WARNING: This article discusses child abuse and self-harm
Cecelia Gaylard and Yvonne Gurtler endured unspeakable horrors while growing up in Auckland. More than three decades later, the sisters came face-to-face with their rapist in court and got justice. They lift their name suppression to speak to Katie Harris.
As a 9-year-old, Cecelia Gaylard made a deal with a monster.
For years, she was raped and brutalised by her parents’ boarder.
The only power the now 55-year-old felt she had left was stopping her abuser, Raymond Bielawski, from violating her toddler sister, Yvonne Gurtler.
“I tried to keep Yvonne safe.”
Each night, after she tucked Yvonne into bed and turned off the lights, she lay awake hoping Bielawski wouldn’t creep into their bedroom.
And if he did, Cecelia urged him to spare Yvonne and molest only her.
“We used to pray,” Yvonne, 51, said of their childhood. “But we don’t pray anymore”.
Cecelia was barely two years into primary school when Bielawski began sexually abusing her.
It started when he was granted “bathing rights” by her parents, the permission to spend time alone with her in some of her most vulnerable moments.
As time went by, his indecent abuse of Cecelia escalated to rape and physical violence.
“He choked me, he kicked me, he beat me.
“I fought, kicked, screamed, I tried to get away ... I thought that, if it was happening to me, it wasn’t happening to her. ”
She endured it for years, believing that, at least through her suffering, she was saving Yvonne from the same fate.
When she gained the courage to tell her mother about the sexual abuse, she was yelled at.
“She told me I was lying, and then I got abused verbally by her for it being my fault. So for the longest time, I believed I did something to deserve this.”
To keep her sister out of harm’s way, Cecelia hid her.
First in the linen closet, then in the ceiling.
Later, Yvonne learnt to hide for herself.
Much of the abuse both girls endured when they couldn’t hide is too graphic to print.
In all, Bielawski was convicted of 13 charges in relation to the sexual and physical assaults of the sisters in their central Auckland home.
Most of the charges were representative, meaning they reflect offences that occurred on more than one occasion.
Although the attacks were numerous, one rape stands out to Cecelia.
She and Bielawski were in the lounge - a space where the man who referred to himself as the girls’ uncle often raped her - when she says her mother walked in.
She claims he said, “She’s enjoying it,” and her mother walked out.
Cecelia’s decision to escape from home came through a thousand cuts.
There was no glass shattering, no shouting match, just a gradual realisation that, if she stayed, she might not get out alive.
“If I didn’t leave, I would be killed. Pure and simple, someone would kill me,” she believed.
Running away without her sister was the hardest decision.
But believing she was the only one being sexually abused, and that walking away alive was better than dying at their home, she packed a bag and left for the YWCA in Grafton.
“The manager said to me, ‘If you can get a job, you can stay.’”
Cecelia moved on with her life, finished high school and put herself through university.
It was during her studies that she met Steve, now her husband.
“The night we met, I know this sounds weird, but I’m sure my soul wrapped around his soul.”
They had their first date at Mt Wellington McDonald’s.
“I said to him, ‘Look, if you ever touch me, hurt me, if you’re dishonest, cheat, whatever, I’m leaving. I’m going.’ Poor guy.”
After 32 years, marriage and several children, the pair are still in love.
She made sure her old life, however, stayed in the past and never saw her mother or stepfather again.
“I knew I was not bringing the poison with me.
“I made sure I was not on social media. I was on no bills, I wasn’t on the electoral roll, and I hid in plain sight. And I never visited the suburb that they lived in.”
As Cecelia moved on with her life, Yvonne’s abuse only worsened.
“Life was hell for me,” Yvonne says.
“When Cecelia left, I was sad, devastated, even though we had our differences and were often played off against each other by our mother. [Cecelia] had basically been my mother, my carer, my protector most of my life. I honestly was scared.”
Bielawski, she says, took advantage of there being one less person in the home to ramp up his sexual abuse.
“He had always treated me differently to Cecelia. For her, he was violent. For me, he was my friend, my best friend. I thought what we were doing was normal. It wasn’t until I was 13 that I realised it was not normal at all.”
That was when he raped her.
“It was the first time he had hurt me. It was because of this that it all stopped. Never again did I go near him or let him touch me, but I did try and kill myself.”
A few years after Cecelia left home, Yvonne also ran away.
“I left because I thought if I didn’t, I would be killed or kill myself.”
In the years since Yvonne fled, she has been burdened by shame.
She struggled for years to maintain healthy relationships or find the words to tell her sister she also had been abused.
“It was so hard for me to say for the longest time because I was so ashamed of the fact that I thought it was normal and that it felt okay. That was the hardest thing for me to come to terms with. That was harder than even [the abuse].
“The way it happened to me and the way I felt about it. I didn’t realise Cecelia thought that she had protected me from it, because we had never discussed it.”
Unlike the violence he inflicted on Cecelia, Bielawski disguised himself as a safe harbour for Yvonne from her physically and emotionally abusive parents.
According to court documents, the girls were regularly abused physically by their mother and Yvonne’s father (Cecelia’s stepfather), often in the presence of boarders who were encouraged to join in.
As well as this, the sisters allege their parents frequently starved them.
On one occasion, they say Cecelia took some cereal from the kitchen to eat and, as punishment, her mother pushed her hands onto an electric frying pan.
“It was horrendous,” Yvonne recalls. “She burnt both sides of her hands.”
Yvonne says she still overcompensates for the forced starvation by overeating and by ensuring her house is excessively stocked with food.
It was due to the alleged starvation and physical abuse by her parents that Yvonne came to believe all adults were bad, except Bielawski and Cecelia.
“He gave me food, he let me watch television. He treated me kindly, he never hit me. He was the only adult other than my grandmother that never hurt me in a violent way.”
That feeling of safety around him made it even harder to tell her sister that she’d been raped.
“I felt Cecelia would look at me differently and not love me. And that’s why I keep people away from me because I feel like they can see that, and it’s a stain on me. I don’t want people to know me because I don’t want them to see that.”
Those walls fell after their mother died.
Yvonne always thought she’d feel relieved and grateful when her mother passed. But the death brought with it memories of the abuse.
“I had already started to express it with my therapist, and I knew that this had happened to Cecelia, and I just thought it was time to say something.”
Shortly after their mother’s death, Yvonne confided in Cecelia about the assaults.
Learning of Bielawski’s abuse of her sister hit Cecelia like an “avalanche” of emotion.
“I was devastated because, honestly, I thought I’d saved Yvonne from all of the horror.”
A few months after the disclosure, as the Covid-19 pandemic began, Cecelia told Yvonne, “I think we should do something about this.”
Yvonne wasn’t ready to go to the police. Even the prospect of speaking to authorities was “absolutely terrifying”.
“I said to her, ‘I just can’t do it right now,’” Yvonne told the Herald.
“I felt like I was spiralling out of control.”
But Cecelia could no longer wait to take action.
“The dam had opened.
“Where I’ve come from, I should be dead. I should be a drug dealer, I should be an alcoholic, because those are all things that are numbing, it’s just I found a different way of [processing the abuse].
“And then when Yvonne wasn’t ready to go to the police, it took two years, and in the end I said, ‘I’m going’.”
With the support of sexual violence charity HELP, Cecelia gave a statement to Manukau police in May 2022.
“Up until then, you hold so much shame. It’s the worst thing.
“Unlike a burn victim, where you can see it, this is something that lives inside your body for the rest of your life. But I walked out of there, and even though it’s only figuratively, I gave that shame back to where it belonged. It was never mine to carry.”
Two weeks after Cecelia reported the abuse, Yvonne also gave a statement to authorities in Canada, where she was living at the time.
Bielawski was arrested and stood trial on 13 charges in July this year.
Yvonne was on the edge of “losing it” as she stood outside the Auckland District Court preparing to testify.
“My heart fell into my shoes [as] the detective opened the courtroom doors.”
It was hard for her to reconcile the hollowed-out elderly man sitting in the dock with the child-abuser she once knew him to be.
“I looked at him and he just wasn’t that monster anymore. I mean, he is a monster, but he wasn’t what I had been having nightmares about. He wasn’t what I had expected.
“He was sitting there all crouched down, trying to make himself look as small as possible. He was looking at his feet, and he never once looked up.”
Taking the stand to give evidence, Yvonne’s tears started when she was asked to state her name.
“The judge, who was amazing, said to me, ‘Take a drink, calm down.’ He was just lovely.”
She eventually found her voice, but as she spoke, she worried what the jury would think of her.
“They don’t know me from a bar of soap. Are they going to understand my story? Are they going to feel my pain? Are they going to hear me?
“I had a fear that they’re not going to believe me. Because that’s how it’s always been. And I noticed at times they were in tears and I thought, ‘Well, I’m really glad some of them have heard me and they understand the pain that comes along with this.’”
After three hours of deliberation, the jury returned with its verdicts. Guilty, on all charges.
While she was relieved by the decision, Cecelia says it left her filled with sadness. The abuse they endured was not a movie, but real life, and 12 jurors had been forced to live the nightmare alongside them.
She says abuse “takes” from victims at an unfathomable level.
“I stopped letting people take photos of me at the age of 12 because I couldn’t bear for anyone to see me. I stopped going to the dentist at the age of 14 because I couldn’t let anyone touch me.”
Yvonne felt a mix of emotions after the trial.
“There were so many feelings in this ball. I’m not even sure how I was actually meant to feel, but one thing I want people to know is that this is a long road, and it is a hard road. But it’s something that we didn’t walk alone. We had support and we had each other.”
After years of health issues, the root of which Yvonne believes lies in the abuse, she found renewed vigour and can now see a bright light ahead.
“After the trial, I think I’ve got another 50 years, because the first 50 were a real struggle. But now I see the next 50 as a chance for me to actually live.”
Bielawski is due to be sentenced later this month.
Cecelia always knew she wanted to tell her story.
“I don’t want you to think it’s easy,” she says of the justice process. “It’s the most painful thing we’ve done.”
But in waiving her automatic right to name suppression to tell her story, she wants other women, particularly victims of historical abuse, to know it is always possible to go to the police.
“As long as that perpetrator is alive, at any age, there are no limitations. You can go and ask for help.
“It’s never too late to stand up for yourself and to speak your truth.
“You are worthy of love.”
Yvonne believes that, if you can survive abuse, you can survive holding your perpetrators to account.
“Never give up the right to be heard and to tell your story.”
Katie Harris is an Auckland-based journalist who covers issues such as sexual assault, workplace misconduct, media, crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2020.
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