“But we are very proud of her, how she’s coped, although she is scarred from it.” “I find it hard looking at photos of as a little girl thinking she was being horrifically abused. “I have very vivid nightmares, flashbacks. “The whole thing has had a massive impact and some days I’m really shaken up about it. “But I started to feel it the day of the verdict. “I never get sick, I don’t catch anything,” Rachel told from her home two days after the verdicts.
Three-and-a-half years battling to get the case into court and her daughters through the ordeal of giving evidence was over. Rachel, Elly, Sophie and their large band of family and friends hugged each other outside the court and went off to celebrate.īut just hours later Rachel came down with the flu. Roberts barely flinched in the dock on Tuesday as the female foreperson’s voice rang out in the courtroom, charge after charge, “Guilty … guilty … guilty … guilty …”. He also claimed he was a devoted father to Sophie and that Rachel had concocted two assaults against her. He claimed Elly, who he began abusing just after her 12th birthday, had entered into a consensual sexual relationship.
After his arrest, Rachel found 13 SD cards hidden in one of his jackets and police discovered the videos.Īt his trial, Roberts argued that he hadn’t drugged Rachel or Elly, who could be seen comatose during the assaults. Roberts had videoed himself raping Elly and violating her with objects. The District Court had convicted Roberts of 99 indecent and sexual assault charges against Elly when he pleaded guilty because he could not defend them. They found him guilty of indecently assaulting her, and on two counts of indecently assaulting her younger sister Sophie, aged 11. The six man, six woman jury found him guilty of sexual intercourse with Elly when she was aged between 10 and 14 and when she was under his care. On Tuesday, a jury found Roberts guilty of 22 charges of drugging his stepdaughter Elly between the ages of 12 and 16 years and four charges of drugging Rachel. “There were a 100 pieces of a puzzle floating around in my head, and suddenly they came together in my head.” “In the few months leading up to his arrest, his behaviour had been quite strange but never in a million years could I have imagine this,” Rachel told. She is witty and wise, and yet was completely fooled by her abusive, controlling husband until his self-promoted image as a devoted father cracked. Rachel is a highly intelligent and successful businesswoman.
It is only at the end of the criminal trial for Roberts’s child sex crimes, that the concurrent civil case can be revealed. Incarcerated in Parklea correctional centre in western Sydney, a relative of Roberts is suing Rachel for $100,000 in an unrelated matter. “He’s a psychopath and a narcissist and he not only groomed my daughters, I realise now he had started on a third, his own biological daughter.” “I’ve got six kids to bring up and four of them are his, but he doesn’t care about them. “He drugged me, drugged my daughter and raped her for years, now he’s trying to rob me,” she said. We hear what his mother says and sympathise with his reactions.He drugged her so he could rape her daughters and was starting to groom his own biological daughter when the police were called, but the nightmare is not yet over for Rachel Knight*.Įven with ex-husband in prison, locked up as a convicted paedophile, child rapist and poisoner, Barry John Roberts* continues to persecute her via the justice system. Though not first person narrative, Crichton Smith uses detailed descriptions of John’s actions and thoughts to create empathy and understanding of his situation- we see and hear from John’s viewpoint- and grow angry and frustrated on his behalf.
She knows just how to hurt him, using her subtle arrows that work away at his sensitivity or by screaming when he tries to ignore her. She accuses him of having his father’s family’s hereditary defects. She knows that with no confidence he will never leave she also realises he wants to please her and uses this mercilessly. His mother is bitter and vindictive - possibly her helplessness and/or fear of being abandoned has led to her efforts to undermine John. He seems unable to change his life without her permission, which she refuses to give. Quote His boyish eyes would be smitten by a hellish despair, would lose all their hope, and cloud over with the pain of the mute, suffering animalĪs he devotes himself to domestic and caring chores, his mother criticises his personality, lack of ‘proper’ job, and lack of ambition.