When Carol was 19, she was violated by her GP. Her dying wish was to tell the story.

Content warning: the following discusses incidents of sexual assault that may be triggering for some readers.

When I spoke to Carol*, 69, late last year, she didn't want to know the specifics of her prognosis. 

She knew her lung cancer was terminal, she knew it had travelled to other parts of her body, and she knew her treatment plan involved chemotherapy and immunotherapy. But that was enough. She left the details up to her two adult sons.

"I don't want anything in my head like that," she told Mamamia, pausing to swallow medication. "I want to have my own agenda. Like, I want to have my birthday, I want to have Christmas. And if I feel sick again, I don't want to be thinking, 'Well, this is it.' 

"I don't want someone to say, 'It's all over.' I just don't need that yet, you know?"

But while Carol was reluctant to look forward, the illness led her to reflect on what had been, to acknowledge and try to process events in her life that she wasn't previously ready to face.

It's why she wanted to tell her story. For herself, for other women who've been made to feel like they must suffer in silence.

Watch: Sexual abuse survivor and advocate Grace Tame on the importance of sharing survivor's stories. Post continues below.

Carol passed away fewer than three weeks after we last spoke. 

Her family has generously granted permission for her story to be told.

***

As a girl, Carol's life was mapped out for her.

She had a talent for ballroom dancing that saw her competing throughout her childhood and adolescence, collecting major championship titles along the way. When a trip overseas for a competition at 14 interrupted her schooling, that was it; her mother decided she need not return.

"All Mum wanted me to do was dance. I was her little puppet," Carol said.

But behind all the grace and beautiful dresses and trophies, ballroom dancing exposed her to two sexual predators.

The first, the owner of a Sydney dance studio who touched her chest and put his hands down her pants when they were alone during a lesson. She was nine.

"He got into the right position and dance studio where you could tell if somebody walked up the stairs," she said. "The assault had only just started when he did hear footsteps and voices. So as quickly as I could, I walked over and got my bag and left," she said.

"I think it had a great, great impact on my life then, because that was the first time I felt fear."

It wasn't until age 19 that Carol came to terms with what had happened in that studio and how she'd been manipulated into silence. (Just a week after the assault, the instructor selected her as a dance partner for his son, ensuring her loyalty to him for another decade of rehearsals and competitions). It was one of the reasons she quit competitive dancing and turned instead to coaching. 

In her role as an instructor, she was finally involved in the dance world on her own terms; she had agency and purpose. But that was stolen from her after one of the first lessons she gave in 1970.

It was dark. An adult pupil offered Carol a lift home from the studio so she wouldn't have to take the train. But en route, he pulled into a beachside car park and raped her. 

The attacker took her home, where her thoughts turned to her then-boyfriend — a "gorgeous man" with whom she'd been making engagement plans.

"I felt like he wouldn't want me, that I was no good... I felt like I'd been unfaithful," she said.

"I couldn't tell him that [I'd been assaulted]. So all I could tell him was that the relationship was over, that I couldn't marry him.

"I never went back to teach dancing again, never went back to that studio."

"I realised, 'That's the guy. Oh, my God!'"

Without dancing in her life, Carol's body shape began to change in the months after she stopped teaching. She took the recommendation of a friend and visited a doctor who specialised in weight loss.

"By then, I just really wanted to start dancing again. I'd lost my career, I'd lost the man I was with," she said. "I needed to start dancing, but I thought, 'I need to lose a little bit of weight so I can do that and be comfortable seeing the people who knew me previously.'"

She had four consultations with the doctor. Then one afternoon he asked about her periods, told her about the connection between hormones and weight. An internal examination was necessary, he said.

"I remember getting up on the bed and him putting his hands inside me. And he said to me, you've got a twist in your uterus. You need to have your uterus straightened. I was so naïve. I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn't even know what a uterus was."

Carol said she returned to the surgery later that evening, on his instruction, so he could perform a 'procedure'. When she arrived, he led her through the darkened surgery to his office.

"There wasn't a light on — not one light. There was nobody else there. Not a nurse, [there were] no instruments — nothing," she said.

Within minutes, she said, she was laying down, and a needle was inserted into her arm. 

"Next thing I know, I come to and sit up. Again, not an instrument in sight. Obviously, something had happened. I wasn't able to walk properly; my right hip was kind of out... I was limping.

"He said to me, 'You can now finish getting dressed.' He opened up the top drawer of his desk, and said, 'I'm just going to have one of my occasional cigarettes.' 

"I got dressed and walked out. That was all, that was all. I walked out."

There was no prosecuting what had happened, Carol said. Doctors had "godlike" status back then; they were trusted, revered. Even when she told her own mother what had happened, she was met with anger and blame:

"I said, 'I've just been to the doctor's office. Mum, I've been raped.' She just looked at me with the dirtiest look that you could ever imagine, and she said, 'You slut.'"

Listen: What we can all do to join the fight for justice to ensure no more women are abused or silenced.

Carol doesn't blame her mother for not advocating for her. The woman was a product of her culture, of her own struggles. She'd been adopted, had little money, and the man she married — Carol's father — battled severe alcoholism.

One night when he was drunk, Carol's mother intervened when he entered Carol's room in their council flat and removed their daughter's pants. Confronted about it years later, she told Carol, "that's all just normal."

"It just really just made me think, 'Well, what's happened to you to be like that,'" Carol said, "'for me to have to tell you it's really not normal?'"

But Carol's mother, like many others, considered trauma to be 'dirty laundry', something to be dealt with privately, to be scrubbed clean from the mind.

And so Carol trained herself to forget. She went on to other jobs, to relationships, to parenthood.

"You decide to put it out of your head and get back on with living, doing what you’ve got to do, and the responsibilities you have, and that was to look after my children — no matter what," she said.

"And after a while, you do [forget]. Until something comes up and you realise that it has not gone from your memory at all."

Something like coming across the doctor who assaulted you, two decades on.

It was in a Sydney restaurant. Carol was pregnant at the time with her first child.

"I just looked over at table. There were at least 12 men all sitting around in a circle. And I realised, 'That's the guy. Oh, my God.'

"I was shocked... [The assault] was a long time ago by then, but it brought it all back. Over the coming months, when I’d close my eyes, I’d see his face."

***

When I started speaking to Carol, it was four months on from her cancer diagnosis. She was confined to the ground level of her New South Wales home, where she had a hospital bed parked in the dining room. Often out of breath, she'd only venture upstairs to shower every other day.

She had the support of her sons, as well as a cleaner who'd come once a week and a social worker. It was the latter who offered Carol the opportunity to open up about anything in her life she wanted to process. After years of silence, Carol shared with her the story about the doctor, and then she shared it with the police.

While there is no timeline on reporting sexual assault in NSW, Carol said she felt "a bit silly" speaking to law enforcement all these years later. They weren't able to proceed with an investigation.

But in ending those decades of silence in this way, in hanging out that 'laundry' here, she hoped that survivors of historic sexual assault may feel less alone and harbour less self-blame — both for the act itself and their response in the years since.

Over the past few months, Carol watched from a distance as women have spoken up against men in power, holding them to account through the courts, through the media and collective campaigning.

"There are now people that are believed that it did happen, and now more people are going to come forward to tell the truth," she said. "That response will hopefully deter predators as well. Finally, they are realising, 'Oh, I may not get away with this.'"

She saw the progress, the advocacy and steady march toward better awareness and resources for survivors.

"I just wish they were more aware of it when..." she trailed off. "But they weren't.

"I'm glad they are now."

If the discussion of sexual assault in this article has brought up any issues for you, please call 1800 RESPECT (the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service) on 1800 737 732. It doesn’t matter where you live, they will take your call and, if need be, refer you to a service closer to home.

*Names have been changed to protect the identities of all involved. 

The feature image used is a stock image from Getty.