June 18, 2025 • 52 mins
In 2015, Lauren Trevan’s husband was interviewed by police about messages he had sent to a teenage girl. He claimed they were harmless. They weren’t.
As the investigation unfolded, Lauren learned the full extent of his actions — and how much had been hidden. At the same time, she was navigating a controlling and emotionally abusive relationship herself.
In this episode, Claire Murphy speaks with Lauren about the intersection between coercive control and grooming behaviour — two forms of abuse that often remain unseen but have lasting impacts on victims.
Lauren shares her experience and discusses her fictionalised book Now I See You, written to help break the silence around complex forms of abuse. You can find the book here.
CREDITS
Guest: Lauren Trevan
Host: Claire Murphy
Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on. It's July twenty fifteen,
and Lauren Trevin finds a business card in her letterbox.
It's from a detective. They want to speak to her husband.
She's confused. What could the police possibly want with him.
(00:26):
He's been unemployed for a year after being made redundant,
and bills are starting to pile up, with just her
salary keeping their family for afloat. But surely the police
don't get involved in late bills, right, It can't be
about her, despite her fear of him his coercive control.
She's never told anyone the extent of it, never even
made a report, So what do the police want. It's
(00:50):
about messages I sent to Emily, Kick tells her the
next day, after being formally interviewed. It's nothing. They were
completely innocent messages. Apparently there's an investigation into me, he continues,
as Lauren will soon find out her husband's messages to
thirteen year old Emily were anything but innocent. And that's
(01:11):
just the start. Kip has been messaging multiple young girls,
abusing young girls for years, all while Lauren, who'd been
living in her own abusive relationship with him, had no idea.
(01:32):
I'm Claire Murphy and this is True Crime Conversations, a
podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to
the people who know the most about them. There are
many parallels between coercive control and child grooming. Both are
insidious and silent to the outside world, and yet can
(01:52):
happen right there in plain sight. Both are extremely damaging,
Both have lifelong effects on victim survivors. Both are evident
in the story that we're about to tell you. When
Lauren started speaking out about her ex husband's crimes, many
shied away from those dark themes. It was all just
a bit too much, too many horrible things at play.
(02:15):
But as Laurence says, not discussing hard topics does not
stop abuse from occurring. In fact, it only leaves victims
and survivors more isolated, and She's determined not to contribute
to the silence. Lauren's written a book called Now I
See You. It details her experience, but is a fictionalized
(02:35):
version of her story to protect the young victims within it.
She joins us, Now I guess, Lauren, what I wanted
to know? Right from the get go, is how you
found writing the book about your story, putting all of
those words down on paper. Because I imagine, you know,
recalling and retelling the story of what happened to you
(02:55):
and a lot of people around you who you're very
close to, that must have been an incredibly difficult journey
for you.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
It was difficult, but at the same time, I found
under it really cathartic. Essentially, I found I was at
a space in time where I had moved on from
the story a little bit in my life, so that
no one around me was speaking about anything anymore. No
one would really bring it up because it's the ugly,
(03:23):
still fresh, but ugly past, And so me delving into
the book was almost like a therapy because I still
needed to talk about it, and I was just super
passionate about getting my whole story out there. So that
I mean, essentially, I don't want him to be able
to do it again, and I want other people to
see signs to stop it happening again.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Well, let's talk about the human question. The human question
is your ex husband, Kip. Can you take us back
to the beginning, tell us tell us a story about
how you two fell in love.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So we met at a sporting club back in the
very late nineties. He was actually dating one of my
very close friends at the time, and I was dating
another boy in the sporting team, and we all used
to hang out together a lot, and essentially what happened
(04:17):
is we both broke up with the other partners and
then ended up pretty much getting together. Was it wasn't
like I had a decision in that I hadn't really
thought about it.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
We were all at his.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
House one night having drinks, and all of a sudden,
he took me outside and kissed me, and I was like,
oh gosh, like I'd never had It was a really
big surprise to me that he was interested in me.
He was this, you know, super popular guy in the club.
He'd been there forever, and he was really talented, and
(04:51):
you know, he was the type of guy when he
would talk, people would.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Listen around him.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And I think I was just a little bit blown
away by the fact he was interested in me at all.
I hadn't really gone there in my head until it happened.
And then obviously I was not close friends with that
friend anymore after that, and I think I felt like
i'd invested a lot into that relationship, so I kind
(05:19):
of felt like, oh, it was meant to be. It
must have been meant to be if it means giving
up these other good things in my life.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
It's so interesting in reflection, is it when you look
at your entire story that you can now pinpoint red
flags before you knew red flags were coming your way?
Because to have someone sort of come up to you
and take that initiative and just kiss you seemingly out
of nowhere, when you've had no thoughts or feelings about
this person leading up to that point, it's so hard
(05:47):
to explain how now, looking back, that looks like a
red flag, but in that moment, that feels very romantic,
and that feels very much like a fairy tale love story.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Right it was, and it did feel that way, and
that's why I felt like, oh, it must be meant
to be. You know, he must be my soulmate if
it felt so good at the time, even though it
was wrong at the time. And I think that's where
he got me really invested in that relationship, because I'd
already given up things before it even started to be
(06:20):
with him. So yeah, that was definitely the first warning
I would.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Say we mentioned there that you met at a sporting club.
Kip's role within that club was quite important, right, and
it only got more important as your relationship went along.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
He always was coaching people, and he was definitely a
senior member, and he ended up president of the club.
We were in as well down the track. But when
I got together with him, he was twenty nine years
old and I was twenty, so yeah, already a bit
of a power imbalance.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
So looking at the club perspective, was that your community?
So you're both involved in this sporting club. He's quite
an important person within that club. You've already mentioned a
power dynamic between your age differences. Would you say there
was then a power dynamic between his role and the
club and your part within that club community.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Definitely at the beginning of the relationship. Over time, I
sort of got myself my own position as such within
the club and was quite confident within the club myself.
But yeah, certainly we were kind of like the mum
and dad by the end of it.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
In the club.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
We're talking over a fifteen year period, so we were
together a long time. But definitely at the start I
was new to the club and learning learning skills and
things like that and getting better at the sport. So yeah,
it was definitely power imbalance in the club as well.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
At the start.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
So you two move in together pretty quickly, only after
about six months and you start to build a life together.
Can you pinpoint the moment the controlling behavior started and
did you recognize it in the moment or was this
only something that you recognized in hindsight.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
There's two events that happened fairly close together. One was
a friend of mine from high school sent me a
text message on my phone and he, Kip Wofford, read
the message at the time, and he was straight up
jealous and just and it was over the top jealous.
(08:27):
I can't remember the exact conversations because it's you know,
twenty something years ago now, but it just went on
for days almost.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
It was way too much.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
It was more than what I really had to go
out of my way to convince him, no, no, I
love you and only you. And this was very early
on in the relationship, like within a couple of years.
And the other thing he really early event that I
remember clearly is waking up at like four in the
morning with him just turning the bedroom light on.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
I was asleep.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
He'd gone out drinking and sort of to some local clubs,
and he just stood in the doorway, leaning against the
doorjam and just boomed at me, who's been here, you know,
with the light flatter? And I was just so taken
aback and sat up and half asleep.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
And I'm like, what are you talking about? No one's
been here.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It was in his unit, of course, no one had
been there, and he goes, I can tell because the
toilet paper's hanging differently, and that was just a real
I never It took me hours after that to settle
him down and say no, no, I didn't have anyone here,
and he's still You couldn't convince him. It was like
(09:38):
we were talking about two different relationships. So he made
me work really hard to convince him I hadn't done
anything wrong, when I actually hadn't done anything wrong. I'd
just been in bed, and he made me work very
hard to try and convince him of that, and I
couldn't convince him. It took way too long, and he
(09:59):
ended up just passing out on the bed. And I
think I felt sick for days after that, because I
don't think there were so many different little events that
happened over time that kind of mold into one another,
now you know what I mean, Like they so it's
hard to pinpoint exactly, but those things would happen and
then he wouldn't speak to me for days, and I'd
(10:19):
have to, you know, worm my way back into his life,
if that makes sense. But then then things would be
brilliant again once our relationship got back on track, and
he'd be loving, and I'd go back into that honeymoon stage,
you know, the way our relationship had started, and he was,
you know, all kind words.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
He was always very good with his words.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Did you at any stage when you're going through these
things where he's accusing you of having another man at
the house, did it ever occur to you with that
moment that he might be reflecting his own behaviors back
at you that the reason he was so concerned that
you had a man in the house is because he
was the one who was being unfaithful to you outside
of your house.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Only Really, this is how blinded I was by this man.
He could convince me of just about anything.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
He would.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, I literally found him in bed with a really
good friend of mine one morning and my friend got
up at six am and she ran out of the house.
And I have, like, I'm friends with her again now
because I know what happened that night, but it certainly
(11:34):
wasn't her instigating it, and she was trying to get
out of it. And he convinced me over the coming
days that he had been so drunk that he couldn't
even remember if he'd done anything wrong, but he loved
me and it wasn't really cheating if he couldn't remember
it anyway. And it sounds so silly and dumb now,
(11:57):
but we're talking a few years into our relationship now,
and I was so invested. I'd moved in with him,
you know, he was my dream man, and he was
promising me the life I really wanted, and I thought
we were meant to be together, and I just would
have been so humiliated if it had offended that way,
(12:18):
and I just thoughtful, no, I can move on from
this if he you know, he wasn't really cheating. So
he really did a good job of convincing me. So no,
I didn't see back then that he was reflecting his
own behaviors on to me.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
When you talk about your friend who ran out of
the house that day. And I know that you're really
mindful of not sharing other people's stories because it's not
your story to tell. But you mentioned that you know
now what happened that night? What did happen that night?
How did she explain what had happened between her and
your then boyfriend?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
To be honest, we're only recently back in contact through Instagram,
of all things. We live in different states, and I'm
sure we will catch up properly. But all she really
said is I saved her by walking in, like at
the time I walked in, and she hasn't been able
to say much else. I think she was in a
(13:16):
really sticky situation that she didn't want to get in
and didn't really know how to get out of it.
Because we were all raised to be polite, and I
think that where we didn't really stand up for ourselves
as much as we do nowadays.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
That could also be said. I guess of you taking
on all of the mental load of running your home too,
is that there's this expectation that that's just the woman
you're supposed to.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Be, right, Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
So you mentioned that you also got yourself a role
within the club and you are working full time, so
obviously you're in the world and you're achieving things and
you know growing. How did Kip react to your successes?
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Specifically, my biggest one that showed for me was when
I came home after finishing my nursing course and I
was so excited. I was, I was like graduated nursing.
I was going to be able to work now after
two and a half years. And I was so excited,
and he barely grunted at me. Like I realize now
(14:27):
that I look back, it was him not being able
to share joy in something that I'd done for myself.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Because he was really he was very good at.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Talking me up with things he'd had a hand in,
you know, like if I'd got a new skill that
he'd showed me, I was, you know, good at that,
like you know, four wheel driving or something like that.
You know, he could be proud of me because he'd
shown me how. So it was actually his accomplishment, if
that makes sense. Yeah, now that I look back, that's.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
What it was.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Can you tell the story about the margarine you bought
a different brand because most of us do when we
go shopping, like we're looking for bargains, right, so you've
gone for something that's just a little bit cheaper than
what you usually would get. How did he react to that?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Well, that specific story is relating to in my book
Now I See You, which I fictionalized, But that was
something that was a conversation that came up a lot
like it just wouldn't have happened that I buy the
wrong margarine because that is the margarine he has. That's
the margarine he's always had, and that's the one. And
(15:37):
there was a cheese I had to buy, and there
was you know, there was just things that you just
did for him to keep the piece. So you knew
that you wouldn't get his negativity and he wouldn't be
you just didn't want to upset him. I remember not
long after us getting married that I brought up something
(16:03):
he'd done and he just would flip the script and
he went on for hours and hours about how miserable
his life was and with me, and that I didn't
have enough sex with him, and that getting married like
this is a few months into our marriage, getting married
had ruined our sex life, had ruined our life. I
(16:24):
just thought, oh my god, I literally said to myself,
if I want to stay with this guy, I have
to just have sex with him whenever he wants to,
so he can never do that to me again, because
it just went on late into the night. He'd sort
of keep me up with this sleep deprivation of arguments
that just went on and on and on, and it
just wore me down and.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
It was like this sort of mind fuckery, if that
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
It was.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
More than that, because it was like again talking about
two different relationships. I actually started to keep a sex
diary after that because I wanted to be able to
know here we had sexy this like I didn't want
him to be able to have a go at me
like that again. But again, in between those times, it
(17:15):
would be like, that's that never happened, and you think,
oh god, I'm so glad that's over. Thank God, that's
not going to happen again. I'll make sure that doesn't
happen again. That he, you know, gets that upset with
me about something that he's been berating me. But over
time it just got worse and worse in the relationship.
(17:36):
And yeah, he would say things. He was constantly jealous.
He said he'd put cameras all over the house so
he'd know if I had someone there.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Do you remember the first time you heard the term
coercive control?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yes, I do, very clearly. I was listening to a
podcast with Laura Richards speaking about it, and this was
well after my relationship had ended, and I was like, Oh,
my gosh, that's that's what happened to me. I was
exact like everything, the whole the manipulation, with the threat
of suicide when I tried to leave, the just so
(18:12):
much of it over time, and just the whittling down
of who I was, because after fifteen years with him,
I really I'd taken on his political views. I just
literally became this sort of yes person to him.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Claire Murphy.
I'm speaking with Lauren Trevin, author of the book Now
I See You up next. Lauren tells us about the
first time Kip's abuse turned physical. Did the violence against
you ever turn physical? I mean, obviously feeling like you're
(18:52):
forced to have intimacy with a man in the way
that it has now been laid out for you, that
in itself is physical violence. But did it ever escalate
to a point where you felt for your bodily safety.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Probably last few year years of our relationship, I realized
how trapped I was and how frightened of him he was.
He'd always been very much a violent person, never with me,
like he'd punched holes in walls in the house, and
he'd stood over me like with you know, nostrils flaring
and fists clenched and things like that, but never actually
(19:27):
touched me in a physically violent way. But you know,
just for an example, we were sitting outside with some
neighbors one day, two brothers that had moved in above
us quite early on in our relationship, the first five years,
and I don't know what one of the brothers did
or said, but he all of a sudden pushed the
(19:48):
table out, jumped up, and threw this brother into the
wall like a brick wall because of something like something
the brother had said or looked at me funny or
like it was a jealousy thing. And obviously we didn't
stay friends with those neighbors. He was a volatile person,
you know, but everyone kind of relied on him because.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
He was a huge guy.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
He was six foot three or is six foot three,
and at that time he was built you know, like
a rugby forward.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
He was a big, big.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Guy, and he kind of commanded he'd be the one
to end the fights. Other people would start him, his
mates would start the fights, and he'd be the one
to finish the fights.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Well, I wanted to ask you that, if he's known
to be a sort of fairly physically violent guy, was
anyone looking out for you, like, was anyone asking the question?
Speaker 2 (20:38):
No one was asking that question specifically. But I was
not sharing just about anything what was going on behind
closed doors, how I was in the marriage. You know,
we did present like a pretty healthy relationship I think
out in public, but you know, and by the time
we had children and things like that, we just presented
(21:00):
as this, you know, a busy, little young family. But no,
I do remember my friend one day having lunch with her,
and I was explaining something I can't even remember what
had happened the night before, and I did confide in her,
and she said to me.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Why don't you leave him? He treats you like shit?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
And I said, and even in that early days, I
had really young babies, and I remember saying to her,
because I know, leaving him is going to be way
harder than trying to live with him, and I was
already in without me admitting it to myself properly, I
was already frightened because I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
What he was capable of if I did leave.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Because I always given in and behaved myself, behaved the
way he wanted me to behave If that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
What was it like for you when you were pregnant
and having babies, when you're even more vulnerable than what
you already are in that relationship.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
So when I got pregnant with my first daughter, he
was at first seemed quite happy, but then that the
pregnancy seems like a real hassle to him because I
was sick all the time. I was I just morning sickness.
Wasn't morning sickness for me. It just was there the
whole pregnancy. Every day I'd pretty much wake up throwing up,
(22:17):
and then it would just continue. It wasn't a lot
of fun. So yeah, it probably wasn't a lot of
fun to be around back then, but it was really tough.
And I was hoping that pregnancy would, you know, make
him stop smoking and make him stop drinking, and you
know nothing, No, I thought it would bring us closer together.
(22:39):
But it didn't. It did the opposite. He'd just you know,
take off and do his own thing on the weekend.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
What kind of dad was he?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
He was super lovely to the children in terms of
he was always great with kids, and when he was
around them, he'd you know, happily bounce them on his
knee and stuff like that. But in terms of doing
the hard yards of parenting, I pretty much did most
that he'd come in.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
And yeah, he changed some nappies.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
He was certainly not the worst parent that you've ever
heard of at all, but he was not supportive of
me at all.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
When did you realize he was tracking your car?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Well, that I cannot prove, but I just was at
a work function and he rang me and said to me,
So it could have been my phone. I don't know,
but it was a work function that wasn't at work,
but it was at a pub around the corner. But
it was an education night, And it was just the way,
(23:50):
because when you're in these relationships, it can be like
the slightest look that they give you and you know
something's really a miss, or the slightest tone difference in
his tone, and the difference in his tone when he said, oh,
he got He sort of answered the phone and goes on,
where are you? And I said, I'm at the work
function and he goes, no, where are you exactly? And
(24:14):
I just I just at that it just clicked to me.
I just he knows where I am. I'm sure he
knows where I am. And he's asking why am I
at a pub? He's saying, I'm lying to him. I
think he thinks he's caught me out doing something wrong.
But and it just dawned on me that and I
never felt I never felt like safe after that in
(24:36):
terms of him, Like, I just figured he knew where
I was all the time, and I knew by then
he was reading my messages, so you know, he was
much more tech savvy than me.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
So you've gone through quite a lot. You've asked him
to move out, he's refused. You know he's controlling you.
Is he also controlling finances? Is he isolating you from
people and money and things like that that they often
see in coercive control cases?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
So yes, he had he was the major money earner,
and he would like give me one of his cards
to use. But we never had joint bank accounts. And
even when I went back to work. He would just
pay all the major bills and things like that, and yeah,
so our money was kept quite separate. In terms of isolating,
(25:31):
he would in a clever, manipulative way, like he'd say
little snide comments about my best friend for instance. He
was very, very clever. He would never outright tell me
I could or couldn't do things as well, but he would,
like if I went to a mother's group dinner, he
would just make my life miserable when I got home,
(25:54):
and he'd say, like I would get accused of having
another affair or something like that would happen when I
came home, or something would happen. He'd just be miserable
around me, and I couldn't. He just made things not
worth doing. Like I describe coercive control as you know
(26:15):
those dog collars that people put on dogs that don't
have fences, that as soon as they hit the boundary
of the fence they get an electric shock. And that's
that's what coercive control is. It's not this outright. You learn,
you take one step forward and one step back or
(26:35):
two steps back because you learn, and then it's like
getting hit by a baseball bat when you break the
rules that you didn't know were there. If that makes sense,
it's very It really does screw with your brain. Yeah,
and you just don't recognize yourself.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
After the break. Lauren tells us about the moment she
realized that the man she was married to was not.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
Who she thought he was.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Will take us to that day in twenty fifteen, there's
a business card in your letterbox. What happened after that?
Speaker 3 (27:12):
So there was a.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Police card in our letterbox and I just said to him, Oh,
what's this for? And he goes, I'll sort it out later.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
And anyway, he wasn't working at that stage. He'd been
made redundant the year before and still didn't have a
job like close to a year later, so he should
have been home in that evening, but I'd gone and
got the kids and everything. And anyway, finally at eight
thirty at night, he rang me on my phone and
(27:41):
I said, well, where are you? I had been really worried,
and he goes, I was just interviewed by the police.
And he actually said his actual words were, this fucking
bitch of a detective just interviewed me.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
So he was interviewed by a woman yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
And interestingly I met her later on this one who first,
and she said, oh my god, he made my skin
crawl the first time I met him. And I'm like,
I wish he hadn't done that to me, but no,
she so anyway, he said he was being investigated for
some using some carriage servers to send messages to one
(28:26):
of the girls in the club. And I said, what
do you mean. And he started to talk about this
girl and I said, she's thirteen.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Why are you messaging her? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (28:37):
And he goes, oh, it was all about It was
all about this coaching I was doing with her on
the weekend, and it was all in jest, and it
was just stupid stuff and the families being milicious because
the dad doesn't like me. And anyway, I was convinced
of that, and I just believed him, even though something
felt really wrong in my guts about it, like something
(28:59):
felt really off. And it was on the Saturday after
that we had our AGM and we were all seated
around this table at one of the members houses, and
Kip had gotten up and resigned as president and went
outside because of the investigation, he had to resign, and
(29:20):
he went outside and then I got all up at
it and said, I hope that you know I want
this whole family band after all this companies in defense.
Oh my gosh, yes, And then I'm so embarrassed by
it now. But someone ended up just saying to me, oh, Lauren,
just just just wait until you know what's happened. And
(29:40):
I'm like, oh, no, I know what's happened. Anyway, the
meeting went on, and then someone handed me a transcript
because his mother and mother of this girl had sent
it to the club and I was on the committee,
so they handed it to me to read. And when
I read the messages, I was just blown away. It
was not my husband. It was not his voice, it
(30:01):
was not his the way he sends text messages. It's
all smiley faced and ha ha has and something about
wish I could be chasing little hotties like you, and
you know he wanted to massage her butt, and all
like this is a thirteen year old. He was forty
five at this time. There was nothing in jest about it.
(30:25):
When I was reading it, it was it was sickening.
And I just got up and I said to my
best friend, I got to go, and I wrangled the
kids together, who were three and six at the time,
and I popped them in the car and then he
must have found out I was leaving the house and
I just and I just screamed at him and said,
you sound like a fucking pedophile. Did not come home,
(30:47):
and yeah, that was the end of my relationship with him.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
That young girl that they found the text messages between
the two that was really found by accident, like a
mom was just up one night, he sent a late
night message. The phone happened to be near her. She
happy to intercept it at the time. So had it
not for been that kind of a ligning of planets,
we might never have known about this behavior. But then
(31:17):
you would find out that it was more than one girl.
How did you then find out that this behavior was
actually quite the norm for him?
Speaker 2 (31:27):
So I think it was. It was quite early on,
It was within weeks. It was all a bit of
a blur in that time, as you can imagine, because
my marriage was over in like two seconds. My very
very close friend rang me and she said one of
her daughters had called her and said that he had
(31:50):
molested her one night. And that was the next person
coming forward. And at that stage she decided to go
to the police as well and do a statement, and
then the police ended up calling a whole club meeting,
(32:11):
and I didn't go because I figured people won't talk
freely around me because they might think I'm on his
side or something. I really wanted the girls to know
that I supported them, because it was a family club.
Like everyone in that felt like my family. We spent
so much time together and these young girls, some of
(32:32):
them had babysat my children. I had babysat some of
these girls as well. When anyway, it just slowly drip drip, drip,
until more girls came forward, and eventually we found out
there was up to seven seven girls that and he'd
(32:53):
done much more than just send messages. That was how
he would start his He hasn't formally been charged with
grooming because those grooming laws didn't exist at that stage.
But I mean, essentially, if you were to look at
the definition of grooming, that's what was happening.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
And he was doing this from when some of these
girls were like eleven, right, that's.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Right, yep, yes, So he would start by sending messages
and like getting closer, and that'd be harmless at first
and then he'd slowly start to sexualize the messages like
add in and a few of the girls had like
almost curled him out on being rude in his messages,
(33:37):
like one of them actually just wrote back pedo or
something and he stopped messaging her. And there was definitely
girls that had said they had messages but their parents
didn't want them to go to the police. So anyway,
I'm sure it was bigger than it was. But yes,
(33:58):
he was initially charged with seven offenses and then child
sex offenses and then that ranging from using a carriage
service to cause offense to pretty much sexual penetration of
a child under sixteen, And he ended up getting charged
(34:20):
with forty seven charges in total. But by the time
you go to trial, they whittle that down to the
most they say in Australia. I don't know why they
say that. The jury they try and just consolidate it
into just a smaller group of charges, like the most serious.
So yeah, in the end, he was tried for twenty
(34:42):
five of those crimes against yeah, seven girls.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
And was he found guilty of all those.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
He was found guilty of all but one of the
text message charge where the girl had deleted it when
she couldn't exactly remember what had been said, so you
can understand that. And then he was found one of
the charges, gave an old time charge, so I think
it's twenty three offenses in the end, three of rape
(35:13):
he was found guilty of, and then a whole bunch
of other charges that he was guilty of.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Did it make you a question what had maybe happened
with your own children?
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Absolutely it did, yes. So after reading those messages, you know,
I was I rang his family and I was saying, look,
I'm nervous about leaving the children with him, like he's
going to come and see the children. And anyway, child
protection got involved very early on, which I was grateful
(35:46):
for at the time, and they put in place that
the children had to be supervised around his children, within
line of sight and hearing.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
By his mother.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yeah, so that was the first So that was within
within a month of us finding out, So that was
before the charges were laid and everything. So that was
within a month of us finding out about the messages.
He was not to see the children unsupervised.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
So he's still allowed access to his children after he's
been accused. Is he still allowed access after charges are
laid against him.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yes, so he was allowed access despite me saying that
I didn't believe his mother wasn't supervising properly, because the
kids would come home and say, oh, you know, they
were out doing something. They had been at the beach
or something, and oh no, but he was out in
(36:45):
the boat with the kids, and I'd say, oh, it
was Grandmo there. Oh no, she was on the beach,
and it's like, that's not supervising. And it was like
talking to a brick wall in the family court trying
to get anything changed once it's written down as a
consent order. Because I'd signed consent orders that she could
(37:06):
supervise despite them making her sign an undertaking, I still
didn't believe that she was supervising properly. But you know,
the family court was not a good experience at all.
I remember I was thinking, because his family started taking
(37:26):
him into the school. On at least one occasion, he
was there with his mother, but then off reading with
another little child in my daughter's class, or other kids
as well.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
So so he's been allowed onto school grounds after being
charged with child sexual offenses.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Forty seven charges at that stage and including yeah, sexual
penetration of children, So at that stage I didn't even
know about it until my daughter said, oh, daddy was
in class today, and I was like, oh wow, and
I'd moved her schools so no one recognized him as
her dad, and then she was really excited and I said,
(38:07):
was he reading to you? Like just reading to you?
And she said no, no other kids too, and I
was just I rang the police and said, surely that's
breaking bail and they said, unfortunately, it's not because his
mother was there with him, because he had to be
with another with some another adult to be with other
(38:30):
girls under sixteen. It didn't say anything about schools the
bail strictly, and so I rang child Protection. They said
they couldn't help. And then I rang the school and said,
which I had not wanted to do. I didn't want
them knowing what was going on. And I ended up
just telling them everything because I said, you cannot have
(38:53):
this man in a classroom. I said, what are people
going to say, when the parents going to say when
they find out a charge sex offenders in the classroom
reading to the little Johnny by himself around the corner.
I was just I couldn't get over how our system
lets us down, And that's what I was going to
say as well about when I met the children's lawyer
(39:15):
in family court. I thought, family court will be, you know,
a breeze for someone like me. He's going into it
with you know, he's a child sex offender. Nope, he
still has just as many rights as you know that
the whole focus was all about maintaining his relationship with
(39:36):
the children rather than the children ought to be protected
from a child's sex offender.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
So it's it was really that part of it was
really tough.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
So while you're fighting the system, there's all these parents
of young girls who are having to face the reality
that their young daughters have been groomed, sexually assaulted by
a man that they knew and trusted. And as you mentioned,
these people have been like family to you. This is
your community. How did you then go on? Do you
(40:12):
remove yourself from that community? Do you try and speak
to the people who've been impacted by this? Like? How
do you then move forward from this?
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Well? I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I didn't feel like I could go back to the
club at all ever, So I was just I was
pretty heartbroken by that. I was just too I guess
ashamed at that stage, but I really wanted the girls
to know every year or to know that I was
one hundred percent behind them straight away. So it was
very early on I sent a big group message to
(40:44):
all the girls saying how much I supported them and
was hoping that if anything has happened to them or
he's sent any inappropriate messages, I can't remember exactly what
I wrote, but I just said that I really loved
them all and that I want them to speak to
the police if they can, and that I fully support them.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
The whole way.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
How was your relationship with the parents, Because I understand
there's a family whose two daughters were molested by your
ex husband and she was very close to you. You
guys are really good friends. How does that relationship end
up after all this, Where.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Like still really really great friends and I see her
daughters still and where yeah very much. We don't live
in the same state anymore, but where yeah, we'll be
in contact for life. And I have intermittently kept up
(41:45):
to date, and I, you know, on social media. I
keep up with all those girls to see, you know,
them living their lives and make sure that everything's going
because for them to stand up, you know, at that stage,
some of them were, you know, so young, and they're
(42:07):
standing up to this man that I never could, and
it was so impressive to me that it really helped
me get the strength to you know, get stay away
from him and to give evidence against him at his trial.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
And it.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yeah, those girls are all very very phenomenal, beautiful, beautiful
human beings. So despite what he did, he he didn't
destroy any of them. So I'm so proud of them that.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
When you said that, one of those girls messaged him back,
calling him apedo, like, I can only hope that our
daughters have enough of that determination in them to also
respond like that. You must have been really relieved to
know that some of those girls really were equipped to
understand what he was, because not all kids are educated
(43:05):
to be able to identify it, and knew yourself didn't
see any of it, Like, it's really difficult when these
people are manipulating, especially young vulnerable people, but to know
that a young teenage girl has already clicked in her
brain that this is not right, Like, you must have
been so immensely proud of a really young woman to
be able to do that.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
I was, and I think that that was also a
sign of him getting cocky in what he was doing,
because by that stage he was quite a few years
down the track of abusing girls. I think early on
he really took his time with the before he sort
(43:46):
of would sexualize the messages, and I think he was
starting to get to be honest, Yeah, a bit cocky
that he could just have anything he wanted. To be honest,
I still think he thinks he's done nothing wrong and
that all those girls he just was convinced that they
wanted him as well, you know, like I don't. He
(44:08):
said to the family court reporter that he had done
nothing wrong and then accused me of another affair. And
he's done nothing, nothing worse than what I'd done by
having an affair that didn't happen. So it's coercive control
as well. You know, he's manipulating them, he's manipulating the parents.
(44:33):
He looked like this great upstanding citizen with a wife
and two children at his heart in a sporting community club,
and you know, he was the one who would say
to the parents, don't worry, I'll be at that event
to look after them, you know, if you can't make it.
And you know, he was the guy that we trusted,
(44:53):
and he was Yeah, it was quite phenomenal. He abused
girls in my house when I was there. It's just yeah.
When they read sentencing remarks and all his offending came out,
it was quite phenomenal to sit through. But I was
(45:14):
really proud of the Jewelry for getting it right in
my opinion, and the judge at the time, Judge wis Chusen,
I felt like he saw saw us all and he said,
you know, he because his lawyers wouldn't let me do
a victim impact statement because I wasn't a victim, and
(45:37):
that's what I was told along the whole way. I
was the only one who was financially affected and needed
the money because I had to move out at that stage.
But I was the only one not a victim, which
I understand. But I also was as broken in a
sense as a victim, like I was broken by that
(45:58):
man for a long time, and I wanted to do
a victim impact statement because it did affect me and
the children. And eventually the judge turned around and he
stopped listening to the argument that I couldn't do one,
and he just said, she loved those girls. And then
that's when I felt like he'd heard us, he'd listened
to us. He was all over the case when I
(46:20):
knew that he knew that I loved them as well,
you know, And yeah, he goes, that's fine, she can do.
She's not a victim in the sense of a victim.
She's a or a family member of the victim. And
he said, but she loved them, So that was beautiful
that moment.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
He is found guilty, sentenced fourteen years, but still makes
your life difficult, like you have to fight him to
be able to move into state. You obviously there will
come a day where he'll be set free. How do
you feel about that?
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Honestly, in a way, I'm terrified, But I also want
to stand up and scream from the mountain because I
feel like every time I tell my story and more
people know about it. You know, the silence is what
gives them power, and by me staying silent, it's just
(47:21):
making him more powerful, knowing that I'm sitting in a
little hole, afraid to talk about any of this, whereas
I need to take some of that power away from him,
and I need and it gives me strength knowing that
people are behind me. You know, he can't do anything
(47:42):
to hurt me because it's going to be so obvious,
do you know what I mean, Like if he comes
for me or anything like that, everyone's going to know.
So he can only do it once, right, So I'm
not I'm refused to live in fear when he gets out. Obviously,
ask me in a few years time, because yes, I'm terrified,
(48:05):
but I'm also so determined, so bloody determined, because I
am sick to death of these people getting away with
this crap. And then he's going to get out of
jail and no one's going to know about it. It's
like it never happened. It's like it never happened, and
he'll just be able to pick up his life where
it left off. In a sense, I know it won't
(48:27):
be the same, but I don't want him to be
able to do it again, and I want more people.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
The more people that know about.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
It, it's better for all of us. You know, these
things people need to get comfortable with talking about uncomfortable
topics because child sex offending is happening everywhere right now
and we need to step up and do a lot
more to stop it.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
What does life look like Lauren now? She's still essentially
partly living that past life because you've made it mission,
as you've just said, to make sure this doesn't happen again.
But Lawrence still has to move forward in life too.
So where have you found yourself now? Are you happy?
How are your kids feeling? And do they know what's
(49:19):
happened with dad? Like what's their understanding of everything?
Speaker 2 (49:22):
So my daughter doesn't want to know yet what he's done.
They both know he's in jail. My son knows a
little bit of what he's done, but not none of
them really know the whole story. They really don't bring
him up anymore at all. They see their cousins and
they love their cousins and are happy to see them.
But the kids are doing really, really well. They've got
(49:43):
a brand new life in a new state that they've
just settled into. I mean, honestly, they're just like every
other little crazy tuna that drives you nuts.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
Mine. Is it there yet?
Speaker 1 (49:55):
But I'm not looking forward to it now.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Well, I've got two teens as of the other day,
so yes that they're challenging regardless of.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Yeah, but my daughter, you know, she got me to
come and.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Speak at her at her cohort at school last year
about healthy relationships and tell my story of coercive control.
And you know that that's the whole pointing out to
kids in your ten that extreme jealousy does not mean
they're really into you. You know, it's a really scary
sign that someone's trying to control you. And it's one
(50:30):
of the first one of the first things at that age.
You know, just and anyone who wants to be with
you and your partner should be someone who wants to
see you as your very best version of yourself. It
shouldn't be it shouldn't be someone trying to make your
world smaller, which is what these coercive controllers do. They
(50:52):
try and isolate you, They try and belittle you, They
try and make you feel so that you're nothing, that
you're completely codependent on them, and that's what they gain
out of it. Whereas you know, someone a good relationship
which I have now, is someone you can talk to,
someone who wants to see you do your best, someone
(51:13):
who celebrates your wins in life and wants to see
you have a vast and big friendship group. You know,
they don't want you to not go out again because
you know it's it's it's they want to see you happy.
And that's That's what I would say to every young
person going into a relationship, because that is a surefire
(51:35):
way to tell very early on, if someone's, you know,
trying to shut down your world and make it smaller,
then it's not a good person.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
Thanks to Lauren for helping us tell her story. You
can find a link to her book Now I See
You in our show notes. True Crime Conversations is hosted
by me Claire Murphy. Our producer is Charlie Blackman, with
audio design by Jacob Brown. Thanks so much for listening.
I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on. It's July twenty fifteen,
and Lauren Trevin finds a business card in her letterbox.
It's from a detective. They want to speak to her husband.
She's confused. What could the police possibly want with him.
(00:26):
He's been unemployed for a year after being made redundant,
and bills are starting to pile up, with just her
salary keeping their family for afloat. But surely the police
don't get involved in late bills, right, It can't be
about her, despite her fear of him his coercive control.
She's never told anyone the extent of it, never even
made a report, So what do the police want. It's
(00:50):
about messages I sent to Emily, Kick tells her the
next day, after being formally interviewed. It's nothing. They were
completely innocent messages. Apparently there's an investigation into me, he continues,
as Lauren will soon find out her husband's messages to
thirteen year old Emily were anything but innocent. And that's
(01:11):
just the start. Kip has been messaging multiple young girls,
abusing young girls for years, all while Lauren, who'd been
living in her own abusive relationship with him, had no idea.
(01:32):
I'm Claire Murphy and this is True Crime Conversations, a
podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to
the people who know the most about them. There are
many parallels between coercive control and child grooming. Both are
insidious and silent to the outside world, and yet can
(01:52):
happen right there in plain sight. Both are extremely damaging,
Both have lifelong effects on victim survivors. Both are evident
in the story that we're about to tell you. When
Lauren started speaking out about her ex husband's crimes, many
shied away from those dark themes. It was all just
a bit too much, too many horrible things at play.
(02:15):
But as Laurence says, not discussing hard topics does not
stop abuse from occurring. In fact, it only leaves victims
and survivors more isolated, and She's determined not to contribute
to the silence. Lauren's written a book called Now I
See You. It details her experience, but is a fictionalized
(02:35):
version of her story to protect the young victims within it.
She joins us, Now I guess, Lauren, what I wanted
to know? Right from the get go, is how you
found writing the book about your story, putting all of
those words down on paper. Because I imagine, you know,
recalling and retelling the story of what happened to you
(02:55):
and a lot of people around you who you're very
close to, that must have been an incredibly difficult journey
for you.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
It was difficult, but at the same time, I found
under it really cathartic. Essentially, I found I was at
a space in time where I had moved on from
the story a little bit in my life, so that
no one around me was speaking about anything anymore. No
one would really bring it up because it's the ugly,
(03:23):
still fresh, but ugly past, And so me delving into
the book was almost like a therapy because I still
needed to talk about it, and I was just super
passionate about getting my whole story out there. So that
I mean, essentially, I don't want him to be able
to do it again, and I want other people to
see signs to stop it happening again.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Well, let's talk about the human question. The human question
is your ex husband, Kip. Can you take us back
to the beginning, tell us tell us a story about
how you two fell in love.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So we met at a sporting club back in the
very late nineties. He was actually dating one of my
very close friends at the time, and I was dating
another boy in the sporting team, and we all used
to hang out together a lot, and essentially what happened
(04:17):
is we both broke up with the other partners and
then ended up pretty much getting together. Was it wasn't
like I had a decision in that I hadn't really
thought about it.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
We were all at his.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
House one night having drinks, and all of a sudden,
he took me outside and kissed me, and I was like,
oh gosh, like I'd never had It was a really
big surprise to me that he was interested in me.
He was this, you know, super popular guy in the club.
He'd been there forever, and he was really talented, and
(04:51):
you know, he was the type of guy when he
would talk, people would.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Listen around him.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And I think I was just a little bit blown
away by the fact he was interested in me at all.
I hadn't really gone there in my head until it happened.
And then obviously I was not close friends with that
friend anymore after that, and I think I felt like
i'd invested a lot into that relationship, so I kind
(05:19):
of felt like, oh, it was meant to be. It
must have been meant to be if it means giving
up these other good things in my life.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
It's so interesting in reflection, is it when you look
at your entire story that you can now pinpoint red
flags before you knew red flags were coming your way?
Because to have someone sort of come up to you
and take that initiative and just kiss you seemingly out
of nowhere, when you've had no thoughts or feelings about
this person leading up to that point, it's so hard
(05:47):
to explain how now, looking back, that looks like a
red flag, but in that moment, that feels very romantic,
and that feels very much like a fairy tale love story.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Right it was, and it did feel that way, and
that's why I felt like, oh, it must be meant
to be. You know, he must be my soulmate if
it felt so good at the time, even though it
was wrong at the time. And I think that's where
he got me really invested in that relationship, because I'd
already given up things before it even started to be
(06:20):
with him. So yeah, that was definitely the first warning
I would.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Say we mentioned there that you met at a sporting club.
Kip's role within that club was quite important, right, and
it only got more important as your relationship went along.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
He always was coaching people, and he was definitely a
senior member, and he ended up president of the club.
We were in as well down the track. But when
I got together with him, he was twenty nine years
old and I was twenty, so yeah, already a bit
of a power imbalance.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
So looking at the club perspective, was that your community?
So you're both involved in this sporting club. He's quite
an important person within that club. You've already mentioned a
power dynamic between your age differences. Would you say there
was then a power dynamic between his role and the
club and your part within that club community.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Definitely at the beginning of the relationship. Over time, I
sort of got myself my own position as such within
the club and was quite confident within the club myself.
But yeah, certainly we were kind of like the mum
and dad by the end of it.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
In the club.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
We're talking over a fifteen year period, so we were
together a long time. But definitely at the start I
was new to the club and learning learning skills and
things like that and getting better at the sport. So yeah,
it was definitely power imbalance in the club as well.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
At the start.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
So you two move in together pretty quickly, only after
about six months and you start to build a life together.
Can you pinpoint the moment the controlling behavior started and
did you recognize it in the moment or was this
only something that you recognized in hindsight.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
There's two events that happened fairly close together. One was
a friend of mine from high school sent me a
text message on my phone and he, Kip Wofford, read
the message at the time, and he was straight up
jealous and just and it was over the top jealous.
(08:27):
I can't remember the exact conversations because it's you know,
twenty something years ago now, but it just went on
for days almost.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
It was way too much.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
It was more than what I really had to go
out of my way to convince him, no, no, I
love you and only you. And this was very early
on in the relationship, like within a couple of years.
And the other thing he really early event that I
remember clearly is waking up at like four in the
morning with him just turning the bedroom light on.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
I was asleep.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
He'd gone out drinking and sort of to some local clubs,
and he just stood in the doorway, leaning against the
doorjam and just boomed at me, who's been here, you know,
with the light flatter? And I was just so taken
aback and sat up and half asleep.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
And I'm like, what are you talking about? No one's
been here.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It was in his unit, of course, no one had
been there, and he goes, I can tell because the
toilet paper's hanging differently, and that was just a real
I never It took me hours after that to settle
him down and say no, no, I didn't have anyone here,
and he's still You couldn't convince him. It was like
(09:38):
we were talking about two different relationships. So he made
me work really hard to convince him I hadn't done
anything wrong, when I actually hadn't done anything wrong. I'd
just been in bed, and he made me work very
hard to try and convince him of that, and I
couldn't convince him. It took way too long, and he
(09:59):
ended up just passing out on the bed. And I
think I felt sick for days after that, because I
don't think there were so many different little events that
happened over time that kind of mold into one another,
now you know what I mean, Like they so it's
hard to pinpoint exactly, but those things would happen and
then he wouldn't speak to me for days, and I'd
(10:19):
have to, you know, worm my way back into his life,
if that makes sense. But then then things would be
brilliant again once our relationship got back on track, and
he'd be loving, and I'd go back into that honeymoon stage,
you know, the way our relationship had started, and he was,
you know, all kind words.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
He was always very good with his words.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Did you at any stage when you're going through these
things where he's accusing you of having another man at
the house, did it ever occur to you with that
moment that he might be reflecting his own behaviors back
at you that the reason he was so concerned that
you had a man in the house is because he
was the one who was being unfaithful to you outside
of your house.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Only Really, this is how blinded I was by this man.
He could convince me of just about anything.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
He would.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, I literally found him in bed with a really
good friend of mine one morning and my friend got
up at six am and she ran out of the house.
And I have, like, I'm friends with her again now
because I know what happened that night, but it certainly
(11:34):
wasn't her instigating it, and she was trying to get
out of it. And he convinced me over the coming
days that he had been so drunk that he couldn't
even remember if he'd done anything wrong, but he loved
me and it wasn't really cheating if he couldn't remember
it anyway. And it sounds so silly and dumb now,
(11:57):
but we're talking a few years into our relationship now,
and I was so invested. I'd moved in with him,
you know, he was my dream man, and he was
promising me the life I really wanted, and I thought
we were meant to be together, and I just would
have been so humiliated if it had offended that way,
(12:18):
and I just thoughtful, no, I can move on from
this if he you know, he wasn't really cheating. So
he really did a good job of convincing me. So no,
I didn't see back then that he was reflecting his
own behaviors on to me.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
When you talk about your friend who ran out of
the house that day. And I know that you're really
mindful of not sharing other people's stories because it's not
your story to tell. But you mentioned that you know
now what happened that night? What did happen that night?
How did she explain what had happened between her and
your then boyfriend?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
To be honest, we're only recently back in contact through Instagram,
of all things. We live in different states, and I'm
sure we will catch up properly. But all she really
said is I saved her by walking in, like at
the time I walked in, and she hasn't been able
to say much else. I think she was in a
(13:16):
really sticky situation that she didn't want to get in
and didn't really know how to get out of it.
Because we were all raised to be polite, and I
think that where we didn't really stand up for ourselves
as much as we do nowadays.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
That could also be said. I guess of you taking
on all of the mental load of running your home too,
is that there's this expectation that that's just the woman
you're supposed to.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Be, right, Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
So you mentioned that you also got yourself a role
within the club and you are working full time, so
obviously you're in the world and you're achieving things and
you know growing. How did Kip react to your successes?
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Specifically, my biggest one that showed for me was when
I came home after finishing my nursing course and I
was so excited. I was, I was like graduated nursing.
I was going to be able to work now after
two and a half years. And I was so excited,
and he barely grunted at me. Like I realize now
(14:27):
that I look back, it was him not being able
to share joy in something that I'd done for myself.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Because he was really he was very good at.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Talking me up with things he'd had a hand in,
you know, like if I'd got a new skill that
he'd showed me, I was, you know, good at that,
like you know, four wheel driving or something like that.
You know, he could be proud of me because he'd
shown me how. So it was actually his accomplishment, if
that makes sense. Yeah, now that I look back, that's.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
What it was.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Can you tell the story about the margarine you bought
a different brand because most of us do when we
go shopping, like we're looking for bargains, right, so you've
gone for something that's just a little bit cheaper than
what you usually would get. How did he react to that?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Well, that specific story is relating to in my book
Now I See You, which I fictionalized, But that was
something that was a conversation that came up a lot
like it just wouldn't have happened that I buy the
wrong margarine because that is the margarine he has. That's
the margarine he's always had, and that's the one. And
(15:37):
there was a cheese I had to buy, and there
was you know, there was just things that you just
did for him to keep the piece. So you knew
that you wouldn't get his negativity and he wouldn't be
you just didn't want to upset him. I remember not
long after us getting married that I brought up something
(16:03):
he'd done and he just would flip the script and
he went on for hours and hours about how miserable
his life was and with me, and that I didn't
have enough sex with him, and that getting married like
this is a few months into our marriage, getting married
had ruined our sex life, had ruined our life. I
(16:24):
just thought, oh my god, I literally said to myself,
if I want to stay with this guy, I have
to just have sex with him whenever he wants to,
so he can never do that to me again, because
it just went on late into the night. He'd sort
of keep me up with this sleep deprivation of arguments
that just went on and on and on, and it
just wore me down and.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
It was like this sort of mind fuckery, if that
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
It was.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
More than that, because it was like again talking about
two different relationships. I actually started to keep a sex
diary after that because I wanted to be able to
know here we had sexy this like I didn't want
him to be able to have a go at me
like that again. But again, in between those times, it
(17:15):
would be like, that's that never happened, and you think,
oh god, I'm so glad that's over. Thank God, that's
not going to happen again. I'll make sure that doesn't
happen again. That he, you know, gets that upset with
me about something that he's been berating me. But over
time it just got worse and worse in the relationship.
(17:36):
And yeah, he would say things. He was constantly jealous.
He said he'd put cameras all over the house so
he'd know if I had someone there.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Do you remember the first time you heard the term
coercive control?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yes, I do, very clearly. I was listening to a
podcast with Laura Richards speaking about it, and this was
well after my relationship had ended, and I was like, Oh,
my gosh, that's that's what happened to me. I was
exact like everything, the whole the manipulation, with the threat
of suicide when I tried to leave, the just so
(18:12):
much of it over time, and just the whittling down
of who I was, because after fifteen years with him,
I really I'd taken on his political views. I just
literally became this sort of yes person to him.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Claire Murphy.
I'm speaking with Lauren Trevin, author of the book Now
I See You up next. Lauren tells us about the
first time Kip's abuse turned physical. Did the violence against
you ever turn physical? I mean, obviously feeling like you're
(18:52):
forced to have intimacy with a man in the way
that it has now been laid out for you, that
in itself is physical violence. But did it ever escalate
to a point where you felt for your bodily safety.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Probably last few year years of our relationship, I realized
how trapped I was and how frightened of him he was.
He'd always been very much a violent person, never with me,
like he'd punched holes in walls in the house, and
he'd stood over me like with you know, nostrils flaring
and fists clenched and things like that, but never actually
(19:27):
touched me in a physically violent way. But you know,
just for an example, we were sitting outside with some
neighbors one day, two brothers that had moved in above
us quite early on in our relationship, the first five years,
and I don't know what one of the brothers did
or said, but he all of a sudden pushed the
(19:48):
table out, jumped up, and threw this brother into the
wall like a brick wall because of something like something
the brother had said or looked at me funny or
like it was a jealousy thing. And obviously we didn't
stay friends with those neighbors. He was a volatile person,
you know, but everyone kind of relied on him because.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
He was a huge guy.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
He was six foot three or is six foot three,
and at that time he was built you know, like
a rugby forward.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
He was a big, big.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Guy, and he kind of commanded he'd be the one
to end the fights. Other people would start him, his
mates would start the fights, and he'd be the one
to finish the fights.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Well, I wanted to ask you that, if he's known
to be a sort of fairly physically violent guy, was
anyone looking out for you, like, was anyone asking the question?
Speaker 2 (20:38):
No one was asking that question specifically. But I was
not sharing just about anything what was going on behind
closed doors, how I was in the marriage. You know,
we did present like a pretty healthy relationship I think
out in public, but you know, and by the time
we had children and things like that, we just presented
(21:00):
as this, you know, a busy, little young family. But no,
I do remember my friend one day having lunch with her,
and I was explaining something I can't even remember what
had happened the night before, and I did confide in her,
and she said to me.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Why don't you leave him? He treats you like shit?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
And I said, and even in that early days, I
had really young babies, and I remember saying to her,
because I know, leaving him is going to be way
harder than trying to live with him, and I was
already in without me admitting it to myself properly, I
was already frightened because I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
What he was capable of if I did leave.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Because I always given in and behaved myself, behaved the
way he wanted me to behave If that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
What was it like for you when you were pregnant
and having babies, when you're even more vulnerable than what
you already are in that relationship.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
So when I got pregnant with my first daughter, he
was at first seemed quite happy, but then that the
pregnancy seems like a real hassle to him because I
was sick all the time. I was I just morning sickness.
Wasn't morning sickness for me. It just was there the
whole pregnancy. Every day I'd pretty much wake up throwing up,
(22:17):
and then it would just continue. It wasn't a lot
of fun. So yeah, it probably wasn't a lot of
fun to be around back then, but it was really tough.
And I was hoping that pregnancy would, you know, make
him stop smoking and make him stop drinking, and you
know nothing, No, I thought it would bring us closer together.
(22:39):
But it didn't. It did the opposite. He'd just you know,
take off and do his own thing on the weekend.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
What kind of dad was he?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
He was super lovely to the children in terms of
he was always great with kids, and when he was
around them, he'd you know, happily bounce them on his
knee and stuff like that. But in terms of doing
the hard yards of parenting, I pretty much did most
that he'd come in.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
And yeah, he changed some nappies.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
He was certainly not the worst parent that you've ever
heard of at all, but he was not supportive of
me at all.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
When did you realize he was tracking your car?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Well, that I cannot prove, but I just was at
a work function and he rang me and said to me,
So it could have been my phone. I don't know,
but it was a work function that wasn't at work,
but it was at a pub around the corner. But
it was an education night, And it was just the way,
(23:50):
because when you're in these relationships, it can be like
the slightest look that they give you and you know
something's really a miss, or the slightest tone difference in
his tone, and the difference in his tone when he said, oh,
he got He sort of answered the phone and goes on,
where are you? And I said, I'm at the work
function and he goes, no, where are you exactly? And
(24:14):
I just I just at that it just clicked to me.
I just he knows where I am. I'm sure he
knows where I am. And he's asking why am I
at a pub? He's saying, I'm lying to him. I
think he thinks he's caught me out doing something wrong.
But and it just dawned on me that and I
never felt I never felt like safe after that in
(24:36):
terms of him, Like, I just figured he knew where
I was all the time, and I knew by then
he was reading my messages, so you know, he was
much more tech savvy than me.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
So you've gone through quite a lot. You've asked him
to move out, he's refused. You know he's controlling you.
Is he also controlling finances? Is he isolating you from
people and money and things like that that they often
see in coercive control cases?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
So yes, he had he was the major money earner,
and he would like give me one of his cards
to use. But we never had joint bank accounts. And
even when I went back to work. He would just
pay all the major bills and things like that, and yeah,
so our money was kept quite separate. In terms of isolating,
(25:31):
he would in a clever, manipulative way, like he'd say
little snide comments about my best friend for instance. He
was very, very clever. He would never outright tell me
I could or couldn't do things as well, but he would,
like if I went to a mother's group dinner, he
would just make my life miserable when I got home,
(25:54):
and he'd say, like I would get accused of having
another affair or something like that would happen when I
came home, or something would happen. He'd just be miserable
around me, and I couldn't. He just made things not
worth doing. Like I describe coercive control as you know
(26:15):
those dog collars that people put on dogs that don't
have fences, that as soon as they hit the boundary
of the fence they get an electric shock. And that's
that's what coercive control is. It's not this outright. You learn,
you take one step forward and one step back or
(26:35):
two steps back because you learn, and then it's like
getting hit by a baseball bat when you break the
rules that you didn't know were there. If that makes sense,
it's very It really does screw with your brain. Yeah,
and you just don't recognize yourself.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
After the break. Lauren tells us about the moment she
realized that the man she was married to was not.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
Who she thought he was.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Will take us to that day in twenty fifteen, there's
a business card in your letterbox. What happened after that?
Speaker 3 (27:12):
So there was a.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Police card in our letterbox and I just said to him, Oh,
what's this for? And he goes, I'll sort it out later.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
And anyway, he wasn't working at that stage. He'd been
made redundant the year before and still didn't have a
job like close to a year later, so he should
have been home in that evening, but I'd gone and
got the kids and everything. And anyway, finally at eight
thirty at night, he rang me on my phone and
(27:41):
I said, well, where are you? I had been really worried,
and he goes, I was just interviewed by the police.
And he actually said his actual words were, this fucking
bitch of a detective just interviewed me.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
So he was interviewed by a woman yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
And interestingly I met her later on this one who first,
and she said, oh my god, he made my skin
crawl the first time I met him. And I'm like,
I wish he hadn't done that to me, but no,
she so anyway, he said he was being investigated for
some using some carriage servers to send messages to one
(28:26):
of the girls in the club. And I said, what
do you mean. And he started to talk about this
girl and I said, she's thirteen.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Why are you messaging her? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (28:37):
And he goes, oh, it was all about It was
all about this coaching I was doing with her on
the weekend, and it was all in jest, and it
was just stupid stuff and the families being milicious because
the dad doesn't like me. And anyway, I was convinced
of that, and I just believed him, even though something
felt really wrong in my guts about it, like something
(28:59):
felt really off. And it was on the Saturday after
that we had our AGM and we were all seated
around this table at one of the members houses, and
Kip had gotten up and resigned as president and went
outside because of the investigation, he had to resign, and
(29:20):
he went outside and then I got all up at
it and said, I hope that you know I want
this whole family band after all this companies in defense.
Oh my gosh, yes, And then I'm so embarrassed by
it now. But someone ended up just saying to me, oh, Lauren,
just just just wait until you know what's happened. And
(29:40):
I'm like, oh, no, I know what's happened. Anyway, the
meeting went on, and then someone handed me a transcript
because his mother and mother of this girl had sent
it to the club and I was on the committee,
so they handed it to me to read. And when
I read the messages, I was just blown away. It
was not my husband. It was not his voice, it
(30:01):
was not his the way he sends text messages. It's
all smiley faced and ha ha has and something about
wish I could be chasing little hotties like you, and
you know he wanted to massage her butt, and all
like this is a thirteen year old. He was forty
five at this time. There was nothing in jest about it.
(30:25):
When I was reading it, it was it was sickening.
And I just got up and I said to my
best friend, I got to go, and I wrangled the
kids together, who were three and six at the time,
and I popped them in the car and then he
must have found out I was leaving the house and
I just and I just screamed at him and said,
you sound like a fucking pedophile. Did not come home,
(30:47):
and yeah, that was the end of my relationship with him.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
That young girl that they found the text messages between
the two that was really found by accident, like a
mom was just up one night, he sent a late
night message. The phone happened to be near her. She
happy to intercept it at the time. So had it
not for been that kind of a ligning of planets,
we might never have known about this behavior. But then
(31:17):
you would find out that it was more than one girl.
How did you then find out that this behavior was
actually quite the norm for him?
Speaker 2 (31:27):
So I think it was. It was quite early on,
It was within weeks. It was all a bit of
a blur in that time, as you can imagine, because
my marriage was over in like two seconds. My very
very close friend rang me and she said one of
her daughters had called her and said that he had
(31:50):
molested her one night. And that was the next person
coming forward. And at that stage she decided to go
to the police as well and do a statement, and
then the police ended up calling a whole club meeting,
(32:11):
and I didn't go because I figured people won't talk
freely around me because they might think I'm on his
side or something. I really wanted the girls to know
that I supported them, because it was a family club.
Like everyone in that felt like my family. We spent
so much time together and these young girls, some of
(32:32):
them had babysat my children. I had babysat some of
these girls as well. When anyway, it just slowly drip drip, drip,
until more girls came forward, and eventually we found out
there was up to seven seven girls that and he'd
(32:53):
done much more than just send messages. That was how
he would start his He hasn't formally been charged with
grooming because those grooming laws didn't exist at that stage.
But I mean, essentially, if you were to look at
the definition of grooming, that's what was happening.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
And he was doing this from when some of these
girls were like eleven, right, that's.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Right, yep, yes, So he would start by sending messages
and like getting closer, and that'd be harmless at first
and then he'd slowly start to sexualize the messages like
add in and a few of the girls had like
almost curled him out on being rude in his messages,
(33:37):
like one of them actually just wrote back pedo or
something and he stopped messaging her. And there was definitely
girls that had said they had messages but their parents
didn't want them to go to the police. So anyway,
I'm sure it was bigger than it was. But yes,
(33:58):
he was initially charged with seven offenses and then child
sex offenses and then that ranging from using a carriage
service to cause offense to pretty much sexual penetration of
a child under sixteen, And he ended up getting charged
(34:20):
with forty seven charges in total. But by the time
you go to trial, they whittle that down to the
most they say in Australia. I don't know why they
say that. The jury they try and just consolidate it
into just a smaller group of charges, like the most serious.
So yeah, in the end, he was tried for twenty
(34:42):
five of those crimes against yeah, seven girls.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
And was he found guilty of all those.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
He was found guilty of all but one of the
text message charge where the girl had deleted it when
she couldn't exactly remember what had been said, so you
can understand that. And then he was found one of
the charges, gave an old time charge, so I think
it's twenty three offenses in the end, three of rape
(35:13):
he was found guilty of, and then a whole bunch
of other charges that he was guilty of.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Did it make you a question what had maybe happened
with your own children?
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Absolutely it did, yes. So after reading those messages, you know,
I was I rang his family and I was saying, look,
I'm nervous about leaving the children with him, like he's
going to come and see the children. And anyway, child
protection got involved very early on, which I was grateful
(35:46):
for at the time, and they put in place that
the children had to be supervised around his children, within
line of sight and hearing.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
By his mother.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yeah, so that was the first So that was within
within a month of us finding out, So that was
before the charges were laid and everything. So that was
within a month of us finding out about the messages.
He was not to see the children unsupervised.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
So he's still allowed access to his children after he's
been accused. Is he still allowed access after charges are
laid against him.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yes, so he was allowed access despite me saying that
I didn't believe his mother wasn't supervising properly, because the
kids would come home and say, oh, you know, they
were out doing something. They had been at the beach
or something, and oh no, but he was out in
(36:45):
the boat with the kids, and I'd say, oh, it
was Grandmo there. Oh no, she was on the beach,
and it's like, that's not supervising. And it was like
talking to a brick wall in the family court trying
to get anything changed once it's written down as a
consent order. Because I'd signed consent orders that she could
(37:06):
supervise despite them making her sign an undertaking, I still
didn't believe that she was supervising properly. But you know,
the family court was not a good experience at all.
I remember I was thinking, because his family started taking
(37:26):
him into the school. On at least one occasion, he
was there with his mother, but then off reading with
another little child in my daughter's class, or other kids
as well.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
So so he's been allowed onto school grounds after being
charged with child sexual offenses.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Forty seven charges at that stage and including yeah, sexual
penetration of children, So at that stage I didn't even
know about it until my daughter said, oh, daddy was
in class today, and I was like, oh wow, and
I'd moved her schools so no one recognized him as
her dad, and then she was really excited and I said,
(38:07):
was he reading to you? Like just reading to you?
And she said no, no other kids too, and I
was just I rang the police and said, surely that's
breaking bail and they said, unfortunately, it's not because his
mother was there with him, because he had to be
with another with some another adult to be with other
(38:30):
girls under sixteen. It didn't say anything about schools the
bail strictly, and so I rang child Protection. They said
they couldn't help. And then I rang the school and said,
which I had not wanted to do. I didn't want
them knowing what was going on. And I ended up
just telling them everything because I said, you cannot have
(38:53):
this man in a classroom. I said, what are people
going to say, when the parents going to say when
they find out a charge sex offenders in the classroom
reading to the little Johnny by himself around the corner.
I was just I couldn't get over how our system
lets us down, And that's what I was going to
say as well about when I met the children's lawyer
(39:15):
in family court. I thought, family court will be, you know,
a breeze for someone like me. He's going into it
with you know, he's a child sex offender. Nope, he
still has just as many rights as you know that
the whole focus was all about maintaining his relationship with
(39:36):
the children rather than the children ought to be protected
from a child's sex offender.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
So it's it was really that part of it was
really tough.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
So while you're fighting the system, there's all these parents
of young girls who are having to face the reality
that their young daughters have been groomed, sexually assaulted by
a man that they knew and trusted. And as you mentioned,
these people have been like family to you. This is
your community. How did you then go on? Do you
(40:12):
remove yourself from that community? Do you try and speak
to the people who've been impacted by this? Like? How
do you then move forward from this?
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Well? I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I didn't feel like I could go back to the
club at all ever, So I was just I was
pretty heartbroken by that. I was just too I guess
ashamed at that stage, but I really wanted the girls
to know every year or to know that I was
one hundred percent behind them straight away. So it was
very early on I sent a big group message to
(40:44):
all the girls saying how much I supported them and
was hoping that if anything has happened to them or
he's sent any inappropriate messages, I can't remember exactly what
I wrote, but I just said that I really loved
them all and that I want them to speak to
the police if they can, and that I fully support them.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
The whole way.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
How was your relationship with the parents, Because I understand
there's a family whose two daughters were molested by your
ex husband and she was very close to you. You
guys are really good friends. How does that relationship end
up after all this, Where.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Like still really really great friends and I see her
daughters still and where yeah very much. We don't live
in the same state anymore, but where yeah, we'll be
in contact for life. And I have intermittently kept up
(41:45):
to date, and I, you know, on social media. I
keep up with all those girls to see, you know,
them living their lives and make sure that everything's going
because for them to stand up, you know, at that stage,
some of them were, you know, so young, and they're
(42:07):
standing up to this man that I never could, and
it was so impressive to me that it really helped
me get the strength to you know, get stay away
from him and to give evidence against him at his trial.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
And it.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yeah, those girls are all very very phenomenal, beautiful, beautiful
human beings. So despite what he did, he he didn't
destroy any of them. So I'm so proud of them that.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
When you said that, one of those girls messaged him back,
calling him apedo, like, I can only hope that our
daughters have enough of that determination in them to also
respond like that. You must have been really relieved to
know that some of those girls really were equipped to
understand what he was, because not all kids are educated
(43:05):
to be able to identify it, and knew yourself didn't
see any of it, Like, it's really difficult when these
people are manipulating, especially young vulnerable people, but to know
that a young teenage girl has already clicked in her
brain that this is not right, Like, you must have
been so immensely proud of a really young woman to
be able to do that.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
I was, and I think that that was also a
sign of him getting cocky in what he was doing,
because by that stage he was quite a few years
down the track of abusing girls. I think early on
he really took his time with the before he sort
(43:46):
of would sexualize the messages, and I think he was
starting to get to be honest, Yeah, a bit cocky
that he could just have anything he wanted. To be honest,
I still think he thinks he's done nothing wrong and
that all those girls he just was convinced that they
wanted him as well, you know, like I don't. He
(44:08):
said to the family court reporter that he had done
nothing wrong and then accused me of another affair. And
he's done nothing, nothing worse than what I'd done by
having an affair that didn't happen. So it's coercive control
as well. You know, he's manipulating them, he's manipulating the parents.
(44:33):
He looked like this great upstanding citizen with a wife
and two children at his heart in a sporting community club,
and you know, he was the one who would say
to the parents, don't worry, I'll be at that event
to look after them, you know, if you can't make it.
And you know, he was the guy that we trusted,
(44:53):
and he was Yeah, it was quite phenomenal. He abused
girls in my house when I was there. It's just yeah.
When they read sentencing remarks and all his offending came out,
it was quite phenomenal to sit through. But I was
(45:14):
really proud of the Jewelry for getting it right in
my opinion, and the judge at the time, Judge wis Chusen,
I felt like he saw saw us all and he said,
you know, he because his lawyers wouldn't let me do
a victim impact statement because I wasn't a victim, and
(45:37):
that's what I was told along the whole way. I
was the only one who was financially affected and needed
the money because I had to move out at that stage.
But I was the only one not a victim, which
I understand. But I also was as broken in a
sense as a victim, like I was broken by that
(45:58):
man for a long time, and I wanted to do
a victim impact statement because it did affect me and
the children. And eventually the judge turned around and he
stopped listening to the argument that I couldn't do one,
and he just said, she loved those girls. And then
that's when I felt like he'd heard us, he'd listened
to us. He was all over the case when I
(46:20):
knew that he knew that I loved them as well,
you know, And yeah, he goes, that's fine, she can do.
She's not a victim in the sense of a victim.
She's a or a family member of the victim. And
he said, but she loved them, So that was beautiful
that moment.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
He is found guilty, sentenced fourteen years, but still makes
your life difficult, like you have to fight him to
be able to move into state. You obviously there will
come a day where he'll be set free. How do
you feel about that?
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Honestly, in a way, I'm terrified, But I also want
to stand up and scream from the mountain because I
feel like every time I tell my story and more
people know about it. You know, the silence is what
gives them power, and by me staying silent, it's just
(47:21):
making him more powerful, knowing that I'm sitting in a
little hole, afraid to talk about any of this, whereas
I need to take some of that power away from him,
and I need and it gives me strength knowing that
people are behind me. You know, he can't do anything
(47:42):
to hurt me because it's going to be so obvious,
do you know what I mean, Like if he comes
for me or anything like that, everyone's going to know.
So he can only do it once, right, So I'm
not I'm refused to live in fear when he gets out. Obviously,
ask me in a few years time, because yes, I'm terrified,
(48:05):
but I'm also so determined, so bloody determined, because I
am sick to death of these people getting away with
this crap. And then he's going to get out of
jail and no one's going to know about it. It's
like it never happened. It's like it never happened, and
he'll just be able to pick up his life where
it left off. In a sense, I know it won't
(48:27):
be the same, but I don't want him to be
able to do it again, and I want more people.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
The more people that know about.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
It, it's better for all of us. You know, these
things people need to get comfortable with talking about uncomfortable
topics because child sex offending is happening everywhere right now
and we need to step up and do a lot
more to stop it.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
What does life look like Lauren now? She's still essentially
partly living that past life because you've made it mission,
as you've just said, to make sure this doesn't happen again.
But Lawrence still has to move forward in life too.
So where have you found yourself now? Are you happy?
How are your kids feeling? And do they know what's
(49:19):
happened with dad? Like what's their understanding of everything?
Speaker 2 (49:22):
So my daughter doesn't want to know yet what he's done.
They both know he's in jail. My son knows a
little bit of what he's done, but not none of
them really know the whole story. They really don't bring
him up anymore at all. They see their cousins and
they love their cousins and are happy to see them.
But the kids are doing really, really well. They've got
(49:43):
a brand new life in a new state that they've
just settled into. I mean, honestly, they're just like every
other little crazy tuna that drives you nuts.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
Mine. Is it there yet?
Speaker 1 (49:55):
But I'm not looking forward to it now.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Well, I've got two teens as of the other day,
so yes that they're challenging regardless of.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Yeah, but my daughter, you know, she got me to
come and.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Speak at her at her cohort at school last year
about healthy relationships and tell my story of coercive control.
And you know that that's the whole pointing out to
kids in your ten that extreme jealousy does not mean
they're really into you. You know, it's a really scary
sign that someone's trying to control you. And it's one
(50:30):
of the first one of the first things at that age.
You know, just and anyone who wants to be with
you and your partner should be someone who wants to
see you as your very best version of yourself. It
shouldn't be it shouldn't be someone trying to make your
world smaller, which is what these coercive controllers do. They
(50:52):
try and isolate you, They try and belittle you, They
try and make you feel so that you're nothing, that
you're completely codependent on them, and that's what they gain
out of it. Whereas you know, someone a good relationship
which I have now, is someone you can talk to,
someone who wants to see you do your best, someone
(51:13):
who celebrates your wins in life and wants to see
you have a vast and big friendship group. You know,
they don't want you to not go out again because
you know it's it's it's they want to see you happy.
And that's That's what I would say to every young
person going into a relationship, because that is a surefire
(51:35):
way to tell very early on, if someone's, you know,
trying to shut down your world and make it smaller,
then it's not a good person.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
Thanks to Lauren for helping us tell her story. You
can find a link to her book Now I See
You in our show notes. True Crime Conversations is hosted
by me Claire Murphy. Our producer is Charlie Blackman, with
audio design by Jacob Brown. Thanks so much for listening.
I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation
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