"Oh, absolutely," I replied. "I can't believe how different all the states are. New York was magic, though. I went to the Frick [museum], like you suggested, and was blown away." "Fantastic, isn't it!" Judge said. He collected art, I'd learnt the last time I was here. "But I'm afraid we've got a bit of work to do before we can chat more. As you know, we're heading off to Gladstone this Sunday." "Yes, Rebecca has shown me all the preparations." "Before that, I need to deliver a judgment I reserved from a pretrial hearing last week."

"Oh," I said, instantly nervous again. He got up and walked to his desk, collecting a wad of stapled paper. "I'd like you to proofread this and set up a time tomorrow for me to deliver it. You'll have to contact all the parties and make sure we have a courtroom booked." "Sure." I took the documents from his outstretched arm and stood up. "Great," he said, turning to sit at his desk. "Let me know how you go." I left his room and took a seat in my new office, just outside his chambers. It was a small, square space, clean and simple, with a large calendar on the wall beside my computer. The calendar colour-coded the eight towns that Judge and I would be travelling to on circuit. Only two weeks would consist of civil law during the year, and the rest were criminal.

Gladstone came first: two weeks beginning Sunday, then only two weeks back home before Bundaberg. After that, three weeks in Brisbane, then off to Warwick, and it continued on. I grew anxious as I stared at the year in front of me, so brought my attention to the present – to the proofreading. I scanned down the page. The defendant was accused of sexually assaulting and raping the young daughter of his girlfriend. She'd been in primary school when the offending took place and was now a teenager. In her police statement she listed several occasions when the defendant had tied her up before assaulting her, the severity of the bondage and penetration increasing over time until she complained to her mother. The critical incident in question was when the defendant allegedly tied the girl to the Hills Hoist in his backyard before raping her. The prosecution had found one of the defendant's previous sexual partners, who was willing to testify that while they were together he liked bondage, and that she had ended the relationship because his sexual desires grew in intensity. I read on and on, forgetting to check for spelling or citations, gripped by morbid curiosity. I felt a tiny scratching in the back of my mind; fingernails trying to get through drywall.

I waved to Judge as I saw him walk toward the Qantas check-in area at Brisbane Airport, and was relieved to see him also in casual clothes. I'd heard stories of other judges requiring their associates be in formal work-wear at all times, even on Sundays when flying out for circuits. Not for the first or last time, I considered how lucky I was to be paired with him in particular. We chatted and I asked him all kinds of questions about circuit. He told me some towns were different from others, that juries did and didn't respond to different things in different areas. In some regional places it was extremely difficult to get guilty verdicts, while in a few others being charged practically meant convicted. Some communities had particularly tense relationships with the local police – powderkeg style – whereas others were brimming with mutual respect and co-operation. In court, the associate stands up at the beginning of the trial, in front of the room, and arraigns the defendant. In Gladstone I read out the document telling James Williams* what he was charged with, whom he'd allegedly done it to, and when. Williams stood up and I asked him if he pleaded guilty or not guilty to three counts of indecent treatment of a child under 16, each with a circumstance of aggravation that she was under his care. "Not guilty," he said assuredly, three times. He was a balding man in his 40s or 50s, with a belly that hung over his tightly belted polyester suit pants. An ordinary-looking dude, I noted.

First, the complainant gave evidence through a prerecording. She didn't want to be in the same courtroom as Williams, her mum's ex-boyfriend. She'd been 13 when, allegedly, he began touching her and saying inappropriate things to her, then 14 when his behaviour allegedly escalated. "He would say weird things to me," she said. "Like he would say to me, 'Who taught you how to do that so well?' and, 'Oh, how'd you get so good at that?' while he was doing stuff." I shifted in my seat, a strange tightness coming across my chest and in my belly. I looked up at Williams; he was watching the screen, a calm disdain on his face, his thin lips pursed. I didn't recognise the words, or his face, but something in her mimicry of his tone rang true and touched something familiar to me. A saccharine and filthy way of speaking to someone who is terrified. When the prosecutor had finished stepping the girl through her evidence, she underwent three hours of cross-examination. We had to break for lunch in the middle of it. I was incredulous; three hours of crying and reliving trauma. At the end of the next day the defendant took the stand. His barrister stepped him through all the dates on which the allegations had taken place, producing a work diary that suggested Williams had been out on painting jobs on a number of the occasions on which his girlfriend's daughter had said he'd cornered her. The barrister remarked that Williams worked a lot; Williams said he was just trying to support his family, and that he was saving for a boat.

Some of the jury nodded. In the break, Judge told me how rare it was for a defendant to give evidence. At the end of all the evidence the jury went out to deliberate. They returned in less than an hour. "We've got a verdict, Judge," I said, and saw surprise flicker across his face. "How long is that?" he asked, gathering his robes from where he'd just put them away. "Almost 40 minutes."

"I think that might be a record," he replied. "Does it mean anything?" I asked. "Yes," he said, pausing to look at me, having put his wig on. "They normally take a little longer to decide if they're going to lock someone away." A few jurors were laughing as they entered the courtroom. One brushed biscuit crumbs off his shirt.

"Would the speaker please stand up," Judge asked, and a man got to his feet. "Have you reached a verdict?" "Yes, we have," the man said. He was in a flannel shirt and jeans, with a brown belt and boots. A regular guy. "Not guilty." The answer planted a fear inside me, a spore that would fester and grow with each trial I sat in. If people didn't believe these women, why would they believe me? The middle four months of the year included trips to Warwick, Roma and Gympie, each town presenting similarly quaint old courthouses and the same unoriginal stepfathers, uncles, and ex-boyfriends to fill them with unoriginal sins. We landed, dealt with the worst each locale had to offer, then flew away again; FIFO workers in fancy attire. My state of mind rapidly and exponentially deteriorated but I kept up appearances, like an Easter egg forgotten in the garden, the shiny foil intact but the inside entirely eaten away by ants. Alone in my motel room each night, I drank, the amount increasing with each trip. I threw up dinners in every single shower, and eventually started cutting myself, behaviour I hadn't reverted to since I was an angsty teen, when learning about sex had returned my mind to what had been done to me.

The nightmares were perhaps the hardest to handle. When I was finally able to sleep each night, my mind would fill with scenes of horrific sexual violence. Sometimes I was a part of it, sometimes I was frozen and could only watch. Sometimes they were strangers, sometimes the faces were ones I'd actually seen. When the alarm went off, I'd wake, crying and exhausted, only to realise it was just the beginning of another long day in the District Court. The real world and my subconscious seemed to be competing, one-upping each other for months on end over the most disturbing thing a man could do to a woman or child. All the while my own matter simmered away in my head. Every verdict I stood up and took was an omen, every action of a prosecutor or defence barrister a sign. There were no longer walls between my own matter and the ones I was hearing each day. I was all these women, and I was gathering and carrying them all with me. The Lee family – Bri’s father, Bri, her mother and her brother – in 2001. Credit:Courtesy of Bri Lee I went to a cafe with Mum one Sunday. I'd barely seen her or Dad on the weekends since I'd started working; they spent them on a block of land they'd bought to retire on. "We had a lovely time at Maleny yesterday," Mum told me as our coffees arrived. "Oh cool. Why did you go?" I asked. "For that famous gelati place?"

"No, we visited Samuel's* parents' new house," she said, licking foamed milk from her spoon as my body started its familiar shutdown ritual. "It's architecturally designed and so lovely. I said to your father, 'This is the kind of house I really wanted.' " "Mm?" I picked up my cup and pretended to blow on it to cool it down, holding it in front of my face as I flushed red. My eyes were going blurry at the edges as she continued talking and stirring sugar into her flat white. "And why were you there?" I asked, struggling to sound casual. "Did they just call you out of the blue? Or did he invite you? Was he there?" "Well, Samuel invited us and I think he thought your brother would be there because he's got some new investment idea and ..." "He's such a f---wit."

"Yes, well, we just told Samuel on the phone that we weren't in a position to invest, and then he called on the morning of our visit and cancelled. But we still had a lovely day with Samuel's parents." When I got home, I realised there would never be a right time and immediately felt as if I missed Mum. I hadn't really listened to anything she'd said; she could surely tell I was distracted or that I didn't want to be there. She probably thought I didn't want to see her so much – and that was true, but only because whenever I saw her I spent the entire time trying to tell her what had happened to me and fighting through the freeze again. Sitting in front of my L-shaped desk, I spun slowly on my swivel chair, taking in a 360-degree panorama, soaking in the stacks of folders of sentencing remarks, the piles of depositions for future trials, the textbooks and loose-leafs filling the shelves behind me. I had been breathing it all in, every day – the reminder that my abuse was one tiny teardrop in a putrid ocean. I wondered if I would be further clogging the system by making a complaint. Was there another young woman, somewhere, waiting for a moment like this, too? Definitely. I closed my eyes and imagined her. I put my hands onto my files and thought of the faces of all the women and children I'd seen in court. I'd seen them crying. I'd felt their fear. I'd felt them freeze when asked to relive their horrors in a cavernous room full of angry adult strangers. I thought of all the things I wanted to tell them but couldn't, sitting mute and neutral behind my court desk. That I admired them so much. That they were strong. That monsters were real, that these men were what they looked like, and that everyone has a right to justice. And that I did, too.

I punched the number into the phone. A woman's voice carried down the line. "Hello, Dutton Park Police Station, Constable Tanner*," she said clearly, if a little unenthusiastically. "Good afternoon, I'm calling to report a crime thing that happened to me when I was a kid." "Okay, sure," she said. I could picture her straightening up on the end of the line. "Are you able to speak to me about this now?" "Yes."

"And the matter you're calling about, how long ago did it happen?" "About 15 years ago, when I was in primary school." "Okay, I'm going to transfer you to someone from the CIB, is that all right?" "Sure." On hold, I listened to audio encouraging people to use an anonymous firearms hotline. I couldn't think of a single trial or sentence involving firearms that had come across my desk that year. Why not provide an anonymous hotline for domestic violence tip-offs?

"Hello, are you still there?" the constable asked. "Yes." "Unfortunately there's nobody from CIB available at the moment. Are you happy for me to take some information from you and pass it on to an investigator there?" "Yes, sure." She took my personal details. "And can you tell me a little bit about what happened?" she asked.

"Yes, it was a one-time occurrence," I started, "and it was my brother's friend. He's six years older than me, and I was wearing my primary school uniform, and we were playing out the back of my house on the trampoline, and then my brother went inside the house, and ..." Bri in her primary school uniform in 1999, aged 8. Credit:Courtesy of Bri Lee I stopped talking. I was sweating, panicking, my eyes wouldn't open. All my muscles were locked. The woman on the phone waited, silently. I pushed through the rest of the details, listing them off like dot points; the blood was rushing back to the centre of my body, giving me pins and needles in my fingers. I fumbled with the phone. She asked something I didn't understand. I was still and silent for a while. Somewhere else. "Hello?" she asked, louder.

As dad drove me to the police station the next week, we chatted about normal stuff. I watched to see if he was nervous or sad but couldn't read anything different from usual. It occurred to me that he no longer had the capacity to be unpleasantly surprised – perhaps he'd been a police officer for too long to think anything was sacred or untouchable. He pulled into a visitor's parking bay. So there I was, walking with my ex-cop dad to the doors of the police station, well over a decade after I'd been molested, having finally developed just enough disregard for the potential social fallout to report it. Finally feminist enough to realise I was all out of f---s to give. Still terrified of being called a liar or disregarded, but past the point of letting other people tell my story. All that reckless resolve whooshed out the door when the policewoman at the counter recognised Dad. Confusion, then realisation flashed across her face. I wondered whether Dad felt ashamed or embarrassed to be there. How might a firefighter feel if their child caused a fire? What if a teacher's child needed an after-school tutor? My father had been a police officer and prosecutor for well over a decade yet there we were, fronting at the desk with a historical sex abuse complaint. I should have done this by myself, I suddenly thought. I looked up at his face, but again there was nothing.

The nature of these things is that they're usually done by the people we trust; offenders mostly fly under the radar as family or friends. I knew Dad knew this, but shame and embarrassment aren't always logical. If he was suffering, though, he didn't show it. In this, he could be absolutely relied upon to be a man of his generation. A policeman came out of a side door and introduced himself. He was in office clothes and had a relaxed manner that verged on tired. "Did you bring a book or something to do while you wait?" I asked Dad as the policeman asked me to follow him upstairs. When I stepped into the tiny interview room, with its fluorescent lights and icy, rattling airconditioning, a second police officer came in and closed the door. It was now just me and the two men. "Ready to roll?" the second officer asked, dropping a cardboard box of tissues onto the desk in front of me. I shouldn't have done any of this at all. Considering the resolve with which I'd tried to forget the incident, it was ironic that my recollection of it was crystal clear. The odd details about things Samuel said, the way the offending progressed, were peculiar enough to defy the potential for fabrication by a child's mind.

"He said to me, 'My sister likes it when I do this,' " I told the officers and began crying. The first policeman raised his eyebrows and turned the corners of his mouth down, making notes. I was crying at how disgusting it all was, but also with relief. I'd spent so many years thinking I'd dreamed it up; for most of my youth I'd presumed the grotesque event was a fantasy I'd created. The other officer interrupted me at an awful point in the story to question the placement of body parts. I answered him with more specificity. "Oh, so not rape then, just sexual assault," he said, shifting his weight back in his chair and crossing his legs. "Well, not just, but you know what I mean," he added, waving his hand for me to continue. I tried to ignore him and finished recounting the event. "Okay, so, based on what you said on the phone it sounded like a sexual assault case, but this is actually more of an indecent treatment case if you were in primary school." "Yes," I replied, too exhausted to argue, too upset to remind him that they'd "lost" the record of my first call and complaint, forcing me to repeat it all over again.

They explained that if I was ready, I could give my official statement that evening. The next step, if I wanted, was to make a pretext call to Samuel, in which I'd try to get him to admit to the offending. Unbeknown to him, the call would be recorded. I'd only ever heard about pretext calls at work – when lawyers were fighting to make them inadmissible. I was terrified of having to speak to Samuel but if I could just get him on tape admitting it all, I could take a short cut past the normally years-long process of pretrial preparations. I had to try. * Names have been changed. Edited extract from Eggshell Skull, a memoir by Bri Lee (Allen & Unwin, $30).

