My daughter Mia and I have always had an unusual bond.

She's always been a fearless explorer — the tiny child at the top of the slide, the girl who gave an earnest presentation to stunned classmates on exploding pus in bubonic plague victims.

Whip smart, global catastrophes were her favourite topic and I was her biggest fangirl. But as she left childhood, our relationship shifted like a giant, cracked ice shelf.

Our easy-going comradery gave way to awkwardness. I was increasingly uneasy around her. I couldn't look her in the eye. Sometimes I'd catch myself watching her and crying. I found it almost impossible to look at myself in the mirror.

My bad dreams, which had ebbed and flowed over many years, ramped up to a weird kind of fever pitch. I couldn't put my finger on what had happened between us.

While I didn't realise it at the time, when I looked at Mia, I was looking at myself at 13. And when I was 13, I met a man called John Philip Aitchison, an Anglican deacon.

It started with a church morning tea

He was a celebrated church organist and I was a violinist planning an international career as a soloist.

I was rehearsing with my youth orchestra when the conductor pointed me out to him.

After our performance, we were led over to morning tea and told, "Help yourselves".

Georgie performs a solo — she says her abuser was in the crowd watching. ( Supplied )

This was an unheard-of invitation. The church ladies had gone all out to impress: little cakes, lemonade and unlimited scones — it was a hungry teenage heaven and we were the classical music version of a ravening hoard of savages.

I was on my way towards the poached chicken sandwiches — the seriously good kind, with home-made mayo — when suddenly Aitchison was there, trying to be a cool grown up.

Behind him, my good friend Kate had gotten to the sandwiches first. I was faintly outraged that she ate the best ones while pocketing a decent number too. Aitchison was talking to me, but I was so preoccupied by Kate's thievery that I barely noticed him. "You'll have to come and play your competition pieces for me sometime", he said, and I pulled away from him.

That part is a fun memory. Not long after, I'd be in a meeting room with him and that church again, suddenly having secrets that weren't a normal part of childhood. Over two years, he would rape me five times: in church, in a nearby church hall and in our home.

During that period, he would be ordained as an Anglican priest. And in that time, all the things that made me "me" — like my beloved music — became a dark prison.

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Georgie playing piano with her cat shortly before meeting John Aitchison. She abandoned her musical ambitions afterward.

My daughter had a secret too

Nearly 30 years later, Mia had a secret too. She was fast to tears, followed by long periods in her room, studying the most bloodthirsty of viruses and plagues with a desperate sadness.

One of her favourite games with me was "Will you love me if...." A curious subject began to take centre stage. She'd toss it into conversation oh so casually, but with a quivering bottom lip. "Would you love me if I was the Ebola virus?", and then immediately after, "Would you love me if I was gay?"

My job was to answer with a studied air of nonchalance. "Yep, Mia, I'll love you forever." When she was younger, this was enough, but at almost 13, she seemed unable to move on, needing that same answer over and over again.

Not long after, Mia suddenly said, "Mum, I think I'm gay."

We bought rainbow cake and celebration milkshakes. It was that simple.

Now that Mia had shared her big secret, everything began to slide into place and I realised what the issue for me really was. As she turned 13 and proudly stood up for who she is, she was a reminder of everything I'd tried to forget. It was too awful for me to carry in secret any longer, too heavy not to put down.

I found myself looking at my smart, ethereal daughter and thinking, "This girl is seriously brave."

Georgie's daughter Mia as a young teenager in 2015. ( Chris Clinnick Photography )

And then I realised I must have been just like her. Just as brave. Just as little. And I could be brave again.

The house was empty when I sent a single, tentative email to the church including the initials of my perpetrator — JA. I clicked "send", went straight to the bathroom and threw up. But when I straightened up, I looked at myself in the mirror for the first time in months.

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'I didn't think I deserved to wear white'

My husband Phil found out what Aitchison had done to me early. He would wake me from my screaming nightmares without judgment, then hold me until I realised he wasn't my attacker.

He learnt about my meeting with a Canberra bishop to reveal my abuse, only to be thrown out of home by my disbelieving family, lost to me at the age of 21.

Along with falling in love, Phil learned about complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). He saw every horrible part of me; challenging him, hating him for his ability to see anything good in me.

I expected he would eventually surrender and leave me, but under the Split Point Lighthouse at Airey's Inlet, he married me as lightning cracked over Lorne and the waves crashed so loudly below us that we couldn't hear our vows. I wore black. I didn't think I deserved to wear white. We kissed as the rain came down and joked about what the weather was saying about us.

Georgie and Phil married beneath the Split Point lighthouse in 1998. ( Supplied )

I was a wife. A mum. I watched my little family living their lives with careless ease, surrounded by love that they took for granted. I tried to be funny, to hide my worsening but undiagnosed CPTSD, to be anyone but who I was.

Phil would bring home a box of chocolates every time I had a nightmare. He'd ask what action I needed from him and then do it.

I'd catch him reading books about CPTSD with the fervour usually reserved for a Carlton match. It was Phil who first suspected I had this illness, Phil who encouraged me to get professional help — an essential part of recovery for survivors, just like treatment for any other chronic health condition.

Phil found ways to encourage me to come forward, without stigma or shame: sending me every article about clergy abuse he found, casually, without pressure. "Thought you might be interested in this...", he'd say, before building a working volcano with Rory (real foaming lava!)

Coming forward made me anonymous

Over time, even the kids got into it. "Mum, if anyone hurt me, we would go to the police. Letting kids be hurt is as bad as someone doing it", Imogen said aged 10.

Mia would tell me about other brave kids at her school, who'd find her in private areas at school. They'd tell her their fears about coming out: that their parents would think it's a phase, or that the school would insist they see the dreaded school counsellor, known for her windowed office so public you may as well fly the rainbow flag on the school pole and be done with it. They'd watch teachers saunter past as their peers said things like, "do I have to be paired with the f***ing homo?"

Georgie's daughter Mia has become a confidante for other LGBT kids at her school. ( Supplied )

If they could own their identities, surely, I could too. But in baring my full self, I suddenly became anonymous. While society speculates about why someone like me takes 30 years to come forward, part of the cost is that you stop being a person entirely. You're "a child rape survivor", "a woman now aged 45" or a set of initials in a court transcript.

While the criminal investigation was in full swing, I sat in the break room at work, watching the Ballarat Boys leaving for Rome on TV.

"You know, I've got all the time in the world for those blokes from Ballarat", one colleague said, "but you gotta question the motives of the rest of them. Jeez, must be a huge number who just come forward for quick cash." I absorbed this in silence: I wasn't supposed to speak about my case.

Listening to comments like these, I realised that as far as society is concerned, the only good survivor is an anonymous one.

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Two traumatic days in an unforgettable room

Three and a half years later, in April 2018, Aitchison's trial began. The first to testify were two of his other 8 known survivors, brave men who knew I could never thank them, would never know them — all of us connected somehow by music.

I testified for two days in a remote witness room and I'll never forget its every detail.

The smell of the antiseptic attempting to cover up the vomit from survivors before me. My sudden tears when I saw a battered teddy bear in the attached waiting room — children aren't allowed to take one in lest it's prejudicial to the jury.

Ice blocks so cold they burned my fingers, to stop me from dissociating — to keep me aware of my surroundings, so I wouldn't get lost in the memory.

The dozens of white envelopes full of evidence uncovered by the criminal investigation: photos of me as a child, layouts of bedrooms, back rooms and church halls. Letters written over the years by me and those I'd loved. The story of my lost life, handed to me then yanked away again.

One photo was of my childhood bed: white frilled doona cover, blossom trees outside my window. Pink and white.

Georgie in her childhood bedroom where the final rape took place, a year or two afterwards. ( Supplied )

Aitchison raped me on that bed and now I had to relive it: what he did, what I was wearing, whether I fought him. My body parts were described with foreign, technical names. I touched the photo in front of me, and the last tendrils of dignity fell away. I cried then. Really humiliating tears that tore sounds from my throat that no human should make.

The judge called a recess and my nose began to bleed heavily. The Sheriff said this happens a lot — our bodies aren't designed for the kind of stress testifying involves. She told me about a little girl who testified against a family member in a white dress with red cherries. The judge called a recess when her nose started bleeding but she didn't stop talking, so they kept her testifying. "By the time she finished, her dress wasn't white anymore."

All I could think about was Mia. What she was like at eight years old.

And then I was done: "Thank you, Mrs Burg, you are dismissed."

The TV screen in front of me turned to static, the last image was my own face in the corner, twisted in anguish like something from a horror movie. Beside me, the Sheriff and Witness Liaison Officer shifted cramped muscles that they hadn't moved for hours. But I didn't move, staring blankly at the tiny, unblinking eye of the video camera trained on me.

I wanted to close my eyes and never wake up ever again. The prosecution questions had lasted a day and a half. Cross examination another three hours.

Afterwards, I'm led into the twilight sunshine of a perfect Canberra day. My husband is waiting across the street.

"You should be so proud of her, Phil," my Witness Liason Officer says. "She's in shock, treat her like this was a car crash."

After we got home, Phil and I went for long drives in places we love, around the Dandenong Ranges, the winding spur out to Marysville. I've found the best decompression is watching the changing landscape around me, from the giant tree ferns to the rise and fall of valleys.

I'd cry silently, barely noticing the hours passing while I talked about teddy bears and white cherry dresses over and over again. Our unspoken agreement was that Phil wouldn't look at me, but would hold my hand, stroking my thumb.

Georgie credits Phil with helping her survive her abuse. ( Chris Clinnick Photography )

Truth can be ugly, but full of hope

Aitchison is serving his third sentence now, having abused children across Australia and England. In April last year he was sentenced to nine years in jail, with a non-parole period of five years. He could be released as early as 2023.

Before my case, he had only served two years behind bars in total.

The path to owning my name and identity is fraught and unsteady, laid by other survivors before me, including seven of Aitchison's who never saw the justice they deserved.

Around me I hear the voices of other survivors yet to come forward, or who didn't survive the trek. Survivor 87206 and his beloved sister Cheryl, who died before she had the chance to tell her story. Too many kids.

When I'm frightened of saying who I really am, I think of them. When I sent my first email to the church, I did it simply because I couldn't keep the secret anymore, because I wanted to look at my daughter. I'm not a writer, or a politician. There was no victim advocacy organisation standing beside me.

Now I write these words, with a hope that wasn't there before.

The truth is horribly sad and ugly, but it's other things too. Speaking out about my abuse is my greatest achievement in life. When the fear and shame pulls me under, what brings me back each time is the face of a little girl looking steadily at the camera in her year-one photograph.

Georgie Burg smiles in her first grade photo. ( Supplied )

She has wide grey eyes and a gap between her front teeth.

Then, older at 14, she sits hunched over her violin, unsmiling, sombre.

She has been raped. She barely speaks now.

Georgie at 14, midway through the abuse period. ( Supplied )

I think she was hopeful for her life once. She deserved happiness and love and an identity. She deserved to consent to her own life, lived the way she wanted.

It's time for me to say for the girl I used to be, for us — I will not be silent anymore. And to those who have the privilege of hearing a tentative voice owning who they are? They deserve your awe, your silence, because you're being given a once in a lifetime gift.

Now, I'm doing things I thought were for other people. Like writing this article. Like speaking at an intimidating Government Redress Roundtable and meeting my heroes. Looking at my daughters' gentle, innocent faces and knowing we are proud of each other. Most of all, speaking with my own voice.

Not a thing to be used. A person.

Georgie Burg is survivor 577 in the Royal Commission's Book of Messages held in the National Library. She is now studying a degree in Social Science (Criminology), working in policy & project administration in the education & NFP sectors.

If this article has raised any issues for you, please phone Lifeline on 131 114 or the sexual assault support line 1800 RESPECT on 1800 737 732.