The girl, now a 27-year-old woman, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that she met her attacker when she started playing in an under-10s soccer team in southern Sydney.
The man was her coach, and he was soon offering to babysit her overnight, something her mother readily agreed to as his wife was a friend of hers.
In her statement, the woman said the coach’s wife would come into the room where she was sleeping at night and take her into the coach’s bedroom, where he would rape her while she watched.
“I would see her watching and when I would look at her she would look away,” the victim said. “She would either be laying on the bed or somewhere in the room. His wife would say to me ‘it’s OK’ and ‘it’s alright’”.
When she was 11, the victim told a friend at school, who reported it to the school, who contacted the NSW Department of Community Services.
She gave evidence in court at 13 but the coach was acquitted. In 2004, he was jailed for molesting three other children.
Two years later, when she was just 15 years old, the victim was diagnosed with HIV. She believes she contracted it from her rapist as she had not had sex with anyone else, used drugs or had a blood transfusion.
