True Crime Conversations · Mamamia Podcasts

The Family Friend No One Suspected

·1 hr 19 min·5 clips

Rose said, "I don't like it when such and such licks my vagina."

1. True Crime Conversations follows Michelle Milthorpe’s account of the family-friend abuse case that began in Albury, New South Wales, on 27 October 2013. 2. Michelle Milthorpe is the guest, speaking as a mother, teacher, politician, and advocate for victims of child sexual abuse. 3. The episode asks how two children, Rose and Pippa, disclosed abuse, and why the court process in New South Wales left them re-traumatised. 4. Michelle says she and Brent moved to Albury in 2003 with an eight-week-old baby and built what she calls a "regular, boring, young couple with kids" life. 5. Rose woke Michelle on Disclosure Day and said, "I don't like it when such and such licks my vagina," then asked, "can I watch Tutu now?" 6. Michelle says she was "only half awake," vomited after telling Brent, and then spoke with Pippa, who wrote down what had been happening. 7. The family friend and his wife had become de facto grandparents after the Milthorpes moved away from their own relatives and friends. 8. Michelle says the children had known him their whole lives, and one girl said the abuse happened "every time I went there." 9. Michelle identifies grooming as a central part of the case, including threats that their father would think they were "disgusting" and warnings that nobody would believe them. 10. Michelle lists early warning signs such as refusing to go there, selective mutism with adults, repeated urinary tract infections, and Rose hiding under a table. 11. Rose’s superhero-cape moment stands out: she said she wanted to be invisible, but "he still found me." 12. Michelle says she and Brent were also groomed, and she calls hindsight "a bitch" because the warning signs only made sense later. 13. After disclosure, Michelle rang the principal, the police arrived, and she learned the Joint Investigative Response Team, Sexual Assault Service, and DCJ would be involved. 14. She says the first interview delay lasted eight days, and that Rose’s first year of school in 2014 was overshadowed by court proceedings, including not learning to read until after the trial finished. 15. The case was moved from Albury to Sydney, and the family stayed in the city for four and a half weeks because Pippa was suicidal at 11. 16. Michelle says the pre-trial and trial were structured to split the cases and remove context evidence, while the girls gave evidence from a separate room via teleconference. 17. A jury member falling asleep forced Rose to repeat her evidence, and Michelle says the repeated questioning felt like emotional abuse. 18. Michelle also describes how her brother defused the atmosphere by joking that the offender was "an old fat motherfucker," which helped the girls feel some power again. 19. The conversation is interview-based, emotionally direct, and shaped by Michelle’s detailed memory of dates, procedures, and the girls’ responses. 20. People interested in child protection, courtroom process, and survivor advocacy will get the most from it; listeners wanting a lighter crime story may skip it.

As heard by us

A clear, victim-centered account of a Sunday-morning disclosure that exposed years of abuse and brought it to a stop.

The episode centers on a Sunday-morning disclosure: a five-year-old tells her mother about sexual assault by a family friend, and the account follows the shock, the reporting, and the fact that the abuse had been going on for years.

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Why you'd press play

You want a case that starts with one mother's worst morning and ends in a hard-fought court battle over context.

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