Grace Tame goes to police over childhood abuser's new messages

Grace Tame, who was sexually abused as a 15-year-old schoolgirl by a 58-year-old teacher, says he is targeting her with "open threats and harassment".

In 2010, Ms Tame was 15 and a student in Hobart when she was repeatedly abused by Nicolaas Bester, a teacher at St Michael's Collegiate School.

Bester was 58 at the time.

In 2011, he was sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison for his abuse of Ms Tame and for possessing child exploitation material.

He served one year and nine months.

In 2015, he boasted on Facebook "judging by the emails and tweets I have received, the majority of men in Australia envy me … it was awesome".

On Monday in a Twitter thread, Ms Tame wrote she was "still dealing with open threats and harassment from the man who abused me" — posting screenshots from Bester's Twitter feed.

In one of the messages, Bester includes an email address — used by Ms Tame — and writes, "at last I shall come for [email address]". 

In another, posted on August 28, he writes "the good old come-uppance on its way", again noting her email address.

"Here he is, the twice-convicted child sex offender, referring to my childhood email, which very few people know, in place of my name. It was the login to my old Facebook he and I communicated on," Ms Tame said.

"He's counting down to an act of revenge, planned for the day of my book's release."

Ms Tame's memoir, The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner, will be published late next month.

In her Twitter thread, Ms Tame wrote: "I have the power to be vulnerable. He will never have that".

She said first went to police over Bester's messages earlier this year, but added, "our reactive justice system is too slow and nothing's changed".

"He is too afraid, and too weak. He is too weak to be vulnerable. Instead, he exploits others who are. He knows no other way to be. I see that now. And because of that, he doesn't scare me anymore," she wrote.

Until 2019, Ms Tame was barred from speaking out and identifying herself as a survivor of sexual assault because of laws in Tasmania.

She fought her way through the Supreme Court and became the first woman in the state to be granted a special exemption to speak out and self-identify as a rape survivor, with the law officially changed the following year.

She also worked alongside journalist and anti-sexual assault advocate Nina Funnell, who created the #LetHerSpeakcampaign in partnership with Marque Lawyers and End Rape on Campus Australia, to successfully change the law.

Since her ordeal, Ms Tame was named 2021 Australian of the Year and is an advocate for survivors of sexual assault and campaigns for laws to support them.

She launched the Grace Tame Foundation, with the purpose of driving cultural and structural change.