced child sexual abuse, according to the latest Australian Child Maltreatment Survey – many in the wider community don’t realize that it affects people for life.
“Look, I think people have a sense that this is it. [abuse] it was a long time ago [for someone]CEO of the National Action Center Against Child Sexual Abuse, Dr. Janine Bush says: “Or that people just move on after a while, so yeah, that’s a common misconception.
“It can affect relationships, people’s experiences of intimacy, and their trust. And such problems can reoccur immediately after the experience or decades later.”
In fact, Bush mentions that some survivors wait until they are in their 70s or 80s before first disclosing their abuse; as some did as part of the Landmark Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and in other state parliamentary inquiries.
“Someone may not want to die without telling someone because they’ve kept this secret their whole life… Look, it’s probably more common than you think,” Bush says.
Bush says survivors may return to suffering and remembering the trauma of their childhood abuse at various “trigger points,” such as becoming a parent or transitioning their child to school. “This can happen if someone who has been abused in an institution is moved to an aged care residential facility.”
For these reasons, one of the recommendations of the Royal Commission – the last findings of which were announced nearly 10 years ago – was that there was a need for “a more responsive, trauma-informed safe system that supports victim survivors of child sexual abuse,” Bush said.
But this system has not yet been implemented, he adds, noting that instead there is a fragmented package of services that are often inaccessible and, at their core, lack a critical understanding of how the trauma of sexual abuse affects a person throughout their life, “from zero to the end of life.”
“For example, a child may be sexually abused in one setting, and what we’ve found is that there are services that can support them in terms of counselling. It may be support in their education. It may be health support that is needed, physical health. These are all different systems. And perhaps support around mental health. There are no specific support services for children who have been sexually abused of a child. So they often need a coordinated system.”
Additionally, Bush adds, the taboo around child sexual abuse is much greater for boys and men than for girls and women.
“Look I think for men, yes the stigma around child sexual abuse [can be greater than for girls and women]“Issues related to masculinity and not showing vulnerability can lead to experiences of being willing to talk about them in more sexist ways.”
This is partly why Simpfendorfer is now passionate about speaking openly about her experience. However, this does not come without a personal cost.
She says it was especially painful to tell her three children, now ages 14, 16 and 24, about the abuse she experienced. She only did so last October when the man she claimed harassed her appeared in court on the charge.
“Yes, to tell me [youngest] My son, looking at me like ‘This happened to you at your age’; “This was very difficult,” says Simpfendorfer, noting that her son is now at the age where he was allegedly abused. [his kids] To see you like this, to have to reassure them, ‘I’m fine, I have good support.’” he says, his voice trailing off.
But he says telling this changed his life. Although the alleged abuser was found not guilty of harassment in court last year (he was jailed on separate charges against other students and intends to appeal his case), Simpfendorfer hopes that as more voices join him, perhaps the crime will become less common.
“I think there is a lot of great work being done in this area on gender-based violence and domestic violence. [against women]. And there aren’t enough men to stand up and say, ‘We’re sick of this.’ But there also aren’t enough men stepping forward and normalizing this conversation. Because these hunters work in the shade. “They feed on silence.”
“So for me, my goal is to tell my story. Be vulnerable, tell, tell everything. Be vulnerable and say, ‘There’s help out there.’ There’s great help. That doesn’t mean you have to go report to the authorities. You don’t have to do that. You can still go and tell the counselor. I got help. It was the best thing I’ve ever done. The version of me now is so much better than the version that kept the secret.”
Anyone needing support can contact 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732), the National Sexual Exploitation and Reparations Support Service 1800 211 028 and Lifeline 13 11 14.
Start your day with a digest of the most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
