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Hey Dad! star victim: ‘I got off lightly’

Sarah Monahan, the child star of the TV comedy series Hey Dad!, on A Current Affair.

Sarah Monahan, the child star of the TV comedy series Hey Dad!, on A Current Affair.

After a gruelling four-year investigation, Hughes was convicted this week in a Sydney court of 10 counts of sexual abuse against a number of child victims in crimes that range back more than 20 years.

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Sarah, who endured seeing Hughes expose himself to her while she was on set, and who told her story first to Woman’s Day magazine and then again of A Current Affair in 2010, says in a an ACA special that airs tonight that she “was thrilled for the other girls” when the actor was found guilty on Monday.

“It wasn’t about me,” she said. “He did some awful, terrible things to them. I feel like I got away lightly.”

Sarah will appear tonight in a special group interview conducted by ACA host Tracy Grimshaw with her fellow cast members Ben Oxenbould, Christopher Trusgrove, Simone Buchanan and Julie McGregor.

In other news, casting agent Liz Mullinar told News Ltd that she was called in to help replace Hughes after he was forced to leave the top rating series by producers in 1994 because “the cast didn’t want him on the program”.

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She says she told Hughes’ wife celebrity manager Robyn Gardner, a long time personal friend, about the suspicions surrounding her husband.

“She didn’t believe me then and obviously she’s sticking by her husband now. It was my decision at the time that telling her was also the right thing to do … (but) she completely rejected the concept,” Mullinar said.

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