Saturday, 22 June 2013

'Mum was paying for music lessons, but I was having sex lessons:' Horrifying story of woman who was groomed by her teacher, 26, when she was just 13

World Class
As maths teacher Jeremy Forrest is found guilty of child abduction, This Morning interviewed Lisa Turner

Lisa met her abuser when she was 12. Gary, her teacher, was 26.
'At that point he was just another music teacher at my school in Australia,' says Lisa Turner, now 44 and living in Hampshire.
'I was in the choir and he was a musician in choir band. I started having singing and guitar lessons with him - both in class and privately - when I had just turned 13.
'He gave me his phone number, and as a cheeky child I started to phone him up and we would have chats.  Then his girlfriend dumped him. Suddenly the relationship switched and I became the comforter, looking after him. All of a sudden he needed me and that was really flattering.'
As maths teacher Jeremy Forrest is found guilty of child abduction, This Morning interviewed Lisa Turner
As maths teacher Jeremy Forrest is found guilty of child abduction, This Morning interviewed Lisa Turner
'Our demeanour became flirty, intimate and sexual over the phone. It then became apparent he was masturbating while on the phone. The first time he orgasmed he became angry. "Look what you've done! I'll talk to you later. I'll see you at school," he would say, and then get off the phone quickly in a huff. '
 
Gary took Lisa on their first date shortly after she was 13.
'I told a fib to my parents, said we had band practice and he was driving past to pick me up. They didn't think anything of it. We went for a meal at McDonalds in the car in the restaurant car park. He knew what he was doing. It was so we wouldn't be seen. He drove the car up the road, up the hills and parked up. We kissed for the first time... and I touched him'
'After that it was more private lessons, chatting on the phone, and more dates.'
Lisa Turner, pictured here around the age she would have met her abuser, says the ordeal ruined her life
Lisa Turner, pictured here around 12, the age she would have met her abuser, says the ordeal ruined her life
When Lisa was 14 they started to have music lessons on Saturday mornings at Gary's house.
'For some reason I couldn't have lessons at school. The guitar never came out of its case. Mum was paying 20 dollars for me to have guitar lessons, when in fact I was having sex lessons.
'He attempted penetrative sex for the first time when I was still 13 but I was too small and too young, so he taught me how to give him oral sex. He finally succeeded with full sex when I was 14. I was, or at least believed I was, a willing participant. I didn't get so much pleasure from it but an amazing thrill of excitement from the whole thing.

'It was all very flattering. "You're not like the other girls, you're special," he would say.
'"You're so special you're making me break the law." was the unspoken thing - the undertone of his words.'
But after a while Gary got suspicious and started to worry he was going to get found out.
'One day he told me he had decided move to England in six months to become a famous musician, but I think it was so he wouldn't get caught. I was 15 but I told him I wanted to come with him.'
Born to British millionaire parents in England, Lisa's family had emigrated to Australia when she was two. A pioneer in his industry, Lisa's father developed plastics software and wrote computer programmes while her mother ran the business.
Lisa convinced her mother to let her spend a week in an English school, allowing her to move to England in April, just two months after her lover. The plan was she would live with her grandmother from the Easter to summer term in England, then her mother would come and collect her.
Lisa, pictured here with her grandmother, started having music lessons before the relationship began
Lisa, pictured here with her grandmother, started having music lessons before the relationship began
They were to spend some time together in England, go inter-railing around Europe for a couple of weeks, then fly home via America, stopping over to Disneyland, which Lisa was desperate to visit.
'But shortly after he moved to the UK, a distraught Gary started calling me. "I can't live without you. You have to come or I'm going die kill myself," he would say.
'This emotional blackmail led me to fly out six weeks ahead of schedule to be with him.
'By this point, my parents had worked it out and asked me. It wasn't a big deal. They were okay about it as Gary had groomed them too so they weren't concerned that there was anything to worry about.
'They were allowing it to run its course. She would have thought: "She's nearly 15, I'll let her bugger off for couple months and let them get on with it", says Lisa.
'This was before people screamed paedophilia, before the concept of child sexual abuse was around. The culture in Australia is more liberal and open minded. Australians can be of the mind that if it isn't hurting anyone and everyone is happy then let them get on with it.
'I believed I was happy. I don't think any damage was done at that point,' she says.
Commenting on the victim at the centre of the Jeremy Forrest case, Lisa says: 'I don't think at that point the girl would have been damaged. But it's great that they were caught .'
But it wasn't so easy for Lisa to come home to her parents, and soon she found herself living in a London suburb while Gary started working as a teacher in a primary school. Then their relationship turned sour.
Lisa is bringing out a book about her ordeal and also trains therapists following on from all she'd learned
Lisa is bringing out a book about her ordeal and also trains therapists following on from all she'd learned
'He used to encourage me to act babyish, and nicknamed me Looby, instead of Lisa, and would make me act like a six or seven-year-old.
'He would like me to play with Barbie dolls, he would buy her toys from cuddly bears and reward her for acting like a baby. If ever I acted a bit grown up he would get grumpy. Once we had a big fight over me wearing make-up.
'The older I got the harder it became for me to play the role of Looby, and he started to lose interest in me. He got more aggressive and physically and sexually violent.
'He wouldn't let me touch him, and if I made any advances he would say, "You're such a slut".
'Looby would be a little girl who wouldn't do such a thing. He was the one who would instigate sex and if ever I instigated it, that wasn't okay.'
The abuse spanned physical, sexual and emotional - and it lasted for six long years
The abuse spanned physical, sexual and emotional - and it lasted for six long years
Between the ages of 16 and 18, Gary started ignoring Lisa for long periods as a time.
'He would touch me for months and months at a time, and then all of a sudden he would wake me up in the middle of the night forcing himself on me.'
'By this point I was self-harming and was hurt by everything. He had groomed me and trained me that my role was to make him happy. So when he was not happy with me I was not happy. He had become physically rough, though never broke a bone and almost never bruised.
'He used to come home and get grumpy if I was upset, as my role was to be a cheerful little girl and never to be upset.'

Then her epiphany came, and she realised, age 19, that she had to get out. But it was when she got out of the relationship that her problems began.
'I was an emotional mess, agoraphobic, self-harming, bulimic, I had flashbacks… It took me years to recover,' she says.
She has been happily married now for 14 years to her husband John and they have a 12-year-old daughter who is still to young to be interested in boys.
'She kind of talks to boys but is not really interested in them yet. In many ways she is very young, naive and innocent, but very together and not needy,' Lisa says.
'My personal mission is for her to respect herself to know her own mind and know that she is lovable and loved. '

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for your comment, keep reading our news and articles

You May Like To Read This