Search for justice a deathbed promise

Maria Krechko, who was sexually abused by Brian Gray in the 80s, promised her husband before he died that she would confront the issue. Photo / Sarah Ivey

As her husband began dying of a brain tumour, Maria Krechko finally promised to break her silence.

For more than two decades she had hidden the secret of her sexual abuse as a 10-year-old in a Social Welfare foster home.

But when she and her husband Jason realised he had only a few months to live, he made her promise to tackle the issue head-on.

"He said to me, 'if there's one thing you've got to do, you've got to do something about all this', because it had affected our marriage, it had affected my whole life.

The 40-year-old mother of four says she still finds it hard to describe the long-term impact of the abuse.

"I often think to myself, 'what would I be like now if nothing like that had happened to me?' but I've been programmed in my head now to be this person who finds it so hard to trust people. And it's not nice. It's really hard."

She also felt motivated by the fact that her oldest daughter was 11 at the time.

"You look at your children at that age and you think of yourself at that age and there's no way I could imagine anything happening to them."

Four months after her husband's death, Krechko walked into a North Shore police station and laid a complaint. It took another five years and three trials (see main story) but eventually her abuser, Bryan Gray, was found guilty of indecently assaulting her in the foster home.

At first Krechko was pleased at the verdict, even though Gray had already fled to Britain.

Then, as she realised that police might not bring him back to face justice, she felt angry at the way she and Koti had been forced to relive their abuse for nothing.

"It's not just something that you pack away and think I'll leave it for a few months. When it happens to you as a little child it really is with you for the rest of your life. It affects everything in your life, even more so when you have your own children."

Krechko had come close to revealing the abuse before. At the age of 15, she turned up, pregnant, on the doorstep of her then-boyfriend's aunt in Tauranga. Although she lost the baby, the two women became close friends and Krechko confided in her.

Later, when her first child was about 18 months old she started having panic attacks and began counselling. Going back to work after motherhood was also a huge struggle because she didn't want to leave her children with strangers in daycare.

She has had to take time off work and still takes anti-depressants, which make her feel dizzy. But she decided to talk publicly about her ordeal for the sake of her own recovery and to encourage other abuse victims

"I'd really like to say to any other person out there who has suffered any form of abuse - whether it's sexual, violent or mental - to please speak out about it and don't sweep it under the carpet."