Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame has alleged she is still dealing with “open threats and harassment” from the man who sexually abused her when she was a child.
On Monday night, Tame wrote on Twitter that has been experiencing harassment online from convicted child sex offender Nicolaas Bester. Bester was jailed in 2010 for abusing Tame when she was 15 years old.
Tame posted screenshots of tweets from an account with the handle ‘Nico Bester’. Tame said he was counting down to an act of revenge against her, planned for the day of the release of her upcoming book. The screenshots also show a tweet where Bester writes “a good old come-upppance on its way”, referring to an email address Tame once used.
“While it’s been a largely positive experience in the public eye, and I’m eternally grateful for the unflinching support, it might come as a shock, even to some close to me, that I am still dealing with open threats and harassment from the man who abused me and others,” Tame wrote on Twitter.
“Here he is, the twice-convicted child sex offender, referring to my childhood email, which very few people know, in place of my name. It was the login to my old Facebook he and I communicated on. He’s counting down to an act of revenge, planned for the day of my book’s release.
“These threats clearly constitute a federal offence and contravene Twitter’s child exploitation policy, which states that it is prohibited to contribute to the re-victimisation and re-traumatisation of a child sexual abuse survivor.”
Tame said she has reported the online threats and harassment to police, but nothing had changed. “Our reactive justice system is too slow,” she noted.
“This might not be the ideal platform to address this situation, but if not here, and if not now, then I ask, where and when? This is an act of reclaiming my power against a predator operating in plain sight.”
Bester’s account has now been suspended by Twitter, but not until after Tame called out the harassment publicly via Twitter.
Tame explained that she is no longer scared, labelling the convicted child sex offender “a sad, old menacing coward”.
“I have the power to be vulnerable. He will never have that. He is too afraid, and too weak. He is too weak to be vulnerable. Instead, he exploits others who are. He knows no other way to be. I see that now. And because of that, he doesn’t scare me anymore,” she said.
Tame’s upcoming memoir, titled The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner, will be published next month.
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