Articles
The magic spell of summer adventure in Byron Bay Eve Jeffery talks to a woman violently raped on her first visit to the Bay
A
t 21 you are eleven foot tall and bulletproof. Magnify that tenfold: you have just arrived in Byron Bay. You have stepped out of the coziness of a trip up from Sydney in your mum’s Kombi. You have a job and place to stay and, less than a week before Christmas, the Bay is weaving its summery magic spell over you ... In 1994, a young girl finished her shift at the Chinese restaurant in town. ‘I felt like a whole new life had started. A perfect new start. I couldn’t believe how friendly everyone was. Like I had landed among the beautiful people and was one of them’. She felt at home. She thought she would never leave. ‘I came to Byron to find my true calling – as you do when you are 21’. After work she began the short walk home. She was feeling really good. She had a job for the summer and it was the most beautiful night. She took off her shoes. She let out her hair. Then began a fivehour ordeal that mothers have nightmares about. ‘I was walking along and there was table near the path. There were two drunk home-
face. He held her by her hair and slashed her throat twice. By this time the girl was so traumatised she was thinking only in terms of survival. She recounts how the man took her further into the bushes and tied her hands and legs. ‘He told me he was going to have to kill me so that he wouldn’t go to jail’. She says for the next few hours she vacillated between pleading for help to get her to a hospital, vowing not name him to police and pretending she was unconscious in the hope that he might think she was dying or dead and choose escape before detection.
less guys sitting at the bench and they made a comment as I approached. I acknowledged them but didn’t engage them and kept walking. When I heard steps coming up behind me, my brain didn’t compute the threat. This was such a beautiful place. This was such a beautiful night...’
At knifepoint She says Craig Darryl Richardson left his companion and approached her with a small flick knife. He forced her into the nearby bushes and rifled through her handbag. There was no cash. She hadn’t been working long enough to get paid. In hindsight she often wonders if there had been a few dollars to satisfy the man’s need for dominance, he may not have looked for alternative compensation for his efforts. Seemingly disappointed by the lack of funds, Richardson reappraised the girl to see what else she might have to offer. She says she could see in his face the recognition of what he wanted and flashing the knife in her face, he told her to remove her shirt. Then he cut her bra off with the blade. ‘I knew
Eyes closed
then something bad was going to happen. He pushed me into the dunes and began to rape me. I was terrified of HIV and I begged him to please, please, please put on a condom. He did, but he held me down with the knife in one hand the whole time. During that first hour, she heard voices from the path. She began to yell out but Richardson lay close on top of her and held the knife even closer. ‘They were laughing at us,’ she says. ‘They thought we were
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just drunken idiots having sex in the bushes. My dress and shirt were cut up. Couldn’t they see that?’ Alone again, the girl says Richardson told her he was going to turn her over and he put the knife in the ground. With the prospect of all manner of horrors racing through her head, she took the chance and grabbed the knife. ‘I was hoping to do serious damage. I kicked him in the balls. It had no effect. I screamed and punched and lashed out with
the knife. I was trying to scare him off, I was a crazy cat. I stabbed him.’ She says the man straddling her seemed impervious to her attack and was more annoyed by it. ‘You fucking bitch,’ he said. ‘You stabbed me five times! I am going to have to stab you six times,’ and he plunged the knife into her chest. ‘I felt the most incredible pain in my solar plexus’. What followed was a lashing, stabbing frenzy: her arms, her chest, her
‘I kept my eyes closed,’ she says. ‘I hoped that if he thought I was dying, he might run away, but I could hear him breathing, I could feel him close. ‘After a couple of hours he was really quiet and I thought he might have gone. I slowly opened one eye and he pounced on me. “I knew you were faking it, bitch!� I knew this was it. I struggled as hard as I could and got my hands loose. ‘He was choking me and I scratched and tried to choke him back. He started piling sand onto me, trying to stuff my mouth full. I couldn’t continued opposite
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14 January 25, 2011 The Byron Shire Echo
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