With news that Robert Hughes will appeal his conviction for child sexual abuse, Sarah Monahan reveals how the case has torn her family apart.
While Sarah knew that going public with allegations of sexual abuse against Hughes would have a great impact on her family, she never expected to be shunned by her own mother Linda, the one person she needed most.
“I haven’t had any contact with her since I first told my story in Woman’s Day,” Sarah reveals. “And that was more than four years ago.
“My brother told me at the time she wasn’t happy with me and that’s all I have heard since.”
Sarah, who now lives in an RV, has been called a liar and an attention seeker by her mother who turned her back on her and began living an anonymous existence.
“The first two years were the worst – they were crushing,” Sarah says.
“I’d be driving along thinking about her and get so upset. I would be bawling my eyes out and have to pull over.”
Sarah still doesn’t know her mum’s address or phone number. And when Woman’s Day found Linda living under a different name on the NSW Central Coast, she didn’t want to comment, other than to say, “Sarah is a liar, she has always been a liar and I do not need to justify myself.
“The people who know me know the truth. I don’t care what she says.”
But their relationship wasn’t always like this. Sarah remembers her early childhood being made up of happy memories. But when her father died, things changed.
“My dad was a fashion designer and I used to model his clothes,” Sarah says.
“It was Dad’s idea for me to be in the TV industry – he really encouraged me and loved coming on set to watch me – but he died when I was 9, just after we finished filming the first series of Hey Dad…!”
RELATED: Robert Hughes found guilty
It was not long after her father’s death that Sarah’s relationship with her mum changed. At the same time, Robert Hughes, who played her loveable TV dad Martin Kelly, began to behave in an inappropriate manner.
“Mum hated escorting me to set,” remembers Sarah. “She had to chaperone me but I know she resented it because it meant she couldn’t go and get a job herself.
“I remember her knitting in the corner the whole way through rehearsal, not talking to anyone, and on Saturdays when we filmed, she’d leave to run errands.”
Sarah insists she told her mum about what Hughes was doing to her, even telling her about “Robert having varicose veins on his penis”, yet still the abuse continued.
“Mum always said if you don’t have anything nice to say about people then say nothing at all.
“And she told me not to be alone with him. My salary was supporting our family after my dad died – if it wasn’t for me working we couldn’t pay the bills – so I just said to myself, ‘Sarah, don’t rock the boat’.”
Eventually, when Sarah turned 16, she quit the show and moved to Honduras on an exchange program to escape Australia.
She says that while she was away, she didn’t hear from her mother at all and didn’t even know that her family had moved house.
“She didn’t call me once while I was away. I tried to get in touch because she was supposed to send me a money order. She had sent it but forgot to put Honduras on the envelope, so it never arrived.
RELATED: Robert Hughes’ niece speaks: He’ll never hurt anyone ever again
“And when I got back to Oz I found out she had moved.”
It wasn’t until 17 years later that Sarah decided to go public with the abuse she endured and as the news spread, more and more victims came forward.
But Sarah still doesn’t have the support of her mother. She has since discovered, through counselling, that the behaviour of her mum is classified as ‘normal’ by therapists as a way of dealing with their own feelings of guilt.
“I waited for that phone call. I am still waiting but I guess if it hasn’t come by now it never will,” Sarah says.
While Sarah isn’t surprised at Hughes’ appeal, she says she will be very upset if his conviction is overturned.
“Detectives spent four years on this, and going to court was traumatic,” she says.
“All of us got a little closure from him being found guilty, not just those that had charges laid but all the girls he molested.”
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