FOR OVER TWO DECADES, child protection advocate and Logan City local, Hetty Johnston, has been fighting for the rights of victims of childhood sexual assault and exploitation.
Ms Johnston is the founder of Australia’s leading child protection organisation, Bravehearts, which began in 1997.
Recently, she shared her story with MyNewsFeed on how Bravehearts began.
“I was living in Geelong, Victoria, until I was in my twenties,” Ms Johnston said. “I met my husband…we went to New Zealand for a little while, and I then fell pregnant with my daughter. So, we came back to live in Queensland where my parents were settled on the Gold Coast.”
After her daughter Kayleen was born, she became involved in a community campaign that was going on in the early 1990’s.
“It was about a toll road through, what was then, Australia’s largest remaining koala habitat, the Daisy Hill State Forest,” Ms Johnston said. “This road was going to go through from the Gold Coast to Brisbane as a duplicate M1.
“I found myself involved in that, then leading it for a long time.”
In the end, the campaign to stop the toll road through the koala habitat was successful and led to Ms Johnston working for the Australian Democrats.
“I was really enjoying that challenge, and loving that,” Ms Johnston said.
In 1995 Ms Johnston was elected Queensland State Leader for the Democrats. However, in 1996 she received a call that turned her world upside-down.
“The Federal Election was on and I was running,” Ms Johnston said. “I asked [my husband] Ian to take Kayleen to New Zealand to spend some time with his family so that I could concentrate…on the election.”
“But, obviously, he wasn’t there for very long. From the very first night he was there, our daughter was so distressed that he knew something was wrong.”
Ms Johnston’s daughter, revealed to her father that a family member had sexually assaulted her.
“Our life changed, totally flipped on its head,” Ms Johnston said. “Nothing has ever been the same since.”
“I just couldn’t process it,” Ms Johnston said. “I didn’t know what to do, I was thousands of miles away from my child and my husband in a time when they needed me the most.”
After contacting a few agencies, Ms Johnston found out quickly there was no organisation in Australia at that time that dealt with child sexual assault which would help respond to what Ms Johnston’s family were going through.
“Information was scarce,” she said. “I learnt through the night about the manifestation on children, I learnt about the high rate of suicide, mental health issues, depression, anxiety, these huge issues…I looked at all these things and I just thought ‘No, this is not going to be happening to my daughter’.”
It was then that Ms Johnston rang the Wellington Sexual Health support service in New Zealand.
“They gave me the information I needed to keep my daughter safe,” Ms Johnston said. “So we flew her back home and we went to the police, and that was a very difficult thing to do.
“It was part of her healing as well, and we wanted to make it clear that there was a good guy and a bad guy, and she was the good guy.”
Leaving her job, the democrats and environmental groups she was involved in at the time, Ms Johnston started the organisation People’s Alliance Against Child Sexual Assault, which then changed it’s name to the one we know today, Bravehearts.
“Kayleen now works for Bravehearts, and she is just as passionate about this as I am,” Ms Johnston said.
Bravehearts is now a nationally and internationally recognised organisation which continues to educate, empower and protect Australian children from sexual assault.
“Here we are all these years later, I think it’s fair to say we’ve changed how we deal with this in Australia and I’m really proud of that,” Ms Johnston said.
After years of working to protect the rights of children, Ms Johnston was formally acknowledged with an Australian of the Year Award for Queensland in 2015.
“I didn’t feel worthy at all, and I still don’t,” Ms Johnston said. “But honoured by it.
“The thought that people would actually nominate me for something like that, and that I would actually win. I was totally humbled and totally surprised. I felt very proud.”
Ms Johnston was also recognised in 2016 after being inducted into the Australian Businesswomen’s Hall of Fame, the same year she ran for the Logan mayoral election.
