Sex abuse victim reads powerful statement to PE teacher in Sydney court: Lee Dunbar
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Read the powerful statement victim of sex abuser PE teacher delivered to her face in the courtroom: ‘I crawled out of a very, very dark hole … Today I’m reclaiming my power’
- A sexual abuse victim gave a compelling statement to her abuser in court
- Her former PE teacher, Lee Joyce Dunbar, 69, sexually abused her in the 1980s
- The victim said it caused relationship with her mum to break down
- She was kicked out of home after her mother interrupted the pair in the shower
- ‘I was dehumanised into an object’ and was ‘terrified and alone,’ the woman said
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A Sydney woman groomed and sexually abused by her physical education teacher in the 1980s says she was dehumanised into an object for her abuser’s pleasure.
Lee Joyce Dunbar hid behind her position as a teacher at Beacon Hill High School to manipulate the then-17-year-old’s mind, provide her with false friendship, isolate her and abuse her, the woman said on Thursday.
‘I was just a child and she was my teacher – I didn’t a stand chance,’ the woman told Dunbar’s sentence hearing in Downing Centre District Court.
Lee Joyce Dunbar (pictured), 69, made a late offer to plead guilty to one count of indecent assault with a female person over the age of 16 years this week. ‘It’s taken a huge effort to force her to account for her criminal actions,’ the victim said
Facing Dunbar (pictured) in court on Thursday, the victim said she had been a bright and popular girl at school, only to graduate broken, isolated, suicidal and unable to trust people
‘I was dehumanised into an object … to be manipulated for her own pleasure.’
Due to face trial last week, the 69-year-old offender made a late offer to plead guilty to one count of indecent assault with a female person over the age of 16 years. Prosecutors accepted it and withdrew four other counts of the same offence.
Facing her abuser in court on Thursday, the victim said she had been a bright and popular girl at school, only to graduate broken, isolated, suicidal and unable to trust people.
The largest adverse impact was her relationship with her mother, who interrupted Dunbar and the girl in a shower one day.
While inadvertently contributing to the abuse ending, the mother failed to understand what had occurred and from then on, could hardly look at her daughter.
‘Seventeen and in HSC, I was kicked out of home,’ the woman said on Thursday as she recounted the consequences of sexual abuse she was put through at the hands of the PE teacher in the 1980s
‘Seventeen and in HSC, I was kicked out of home,’ the woman said.
‘I left with nothing but some clothes in a washing basket … and walked to my nan’s in my school uniform.
‘I was terrified and alone.’
That breakdown flowed onto her relationships with her siblings, and later her own children’s relationship with their grandmother.
‘I lost my mother’s respect and affection. Or rather it was stolen from me, a basic right of every child taken,’ she said.
Nearly four decades after the abuse, she received a diagnosis this year of severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Treatment will soon begin.
‘It’s taken a huge effort to force her to account for her criminal actions,’ she said.
‘I crawled out of a very, very dark hole and still suffer consequences.
‘Today, I’m reclaiming my power.’
Dunbar will be sentenced at a later date.
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The victim told the Downing Centre District Court in Sydney (pictured) she crawled out of a ‘very, very dark hole and still suffer consequences’ – including being diagnosed this year with severe post-traumatic stress disorder