After I gave the Forster Police Station my written statement, the constable gave me the details of a sexual assault counselling service based in Taree.

I called them a few days later and a psychologist was assigned to me. Her name was Cathy, too.

Cathy would travel from Taree to Forster to see me. I spent an hour or two with her, once a fortnight. Sometimes I saw her every week for almost a year.

I didn’t book the appointments. Cathy did.

It wasn’t like I was suicidal. I just wanted answers about what I should do regarding my rape case, but all Cathy wanted me to talk about was my family. I often found myself leaving her office really angry. However, she knew who Shorten was, even though he hadn’t become Opposition Leader, yet. But when I called to confirm my next appointment with Cathy I discovered she was no longer working there. Cathy told me, on more than one occasion, she was having difficulties with her superior.

Fortunately, I was assigned another psychologist, Cathy’s boss, and this wonderful woman gave me all the answers to all of my questions without hesitation.

After that one meeting with the boss I felt I didn’t need to see a psychologist anymore. I needed to get back on track again.

I began working as a nurse, caring for older people in palliative care.

In October of 2012, I was at work, called in on my only RDO for the fortnight, and whilst saving a dementia patient’s life, I ended up with Lumber Scoliosis (L2, L3, L4, L5 & S1) and four degenerative disc (L2-L3, L3-L4, L4-L5 & L5-S1).

Nasty.

I wasn’t able to stand up straight. I couldn’t sit down on a toilet without screaming. In bed I couldn’t lie on my right side. I couldn’t turn over.

One morning I couldn’t lift the bedcovers off myself.

I had to cry out to my sister, which took so much strength it made me pass out again.

Thankfully, when I woke she was sitting on the bed beside me, helped to get me out of bed and to the toilet. Plus, I’d been fighting insurance companies for almost a year and Julia Gillard’s disability program was trying to force me back to work. I spent about eighteen months in a wheelchair and I still need the use of a walking frame. Very sexy.

I’d been going through Hell for almost a year when, in the news, there was my rapist. Shorten had become Opposition Leader.

The first time I injured my back, May 2012, my sister created a Facebook page for me.

I had a place to sit between my bedroom and the kitchen. I couldn’t walk more than twenty metres and when I tried to walk I was bent over like a 99 year old woman with acute osteoporosis. I was on so many different pain medications that I literally didn’t know what day it was.

As soon as I saw his face I started to scream at the television.

I tried to turn away from the TV and went to visit my old friends I’d recently found on Facebook, hoping their cheerful comments would brighten me up. Instead, I got him, Shorten.

The only person I could think of, who knew Shorten and was social media savvy, was Kevin Rudd. I went to his Facebook page seeking his help. He never replied.

Instead, the next day, I got bombarded with journalists.

Eventually, a 3AW journalist named Justin Smith, told me he knew Shorten, so he contacted the Victorian Police and gave Sex Crimes my phone number.

A few days later, two detectives from Melbourne arrived in Forster to take my statement.

Senior Detective Constable Georgia Connors typed my written statement. We started in the afternoon around 3pm until 5pm. I continued giving her my statement at 9am the next morning and, as we came to the end of the statement, Georgia kept saying she needed to get back home and she was hoping to catch the flight from Newcastle but was stressed out that she, and the other detective, were going to miss it.

A few very strange things happened while Georgia typed the statement.

For starters, I was on so much medication and having to talk for hours on end, made my throat very dry. So I was having to get up, as crippled as I was, and go and ask for glasses of water at the police counter. And because I’d drunk so much water, I kept going to the toilet. But every time I walked back into the room, Georgia would be typing away and I’d have to sit and wait for her.

What was she typing?

When I asked her, she said she was just cleaning up some typos.

The statement was 19 pages long and by the time it came to me reading it, Georgia became frantic about missing this ‘alledged’ flight from Newcastle.

Georgia finally printed off the statement and I was only a few lines through the first page when I noticed she had spelt Shorten’s name incorrectly.

Georgia spelt it ‘Shorton’, not ‘en’. I pointed this out to her and she told me to stop reading the statement. She then had to go through all 19 pages to make sure she spelt his name correctly.

I should mention, in the statement, all the people’s surnames are typed in capitals so, very easy to see the error.

Then Georgia got up out of her seat, took the statement (which she’d given to me) out of my hands and went back to the photocopier to get another printout of my statement.

When Georgia got up from her desk to print off the first statement she gave to me, I could hear the photocopier printing something out. I assumed it was my statement printing out from her computer. But Georgia was gone for at least fifteen minutes, perhaps longer.

When she eventually entered the room again she announced joyfully, “Got it!”

I asked, “Got what?”

Georgia then told me she had finally found the statement I’d given to the NSW police at the Forster Police Station back on 10th December, 2010.

Georgia told me she found my statement laying on the bottom of the last draw in the Forster Police Station filing cabinet. The other problem I have is, Georgia just plonked the Forster Police Station statement down on her desk, then went back out to the photocopier and brought back the statement she had printed out for me to, well, NOT read. The other problem I have is that, I didn’t hear the photocopier again until she reprinted the statement after making corrections to Shorten’s surname.

Because the police officer from Forster had no idea who Shorten was, I believe the statement I gave Forster Police is closer to the statement I have written on this website than the story Georgia typed.

Georgia then started pressing me to sign it. Her plane trip home must have been extremely important. I finally gave in to her demands and signed the statement without reading it. I think I said something like, “I’m on so many drugs right now I’d be able to get this thrown out of court anyway”.

I still remember the way Georgia looked at me after I said that.

(Please note: Georgia spelt my surname incorrectly throughout the statement. This was pointed out to me by Larry Pickering, who interviewed me for his blog), and I still have never bothered to read the statement that Senior Detective Constable Georgia Connors typed).

I also have an email that SDC Georgia Connors wrote to me, apologising for having to leave in such a hurry.