Sarah Kopp

You know, I think part of my bravery was counting on the fact that that might happen and that they might just, like, push me away, you know, because I was like, well, I tried, I tried.

And then when she took it seriously, I was like, whoa, okay, this is real.

You know, is this going to keep going?

And that was, I walked out feeling quite shocked and a bit scared about how that was going to look in the future.

But, you know, amazing.

Like I couldn't have asked for a better police officer to sit down with.

She was absolutely incredible.

And not once did I feel doubted or, you know,

She just had all the time in the world to sit and listen to me and, you know, believed everything I said.

Yeah, she said to me, because she kind of that first time just wanted to, I guess, hear the gist of what had happened.

It wasn't an official statement or anything at that point.

And then so she said, look, let's get you into, we'll do an official statement.

But she's like, because it's such a, you know, a historical thing, it's probably going to take a really long time.

So we broke it into two chunks of four hours.

Yeah.

which was like such a long time to sit and be thinking back and, you know, so much pressure to try and remember all the little details of, you know, because it's not even just remembering what happened, but you've got to be able to link it to specific times because with my case,

The crime was only really a six-month period prior to turning 16.

Right.

Because back then, in the year 2000, 2001, the legislation, you know, didn't protect, like we didn't have the special care laws and things like that in existence, which some of the other states did.

So teachers could technically have a relationship with a student once they turned 16, and it wasn't a criminal offence.