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Chapter 1: What are the warnings about child sexual assault in this episode?
The following podcast contains accounts of child sexual assault. listener discretion is advised. This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie. Our guest today is Sarah Copp, who is speaking publicly about the long-term impact of grooming by her former high school PE teacher, Paul Greeley.
At just 15, while a student at Urangan State High School in Harvey Bay, Sarah was drawn into an unlawful relationship shaped by praise, boundary violations and secrecy. Dynamics, she says, continued to influence her well into adulthood. In the meantime, they had married and had several children.
Years later, she reported Greeley to police and in 2023, he was found guilty of multiple child sex offences. Today, Sarah is a dance teacher and founder of Step In For Kids, an initiative focused on helping communities recognise the warning signs and prevent abuse. Sarah joins us on Australian True Crime to talk about it.
Chapter 2: How did Sarah Kopp's relationship with her teacher begin?
This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.
I think it takes so long to process what's happened to you and the dynamic of the relationship, because especially when, you know, you've been groomed in such formative years, you don't really have any life experience or the development to know what is healthy and what is real. So, yeah, it's so easy to get trapped into these things. And
After my story went public, I had, I would say hundreds of women reaching out, either saying that they've just realized that they're in the same sort of situation, and are still trapped in there, or they have, you know, been through that and married and had children, but have now also made that realization and left as well. Yeah, I have no doubt that it is very, very common.
Yeah, I guess I'm realising that most of the people I've spoken to about being groomed in childhood, their relationship's been fairly short-lived and so they've then gone on to have other relationships and other things that have made them realise. But in your case, this relationship has been ongoing for many years and so, yeah, it must have been incredibly difficult to realise that
You didn't have anything else to compare it to for a really long time.
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Chapter 3: What impact did grooming have on Sarah's adult life?
Yeah, that's right. And it probably wasn't until, you know, the children were school aged and I was starting to make friends with other mums and people who were married because none of my friends were at that stage. You know, we were in our early 20s.
And that's when I think it started to tick over in my brain and I had people make comments to me about they didn't think my marriage was healthy or safe for me, I suppose. And that really got me thinking, I think, and sort of started that process of me realizing I needed to get out.
I can visualise that. You know, sometimes someone tells you something about their marriage, let's say, about their life, but especially about their marriage, and you feel like, oh, you feel like, I don't want to be judgmental, I don't want to say anything to this lady about her marriage, it's none of my business.
But, you know, when another mum at the kinder working bee or wherever says, just happens to mention that, yeah, my husband was my teacher, that's how we met, something like that, you know, that you go... Wow. You sort of don't know what to say. Yeah.
I think too, because I had really no clue about how bad my relationship was. I used to speak so openly about things, you know, things that were going on at home or, you know, and I started getting those reactions from people where they'd be like, oh, that's probably not normal. And yeah, but I had, I honestly did in those early years think that was a typical normal sort of
you know, marriage situation. Well, he's been telling you that since you were literally a child. Can you take us back and tell us about this? And again, we've spoken many times about the fact that grooming of a child usually, I would say, entails grooming of a parent or parents. And I mean, in your case, your lovely mum, Deb. is such a strong example of someone who was vulnerable as well.
So the two of you were very vulnerable when you met Paul Greeley, weren't you? Tell us about that time.
Yeah, so my mum was a single mum, had always been since I was born. So it was just the two of us. We did have the support of her parents, but, you know, eventually we sort of moved away on our own, in our own little home. And I guess to give some context about what my mom is like, she's very, very introverted. I would say struggles emotionally to connect to people. And...
just doesn't have a lot of life experience herself or relationship experience herself. Very shy. I felt like sometimes growing up that I almost had to step up a fair bit into situations because mom just was really, I guess, too shy to stand up for herself and things like that.
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Chapter 4: How did Sarah realize the unhealthy nature of her marriage?
And yeah, He really showed an interest and wanted to talk to me about my life and how I felt about things. And, you know, when you're a teenager and you're already, it's such a vulnerable age, trying to work out where you fit in and everything. And you want to be heard for who you are. And I just sucked that up. It was... Yeah.
Yeah. I was addicted to that. I think we're all vulnerable to that, honestly. I think, you know, if someone shows us a lot of attention and makes us feel like everything we've got to say is interesting and all of those things, I think we can all be pretty susceptible to that, let alone a child, which you were. But even at the early stages, it seems to me that some people were...
a bit creeped out by his interest in you. Is that fair to say? Other people were noticing and going, there's something going on there?
Yeah, there were definitely people that were making comments, um, before anything had really escalated in, you know, in a sexual context, I suppose. And, you know, it was just, I suppose, the amount of time that he was spending with me was just so unusual. You know, I'm a teacher now myself and looking at, you know, through the lens of being a teacher, I just, I couldn't imagine anything
you know, doing half of the stuff that he had organised and investing that time in any one of my students, no matter how much I cared about, you know, them succeeding and all of that.
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Chapter 5: What steps did Sarah take to report the abuse?
Well, your mum, I mean, as you've mentioned, your mum didn't have a big circle of friends or anything like that, but he'd managed to ingratiate himself with your mum and make her trust him to the point that she's inviting him over for dinner. So he's at your house. When you say, you know, the time that he spent with you and the inappropriate sort of places, he's going to your dance recitals.
I mean, it is weird, right?
Yeah. He was like, you know...
offering to help me do assignments on the weekend and things like that like mum actually drove me to his house um she waited in the car in his driveway shouldn't leave me there but you know just the fact that I was going to a teacher's house on the weekend so that he could help me with an assignment like really teachers have enough on their plate that no one wants to actually
Spend the weekend with a student either.
Or, you know, surely you weren't the only student who needed help. So it kind of doesn't work either way, does it? It's like if there were half a dozen kids going over there to do their assignment, that seems reasonable. He seems like an amazing teacher. But just to have you coming over. Yeah. And, you know, it was...
early morning, you know, training for triple jump and things like that. Because, you know, I had, I showed a lot of athletic potential back then. And I think she felt so grateful that there was someone that saw the potential in me and was happy to support me and invest that time into me succeeding.
Were there moments that found, that felt inappropriate to you? Like when... When did you, that little alarm system inside you go off?
I think all along the way there are little moments that you sort of go, oh, that's a bit strange. It's hard thinking back because now I have an adult brain and I'm looking at those situations and I'm trying to remember things how I actually did legitimately feel in those moments. But I remember very early on in, because I had him for gymnastics as a sport in class.
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Chapter 6: How did Sarah's experience shape her current work with Step In For Kids?
And I just, I froze. I absolutely froze and I had no idea what to do. And it was from that point, like that moment, I just, I feel so disconnected from myself. Like when I look back at the memory of that, it's so, it's sort of fragmented. Thinking about it, I feel that instant sort of scared, um,
feeling again and I think I just tried to dissociate and I just didn't you know I have explained it before where I feel I felt like a bit of a robot and he was sort of maneuvering me because I I had no clue what to do I didn't know what was expected of me and I had no I Yeah, I just, I wasn't a willing participant, I suppose. And it just, it went on from there.
And yeah, just him over-sexualizing me, like asking me to get into my pajamas, what I slept in. Then at the time, I just used to wear this daggy crop top and sat in boxer shorts. And that's kind of when he stood me back.
and was looking at me just with such like lust and the way he sort of stepped back sort of like I was on show and just looked at me for such a long time and I just felt so vulnerable so exposed I'd never had a boy my age look at me like that before it just I was so scared and just Just an awful situation and such an imbalance of experience.
Which we know now. You know now looking back. But at the time, was he sort of trying to frame it in that moment and immediately after that moment as a relationship?
Yeah, at some point it did become that. But at the same time, he used to tell me openly that he would hook up with another girl when he was out nightclubbing and things like that as a cover.
Yeah.
Because I don't, this is for us. He goes, because I need to take the heat off us and look like I'm actually, you know, having other relationships. And I remember just feeling absolutely gutted by that and so hurt. But because it was framed in this way of, you know, I do, I'm doing this because I care about us and it's to protect what we have and what we have is so special.
You know, I felt really ungrateful, but I felt like an ungrateful person for not, you know, feeling appreciative of him doing that. And, again, you know, if that had happened to me as a 30-something-year-old woman, I'd be like, rack out, like, rack off. But, yeah, when you're a kid, you just don't realise that that stuff's not okay.
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Chapter 7: What challenges did Sarah face when going public with her story?
She only knew this was happening because Paul had already given her the heads up. He said, someone from the department's going to call you, you need to just say that I'm a family friend. You know, because they're trying to get me in trouble, kind of thing. And he'd already put in the hard work prior to this, like, mum was going through a lot of issues at her workplace,
And, you know, he was in a bit of trouble with his workplace. So they really bonded on that. And he came across like such a victim of, you know, this workplace bullying and all this other stuff. So I think mom empathized with that going, oh, this poor guy, you know, of course I'll say that he's a family friend and we love having him over.
So they rang and yeah, she, they only really asked, I think one question was sort of, you know, what's the nature of Paul Greeley's relationship. And she was like, yeah, he's a family friend. You know, he comes over for dinner sometimes. And that was basically it. They didn't really look too much further into it. And unfortunately, yes, it was a missed opportunity to step in and stop things.
So this relationship, it's now a relationship after it's become sexual, although I believe he was very careful not to have intercourse with you until you were 16. Is that correct?
Yeah, he was always very insistent that we don't have, like, vaginal intercourse until I was 16, because that's against the law. But yeah, we were certainly doing everything else at that point up until. And that was, I think, why, you know, turning 16 was such a big deal to me, because it sort of signified, I guess, being able to be in a proper adult relationship.
And were you in love with him by this stage? Do you think like, were you looking forward to that? Or was that a scary thing? When I turned 16, I'm going to, we're going to have to do this. And also we've got to remember everyone at that age is talking about virginity all the time. So that's the backdrop.
Yeah. Well, that's right. You know, your friends are starting to lose their virginity and you feel a bit left out and, you know, so you don't really be left behind. And I think at that point, Yeah, it was something that I definitely wanted to try.
But you couldn't tell your friends, you know, usually you come to school and go, I did it, I did it on the weekend. Yeah.
But it was kind of the catalyst of me eventually telling my best friend. My best friend Amanda actually on the Christmas holidays after year 10 went to Sydney with her dad. And she actually lost her virginity on those holidays to some guy in Sydney. And she came back and told me about it. And I just was like, I can't not tell her because, you know, we were best friends.
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Chapter 8: How does Sarah advocate for awareness around grooming and abuse?
And I felt really embarrassed. It was pretty much, you know, all my friends and family, it was drilled in, you know, do not talk about how this relationship started or how we met. So obviously, you know, he wasn't telling anyone on his side, you know, how we actually met. But there was a lot of confusion, I think, as to why all of a sudden I was this bride that just popped up.
And, you know, it would have seemed very rushed to his family because they didn't know me. Wow.
And did you have a cover story? Had he given you, if anybody asks, let's say this is how we met, this is? Yeah, I think we just used to say we met at uni.
Oh, yeah. Because he had gone back to study law and, yeah, and I was obviously, I'd started uni after school. So I think that was just the story we used to tell people.
So I guess the question is from there, in the relationship, to the extent that you've agreed to marry, and I'm not suggesting for a minute that any of this was like of your own free will or whatever, because we understand there's a lot of coercion going here, obviously, since you were a child. But- And you had two children, is that right, in the end, you two together?
Yes, we've had two children. So when did it turn for you? Why did it end?
Well, I remember the first time that someone really directly told me something was off, and it was when my son, who was my second brother, born. He would have been about three months old and I was in a car accident with him and I ended up going to see a psychologist for a period of time because I was really struggling to get in the car.
And it was probably within the first or second session of her just asking me a bunch of questions of my life, as they do, they get to know you. And I did wonder, I was like, why is she focusing so much? Like, I'm here to talk about my car accident. I want, you know, like, that's what I'm here for. And she just kept asking me and, you know, about things at home and everything.
I was just like, why are you, you know, but then I think it was after the second session, she just slid me a piece of paper across and it was, um, the domestic violence, the wheel of violence thing that sort of breaks down all the different components of DV. And she said to me, she was like, you know, I think you might be having some issues with this and I think you need to have a look at it.
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