It took Adam Devlin more than 30 years to report the sexual abuse he suffered as a child in Eden.
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But he’s relieved he did.
Adam was eight years old when a family friend first abused him. It would continue for another four years throughout the 1970s.
“I tried over the years to forget about it. To focus on the future and not the past. But I was kidding myself that I was fine,” Adam said.
“When I stop and look back at my life, the history of drug and alcohol abuse, relationship issues, I track it all back to that time in Eden.”
Adam decided to report the abuse to police last year following the death of his parents.
“He was somebody that my parents trusted to take care of me. I made a decision a long time ago that I didn’t want Mum and Dad feeling any sort of guilt for putting me in that situation,” Adam said.
“My parents were incredibly family-based. Very trusting.”
But Adam regrets not saying something sooner.
“It was pretty horrific abuse that I put up with. It did shut me down emotionally for many years,” he said.
“I went through my 20s and half of my 30s with a very bizarre sexualisation – a lot of alcohol, a lot of drugs, a lot of anonymous sex.
“Looking back on it, I encountered a perverted sexuality as a child that was normalised to me. I was living a life that I hated.
“Had I reported this in my 20s I’d be a hell of a lot further in life than what I am now. I feel I’ve wasted a decade or two of my life.”
Adam knew he had to make a change.
“I first did some counselling on my own account. If I didn’t make one dramatic change in my life I would be dead.”
He said reporting his abuse to police last year was like “a weight had been lifted off him”.
“The police did an investigation and were just about to refer my case to the Director of Public Prosecutions with the recommendation to lay charges,” Adam said.
“But the guy died. I was furious. It had taken me 30-odd years to get to this point. They’d done a 12-month investigation into it and were almost at the point of having him arrested.
“I didn’t care what the outcome of this was. I wanted it on the record.”
Sadly, Adam was not the only victim as a child in Eden.
“During that period I came to know I was one of four people in my senior year at high school who was sexually abused as child in Eden,” he said.
Adam vividly remembers when he stood up to his predator. The day the abuse stopped.
“I’ll never forget it. I was at his house. He tried to start touching me. He was drunk. He was always drunk,” Adam said.
“I pushed him off against the wall in his garage and told him if he ever touched me again I would stab him.”
Adam feared telling his two older brothers about the abuse, afraid they or their father would take the law into their own hands.
“As a child you don’t know what’s going on. You don’t have the tools,” he said.
Adam completed his High School Certificate and moved to Sydney for his tertiary studies.
It was here that he would adopt his new name. A new identity.
“At the end of orientation week everyone was given a new name relating to what others had learnt about that person during the week,” he said.
“I was called Adam, as in ‘Adam and Eve’ based on the Eden thing. I liked it.”
In 1990 Adam “fled” to London to escape his past, booking a one-way ticket and arriving with less than $1000.
“It was a new start. A new me. I adopted the name Adam in full,” he said.
“I came back from London and legally changed it. I never liked Garry John.”
Despite his new identity and reporting his abuse to police, he can never escape the past.
“I think about it daily. When I’m on my own that’s the first thing that pops into my head, what he did to me,” Adam said.
He will soon seek psychological support in his home city of Melbourne after finding the experience “lifesaving” almost 20 years ago.
“It was helpful. Leading up to that point I was starting to self-harm and I was intelligent enough to see where that was going to end,” he said.
“I’m not thinking about self-harming now. I’ve got an incredibly supportive partner, but I need to see a professional.”
Adam has decided to speak about his ordeal after seeing an article in the Magnet relating to historical sex offences in Eden and surrounding areas.
He said Eden had a problem with paedophilia.
“We need to shed light on this historic problem in that town,” Adam said.
He encouraged anyone who had been abused to report it to police, saying his case was treated with utmost respect.
“Go to the police. Tell them what’s happened. The first step is the hardest. There’s no healing without doing that,” Adam said.
“There’s no shame either. You have nothing to be embarrassed about. You were a child who has been abused by an adult.”
Adam has accepted that he cannot retrieve the past 30 years of his life. But he wants to stop others from wasting their own.
“I’m not hiding anymore.”
- If this story has affected you contact Bravehearts on 1800 272 831.