I spent hours on that toilet sobbing, trying to figure out what I had done wrong and what I did to him that could make him treat me that way.

The smell he left refused to leave me. I got toilet paper and put it under the bathroom tap, hoping warm water would help. I wanted to have a shower but was too scared I would wake the strangers I was sharing the cabin with. (Remember I had been programmed by my mother to stay quiet and not wake her, or others).

As the sun began to rise I was still on that toilet, crying and wiping away the smell, when I looked up to see what it was that was pushing into my back disabling my legs to fight Shorten off.

It was a towel rail.

I decided I needed to keep this to myself, so I would have to be in bed before the two strangers woke up. In hindsight I wish I told the world. But I couldn’t make sense of what had just happened and I was frightened about what would happen to me if I told anyone.  Even though he was a young man he was still my senior in the ALP. Who would believe me?

I tried my best to clean myself up.

As I exited the bathroom I looked down the hall and saw a big double, maybe queen size, bed with fresh sheets still folded on the end. I naively wondered if that was supposed to be ‘sex’, why did he use the bathroom wall when there was a big bed right there?

It still hadn’t sunk in until later that Shorten had in fact raped me. Was I in denial? In shock?

I went into the small bedroom where the other two strangers were still sleeping.

The sun was still riding and the small bedroom was still dark, so I was having difficulties finding my nightwear.

I started moving from shock, disbelief and despair into anger.

I rummaged through my clothes, not caring where they landed. I didn’t even care if I woke the two girls (who I now thought of as bitches. How could they not have woken up?).

I finally found my nightwear, got into my bed, which just happened to be the bottom bunk, and put my nightwear on when I was under the covers.

I lay there for a long time. As one of the girls began to wake, I strangely began to feel safe. Maybe I needed to feel safe. At least I was not alone, and he was gone. I turned over towards the wall and finally went to sleep.

I didn’t sleep well. I had sudden jolts that woke me up. But I stayed in bed all day. Until in the early evening when ‘S.F’ came into our cabin and then entered our bedroom.

‘S.F’ told me Bill Shorten was going around boasting to everyone that he fucked me.

And I was ‘easy’.

He didn’t ‘fuck’ me. He raped me.

And now he was covering his tracks in case word got out about what he did, inferring it was consensual sex.

It was rape.