Jodie Nicoll suffered a childhood of sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather who is now in prison.
WARNING: This story details child sex abuse and may be distressing.
Jodie Nicoll took a brave step this year by outing her stepfather Bernard Raymond Stothers — the man jailed for sexually abusing her for almost three decades. She talks to journalist Kelly Makiha about how it feels to no longer live a life of secrecy and shame.
Jodie Nicoll used to dream of what it would be like to be free.
Now she’s living a life she thought only existed in movies and books.
“Knowing that someone, somewhere will draw courage from knowing the hell I was once in and seeing the peace that I have now is so motivating,” Nicoll says.
Jodie was 3 when her sexual abuser — stepfather Bernard Stothers — touched her for the first time. She was 8 when he started raping her repeatedly. The offending went on for nearly three decades and she became pregnant after one of the rapes.
In May this year, the now-37-year-old took the extraordinary step of asking the High Court to lift her automatic name suppression so she could speak publicly for the first time about what happened.
Bernard Stothers will remain in jail for at least 10 years.
What happened to Jodie Nicoll?
Jodie, who now lives in Hawke’s Bay, and her family lived a transient lifestyle mainly in the Bay of Plenty and South Waikato — including Tokoroa, Putāruru, Rotorua, Ngongotahā, Te Puke and Maketū.
Stothers started sexually abusing Jodie in 1989. The repeated rapes ended when she was 31.
In 2018, she found the courage to make it stop. Four years later, on December 15 last year, Stothers, then aged 55, was jailed.
Stothers is now in jail for at least 10 years for sexual offending against his stepdaughter for 28 years.
Sentencing notes obtained by the Rotorua Daily Post show Justice Graham Lang sentenced him to preventive detention with a minimum of 10 years. That means he will be in jail for at least 10 years before he’s eligible to apply for parole. If he never satisfies the Parole Board he deserves to get out, he might not ever leave prison.
Stothers initially denied he did anything wrong. But just before his trial, he pleaded guilty to a representative charge of committing an indecent act on a child under 12, two counts of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection involving digital and oral penetration, and two representative counts of sexual violation by rape, the notes say. A representative charge means it happened more than once.
Jodie Nicoll as a child.
A police summary of facts supplied to the Rotorua Daily Post said Jodie’s earliest memory of being sexually abused was when she was 3 and Stothers was 23. He got her to sit on his lap while her mother was out and touched her and made her touch him.
Those incidents happened more regularly from then on. The summary details horror memories such as when watching movies, while in the car and him doing it secretly when other people were in the room.
She had recollections of him lifting her out of her bed while asleep and being carried into the lounge where she would be sexually abused, often while not fully awake.
From the age of 7, the abuse progressed to what the law describes as “digital penetration”. The summary of facts said it would happen several times a week.
The first time he raped her was in the back seat of a car when she was 8, with Stothers telling Jodie’s mother they were out doing grocery shopping.
The summary of facts said from then on the rapes sometimes occurred daily, or weekly if he didn’t get an opportunity.
There were times when she lived away from him and the rapes would stop but eventually, they would continue when he was in their lives again.
Her nightmare ended in 2018 after a confrontation with Stothers when she finally plucked up the courage to tell a friend, who then drove her to the police station where she laid a complaint.
How speaking out has changed Jodie Nicoll’s life
Jodie Nicoll has no regrets about going public. Photo / Paul Taylor
Fully reporting such heinous crimes is uncommon because of heavy restrictions that protect the identities of the victims, who have automatic name suppression by law. If offenders are family members — which is often the case — they often can’t be publicly identified either, to protect the victims.
Jodie successfully applied to the High Court to lift her statutory name suppression to allow her to tell her story to the Rotorua Daily Post.
She said in May it was her hope she could encourage other sexual abuse victims to come forward.
For the first time this year, Jodie has been able to tell her story, not only to the Rotorua Daily Post but to people in general.
“It has been the biggest healer for me ... I spent so many years not functioning in life and I now function in society better than I ever imagined.”
Jodie now works fulltime where she gets to help people every day. She’s made new friends and socialises. She’s also the chairwoman of a support committee and she’s loving being a mother, and a wife to her husband — a man she describes as her biggest cheerleader.
“Not only did I survive, I fought through the investigation with no family support and through the court process when I didn’t even know if I could get out of bed; but I pushed through and dug deep to tell my story because I know that we have to keep having the uncomfortable conversations and talking about the taboo subjects so that it can’t be swept under the rug.”
She was happy to not have experienced any negative responses.
“I have had people reach out on social media and just the other day a friend messaged me and she thanked me for being strong enough to do it because it gave her the strength to just recently draw her own courage to seek help for historical abuse. That moment made every single difficult moment leading up to now worth it.”
Others had reached out and praised her for her strength and have told their experiences, while some had sought her advice.
Jodie said she had helped support another woman through her court process from afar, just by listening and being there.
How Jodie Nicoll is still impacted
Instead of dwelling on her past, Jodie has made an active decision to be proud of the skills she’s developed along the way.
“I use it to help show people that true peace is achievable. Could my mental health take a backslide one day? We all know the answer is yes, but for as long as I can I choose to be happy and I know that I am free.”
She used to think she was destined for a life of anxiety, unemployment and loneliness because she pushed everyone away.
“Now I live a life that I thought only existed in movies or books. It sounds cliche and feels surreal and I often wonder who I am because I am far more than what I believed was possible.”
She often found she had to explain grooming and manipulation to people who asked why she didn’t do anything to stop it when she became an adult.
“The awareness around this is so sparse that people think it’s unfathomable that something like this could happen to an adult. I have to explain I was 3 years old when this began, the grooming, manipulation and control started then and it continued right up until the day of sentencing.
“The day I stood in front of Bernard, read my victim impact statement and watched him be held accountable was the day the chains broke and I was free of him.”
Where to get help:
If it’s an emergency and you feel you are or someone else is at risk, call 111.
If you’ve at any time experienced sexual assault or abuse and need to talk to someone, contact Safe to Talk confidentially, any time 24/7:
Kelly Makiha is a senior journalist who has reported for the Rotorua Daily Post for more than 25 years, covering mainly police, court, human interest and social issues.
