Former Australian of the Year tweets screenshots allegedly taken from the man’s now-suspended account who attacked her repeatedly in 2010.
Grace Tame claims that the instructor who sexually assaulted her when she was 15 years old has made “open threats and harassment” posts on social media.
Nicolaas Bester, who constantly harassed Tame in 2010 while she was a student at St. Michael’s Collegiate School in Hobart, was allegedly the subject of screenshots that the former Australian of the Year uploaded on Twitter. Tame was a student at that time. Her math teacher at the time was Bester, who was 58.
He was found guilty in 2011 and given a two-year, ten-month prison term for abusing Tame and having child exploitation literature in his possession. After a year and nine months, he was freed.
Tame battled against a Tasmanian legislation that prohibited sexual assault victims from being identified or speaking in public. Tame won the ability to speak about her victimisation. She obtained a supreme court exemption from that rule in 2019 and served as the impetus behind the #LetHerSpeak movement, which earned her the 2021 Australian of the Year award.
On Monday, she posted screenshots from an account allegedly controlled by Bester, which seemed to use her old email address to address her.
One screenshot from April 27 reads, “at last I shall come for [Tame’s childhood email]… in good time,” and mentions Elon Musk purchasing the social media platform.
Sunday’s most recent tweet reads, “Only 4 weeks to go!! [Tame’s previous email] The good old come-uppance is on the road.
Tame said that she had reported the tweets to the police, describing them as “open threats and harassment from the man who abused me,” but that “nothing’s changed” because “our reactive justice system is too slow.”
“Here he is, the twice-convicted child sex offender, referring to my childhood email, which very few people know, in place of my name,” she said on Twitter. “It was the login to my old Facebook he and I communicated on.”
According to Tame, the publishing of her memoir on September 27 coincided with the 10-week and 4-week marks on the countdown.
She claimed that the tweets were against Twitter’s rules and committed a federal offence.
This is deliberate harassment towards a known victim of his prior crimes that is intended to do more harm.
Yesterday evening, the Twitter account was shut down. A Twitter representative said, “We have permanently suspended the account in question for breaking the Twitter Rules and our principles.
Tasmania police have been approached by Guardian Australia for a response.
