 This week's episode is sponsored by Change. Change is an online mentoring program that teaches people with no experience how to create a real profitable online business and e-commerce. I have been working with Ryan at Change for a few years now and attended many events and got to meet the amazing community of like-minded people. These guys are the best of the best. The support these guys offer is personal, no bots or employees. There's no experience needed but like anything in life it takes time as it's a real business with real results. For more information go check out Ryan on Instagram at RyanGybe and he will guide you through the steps to help build a successful business. You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications bell so you are notified for when my next podcast goes live. I was actually sexually abused when I was 12 and it changed my life and then I went and saw the woman who was in charge of the makeup department for Channel 7 who I knew and I said to her I just had the shit to stay with the dirty old man and she said to me oh I thought you knew and I said knew what she said oh he's nicknamed the octopus he does this to all makeup artists. So there'd be a tissue with a powder puff on so I didn't have a box of tissues in my hand and a powder puff on the other and I'd do this every single time bar one he would touch me he'd run his both hands up my legs he'd try and shove his hand inside the rip of my shorts and nobody none of the men in the studio stopped him nobody said anything it was all very must have just been entertaining I suppose but nobody did a damn thing but then men didn't stand up for women back then. My actions were headlines around the world Australian my favourite headline which I loved was Australian television makeup artist dramatically stares down Ralph Harris in court. When I was 20 I was raped you know lots of shit happens when you're young and I put it away and I just I just decided that it was unwanted sex. And boom we're on and today's guest is good Susie Dent. Susie how are you? James good. You're looking well. Thank you. 61 you just told me yeah you're looking amazing. Thank you. A woman who's been through it as well you exposed one of the biggest sex cases out there which is Ralph Harris it just became public you waived your anonymity. I never get it wrong but you're now here you've also released a book 60s and new 40 which we'll touch on in the industry are we give it a plug what's this about? Okay so 60s and new 40s the ultimate guy to aging I wanted to put together the things that I feel we need to really focus on as we're aging and it's not just diet and exercise I really feel that when we get to this age we need an upgrade in our communication skills we need an upgrade in learning about our mindset it's all about your mind if you think you're going to be old then you'll be old. So men in Australia for instance you'll say hey you're going mate I'm doing okay for an old bloke I'm like so you're only doing okay and you're an old bloke so your mantra every day is that you're only okay that you're old so if you keep saying it you're going to only ever be okay not exceptional and you're going to age yourself by by this being your thought thought process so how about turning it around going fit young strong and vital thanks so as soon as you say that your energy levels are up here you're vibrating at a higher level so you're going to age disrupt the aging process by using your mind yeah I believe in all that I was I worked with Dr. Amato's interpreter he was a man who used to film crystals and take photos of it and freeze it and speak positive words to it and it looked like snowflakes and beautiful but if you spoke like evil and angry just certain words spoke to it it would be yellow and orange it would change colours I know I spoke about this years ago but the jam jar challenge two jam jars full both of rice white rice so I love you to one for 30 days and I hate you to one for 30 days the one they say I hate you for 30 days all blue and mouldy the one I says I love you still all pure white words are powerful yes they are they are very powerful so my good friend Leanne Brown as well who's very spiritual now because if we're speaking you say oh good morning she say look stop saying that because it's morning it's like a young morning something because was it so it doesn't know the difference obviously you're thinking morning because they're saying that morning something so it was good rising shoes to say but I don't really stick to that because I forget but I know how words are powerful obviously the main story is they're all harsh stuff which will get into but I was like to go back to the start of my guess get a bit understanding about you Suzy King W Grom who all began okay so I grew up in Sydney I was raised so I had a mother and a father and a brother my younger brother my mother was a narcissist so I was raised by a narcissist which I didn't even know what a narcissist was until I was in my fifties my father was very religious and he had his head in the Bible my whole life so he was always searching for the perfect religion so I grew up in a very strict morally strict family with two people who really had a problem with swear words and with communication which is probably why I'm really big on communication and not letting words scare you and I realized being raised by a narcissist and a woman who has no empathy is a different way to other people how other people have been raised so from the age of I left home at 18 because I got tired of getting hit because she liked to hit and he liked to hit and one day I decided I'd punch back so I punched my mother back and later out across the kitchen floor and then two days later I'd moved out and then my dad who was overseas at this at that time came to the place I'd managed to score to live in and spent only an hour with me said it was probably for the best than us for the key back and I didn't realize how powerful that was for many years and then I thought wow that's a I would I have a 21 year old son I would never ever cut him off like that you know so I had an interesting childhood I was a classic high achiever because when you have a narcissist as a parent you're always trying to please them so I didn't really matter how high I strove what I want and what I achieved I still didn't really get the attention that I craved as a child is that we all crave and I did achieve a lot as a child I was like good at sports I was good at all sorts of things not so much academia but you can be one of the other school sporty you get away with a lot more you know so I that's who I was I I came to England when I was 20 and discovered there was such a thing as a makeup artist and when I was at high school I was always the one that was either on the stage performing or backstage doing the hair and makeup so I was always into hair and makeup because my mum was an Avon lady so I was always surrounded by Avon had these little tiny lipsticks that really chiseled really beautifully and I smelled a certain way so I always had this thing about makeup so when I discovered 20 there was such a thing as a makeup artist I called my parents because I have dual nationality you see and I said if you can find me a school I'll come home if not I'm gonna stay here and study with the BBC so at the time there was one school in the entire country of all of Australia that actually was a theatrical makeup artist school that taught men and women how to be makeup artists my dad got me in there because I had this book full of awards I did dancing I had dancing wards and I did I did the Duke of Edinburgh award so I had my bronze and my silver Duke of Edinburgh awards I had all these awards and the lady who ran the school was a prima ballerina who used to dance in England and she and my dad was very charming and very handsome so that really helped and he got me into the school because she thought that all this the dance apart so that I had discipline my dad just laughed went certainly it's what she does so he got me into the school and then I so I came home and I started doing that at 21 and I realized that I felt like I was at home because I'm a very creative person but I didn't really know that I was when I was in high school so I kind of felt like I was with my tribe you know and so I became a makeup artist and I've done that for 40 years and I've expanded myself within my career doing wardrobe and props and special effects and I'm a miniature artist I can do all sorts of things as a creative and so that's kind of who I am but I also I do other things in my life as well so I've kind of worked through my life being self-employed all the time and I've worked on shows like home and away which is really popular here killed one of the main characters Bobby back in the day it's like yeah I've got the Polaroids to prove it you know but I never stayed I never worked full-time I always like to move around you know back when I was a makeup artist in 1986 when I was 23 was when I worked with Ralph Harris so it was the very beginning of my makeup career and I was a really big deal that you know he was the biggest star I had ever worked with I was excited to work with him because I'd watched him on you know on black and white television when I was a little girl with the wobble board and all that I wouldn't say I was a raging fan but I knew exactly who he was he was the most famous person to have come through Channel 7 Studios so he was given like the red carpet treatment through I call them the powers that be the men that ran the station so they all gone of greeted him and brought him down to meet the crew so it was a small crew because it was just him for the day doing what we used to call primos I can't remember what what he was talking about because it was a long time ago and because I was busy doing other things that day but yeah it's a promo for the work that he was doing here or a show that he was doing right so when I so he sat in my makeup chair I took him into a room it was a small room so maybe you know six foot well small it's a small room enough for him to wide enough to have an ironing board in and for talent to put stuff in and a big kind of chair that's like an old-fashioned barbers chair with a mirror in front of it with lights and stuff and his brother was with him and he was standing at the doorway which is like here and say Rolf is sitting here and I was here so my mirror was here and I work that way because I was working with my right hand you always have to touch someone's skin to find out what sort of skin type they are because you can't necessarily tell and then that ascertains what sort of product you're going to use on their skin right so and you always ask the thing about makeup artists is where we touch you we invade your aura be invading your space the cameraman dude don't do that the only ones that do is make up a wardrobe and if on a shoot like this if you're the only one you've got your own wardrobe then you're the only person that's touching your body as far as wardrobe so makeup artists you have to have the right attitude about you as well you know what it's like if you're around someone it's in an angry mood that can sometimes rub off on you like you can feel people's vibe so it's important that as a makeup artist that you're pretty neutral or that you're always always up you know I've worked with like four of our prime ministers and I'm not gonna you know before they do like talking to the nation and stuff and I'm not gonna go my dog died and I'm so upset because that would be a shit thing to do to someone before they're about to you know they'd be bringing them down so it's my job really psychology is a big part of what I do which is why I've succeeded for 40 years and doing it because I can read people really well but back then this was the beginning ish of my career I was probably only this is maybe my third year in so he's sitting in my chair and I'm standing in front of him feeling his skin and he dropped his right arm down the arm of the chair and I was wearing these baggy denim shorts and a white Heinz t-shirt and black Doc Martens white socks because that was the kind of thing that you wore and there was like a rip in my shorts on the thigh which is much more modest than the rips that you see now but the beginning of when we used to wear rip shorts because the fashion had to start somewhere and he I have good legs you guys can't see that but I have good legs I've still got good legs now I had shithole legs back then so they couldn't keep his hands off my legs so I stuck his hand down and ran his hand up my shorts alright so I was standing there so that was a surprise because I think at the time is like 63 he was like old enough to be my grandfather I was like 23 nearly 24 and 23 year olds back then a tidally different to 23 year olds now you know the kids of today they've got the internet they can look up anything there's so much more mature we were innocent back then we didn't even know what the word pedophile was it was not part of everyday vernacular in society you know so I ran his hand up my shorts and up my leg and that was like interesting and I turned around to the mirror and the first thing I thought of is I can't believe he works for children and it wasn't like I hadn't been touched by men before because I've been touched a lot it's what happened to women a lot in the 80s I'm not special in that regard when I was younger I used to feel like I had a neon sign over my head that said touch me because I got sexually touched in every job that I had when I since I left school and this was you know it was a surprise because it never happened in this industry I felt really safe working in film and TV and I was dressed like a tomboy I mean that was how I like to dress it was easy so he touched me and that was the beginning really and he was still talking to his brother so he's chatting to his brother running his hand up my leg at the same time right so multitasking and then so I did his makeup I didn't say anything about it but I looked at him and I looked into his eyes when you're standing that close to someone you can see them and I can see people you know who they actually are and he was just looking at me with the idea you kind of look and a really lascivious look in his eyes so you know he was getting off on it the number one rule as a makeup artist is you don't upset the talent which is why I talked to you about you working with people and having the right vibe if I upset you before you go on camera then I'm doing a shit job and you've got to you get in the right mindset to perform and to go on camera and to do everything that you have to do you don't need someone bringing you down you know so I didn't say anything plus women didn't say anything in the 80s we nobody really listened to us anyway so it took him into the studio where there was all men working because it was more than anything it was a male dominated industry more back then than it is now and the director was around his age and the director he they were fairly friendly so they they must have known each other or they'd obviously spoken before and they both started talking about me while I'm standing right there I'm talking about my legs what I look like what my body was like whilst I was standing there so that was uncomfortable because the director was kind of like my boss and these are these are this is my work environment this is where I'm working so they're chatting about me that I'm standing there thinking you guys you really think that the Hollywood casting couch is alive and well in your minds and you both so fucking old and you've got no chance and I don't know why you're talking about me like this but okay so I'm just standing there being polite and nice as you do and as you did back then and then that just kind of started off the tone of the day it was like Groff had given himself permission the director had given him permission it was okay to touch me and that's what he did back then it was video cameras so video cameras meant really bright lights and really hot lights because the the bright lights without the heat hadn't been invented yet the air conditioners always had to be turned off because quiet air conditioners hadn't been invented yet which is also why we wore shorts and t-shirts because it got really hot so he'd really sweat a lot so I would go up to him and block block his face get the sweat off his face because that's my job so there'd be a tissue with a powder puff on so I'd have a box of tissues in my hand and a powder puff on the other and I'd do this every single time bar one he would touch me he'd run his both hands up my legs he'd try and shove his hand inside the rip of my shorts and I'd just grab his wrist and go please don't do that because you make the rip a bit bigger and he'd just laugh and keep trying to shove his hand in twice I had this long belt a long leather belt because in the 80s we wore long belts right and he twice he grabbed the belt and pulled me towards him to try and crotch grant him and this is to try to try and crotch grant me right but you know I kind of stood my ground with that one so he didn't get to do that but he tried and nobody none of the men in the studio stopped him nobody said anything it was all very must have just been entertaining I suppose but nobody did a damn thing but then men didn't stand up for women back then I didn't have any men ever stand up for me when they watched other men groping me but this was a particularly uncomfortable because he did it every single time bar one when he had a script in his hand was he doing this to anybody else well he didn't have anybody else to play with because they were all men he just had me I don't think he I don't have any recollection of him ever using my name or even bothering to remember it he would always call makeup so you usually you watch a monitor like a TV screen so you can see what the monitor sees you can see whether there's sweaty or not but usually I would stand closest because then I can visually see it's easier you know I can see what's happening and what I see is going to be magnified by the camera so I know that you know I know how to do my job and each time he just kept touching me and he just didn't stop he just wouldn't stop you know and I would have to be polite and I was really really aware that if I had said anything to him back then he never told anybody to f off um he couldn't slap their hands or anything he was a huge star um uh women were not we were not encouraged society didn't encourage us to stand up for ourselves it was um that that that mindset of boys will be boys and so it wasn't a boy there was a 63 year old man he shouldn't know better uh and women had to just tolerate this sort of behaviour and like I said I'd had this sort of thing before but not as much not as blatant not in front of a whole lot of people um and um I felt that I was responsible for a losing my career if I said anything affecting anybody else in the room he could have um what we like to call an australian had a dummy spit and walked off and like I could have cost the station millions of dollars I didn't know so I felt really um I felt like it was my responsibility to cop this shit uh so I didn't affect anybody else's jobs and I didn't affect his performance because again that's my job wasn't my job to be groped though uh and then I started to get really bored with it like really over it and was starting to get pissed me off and I'm one of these people that um you can see the joy on my face but you can also see the anger uh when I started getting pissed off and I can get really fucking angry uh so um I moved to the back of the studio and I thought well if you can't you know see me very much then he might not need me as much and I could there was like a monitor back there but he still kept you know calling me so then uh I took myself out of the studio because I was so uncomfortable I just didn't want to be in there anymore I just didn't even want him to look at me I didn't like the way he looked at me um I was sick to death of him touching me uh so I stood outside the studio and outside the studio doors you have like you see in the movies you have the red light when they start filming the red light goes off there was a guy there um one of the guys was around my age um and he knew that I was really pissed off and had had enough and um he would come out when he really started sweating he'd come out and get me I'd come back in I'd do my job I'd get touched up again and then I'd literally just turn around walk straight out and shut the door and stand outside the studio just waiting watching for the red light and then at the very end of the day um we usually take the makeup off so makeup back then was really thick because with video you had to have used we used what was called pancake makeup so it was really thick makeup which made the skin look really better because um the lights were really harsh they made you they showed up you know they made it look bad and video was uh they'd say video used to put 10 pounds on you uh so you had to we're always especially men always take the makeup off right um but there was no way I was going to take his makeup off um I was not going to go into that little makeup room with him again because I didn't trust that he wouldn't actually sexually assault me um and opposite the studio doors was a broom cupboard um that I could stand in so I went in and I stood in the cupboard when it was the end when they were all coming out so I hid so no one knew I was there um and I could look I could open the door a little bit and I could look up the hallway because the studio door was here I was here and my makeup room is up there and all my kit was still there as if I was coming back and he went and stood outside my room in the corridor uh for probably about five minutes waiting for me because I could have gone to the loo or something and I thought you can wait for as long as you like mate and so I just stayed in the cupboard um and then um the powers that be the man that men that run channel seven there at the very end of the corridor and they start coming down to get him and he moves towards them and there's lots of back slapping and shoulder slapping and they um escorted him out the front door to what I assume was his waiting car um and I still stayed in the cupboard because I wanted to make sure because if I had come out of the cupboard and he'd come back I was completely exposed like you could see down my whole corridor um and I didn't want to come out so then they all came back and I walked this way which was back to their offices and then I came out of my cupboard and I went back to my makeup room packed everything up and then I went and saw the um the woman who was in charge of the makeup department for channel seven who I knew and I said to her I just had the shitter stay with a dirty old man and she said to me oh I thought you knew and I said knew what she said oh his nickname's the octopus he does this to all makeup artists and to be quite honest I was really pissed off at her because she knew me I was pissed off that I wasn't given a heads up I was I was kind of annoyed I felt like I'd been um kind of betrayed by another woman and that pissed me off and at the same time in the same conversation she so this is the first time I've said anything to anybody about it she said to me oh by the way the powers that be upstairs men upstairs I have a message for you from them they want to congratulate you on the way you've conducted yourself and I just stood there and I thought oh that's right you guys were all watching from the control room upstairs and I had only just complained and I hadn't complained to management I just spoke into the makeup girl and then I realized that wasn't only just the men in the studio it was the six eight ten people sitting upstairs in the control room they were watching what he was doing as well that's a hard thing like for any man and it's hard to try and justify men in the 50s 60s 70s 80s for seeing that thing because it's never all right for any man to see that as a father and who has a daughter understand them maybe too over protected now because I've spoken to enough people who understand the way sick people can operate and abuse their power and for any man to see that and not say anything is sad it's sad more than anything as a woman because I've spoken to enough survivors to understand how tough it is for anybody to even come forward in speak because a lot of people actually blame themselves what could those says things I had a man on earlier very tough man from London abused at seven abused at 14 they bought it all up for 30 40 years because he was scared of people's reaction so you're obviously somebody and there somebody who's abusing their power people around you actually accepting that's what he does it's a octopus that ain't okay that's fucked up so many levels especially some they're abusing their power some sick old pervert it's 63 but yet it's okay because nobody's better than anybody in this planet no matter how many views you get no matter how much money you've got you're the same as everybody else if you step over bounds and if somebody's if I if any man was to see somebody getting abused as a man you've got to be do your duties and protect that woman and batter fuck out that person and and listen I don't have all the answers to how people feel that and how they speak about it but it's only a man's right to try and do the right thing so if there's a lot of things getting exposed now over the years and because social media is a powerful tool and for me if you know somebody's getting abused if you know somebody's abusing kids and you don't do anything about it you're just as bad as them absolutely absolutely and I would have I would have loved it for some for somebody to see anybody to have called him on it but he wasn't and the director who runs the room he was egging him on so there was nothing and in and afterwards you know I thought I told everybody I went home I told my mother I told my friends I've told every man and his dog over the years people have asked me you know as a make-up artist who's the best person and the worst person you've ever worked with and the best person changes because I've worked with superstars you know but the worst person has always been him because he just took that piss you know and he and I never thought it was never called sexual assault so I always thought that I'd been griped and I'm a full-on I was absolutely griped by a dirty old man and like you say not actually coming forward if you know that something like that's happening and not coming forward is a wrong thing to do so in 2013 right and this happened to me in 1986 so in 2013 I see this TV show Current Affair or something and there's this woman who's I think she was maybe 48 and she had come forward to take him to court because he'd assaulted sexually assaulted her with penetration digital penetration when she was 14 and she was being crucified by the press she'd got a PR agent who'd I think got 50 grand for her from a woman's magazine and then dropped her in the middle of the the feeding frenzy so they could call her a liar and I'm watching her and I'm thinking well I know you're not lying and I don't like injustice I'm one of those people that it wasn't about me it was about her so I came forward for her and I got as soon as I saw the show my husband at the time he was with me I didn't even tell him I was going to do it he went you know he chuffed off and I got onto my phone and I started googling where I could actually tell them stuff that I knew so I could back up her story and I sent one email off and that didn't work and then a week later I sent I found the right place I think I got onto Scotland Yard or something straight away and I used the word the octopus and what had happened to me on set just a few things and they came back to me straight away with a phone call can I call you and that was Gary Pankhurst who basically led the whole operation so I ended up having a chat to him which was great and then he you know I got allocated my own police person a guy called tiny who was awesome they looked after me really really well and another guy called Ben's I had two of them they looked after me really well they kept me abreast of what was going on and this went on for like six months before I even knew whether I was going to go to England or whether it was going to be via zoom or whatever you know and the weirdest thing was they told me I was going to have anonymity and I was cool with that and then they turned around and said um actually how did you feel if you didn't have anonymity because apparently at the time um so I was called a bad character witness you know um but that was what they call you in court so I'm basically I'm coming forward to tell you this is what my day was like with Rolf Harris this was my experience I was at work I was his makeup artist this is how I was treated and this was my day so that caused me that's what a bad character witness is called your experience of being with someone um rather than a good character witness uh so I was asked to write an email to the judge of how I felt if I was relieved my name was released to the press they were only interested in the bad character witnesses there was only six of us out of ten there's only ten of us that did this um and at the time there was another court case happening uh for another show called hey dad also run by channel seven also run by the same men that were looking after channel seven and it was a sitcom it was a family sitcom and the father the actor has had um consistently abused the little girl who was playing his daughter now they were taking him to court and they won and he got sentenced to ten years so I worked on that show too and my girlfriend worked on that show and she was hired um to look after the second little girl who'd replaced her and I worked on the show as well and was told make sure he doesn't go anywhere near her make sure it doesn't flow to the tortoise pedophile was never used again to know what that word was um but when you think back on it you know and you're like okay this was the eighties wow okay that's what we were doing had no idea that he was sexually abusing this little girl um so this was all happening at the time so I wrote a really succinct email to the judge and I told him exactly what I thought and that basically it was his call if he wanted to do that and if he wanted to throw me and my name to you know get dragged through the mud that was his call but that if women like me or if I didn't come forward then it was like the women were assaulted and abused all over again so you know do your worst kind of thing but I wrote a really succinct one I put a lot of time into it and then I'm watching tv I'm at home right and I'm watching tv and the news comes on it's a split screen there's that male news reader I'm getting my pajamas on right and I hear these words and I'm like hang on I said that because I did put a lot of time into it and sure enough there's my words on the right hand side of the screen there's this male news reader reading the words of my email to the judge that went through the cops word for word except the very last bit where I said Ralph Harris is guilty I'm like fuck how did they get that how did they get how did channel 10 news get my email to the judge I realized then that I was public property that everything I was pissing myself laughing at the same time everything I said or did was part of public record that I then had to be careful really careful with how I conducted myself because this was a massive case and it was it was like a huge shock that they got that they got it like it's even now to this day I actually only found out recently that that was basically part of public records straight away and I didn't know that so that's how the press got it somehow however I don't think it would have been because the court case hadn't happened yet so as far as I'm concerned somebody leaked that letter money talks you know usually with the press so but it still it was it was a huge surprise to watch to hear myself and see my letter who was that after 30 years and someone comes forward exposing this man who's abused you groomed you made you feel wuffless how was that it was a sense of relief that you bottled up something for so long that okay this is my moment or did you have to think about what you were going to do or was that an easy decision to back this girl straight away it was super easy I didn't even think about it how hard has it been in your life though to be having that from that day to seeing that young girl come forward she um so I was actually sexually abused when I was 12 and it changed my life and it wasn't rape and it wasn't penetration but it changed my life it changed the trajectory of who I was as a woman and how I felt about myself how I felt about my body my self-esteem um I became very self-conscious about my body and what I looked like from the age of probably 19 um I started to cover up I started wearing baggy clothes I never wore anything tight I never wore sleeveless stuff I've never flashed my cleavage or anything like that because it was about my tits uh you know and at the time so um I was I was working as 12 year old for this farmer right um because I've always been you know an achiever and I loved it I'd go to the markets really early in the morning and sell vegetables and stuff in the afternoons and one of my friends who was 13 she got me the job and she worked for him because he was her neighbour uh and there and in the afternoons and on Sundays we'd actually do farming like we'd you know pull veggies and stuff like that and there was a tent there and um I got sent into the tent and the old man was there and uh he um basically he didn't say anything to me and he stuck his hand to my little elastic bra of my 12 year old bra and felt my tits and my nipples and then paid me more and coming from a really religious family uh I literally got out of the tent and I left I never went back and I waited out the front for my dad to come get me I never said anything to my dad I never said anything to my mum because I knew from the age of 11 that my mother didn't have my back so I never told a soul um I hated my tits when I was growing up I come from um a family of big breasted women and the older I got the bigger my breasts got the more I hated them the more I strapped them down I'd wear like two things like uh other women will understand this when you've got big boobs I was sporty they get in the way uh so I'd strap them down with a bra and a crop top and really just squish them um into my body as far as I could get them so they didn't stand out and then I'd wear baggy clothes so you could not see the shape of my body at all um and I covered up completely because I felt like I went through life so far um the bigger my boobs got the more I hated them so when I did start having sex when I was like 18 I would only ever have sex with a t-shirt on because I didn't like and I like sex but I only have sex with a t-shirt on because I really hated that part of my body had great t-its but I didn't like them um because they'd been touched and uh when I was 12 being I was a Sunday school girl um so that became I became a prostitute in my head and because I couldn't tell anybody about it I had a lot of baggage about that um so when I came forward for this 14 year old girl uh in 2013 in the Ralph Harris case my 12 year old girl was going no we're going to talk about this you're coming forward so I it was huge you know oh emotion it was um and then when I when I did come forward I had to I had to I had to say I was sexually assaulted and I'd never actually I'd never actually thought of myself as being sexually assaulted when I was 20 I was raped um you know uh lots of shit happens when you're young and I put it away and I just I just decided that it was unwanted sex I made up excuses I never you know I just dealt with it the way I dealt with it and the way a lot of women and men deal with stuff we put it away we lock it into that dusty suitcase in our minds and slam it shut you know so when I came forward for the Ralph Harris case and the police saying you're sexually assaulted you were sexually assaulted all the stuff that happened to me from when I was 12 came back so it was much heavier than I had anticipated my dad died six months before my husband was going through he was really angry he was going through depression and had huge anger management problems at the time so he was supportive and not supportive so I was kind of really alone um I was really lucky I got to uh take a girlfriend with me the cops paid for me they're British police and I believe because Ralph Harris lost he paid for me to come over um and he'll put him in jail um but it was heavy yeah so you're not just doing it for the young girl who came for a throw panacea you're also doing it for the young girl who you were and is that when it brought everything to the surface from 12 to 23 and trying to shed light because the most important thing is speaking about it and it's a hard this fucking thing though so see when you decided to go forward were you ever in your mind that nobody would believe you oh totally I didn't think anybody believed me at all I thought that because he had position of power and because he was really famous and he painted the queen and you know rich famous powerful men get away with shit all the time so you know I came forward but I didn't actually believe that they would manage to actually get him into into court but I was coming forward anyway and I literally came forward for the woman that I saw on screen and then I found out from the British police that there were dozens of women that came forward dozens from all over the world some of whom were like really young girls when he assaulted them and then so when I first met him and he first touched me and I turned around to that mirror and was shocked that he worked with children I was right because I saw him and I saw inside him when I looked into his eyes you know so I am I was even more grateful that I was that I'm this strong woman that came forward to support these other women who are little girls and I think when we do come forward for other people in life and we don't just do things for ourselves we're so much more powerful when we're doing things for others and I got I got so much healing out of it that I had no idea I would get when I came forward after the court case and that he was actually found guilty you know I stood up in court I'm talking about I'll start talking about my knickers because back then because he kept shoving his hand up my shorts and back then was the beginning of the G string you know so we had two triangles the triangle the front triangle back the piece of elastic that pretty much go around your waist so he would keep trying to push his hand further and further up my leg because he couldn't feel my knickers and I talked to the court about this I made the jury laugh because I'm a funny chick you know so you know I'm in court and I'm and I was told not to look at him by my cop the funny thing was I was actually smuggled into court because like there's like press everywhere it's the biggest court case in the world and right next to the doors is a broom cupboard so the irony did not escape me that I'm waiting to go into court standing in a fucking cupboard again with a cop and my girlfriend you know and he told me not to look at him at all he said just look at the lawyers you know the barrister's lawyers the judge and the jury said don't look at him and I'd been in the courtroom in lunchtime I'd been taken in there by the the court guy which was great and it was empty so I got to see the huge perspic cage like it was like a cage that he was in with a big tressel table and there was paperwork and shit on it and this chair that he was sitting on and where and he told me where everybody was going to be sitting and where all the mother's microphones everywhere they're all over the floors they're everywhere I got to stand in in the witness box and you know asked me you know what if I want to swear on the bible and all that and then when I did go in there it was packed like wall to wall people absolutely packed and I did what I was told because I did say to the guy it said to my copy shocker I can't walk about customer do that it's a nice easy don't and I think you kind of thought I might have done it but when I was finished at the end of my testimony his lawyer or barrister called me it was a woman she called me a liar I put it to you that you're lying and I'm so gobsmacking the honest that was like a real insult and I understand that was her job and I also understand that that's what she did to everybody I did find out later that there was a New Zealand woman who was like live via satellite who lost her jobs when she was called a liar and abuse the crap out of her and I thought well there you go you got that me I'm standing there and I snorted with derision and I couldn't snort now if you paid me like seriously it's surprised that she doubted me that I actually snorted after being called a liar because it's really um it's a lot of responsibility you know standing caught telling your truth in front of the world and you I didn't I had no preconceived ideas of what sentence he should have because that's not my job my job was to tell the truth about my day and that's what I did the fact that I made the jury laughed is just because that's who I am as a person and then then you called a liar and then it was then literally I was my turn to get off the stand so when I did get off the stand the only person I looked at was him because I've been really good up to them and I looked at him and I looked at him as I walked down the aisle and I glared at him the entire time I looked at nobody else I stared and it's called a stare down I didn't know I had to look it up later I glared at him all the way out and he turned his entire body around he did not make eye contact with me months is that covered huh yeah all the press were behind him my girlfriend was watching all of this happen they were going mental writing in their little books right I was just completely focused on you know glaring at him and watching him turn away from me and I kept walking and I grabbed my bag and I said to my girlfriend let's go now the court doors they're quite thick right so I've got a bit of a pace going because at the time the emotions were starting to come out I was halfway between being really fucked off and really upset so it was all just it was coming out of me I need to get out of there you know to keep my cool um and I shoved the door thinking that it was really heavy not heavy so I will and there's two doors and I've got a pace on I shoved this door it hits the wall bang bang in the whole courtroom like jumps twice on Susie Dent has left the building you know I so I made quite an impact on my left and then as soon as I got out of there one of the cops came running after me so I wouldn't go the wrong way because by then I started to get upset and then I find myself in this little room surrounded by police going I fucking didn't lie I'm that's fucked I'm fucked I'm fucking this I'm fucking that and someone bought me a cup of tea so I could chill the fuck out um and then Gary Pankhurst came and he stood in front of me and he took my hand and he said to me well done he said you did really good Susie we're really proud of you and I'm just like how many people actually came forward to expose him there was 10 of us um there was four women who actually um with a little girl so he sexually assaulted and there were six bad character witness who'd also one man who had worked with him um uh as uh he was presenting on a show in Australia he was presenting on a show and this guy like was the audience warm-up guy or something like that uh and the other women had all been assaulted by him in some way shape or form who was it seeing Ralph Harrison in the courtroom that day for the first team after so many years um well I'd never bothered to look at him whenever he came on the screen I just you know I turned it off I never followed his career I didn't give a shit um but when I did actually look at him and he was there I couldn't help myself but glare at him uh like I couldn't help myself it's just I can't tell you what I was thinking except that I was full of emotion anger and absurdness of being called a lie and my my actions were headlines around the world Australian my favorite headline which I loved was Australian television makeup artist dramatically stares down Ralph Harrison court that's why I had to look up stare down I thought yes that was me and that I wasn't supposed to tell many people but my friends in Australia who knew what I was doing were following obviously and they're like yeah I gotta see them so um but I was really pleased that I had such strong headlines um for the other women who hadn't come forward for all the dozens of women that weren't chosen to be to be part of the case by the judge for the women that were part of the case one woman had to stand behind a blanket she couldn't eyeball him at all so I was glad I knew they'd see these headlines and I hope that um that my strength of character would give them the strength to keep going because even then we didn't know whether we were going to win or whether it was just going to be whatever a complete waste of time but we all knew that he was not a good person because we'd all had our own physical moments with him um but we did win so how would how did the press treat him the media with anybody supporting him was anybody trying it was interesting um because back then we still lived in what what was called the society of disbelief so there was millions of people around the world that were getting their Susie hate on uh you know we're all liars I was a liar you know even his brother came out and called me a liar you know front page headlines and I'm a liar and I thought fuck off um and I thought and I thought yeah well I put you in my testimony mate and that you didn't see it so I actually had your back so maybe you should have read it first um and he's saying things like oh if I had seen that happen you know I would have stopped him so he didn't you were there and nobody did um so it was um a lot of there was a lot of hatred a lot of disbelief uh because Roth Harris was a national treasure of England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, many many countries um he I actually in one of the documentaries I mean uh that I watched was like he was named one of the top five entertainers of like our generation that's like massive you know I only realized recently I was a bit bigger than I thought it was um so there was people they were full of disbelief and I had only come forward for the money of which I had not been offered any nor what I've taken it and he came forward um I'm lying if we're all lying because there's no way Roth Harris would have done that uh and the reason is that people believe what they saw on TV and they'd watched him from when they were young and they'd let their children watch him from when they were young and they'd invited him into their homes with this trust of course we all did we all did you know it's what's called hiding in plain sight you know and he worked with children all the time so as an as a as a as a society not just in this country but in several countries society was in shock that they'd been duped by this man uh you know and they felt guilt and shame that they'd that they'd liked him and that they'd loved him and that they wanted to be on his show when they were kids there was so it was it wasn't just about us coming forward us coming forward changed the world and and uh exposing Roth Harris really changed the world and the society that we lived in for the better so naivety was stolen uh and that's a good thing or taken away i think people became a lot less naive about what they watched on television it's my daughter all those sick individuals now i don't want to upset anybody but anybody who works with kids especially male i've got to question them now because i've interviewed so many people and you never think because Jimmy Saville you look at you just think sex case wrong and you i do anyway and you but nowadays people like they can hide they can pay three and i've interviewed the undercover pedophile who went deep undercover for 20 years they don't just groom kids pedophiles are not there to groom the kids they'll groom the parents first parents think they're a good guy the parents will let them push the boundaries with the kids and that's the sad thing it's your kids do not let them go anybody else don't let them steal over when anybody else cub scouts football and it's hard because you want your kids to live their life but there's so much fucking badness on in this world and so many kids taking their own life because they've been abused as kids and are too scared to come forward because of what people will judge them and like Jimmy Saville and Ralph uh Ralph Harris and who else we've got Gary Gleadot not Gary Gleadot but there's some heavy names and they all worked with the same company and it's not necessarily because people slightly bbc and i get it they're covering up for pedophiles they're actually it's not meaning they're all sex cases it wasn't these big corporations but what happens is if these people get exposed to the other main guy who's working on the mainstream what happens is they lose sponsors they lose credibility so do as much as they can to cover it up and discredit yourself and discredit survivors and discredit everybody else to come forward listen you lose your kids you lose your job so people are too scared and we've got a lot of shit with Philip Scofield i know you don't really want to touch in because you don't know the information but again a man who worked with kids a man who listen if he's had sex with somebody who's over 16 and that's nobody else's business but it's the lies to his wife for over 20 years that's the known his brother was a pedophile and covering that up like there's so much more to these things and you see people coming out and giving statements leave him alone it's mental health but if it is the case that he's grooming kids from a young age then he's a fucking wrongie and nobody should be caring about his mental health fuck him and that goes for royal Pharisees but the juicy the power that they had at the protection that are then people are trying to sweep under the carpet the juicy this with your own eyes you seen it straight away when it was happening oh yeah turning a blind eye but did you see it even more once you started to realize how dark the world can be um it's funny uh it's funny that you mentioned the baby see because i was actually discovered the day after i went to court by the baby see by this female producer uh and she hounded me to be on a show with the baby see because i worked in television for such a long time she contacted me by email and i thought oh this will be fun i want to see how far you go with this because i've seen other people people who don't know how tv works and they don't know how abusive the press can be and how manipulative and they get sucked into it and they like like the girl i saw on a current affair and i thought i want to see how far they go um so she took me on a fun little ride of um they wanted to do a full-on tv show with me my name they give you a fake name um sd was my initials all of jeez that's really creative isn't it uh so you know she found me she would have found my cv um so she um though she got as far as um wanting to do a show with me blank out my face uh i get someone else to have an accent and then one day she actually called me lied through her back teeth and told me that my name had been released in court and that released spun me out because my kid was 12 at the time um my husband was you know having mental health issues uh i i had the federal police that britain the from brisbane in queensland i had the feds number to two mobile numbers so i could call them if the press actually turned up on my doorstep so my kid and my husband wouldn't be freaked out and for a whole weekend i couldn't get onto the cop that uh had been allocated to me because he was on a long weekend with his family so for a whole weekend i'm like scouring i'm on the internet looking for where my name has been actually released and then i got on to uh spoke to my husband he said she's lying she's lying and she was lying um that was really wrong of her and that was the bbc it's interesting isn't it how far they'll go i um i i was quite a i wasn't really aware of um other pedophiles and things that went on i think um and having worked in television you know and feel like home in a way i was very aware from a very young age how manipulative the press can be um you know so the kids that and they were kids working on home in a way if they were standing together on a step no idea which is a magazine called new idea we'd call it no idea they would print that they were actually lovers and we would just piss ourselves every monday morning you know piss ourselves laughing going okay who have you been doing this weekend you know because they would just put whatever photos they wanted and say whatever they wanted i don't think um i think the laws may be a little bit better now but maybe not so i'm very aware that a lot of the stuff that we read is not true yeah because the media killed people with the things it says i i think they've listened to a little bit they need to be more careful but back in the day paul gascoin famous footballer had them on the podcast they turned to alcohol one of the greatest footballers of all time that at his peak he was unbelievable and turned to the drink but it was actually sober he was in rehab but what the pressures to do is leave him to box of vodka outside his door bang his door fuck off round the bin and then they came to the door used to pick them up and used to take photos paul gascoin back in alcohol he lost sponsorship deals he lost businesses because they thought he was drinking again that's how but back then you're getting 50 grand 100 grand for a front page story and then these people go and kill themselves throughout the year they kill people you know we've what we've um i've um you know people that i've worked with in the past they've been completely bullied and they've been bullied to death by press by by people thinking the wrong things and i never read any negative press about me um uh did you worry about that though nah do you seem like a tough fucker anyway um i'm tough fucker i mean because obviously probably the shit you've went through as a kid with your mom and other stuff that's happened it does it gives you a thick skin yeah you kind of realize i mean you kind of stand by self in the world you know i was i certainly wasn't used to running and running home to mommy and daddy i was just standing on my own you know and that was a good thing um but yeah no i didn't read it if you don't read it you don't see it you know how long did the court case last it was months it went on for months it felt like felt like ages was that a lot of pressure on your life no i stayed here for a month because Australia's a long way away um and went um you know i had a little adventures with my girlfriend and wanted to run london and went to france for four days um but even and the whole time uh oh yeah so when the bbc woman found me a week later i was contacted every single day several times a day by about a 30 different press from around the world radio newspapers television shows channel seven in sydney i'm like seriously i think i'm gonna talk to you um it was interesting um that got a little bit stressful i got i would answer the phone with this is called being recorded uh so i got really quite cluey but you have to be on your toes all the time because you never know who's going to ring you whether they're going to find you if they find your phone you know so i was i was really really glad that i had my friend with me and the police said that you know you'll need a support person and they were right because if i had been on my own i would have you know probably gone to different places in my head um they're really spun out um so that was you know it was interesting and i didn't um i'd said all along to all of them um i'm not giving my story i don't wish to be the poster girl for groping i'm not going to give you a story the answer is no and i knew exactly what would happen to me they have photographs of me when i was 23 what my legs look like what i look like back then and i know what people do they look at me then and go it was she fuckable then and they look at you now and i was what 50 51 at the time is she fuckable now would i fuck her you know is she is she doable um so consequently do i believe that rolf harris might have touched her up and that's how people in society look at you and other women came forward after the court case after we won um there was like two women one lady um was on one of your morning shows you guys had a run of having morning shows from a bed um and she was on a breakfast on a bed show and she'd interviewed rolf harris and she came forward to the press and she was a larger lady and she was completely vilified um and ripped to shreds because it was like well i wouldn't do you so i don't believe he would have touched you and i knew that's what would happen um i knew that wouldn't necessarily happen to me like that but i knew that that's what the mindset would have been that was unpleasant to know that that was going to happen that's why i mean i had no intention of coming forward anyway uh and uh in the very end the police came forward to me and they said are you sure you don't want to speak to our public city department and come forward i'm like no because this is not about me this is about the women who were little girls who had their lives changed my life i wouldn't say my life changed it didn't affect my sex life i became very mouthy though and i would say fuck off to any man that came near me that i didn't want to come near me he was the last man that ever touched me without me wanting to and i did really uh i suppose it did change me i didn't wear a dress i wasn't wearing a dress then i stopped wearing dresses for 30 years i just completely wore baggy clothes the whole time i really did feel like i moved through life much safer like that i couldn't change my face and i'm glad about that i'm grateful that i look nice and i'm grateful that i look nice now and then i completely changed my life at the age of 55 you're gonna like this i put it out to the universe that i wanted to be in front of the camera for a change to sing in rock band so i'm a singer i'm so quite happy with the microphone and i got this message you gotta be careful what you wish for with the universe and this woman contacted me she'd send my photo and she said we think you'd be a really good contender for the mrs earth australia beauty quest pissed myself laughing fell off the bed you know and i got back in touch with her and i said thank you darling you've like made my month but i'm like i'm nearly 55 i don't wear high heels shoes and i don't wear dresses uh and she said no no women women your age are doing this and i checked them out and they supported a charity which collected new and new shoes for people around the world and i thought i realized that i was having my own sliding doors moment life was very unhappy with my husband back then like i was you know like really unhappy it was not good um and i really wanted to change my life i really wasn't happy with where i was going and i as a makeup artist i've made women look beautiful my entire life and watch them wear beautiful gowns that i felt really i couldn't actually wear and i thought i don't want to be 70 and never experience what it's like to actually wear a gown and look really beautiful and feel okay so i said yes to the most out there left field thing about being a beauty queen which is so outside my comfort zone but i pushed through all this stuff and i started wearing dresses and talking about shoes and going and speaking as a motivational speaker and talking about shoes and i collected tons of shoes and raised heaps of awareness i like to say i built i built myself a steam one frock at a time uh then i got a gown made for me i into uh anyway i went down to a one so i won the first mrs earth australia i beat women who i could have given birth to which was super cool you know i found myself three months later in vegas representing australia with 36 other women from around the world um some of whom i swear must have been born with you know high heel shoes on um i had to learn how to walk in 16 i call them hawker heels nothing against hawkers six inch heels right so it makes me six foot a long way down after you know i didn't want to face plant the stage so like two weeks i'd stand on my carpet in my at the end of my bed to stand trying to get my balance and then it's you know i look like a thunderbird when i walked in there because i used to wearing runners and orthotics don't fit in you know in high heel shoes uh so i taught myself how to wear shoes i threw myself into the pageant industry i studied the pageant industry in america um i got my posture back on um i got my girl back on uh and i came third in the world and came home to stacks of press the the 55 year old tomboy to beauty queen i ended up inspiring women to change their lives i built myself esteem to the high levels that my confidence was already at um it was quite amazing when i was actually here in 2014 i had this huge kind of healing inside the walls of stone hinge which is where i feel all my relatives were with me all my ancient all these spirits were with me in 2014 i had this like healing i cried bucket loads of tears and i looked like uh i looked younger after that i'd like offloaded all this stuff from going to court when i was saying earlier that i'd had this healing and i it was so unexpected you know i grieved my dad i got rid of anger i felt to my mother i learned about i forgave myself because forgiveness is the gift we give ourselves not others i forgave every man that ever assaulted me i just let it all go and then i started to heal and then i became a beauty queen and become a motivational speaker and blew my mind you know and now i'm quite comfortable wearing dresses um and i've been i've spoken all around the world now about healing and forgiveness and now i find myself here again uh and i'm staying now i came for three weeks and decided to stay for six months because i feel that um this is where i belong and i feel a lot of ties here because i'm a first generation australian um and i've had a lot of press lately which is great and i've been able to since he died rolfy people have asked me how i felt um and i've managed to control the narrative a little bit um and talk about his wife and his daughter um and and the fact that we have to think about them just like philip scofield we have to think about his daughters and his wife and the people that attached them and whether they knew that dad was gay or that hubby was gay or whether they didn't and we tend to forget about the people that are related to these people that turn into monsters in society we have to be really mindful i feel of others around us so i've been able to make my story about healing and forgiveness and i'm kind of really grateful in a way i feel like life chose me in 1986 to have a bad day with a dirty old man so i could be this strong rolfy chicken court uh and use my voice uh and come out and and help take a bad man down change society do all this stuff i had no idea i was doing when i came forward um and i've had many many women and men reach out to me over the years um to not just say thank you but to share their stories of assault and that is a humbling thing for someone to trust you enough to share their journey with you uh because the only way we heal is when we speak and when people speak for the first time of being sexually assaulted that's the beginning of their healing journey and that's what these sort of things are all about this is why we have to keep speaking this is why what you're doing in your podcast and you're talking to people who are speaking to you about being sexual assaulted sexually assaulted that's why it's so important because you're helping people heal and you'll help getting emotional again you're helping people on the healing journey and that's a really big deal like you're telling stories and some of the stories and the interviews that you have like my story is sensational and it was hugely huge and other people's stories are huge but the more they speak the more they start to heal and that's so important because life is so fucking short when you get when you get there so and that's the thing about life i always say this but talking about it as the healing process you must face it to heal it you must face it to own it and no matter if it's good or bad you've got to face it if you run away from it it's still going to be there and it's always going to get worse and worse and worse a friend of mine calls it the parasite you must face it talk about it kill the parasite kill that fucking negative vibe that internal pain that you've got and only reason you way you can do that is by facing it talking to it hearing it and owning it and that's the sad thing because a lot of people don't know how to handle trauma and pain and we've all come through trauma in my life everybody it's good different levels of trauma seeing you're going through the court case and all those innocent girls innocent women even innocent men see when he got his verdict did you know the outcome or did you have to wait till you see it on the news i know i was actually the first person that called me was the BBC reporter it was about my was at home in Australia it was about midnight i knew it was happening that day so i was kind of like a wakeish and then the cops called me a little bit after her but she called me so she'd get a statement the statement that she'd been handing me for for ages so i pretty much my statement was congratulations to the police for a job well done and what was going through your mind once you got a go at it fuck yeah and is that when you felt did you feel our relief or was it that moment totally no i felt absolute relief i felt so proud of the women who came forward that were little girls i felt so proud of all of us that we took on not just him but we took on we took on the world in a way that we've pushed through it um that we'd all been brave uh and that we'd had a really good outcome um you know and because some some of the women who are part of the case they have not waived their anonymity i did that in 2019 what means you do that um the me too movement happened in 2017 what i like to call the biggest healing movement for women that the world has ever seen where many victims of sexual assault actually put the hashtag me too on their social profile which for many many women was the first time i never admitted that they've been sexually assaulted some of them and women that i know put it on and then felt shame and pulled it off uh you know because there's a lot of people that need a lot of healing but four out of five women and i think two out of five men are sexually assaulted in their lifetime so it's a big deal for many of us so in 2019 england going ahead and leaps and bounds with changes in in in business and in society the usa new zealand all doing really well unfortunately australia which is still a misogynistic country really had not and we had other court cases happening again in the entertainment industry that i like to call the circus because there's no h and r department in my industry there is in other industries so if something happens to you there isn't really anyone that you can go to a complaint to there isn't big unions that'll back you or anything like that uh so there were men coming forward and people coming forward saying they'd been assaulted and money was winning and it pissed me off a bit so i came forward because i was ready i'd gone through my mrs earthing my self-esteem and my self-confidence were really high so i you know i found my true authentic self i had my voice i'd found my voice and um i wanted to use it and i wanted to try and change the defamation laws in my country but what i really wanted to do was give australia a wake-up that this all started with us um in 2013 with hey dad and with the royal Pharisee in 2014 uh that i wanted to remind australia that there was Australians that had come forward to change the world and that we needed to keep going and we needed to keep talking about things and to keep the conversation going because with anything as long as we keep the conversation going that's when change is going to happen and we're dealing with a generational mindset from you know royal Pharisee was about 93 when he died and the men that were taken down by Operation Newtree were older the older generation my parents and older generation um and we're that they're finally dying off you know but they have still passed this mindset on to their kids um and their sons and their daughters to believe that no well you just have to cop this sort of behavior so we're breeding it out it's being aged away um and these things don't happen quickly you know you can't really if you can't like i don't think you can if you're in a conversation with someone and they say the wrong thing and you bite their head off you're not helping them stall it has to be handled in a in a in a mature way coming from a place of kindness you don't um what's the way to put it um you don't really affect someone's dignity when you're talking to them you don't ridicule them that hey you're saying the wrong thing mate you know get with it this is 2023 that's not going to help anything having a discussion like we're doing and continuing this conversation about how men should act how women should act um and how society is now and we don't play touchy feelies anymore is how we make change yelling and screaming about it doesn't work having proper conversations does you know and talking about it on a corporate level um i know there's a lot of confusion around how people should behave and there was a lot of confusion with the me too movement which is again changed by no offense by men to make it into something that it wasn't when really it was women standing up for themselves and being heard the thing with the Ralph Harris court case it was um the first time in history that uh and those cases with operation new tree that women from historical sexual crimes had been listened to and heard and action had been taken that's what changed society that we'd actually been heard and believed how do men get educated because we're living in a society where some people are just uneducated boundaries and that's the sad thing because people can push and push and push where they've crossed the mark so how do young kids young boys because porn is a massive thing in this planet where i think 60 or 70 percent of the stuff that's watched online is porn and it's all free and it's fucking with young kids minds male and female but porn is that a depressing it grains a mingle in the brain it makes you depressed and i think people can see women as objects instead of actually seeing the beauty and seeing the finer things as i've got older and the people i speak to i start understanding life and understanding people in different roles and how people should be playing that men they build a women creator we're giving life the most important thing on the planet that off roles are just as equally as important as each other but how do men be more educated what do you think needs to be put in place for kids and men to understand that fucking hell it's changed days where things back then may have been more accepted than it is now with porn just in general if you were in general with porn men have to men have to women know that porn is fake women know that they don't actually like having sex the way that it's portrayed like that you know women know that they like to have they like to be with a man and make love they don't like to be fucked the way that porn portrays porn portrays women as as objects like you said and it portrays a way of having sex that's really not acceptable so men need to be educated and boys need to be educated if they're into porn i have no problem with porn porn is great to masturbate too but like you said it changes it changes your brain chemistry and it changes who you are and then when you when young men do you get with a woman and they think that that's how they're supposed to have sex and they're in for a rude surprise when the girls just like enough fucking doing that to me you know you could know i'm not going to touch you and then and then he's weird but he doesn't know why because he's been educated and brought up on porn i think we need to really educate and it starts at school in australia now in school they're talking about consent they're teaching kids about consent and teaching about boundaries you know my child he's 21 and when he was at school basically um his his friends you know basically for them giving head to a guy wasn't actually sex and i'm just like yeah but is he giving you head is it reciprocal no so well you're not really having sex then uh he's he's getting more than you are but they were like it's not sex so they have to be educated boys and girls need to be educated sex is sex intimacy is intimacy i'm not saying they have to be virgins until they're married because that was the whole other uh thing of you know really screwing with people we have to understand how to communicate um and sex is a big thing with men and women uh and uh there's sex and there's making love and the two different things and porn is just it's a thing that's used uh and we need to be just like the actors on tv just like watching Ralph Harris not be the person that he really is we have to understand uh that it's not how sex really is uh and it's not really that's not going to be the way that's going to be enjoyable there's a lot more female porn out there now there's a lot more female directors now actually uh you know creating porn that's more um feminine friendly uh because basically the porn industry was run by men for a while and it was um violent really towards women and aggressive a lot of aggressive sex so now we find there's a lot more porn out there that's more female friendly even seventy percent upon those abuse it's all abuse really so you're watching abuse you are a female so that's the thing with the mind that's you're absorbing that it's going to eventually fuck you up so maybe we make porn harder to actually get in touch with maybe why is it free because you know that the damage it does in the human brain well then why is it free exactly that's a big cooperation and so somebody's but somebody has to be making money somewhere don't they because if it's free to the public they have somebody has to pay for it someone has to pay for the production someone has to pay the actors someone's paying for it somewhere and someone's making money out of it somewhere so there you go so we stop advertising on porn so the big but the big business is the ones that have to be stopped uh too much money though that's where you call that money's the world dream so and that's it so it's all and it's always about money this is why Ralph Harris wouldn't be stopped because it was about advertising revenue it was all about money and it's all about money but what price to society like you've said for the few that make money to the many that get harmed it's mad to show how this mainstream media can spin the narrative though and portray these people as good innocent family man just did he have kids Ralph Harris they have what did they have kids who Ralph I mean he had a daughter so he had a daughter Mindy yeah and she would have been very affected like this like his wife would have been you know and the thing is the the big kicker with Ralph Harris is that he wasn't he was sexually abusing her best friend in their home from when she and groomed her from when she was a little girl and the documentary that I'm in at the moment uh Ralph Harris hiding in plain sight on ITVX she's actually come forward through her psychiatrist she still hasn't waved her anonymity but he talks about what her journey was like with him and how she felt and she might never come forward and that's fine because that's fine how many victims do you actually think he's had dozens through all over the world maybe hundreds could yeah yeah I know dozens and dozens came forward there was a second court case and dozens more came forward and I'm still asked look uh the other day I was in a television studio and the makeup artist um uh she actually came out to me and told me she was assaulted by him and she was working with him as well but you don't say anything because they're stars um and you're kind of like you don't think of it women of a certain age don't are not educated in a way to think of a certain type of groping to be sexual assault we're being groped if someone sticks their hand around you and grabs your booby being groped but now we know it's sexual assault now if anybody touches you and does that you can actually well in Australia it's salt you know you did that to me grab my boob I'm gonna take you to court I can take you to the police I can get you jailed for that well in 1986 the police aren't even interested they're not so well sweetheart you know I'm not gonna do anything how did you get through all from you're a kid and the abuse of household kind of dysfunctional to try and kick on and be something in your life you've kind of went on and stood in your own feet to then be getting abused again by some fucking dirty old pervert and then you've bottled up for 30 years you're married you struggled with that with the mental health what would why do you think it's what do you think it's gave you the strength to then still have a smile in your face to still try and kick on and do stuff for your life what do you think and that was I think it was probably my inner fortitude my faith in myself my ability to be have a smile on my face I'm kind of I live my life with gratitude I'm thankful every day and I start my day being gratitude I'm grateful for being here I'm grateful for things when you live a life and you've got gratitude at the beginning middle and end of it you can it gives you the ability to deal with things if you wallow in things and you let your mind go to places that they shouldn't then that's when it can really hurt you a lot of people need counselling you know or coaching there was there wasn't anybody like that when I was a little girl and I just kept it all to myself because I knew that I wouldn't be believed but it did affect my life you know so basically I did I hated my boobs so much that I ended up cutting them off so I had a breast reduction when I was 29 as soon as they changed the operation so that I could have the milk ducks so they changed it so the milk ducks would still be attached I had a breast reduction when I had the breast reduction I felt great so it was like I'd cut away all the old stuff the bad stuff that was attached to me no that's quite I'm not actually saying that that's what you should do is change your body but I changed my body and changing my body was the biggest psychological chip I'd ever been on and I actually liked my kids for the first time in my life they grew back they're still really happy but I did you mean to grow back oh they actually do when you have a breast reduction they actually grow back well then I then I had a child so you they grow back a bit but they grew back happy but it was weird at the time when I did it I kind of felt like I'd cut away a lot of stuff and I didn't I wasn't doing it for that reason I was doing it because I had really big boobs and they hurt your neck and they hurt your shoulders and so I had a breast reduction and they were small and nice and I really liked them and I felt really comfortable in my body for the first time in years so I did that yeah I had an amazing woman on and then what happens is she got abused as a kid she just decided to put on so much weight because then she wouldn't be a target nobody would want to touch her and that's sad that upset makes a fuck me the pain that you go through the it's a life sentence these people get it's a life sentence you've had no matter you've got the conviction yes it might feel good but up here still there no matter how much you work on yourself and that's what people need to understand and it's just that the shit people have to go through and do you don't really understand until you actually have a conversation and ask them because you tend to see a lot of people kind of open and honest when you actually break it all down and I believe that's why these podcasts are so great is to give people an understanding strength and it's important other people will watch and go and you know watch you can do it I can do it so seem you go through it all he gets convicted you came back to the UK you've wrote your booklet what gave you that inspiration to kind of really go inward and become very spiritual and very aware and in tune and understanding your traumas and pains that what was the the moments I am actually worked for I I kind of I was going through a lot of crap with my husband and I started listening to motivational speakers when I was going on my daily walks and I realized that we're the only ones that can change we're the only ones that are responsible for ourselves and to change you sometimes have to make yourself uncomfortable uh so I made myself uncomfortable putting dresses on uh but it came out everything was really good for doing that but I I realized what was missing in my life was spirituality uh and I saw I kind of started I said to my husband I was getting my god back on and I'm not a religious person I'm a spiritual person I'm not into any religion or anything like that but I started um really understanding that we're all spiritually connected that we're all spiritual beings inside physical form uh and I started doing studying about who I was and what made me tick in the greater whole of the world and I think you when you come through menopause as well you go through a big journey as a woman in menopause it changes you a lot you it changes your emotions it changes your body when your eggs dry up it's like going through puberty on steroids and unless you actually have an understanding of what's happening with your body and communication skills with your family and if you haven't dealt with stuff from your past when you're a woman and you go through menopause and men goes through menopause as well because at a certain age men's testosterone starts running out and that can affect their sex drive affects their bodies they get the middle aged dad bod you know so we as humans we go through it uh and at that stage in our lives if we haven't dealt with stuff that we haven't dealt with it's going to come slap you in the face and things needed to be dealt with so me putting on a dress and becoming a beauty queen was me dealing with stuff me doing um the court case with Ralph Harris surprisingly helped me deal with getting abused when I was 12 because in that courtroom I really felt like there was my 12 year old girl I was in there with the 15 year old or 14 year old or seven year old we're all middle aged remember it was all our little girls that were standing up against this man going fuck you mate and we all got a little girl on uh and I felt that and I felt that really strongly I think um that was a big catalyst for me well I know it was a changeable life uh and having a knowledge and becoming aware of who you are and really tapping into who you are on the inside uh and changing the way how you talk about yourself and how you communicate to yourself about yourself and the words you use about yourself to yourself are really important like you know I'm a loser or I'm fat or I'm this or I'm that you'll stay being a loser you'll stay being a fat uh and I've gone up and down in my weight my whole life you know I was fat still got assaulted can't change what my face looks like my um you know and I seem to put on weight and I still have an hourglass figure it's just heavier you know and I've still got these legs so it really didn't matter so you know then losing weight and and actually really loving my body and going well I got to the stage where I thought you know I'm 55 if anybody has a problem with my legs because women used to get jealous so when I was younger my mum was jealous of my legs so I started covering up at 19 and I wouldn't wear makeup because I'm really fair so I'd take the eyelashes off and I'm really blonde um so I don't you know I don't look as pretty that's what I thought and I'd cover my legs up so I would have I had a better relationship with my mother because she wasn't so jealous of me other women would be going oh my god your legs and back in the like 70s and 80s they would literally say oh my god you bitch I hate you look at your legs and that would really hurt me because it wasn't my fault what I looked like but I felt because I was raised the way I was raised I felt it was my fault what I looked like that I made people feel bad in my presence and I went through life a lot a lot of years like that so whenever that would happen next time I saw me you couldn't see my legs so I covered myself up not just for men but for women and then I got to 55 and thought fuck you all I'm 55 I look fucking hot I have great legs I have an excellent body and I'm fucking pretty so you know I've aged really well I'm gonna I'm just gonna own who I am now and and when you get to 61 like now there's not much competition I've looking really good when you're young everybody's beautiful when you get older it's like okay well you really haven't looked after yourself and I've looked after myself you know I've looked after my mind my body my spirit and my soul and I think beauty comes from the inside and who you are shines out from the inside and your joy and your gratitude and your you know your life force shines out from your soul and comes out through your eyes and that's how we kind of age well and that's how we we go through life being happy and joyful but we've dealt with our stuff so you know and now we have counselors and coaches and if people haven't dealt with stuff they need to talk to someone a trusted someone and that's the beginning of their healing journey and they have to realize that they are good enough that we're all good enough that they are perfect just the way they are when did you realize your mom was a narcissist I googled narcissism when I was little I thought she had a split personality hey Paula yeah no actually a split personality my dad my brother and I called a Doris behind her back for Doris Day she would be she Doris was fun she would dance and sing and carry on and she was really fun to be around she would be like that on the phone and then which put the phone down she would stop and she would switch I was only ever allowed to really talk to her in the commercial breaks of television and I learnt when I became a speaker I learnt that I used to talk really fast because I was programmed that I only had a certain amount of time in the commercial break to talk and to talk about my day because as soon as her program came back on she completely ignored me and she was only really half paying attention to me anyway you know so I learnt I learnt and was raised to believe that I wasn't important in my family and I wasn't important to my mother I won state business awards and I ring at you know I remember ringing at nine o'clock at night and my mother was like well are my programs on now well I kind of talked to my father like I've just beaten out massive companies like 40 companies around the state we've been hurry up like I've done something really huge so I realised and I learnt at a very young age and all three young adulthood that it didn't matter what I achieved for my parents and my mother especially wasn't good enough and it was pretty much I think my late 40s that I go this thing called Google we love Google we find out a lot about life daughters of narcissistic mothers and I looked it up and I ticked all the fucking boxes of who she was and like okay that makes sense and I'd realised way before that that there was no such thing as a split personality really that people were bipolar but from the age of 21 I was on a journey after my 21st birthday party with that my parents put on for me which was interesting and I'd come back from England and the lady up the road who I'd never met she invited me out for a cup of tea and she sat me down and she said to me I have to tell you something she said there's something seriously wrong with your mother and your father she said it's not you there is nothing wrong with you but there's something seriously wrong with your parents and from that moment on I was on a journey to figure out who I was and who I was without them you know with and I took me seven years to indoctrinate myself from the religious crap that had been put in my head to find that who I was was good enough to realise that I was love-starved and needy because I was love-starved and needy you know to find myself I had some amazing friends who are still friends now who would sit there and let me talk and talk and talk and talk which is why I know that speaking is about healing and try and figure out who I was and try and make sense of how her behaviour towards me and his behaviour because it was never logical and I'm a pretty logical person so having really good friends around me was key if I didn't have them I wouldn't be the person that I am today and I'm really grateful for that they helped me but it did it took me ages to un-program myself well I call it my seven year period do you believe it comes in sevens? yeah different cycles good seven bad seven good seven bad seven I don't know whether it's good seven bad seven but it was definitely seven years for me it's like a yin and yang and it's like they say love only last seven years yeah some people say happily that can last for an eternity oh I think it can last longer than that if you're the right person love is as cheesy and cringy as it is it's the most important thing but we're so caught up in a race and to survive and to provide it's it takes us away from our true essence it takes us away from our true being and it's to try and because purpose is the most important thing as well and life is to find something to enjoy your day and kick on in love but it's so difficult because I always say but everybody's confused nobody really knows what the fuck's going on we can sit here and rhyme off all the motivational quotes and spit at each other in life and we're doing okay we've still got the smile on our face and I'm proud of you for everything you're doing but it's just difficult because you see a lot of misery and pain in people I come across people all instantly you're not in a good place I've always done it I've always had that presence where I have no people yeah I feel people and I I've seen somebody crying actually last week sat beside them says everything okay and I had to talk and yes 45 minutes and hopefully it changed their day actually a message me a couple of days ago just to say Frank's and he did that but I don't know if I would 10 years ago if I would have sat down with them I've asked them for their okay other than fuck that creepy bastard then probably just walked past the poor count but yeah it's just that we you don't know but you're gonna different you're different now you're older now you've heard a lot you've got more life experience you've got more life knowledge the older we get the more experience we have the more that we've seen the more that we've you've heard the more people you've spoken to the more we've heard of life and it gives us more knowledge about what makes us happy and we see more sad people and we know what can be done sometimes to help them and sometimes you're just talking to someone is going to lift their day and we don't know we look we understand about having friends around us that are energy vampires we have we understand about having people around us who pull us down all the time and you accept that sort of behaviour because they're people that you love I removed my mother from my life 10 years ago I went completely non-contact and also with my brother so I don't have any family around me so you know I completely moved through life in apart from my child you know in a very a way that was about my protection because I realised having narcissists around you is just not good for your mental health and I would not have been I would not become the beauty queen if I had my mother around me because of her jealousy thing you know so I think we have to sometimes we have to make the hard decisions and we have to be brave and we actually have to walk away from people who are pulling us down and they say that you surround yourselves if you surround yourself with people who are successful and happy then you become successful and happy sometimes we have friends around us that have just pulled us down and we often have parents and family around us who may not be high achievers and you might be the only high achiever in the family and you don't achieve highly because it makes them feel bad about themselves like me covering myself up because I felt that other people felt bad about you know what I looked like but it was their problem not mine well then it took me years to figure that one out so well you're the one with the issue I'm not the one with the issue you've got a problem about your body and you're actually transferring that on to me and that's what people do and so we need to be aware that we have to be true to ourselves and like I said make the hard decisions and walk away sometimes from people who are holding us back so we can achieve our full potential so through your whole life of being abused and narcissistic mom and going through all the court cases worldwide news to covering up to not just protect yourself like a comfort blanket where you're trying to make everybody else feel at ease and low self-esteem low confidence and then you write the 60s new 41 beauty pageants you're doing the right thing like how was it writing your book it was great I loved writing my book one of my motivations I work with as a film and television hero make-up artist I work with women on set who are half my age and often half my fitness and I remember telling them only recently you know like how old are you and like I'm like I'm 61 and that's like lying away it's like my mother doesn't look like you and she's not as old as you I want to be you when I grow up I want to have your kind of vibe when I grow up and I want to look like you and I want to be fit and healthy and I realized that I lived my life a certain way with a certain mindset and a certain way of communication and people need to have an upgrade they need to communicate better they need to realize that when they're talking they're talking maybe as they did when they were in their 20s and when they're in their 50s and 60s they've got to be changing it and growing up more and I know a lot about mindset and I live my life thinking positive things so there's a lot in my book about like interrupters people who interrupt there's a lot of people that interrupt so there's things that I talk about about the way we communicate and the mindset that we have that I thought were as important to talk to people about apart from diet things like don't eat better and give up sugar and stuff like that because it hurts your joints and to be mindful and to exercise and move it or lose it and if you don't move your body when you're older you will lose it you will lose the fitness that you once had but it's about it's all about your mind it's about the words that you used to describe yourself and I felt that I had a lot of knowledge that I could impart to people because I wanted to make it easier I feel that at this age it's if I can teach women and men from the age of 40 up and 45 up and give them the skills that they need so that when they get to 60 they look just as good at like they're 40 because they have a better mental capacity of knowing who they are and to kind of go about things from kindness and love for themselves and for others so it's not a miserable dreary old world that we live in but we've got more positive vibrating people around then the world's going to be a better place if we're surrounded by people who are vibrating in a place a high place of joy and love rather than I'm depressed and I'm negative if we're overly negative it rubs off if we don't focus on the negative we focus on positive we are going to vibrate higher that's going to make us feel better and if you feel happy and you feel gratitude then you feel good and then people see it and you smile at people in the street and they're going to feel good so it just rubs off on everyone Working people buy your book? I'm on Amazon I'll leave the link in the description what about going forward to the future Suzy, what's the plans? Well I'm staying in England now I decided to I came here for three weeks and I decided to stay for six months because I feel that I'm really needed here to help people heal I'm actually I want to do I'm getting into corporate work and there's a big thing about sexual assault in business in corporate at the moment I'm going to use my fame from being the voice of many and helping other people to speak to businesses and help them and try and allay some of the communication problems again it's about communication and boundaries that men and women have in the workplace so that we can have a better happier place to be Hopefully I'm going to be working with my cousin who I spoke with on the weekend who has an HR background so together we're going to be we're going to be coming for you corporate For how do you feel about speaking about today does it bring back a lot of emotion or are you used to it now? It depends on who I speak to and it depends on the questions they ask me so I got a little bit emotional with you sometimes I get asked questions and I'm just like I've done so many interviews I still feel like I'm in the cupboard when I talk about it I don't feel any fear and I don't feel any pain talking to you brought up some stuff but it's stuff that I'm proud to bring up to help others heal if I wasn't in touch with who I am you can never fully walk away from who you are if you can talk about it without tears then you've done a lot of healing and by talking about it it helps other people I remember I saw Ellen DeGeneres on a video thing once and she got griped on the boobs when she was 14 and I was completely blown away and I was like it kind of I had solidarity watching her it's like wow okay so it actually is a real thing what happened to me it's actually real because sometimes we compare we never we should never compare how we were assaulted and sexually assaulted or even spoken to in a bad way we never compare because how it affected us is totally different to how it affects someone else what has happened to me in my lifetime might not have somebody else might not have battered might not have affected them at all but we have to make sure that we don't compare because it's we all have our own personal journeys and we all need to support each other on those journeys proud of you for everything you're doing everything you've overcome and being the voice for the voiceless and trying to give people an understanding of life and what you went through and how to overcome it which is the most important thing you've clearly been through a lot of trauma in your life for anybody that's watching that's maybe going through a narcissist partner or parents some that it's been abused some that it struggled with mental health what advice would you have for them reach out and find a coach I do coaching actually I don't like to call it coaching I do mentoring so a coach is someone that will lead you to find your own answers and a mentor is someone that's going to tell you what you can do so there's two differences so as long as people know the difference between a coach and a mentor that's a good thing but talk to people have a chat reach out to someone that can help you reach out to a mental health person don't suffer in silence it's not going to do you any good know that it's not your fault that you're perfect just the way you are and that you need to deal with the stuff that you've got happening in your past so that you can be the person that you're supposed to be right now and reach your full potential what's leaf all about last question what's all about do you think feel as if I can ask you that question I think life is all about connecting with other people and sharing our journeys with others and having the best journey that we can it was really cool that I was in Ireland and I decided I was going to stay and it was really cool to actually be free to make that decision I think to come at a place that's not fear based to be able to go through life holding your head high being confident with who you are and making decisions and taking a risk you have to take risks with life you know and wish and dream big you know have the big dreams because life has stuff in store for you I just want to be on the other side of camera and do commercials I become an international beauty queen you know life had a ton of stuff more in store for me than I had ever even dreamed of you know so dream dream big use your imagination put it out there use your mindset you can manifest things in life but have faith in yourself and have faith in other people and smile and be grateful So is it absolute legend man I wish you nothing but fucking positive and love and happiness for the future you're a great person you've overcome so much and for that I'm proud of you and I wish you nothing but the best Thank you Jives Thank you