Georgia was 20 weeks’ pregnant and expecting a little boy with her husband. Then a disgusting secret turned her world upside down. Photo / The Project via Twitter
Georgia was 20 weeks’ pregnant and expecting a little boy with her husband. Then a disgusting secret turned her world upside down. Photo / The Project via Twitter
A young mum has spoken of the horrifying moment she discovered her husband and father of her then-unborn son was a paedophile.
Georgia couldn’t reach her husband for hours on the day of her 20-week scan for their first child and was close to calling the police when he finallywalked through their front door, claiming his phone had broken.
But when she pressed him further, a terrifying truth came spilling out.
“I just remember I just was like, ‘there’s just something’s not right here’. So I kept pressing him and pressing him. And that’s when he told me that day he’d been arrested and that he was facing charges of child sexual abuse,” she told Channel 10′s The Project on Monday night.
Georgia’s husband had been chatting with what he thought were girls aged 14 and 15 online, asking them to send nude images.
In reality, he was talking with specially-trained police officers, who caught him in the act and arrested him.
He pleaded guilty to two charges, including using a carriage service to a person under 16 years but never served a day in prison.
He was handed a one-year suspended sentence, ordered to carry out 150 hours of community service, and made to sign the sex offenders’ register for 15 years.
Georgia believes the judge handed him a lenient sentence because of their marriage breakdown.
“The judge in his sentencing actually said that, ‘The end of your marriage and the resulting impact that that’s had on your relationship with your newborn child is essentially sufficient punishment to deter you from ever conducting these acts again.’ And to me, that is just horrifying,” Georgia said.
The husband of Australian woman 'Georgia' who told The Project she discovered he was trying to groom young girls. Photo / The Project via Twitter
Georgia’s son was born four months after his father was charged. She said her ex’s offending “makes her feel sick”.
“My son deserved to have a father that was present at the birth,” Georgia said.
“My son deserved to have a mother that was happy and safe and calm, not stressed out. My son deserved the best. And I was so shattered that I couldn’t give that to him.”
She has sole custody over her son and has moved away. Her ex doesn’t know were she or her son, who is now 3, live.
Despite cutting her ex-husband out of her life, it is hard to escape from what he did.
“People say to me, ‘Oh my gosh, he [her son] looks so much like him,’ and he really does. We don’t talk about it, but it is difficult.”
She says she is “scared” of having to talk to her son about his father’s crimes when he is older.
“What do you tell someone so small and, you know, what is age appropriate when he starts asking? How do you tell someone all of that? What happens if he does eventually want to meet him and how do I navigate that? And these are all probably going to be hurdles that we have to overcome as a family.
“I try not to be too critical about my ex-husband in the sense that I try not to sway my son’s future opinion of him, if that makes sense. I want my son to deal with facts, to understand the facts, and then to be able to make the decision himself.”
Georgia is now campaigning for better communication between the police and the families of criminals.
The only communication Georgia received from the police was a brochure for PartnerSPEAK, given to her by the arresting officer in court the next day.
“The only contact I received from the police was the next day in court. They had the arresting officer walk up to me and he said, ‘You’re the wife,’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘How many weeks pregnant?’ And then he handed me a brochure for PartnerSPEAK, and that was the only communication I received from the police,” she said.
PartnerSPEAK is a support group for non-offending partners and affected family members of sex offenders. Founder Natalie Walker hopes that within 24 hours of discovering a sex crime, every non-offending partner and affected family member will know about PartnerSPEAK, similar to how people are encouraged to call Lifeline for support.
