My prison guard dad let me ‘play’ with paedo inmate who repeatedly raped me when I was ten, claims son
A PRISON guard's ten-year-old son was repeatedly raped by a paedo inmate after he was allowed in to "play" with convicts after school.
Butch, now 58, has spoken out after suffering in silence for decades with the devastating fallout from the abuse he suffered inside HMP Beechworth in northern Victoria, Australia.
His father Douglas was a senior warder at the 19th century jail and his family lived just outside the walls from when he was around five.
As he grew older, he was allowed through a gate into the prison's work yard and vegetable garden most days after school.
He also spent school holidays and weekends there - and spent up to two hours a day alone with an inmate called Bob Curtis who became his "best friend".
But he should never have been allowed near Curtis, who had been jailed three times before for buggery, indecent assaults on boys and flashing, .
Curtis seemed "kind and gentle" and taught Butch to drive the trucks he serviced in the yard.
But he was grooming the youngster under the noses of his father and other warders at the jail.
"I was a happy-go-lucky child, about nine or ten years old, without a care in the world," Butch wrote 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."
Soon Curtis revealed his true intentions when he trapped Butch in the back of a truck and raped him.
The sickening abuse continued for months through late 1972 into 1973.
Butch said: "Up until these events took place this prisoner was kind and gentle, quietly spoken and displayed a caring fatherly kind of demeanour.
"Then without warning my fun little truck-driving playground and my innocent world changed for ever.
"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."
On at least two occasions Butch took a friend with him and Curtis molested 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.
"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."
Butch also recalled how other prisoners taught him to smoke, showed him extreme pornography and played cruel tricks on him such as forcing him to drink their urine.
Eventually, he revealed the rapes to another inmate, who later used the information as a bargaining chip with authorities after he escaped and was recaptured.
Butch initially denied it to police, but then made a statement and in 1974 Curtis was sentenced to a further two and a half years for assaulting him and his young friend.
The judge in the case, Trevor Rapke, was dumbfounded that such abuse could happen inside a prison.
He said: "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 also slammed Butch's father - saying he had shown "extreme decency" in showing Curtis "some sort of latitude", but adding: "I cannot understand him letting his own son be with him."
Douglas was sacked and the family spent the following years in near poverty.
But Butch says it was the prison system that failed him and he has now decided to speak out on the trauma that has followed him for almost half a century.
He was expelled from school and joined the armed forces to escape his home life, then fell into heavy drinking which blighted his life for decades.
He says he has suffered severe anger and depression, costing him his marriage and his promising career as an air traffic controller.
He also blamed himself for years for the end of his father's prison service career and the family's financial struggles.
The friend who was also abused by Curtis took his own life aged in his 20s.
Butch, who now has a teenage son of his own, is planning legal action against the state of Victoria seeking £2.2million in compensation.
He said: "I was sentenced for life for being innocent, happy and carefree.
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"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 for ever.
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"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."