‘Butch’ lived next to Beechworth prison and was repeatedly raped by an inmate who befriended him when he was ten years old
When ‘Butch’ was in primary school in Victoria’s north-east in the early 1970s his best friend was a jailed paedophile and his playground was a prison.
The cheerful blond 10-year-old’s father was a senior warder and his family lived just outside the stone walls of the mid 19th-Century HM Prison Beechworth.
Most weekends and school holidays Butch was let through a gate to enter the jail’s work yard and vegetable garden where he would meet up with inmate Bob Curtis.
Curtis, then aged in his late 20s, was considered a model inmate but had convictions for buggery, obscene exposure and indecent assault of children.
The second-generation criminal and boys’ home graduate could not read or write and was described in a police report as ‘backward’ and of ‘very low intelligence’.
What Butch’s father did not know was that while his son spent hours alone with Curtis, his after-school companion was repeatedly anally, orally and digitally raping him too.
Butch, now 58 and with a teenage son of his own, suffered in silence for decades as he lived with the devastating impact of Curtis’s depravity but is finally speaking up and demanding to be heard.
He has agreed to be photographed and tell his story but does not want his full name used.
Butch’s father Douglas was a senior prison officer at the Beechworth jail in the early 1970s. Young Butch was allowed to spend time with inmates on weekends and school holidays until it was revealed convicted paedophile Robert Charles Curtis had been raping him
How a boy could be left alone with a convicted child sex offender inside a prison is hard enough to believe. That no one in authority noticed what was happening to the child seems incomprehensible. Old Beechworth Gaol is pictured
Butch intends taking the State of Victoria to court seeking up to $4million in compensation if it does not grant him an ex-gratia payment for the appalling trauma inflicted upon him in childhood. He is pictured at the front of his home outside the prison when he was about 12
Butch intends taking the State of Victoria to court seeking up to $4million in compensation if it does not grant him an ex-gratia payment for the appalling trauma inflicted upon him in childhood.
How a boy could be left alone with a convicted child sex offender inside a prison is hard enough to believe. That no one in authority noticed what was happening to the child seems absurd.
‘I was a happy-go-lucky child, about nine or ten years old, without a car in the world,’ Butch wrote of his life before the abuse began in one of several sworn statements he made last year.
‘I was so lucky because my best friend was a current serving prisoner in the Beechworth Prison. The prisoner was a man I thought was my friend, someone I could trust, beyond doubt. I would have done anything for him.’
Butch had moved into the residence next to Beechworth prison with his parents Douglas and Edith, two older sisters and older brother when he was five in 1967.
Butch, now 58 and with a teenage son of his own, suffered in silence for decades but is finally speaking up and demanding to be heard. He has agreed to be photographed and tell his story but does not want his full name used. He is pictured in rural Victoria this week
Butch moved into the residence behind HM Prison Beechworth with his parents Douglas and Edith, two older sisters and older brother when he was five in 1967. He is circled in this picture of the Year 3/4 class at St Joseph’s Primary School in Beechworth in 1971
There was a laneway and locked gate separating the house from the jail and Butch grew up surrounding by inmates who walked around the prison grounds doing jobs such as gardening.
As he got older Butch spent more time in the secure work yard and a garage where trucks were parked to take inmates and equipment to and from a farm run by the prison.
Butch soon learnt to drive the trucks and how to roll cigarettes for criminals. He began smoking at age nine and became the subject of inmates’ cruel tricks.
‘One time, a prisoner urinated into a plastic drink bottle with a Fanta label on it and offered it to me, which of course I did because I thought it was the orange soft drink,’ he said.
‘I choked and gaged and vomited while a group of prisoners were laughing and mocking me.
‘I was continually subjected to foul language all day, every day and explicit, disgusting sexual stories and acts of depravity that prisoners bragged about continually.’
There was a laneway and locked gate separating Butch’s house from the prison and he grew up surrounding by inmates who walked around the grounds doing jobs such as gardening. As he got older Butch spent more time within the prison walls. Old Beechworth Gaol is pictured
Once, while at the prison farm in December, inmates had caught some wood ducks but were told they could not take them back to the prison to cook for Christmas.
Butch was left ‘devastated, frightened and in shock’ by what happened next.
‘The prisoners got angry and smashed the live ducks onto the ground in front of everyone including me,’ he said.
Inmates showed Butch extreme pornography including bestiality but the last of his innocence was taken by the convict he knew as ‘Bob’ – Robert Charles Curtis.
Curtis was permitted at weekends to service the jail trucks while other prisoners were kept behind bars, and Butch was allowed to join him.
‘I had spent lots of time with him and other prisoners on weekdays and during school holidays but weekends were special because it was just him and I,’ Butch said.
Curtis knew trucks and taught Butch to start, then drive, the prison vehicles – a Bedford van and an International. ‘I thought I was hot stuff,’ he said.
‘I was so small I had to sit right on the front edge of the seat, the steering wheel was absolutely massive, but I could drive them, no problem.’
Butch learnt to drive the trucks and how to roll cigarettes for inmates. He began smoking at age nine and became the subject of cruel tricks played on him by inmates. Butch is pictured in his room in the house where he lived next to the prison
‘Nothing could have prepared me for what happened over a few months,’ Butch said. ‘My wonderful prisoner friend turned my normally fun and happy times into filthy, disgusting and degrading events for his personal depraved pleasure.’ Old Beechworth Gaol is pictured
Butch should never have been allowed anywhere near Curtis, who had been convicted of two counts of wilful and obscene exposure in 1965 and indecently assaulting two boys under 16 in 1967.
He had also been sentenced to a year’s jail for indecent exposure and buggery in 1968, according to criminal records uncovered by The Weekend Australian.
‘On dozens of occasions this prisoner and I spent an hour or two together, unsupervised and out of site, in a locked prison vegetable garden,’ Butch said.
Butch is pictured a few days before he joined the Royal Australian Navy aged 17
‘Never in all the times I went with this prisoner solo, or had a friend with me, did one prison officer ever do or say anything to stop this from happening.’
Curtis treated Butch with what the child took for friendship until he showed his true intentions.
‘Up until these events took place this prisoner was kind and gentle, quietly spoken and displayed a caring fatherly kind of demeanour,’ Butch said.
‘Then without warning my fun little truck-driving playground and my innocent world changed forever.
‘Nothing could have prepared me for what happened over a few months. My wonderful prisoner friend turned my normally fun and happy times into filthy, disgusting and degrading events for his personal depraved pleasure.’
The first time Curtis assaulted Butch he lifted him onto the back of a truck then climbed up himself.
‘He said that because we were really good friends it was OK for friends to take their clothes off and show each other what they looked like without clothes on,’ Butch said.
‘He told me to pull down my pants and said he was going to pull his down too.’
Curtis then sexually assaulted the boy with his penis, mouth and fingers.
Robert Charles Curtis was a second-generation criminal and boys’ home graduate who could not read or write and was described in a 1974 police report as ‘backward’ and of ‘very low intelligence’ (pictured)
‘He said because I was his friend he was going to make me feel really good. He said he was the only one that was allowed to do this to me and I couldn’t tell anyone, never, as it was our secret.’
The next occasion was quicker than the first. ‘He was saying stuff like, “You’re a good boy”, “You are my best friend”, “I’m so lucky to have you”, and “Remember this is our secret”‘,’ Butch said.
The assaults continued through late 1972 into 1973. One time Curtis first laid out a makeshift bed of potato sacks. Butch feels physically sick to this day anytime he sees one of those hessian bags.
‘I remember I started crying,’ Butch said. ‘He told me everything was OK. he told me to relax and just try to enjoy it and after a while it would stop hurting.’
On at least two occasions Butch took a friend with him and Curtis took advantage of that boy as well.
One day when Curtis was in the back of the truck and Butch was in the cabin his father appeared from nowhere.
Butch joined the Navy when he was 17 and began a lifetime of heavy drinking. He was quick to anger, filled with guilt and suffered severe depression. Butch is pictured as a Military Police dog handler aged 26 in 1988
‘I’m not sure what Bob was doing that day but nothing happened,’ Butch said. ‘Bob didn’t get caught doing anything wrong, everything continued without dad ever appearing again.
‘Looking back now, my father must have suspected something but he never did anything or said anything about it.’
The final time Curtis defiled Butch lasted just two minutes and involved even more degrading acts. ‘He was giggling and he was saying how hot and sexy I was, his beautiful little boy.’
Eventually, Butch told another inmate that Curtis had molested his friend. That inmate escaped from the visits area and used the information to strike a deal with police when he was apprehended.
Butch initially denied Curtis had ever touched him but reluctantly made a statement and Curtis was jailed in 1974 for a minimum two-and-a-half years for indecently assaulting both boys.
Butch initially denied Curtis had touched him but eventually made a statement and Robert Charles Curtis was jailed in 1974 for a minimum two-and-a-half years for indecently assaulting Butch and his friend
County Court Judge Trevor Rapke was dumbfounded that such offences against children could have occurred inside a prison.
‘What I cannot understand is how a man with this record is able to have contact with young people while he is serving this jail sentence,’ he said.
While Butch’s father had shown ‘extreme decency’ in showing Curtis ‘some sort of latitude’ at Beechworth, ‘I cannot understand him letting his own son be with him… ‘
Judge Rapke said Curtis had ‘no future at all, except to be locked up,’ but it was Butch who would pay a much higher penalty.
‘Suffering from the trauma of being defiled by a monster, who I thought up until that time was kind, caring and trustworthy was only part of the bigger issues to follow me forever,’ he said. ‘I was sentenced for life for being innocent, happy and carefree.’
Butch’s father was sacked and the family soon slid into poverty, moving into a rundown and rat-infested house previously occupied by the sanitary man who collected the town’s excrement.
‘I believe my father was unlawfully sacked from his job and his career terminated because his son was raped by a prisoner for whom he and every other prison officer employed at the time were responsible for guarding and supervising 24/7,’ he said. ‘They failed, he failed, he got the sack.’
Curtis, aged in his late 20s when he assaulted Butch, was considered a model inmate but had convictions for buggery, obscene exposure and indecent assault of children
Deeply traumatised, increasingly withdrawn and suffering low self-esteem, Butch’s life began unravelling. He got in fist fights at school and was strapped three or four times a week. All his grades dropped, except for mathematics.
‘I was continually criticised, belittled, verbally abused, blamed and made to feel guilty for the family situation,’ he said.
Butch repeated Year 9, failed Year 10 and changed schools, only to be expelled for failing to attend 32 days in a row.
Butch, pictured aged 40 in 2002, has found the courage to stand up and tell his story
At 17 he joined the navy and began drinking heavily, a self-destructive habit that has continued throughout his life. Butch married in 1981 but that union broke down within two years.
Depression, feelings of hopelessness and a series of failed relationships followed. The friend who was molested by Curtis killed himself in his early 20s.
After a stint in the Military Police, coupled with bar work, Butch joined the Royal Australian Air Force. He became an air traffic controller but in 2017 his deteriorating mental state forced him out of that demanding position, which had paid about $275,000 a year.
‘The crimes and offences committed against me throughout this short but devastating period in my life have affected everything I have ever done and every decision that I have ever made in my life,’ he said.
Butch is growing in strength and is ready to go to court if the government does not offer him compensation.
‘I have only recently learned that I have been punishing myself all these years for something I didn’t do or for something I never wanted to happen in the first place,’ he said.
‘Until now, I have never had the courage and self-esteem to stand up and tell my story. I want and need to put all the tragic events and memories behind me and move on in my life.’
The Blue Knot Foundation provides support for adult survivors of childhood trauma and abuse: 1300 657 380. Bravehearts provides support and information relating to child sexual assault: 1800 272 831. Victoria’s Victims Support Agency: 1800 819 817. Lifeline: 13 11 14.
