Jess Denham: The Story She Was Never Allowed To Tell
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What happened to Jess Denham and why was she legally silenced for years?
I'm not just a headline, you know, I think that's the key, you know, and I think that's the key for many victim survivors that actually speak out. There's so much more to me, you know. I will never be defined by what they did.
This is an Our Media podcast.
Marie Claire presents You're Gonna Want to Hear This. Welcome back to You're Gonna Want to Hear This, a Marie Claire podcast. I'm Georgie McCourt, editor of Marie Claire. And a note before we start, this episode discusses child sexual abuse and maybe distressing for some listeners. Now, I want you to picture a little girl. She lives on an isolated property. She's homeschooled. Her parents control every part of her life. Her father isn't just her dad. He's also her teacher, her sports coach. That little girl's name is Jess Denham. To the outside world, she's a world champion runner, a sporting prodigy, but behind closed doors, she's surviving unimaginable abuse. Today, her parents are in prison for those horrible crimes.
But for over a decade, legal suppression orders meant that she couldn't speak publicly about any of it, even as details of her own case and private counselling notes were picked over in the media. In this episode today, Jess speaks out not only about the abuse that she survived, but for the very first time about living with Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID, a condition that remains deeply misunderstood and is often sensationalised. This is not just a conversation about trauma. It is about survival and resilience and about how you rebuild a life after such abuse. It's about how Jess has reclaimed her voice after years of being silenced. and her determination to change the way that victim-survivors are treated by our justice system, the media and society.
I am so grateful that Jess has trusted us with her story. I have so much admiration for her. This is Jess Denham and you are going to want to hear this. Jess, welcome to You're Going to Want to Hear This. I am so honoured and it is such a privilege to interview today. So thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, Georgie. It's incredible to be here, and yeah, I'm excited to have a discussion.
Well, for me, I think I have obviously read widely about you, and I've watched you from afar, and I have so much admiration for you. I just want to say that before we chat. I think you are incredible, so it is an absolute honour to meet you. And as you can tell, I'm a massive dog lover, so I'm also in love with your beautiful dog. No, thank you. Thank you. Jess, after being legally silenced for so long, what does it feel like to finally speak in your own name? Because that wasn't always the case and also in your own words.
Yeah, look, it's certainly been a process. You know, I think being... silenced for so long uh and you know obviously through the court process and then um to finally be able to do that you know um it's it's been empowering but it's also been a little bit terrifying because as it's not just about what was done to me you know it's also more than that you know it's it's it's who I am now and and those things and and How you speak about that, I think also, you know, especially publicly can be reframed very differently. So, you know, but, you know, I have a voice now and I am speaking it and I'm just doing it carefully.
You're doing it beautifully. Before we talk about what happened to you, what do you want listeners to understand about who you are today beyond the headlines and beyond what was done to you?
Yeah, I guess, firstly, to be honest, I'm not just a headline. You know, I think that's the key, you know, and I think that's the key for many victim survivors that actually speak out that, you know, there's so much more to me, you know, and I really want to embrace that and I want other people to understand that.
Yeah.
You were known publicly as a world champion runner and a sporting prodigy. What do people think they were seeing when they watched you compete versus what was going on behind closed doors? Because you mastered incredibly well.
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