At 15, Tame was groomed and raped by her maths teacher Nicolaas Bester, who went on to brag about his crimes online while she was gagged from speaking about the abuse.
It was her legal fight against Tasmanian laws preventing sexual abuse victims from identifying themselves publicly, which she won in the Supreme Court in 2019, that thrust her into the public eye as a champion of survivors.
Tame tonight said her experience in the public eye had been mostly positive but she was “still dealing with open threats and harassment from the man who abused me and others”.
“This has been the reality for 12 years now, behind closed doors for my family and me,” she said.
She shared screenshots of tweets appearing to be from Bester referencing her childhood email and threatening “good old comeuppance”.
“Here he is, the twice-convicted child sex offender, referring to my childhood email, which very few people know, in place of my name. It was the login to my old Facebook he and I communicated on,” Tame wrote.
“He’s counting down to an act of revenge, planned for the day of my book’s release.”
Bester was sentenced to two years and 10 months in jail for maintaining a sexual relationship with someone under the age of 17 and possession of child exploitation material, but released earlier.
Tame alleged Bester’s repeated comments online constituted a federal offence and contravened Twitter’s child exploitation policy.
“This is targeted harassment of a known victim of his past crimes, designed to cause further harm,” she said.
“I’ve reported them to police, but our reactive justice system is too slow, and nothing’s changed.”
For years, Bester had been free to speak about his abuse of Tame while she was gagged by Tasmania’s archaic laws.
“The majority of men in Australia envy me,” he previously wrote on social media.
“I was 59, she was 15 going on 25. It was awesome.”
But now Tame is free to speak about what happened and continue the campaign that saw her crowned Australian of the Year in 2021: to change the way the justice system and society in general approach sexual assault.
She said her tweets tonight were an act of “reclaiming my power against a predator operating in plain sight”.
“I’m not ashamed of any of it now,” she said.
“But he should be. He was an adult who abused his authority.
“Just because I have found the anger and strength in me now, does it make me an aggressor, or a survivor?
“I know who I am. I am a survivor.
“I have the power to be vulnerable. He will never have that. He is too afraid, and too weak. He is too weak to be vulnerable. Instead, he exploits others who are. He knows no other way to be. I see that now. And because of that, he doesn’t scare me anymore.
“He is a sad, old menacing coward.”
