As a mother, Therese Butler was supposed to be the one protecting her then-16-year-old daughter, Peta, but instead, she turned into a predator, who facilitated her own daughter’s rape.
In 2006, Therese took Peta to a motel in Toowoomba, under the guise of having a mother-daughter weekend.
She then plied her daughter with alcohol, before inviting a man, known simply as “Thommo”, to their motel.
After Thommo arrived, Therese asked Peta to go to the bedroom.
“I thought they wanted that alone time together,” Peta explained on A Current Affair, as reported by 9 News.
But a few minutes later, Thommo came in.
“The door opened, and it was him. After about five minutes, I went to leave the room… and that’s when he stopped me,” she said.
He then proceeded to rape her.
“I had my head turned to the side while he was raping me and my eyes were closed while crying,” she recounted.
“I couldn’t speak… I couldn’t scream out to my mum, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t do anything.”
Peta said she repeatedly asked Thommo to stop, but he hardly even acknowledged her.
“He never said anything… I felt his face stubble and I still remember the smell of him. He held my hands down. I couldn’t move, and he was very big. He was on top of me,” she recalled.
The whole time the attack was taking place, Peta's mum was sitting just outside, smoking cigarettes, complicit in her daughter's rape.
"I thought she would come in and stop it. I was hoping she was going to. She didn't once try. She sat outside smoking. She knew what was happening," she said.
After the attack, her mother - who met Thommo online - gave her a hug and told her everything would be okay. That's when Peta knew her mother was responsible for what had happened to her.
Peta said her mother may as well have "murdered" her on that day.
"She set it up, the whole thing. She premeditated it. That's not a mother," she said.
It took Peta 10 years to come to terms with what happened to her that weekend, and to tell others her story.
"I wasn't strong enough for it at that time. I didn't think people would believe me," she said.
Eventually, she summoned the courage to call her mum, who is now in prison, to confront her. She recorded that phone call, and in doing so, secured the strongest evidence of her mother's complicity in the crime.
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Therese was sentenced to four years in prison, suspended after 12 months, after pleading guilty to procuring a child for carnal knowledge.
And all these years later, Therese still shows no remorse for her part in enabling the rape of her daughter.
"It was still, yeah, it was still rape, but you were 16. I wouldn't let him touch you under 16, no way," Therese told Peta in a phone conversation.
While Therese is now locked away, disturbingly Thommo is yet to be found by police, who believe he has many other victims.
Top Comments
Sadly, the courts have (again) seemingly sentenced this horrible "mother" (I use the term loosely!) to a very minor sentence when she should have been given a very much harsher one, like 15 years or something--12 months WTF??
The sentencing sends a very strong message that here in Australia we don’t take sexual assault seriously, even the rape of children. This is one of my greatest frustrations with our great country.... we are way too soft on crime in particular crimes against children!