The town that turned its back on a rape victim

In Balmoral, the footy club has an unspoken code: don't rock the boat, or risk being cast out.

The walls of Balmoral’s only pub are adorned with premiership team photos and digger memorabilia stretching back 100 years.

In this place, football is king.

In this one-street town, loyalty is everything.

Everyone is connected.

But beneath the surface, there is disquiet.

A crime took place that fractured this small town.

And people don’t like to talk about it.

'She's all yours'

It's April 2016 and Elise is one of the last to arrive at the 21st birthday party.

"Pretty much everyone was already there," she said, "all the oldies are gathered by the fire talkin' the talk and drinking their beers, and all the young people are over towards the decking area."

Elise has been living away at university, but tonight she's back home in Balmoral to party with her old classmates.

It's a town of 280 people, deep in Western Victoria's sheep farming country west of the Grampians.

"I was 20 and just like, 'Oh my God, I'm gonna get really drunk with my friends, have a good time,'" Elise said.

Most of the town's been invited to the country block across the road from the football club.

Someone hands around silly costumes and a big wooden picture frame that guests use to pose for pictures.

A batch of punch sits on the table; a mix of Midori, vodka and Fruity Lexia.

Elise has a few cups over the course of the night. She knows this place well; she feels safe here.

At around 3am, the night starts to wind down.

Elise has brought her swag so she can help cook a fry-up in the morning. But her friend, the birthday girl Sheree, tells her she can sleep in her parent's caravan.

It's retro, with pastel stripes on the outside, vinyl curtains and thin mattresses at each end.

Sheree and Elise lie back on the bed that's been made up, chatting.

It's not long before others from the party join in.

"Everyone kind of followed and then there [were] like six or like eight people in the caravan all being drunk and jumping up and down," Elise said.

At one point, Shaun Bloomfield, an old friend from school, sits down on the edge of the bed.

Elise tells him to "f*** off".

Shaun's from one of the old families in town, with a surname that appears under football team photos at the pub.

In another corner of the van, is his friend Luke Merryfull — another former classmate from an established family.

Luke is watching porn on a guy's phone, and they're laughing about it together.

"I was kind of like, 'Oh, the boys are being dumb, watching dumb shit'. I wasn't watching it … I was just hoping they would stop and let us sleep," Elise said.

Sheree, the birthday girl, has had a lot to drink, and her boyfriend takes her back to the house.

The rest of the party drifts out too, leaving Elise, Shaun and Luke in the caravan.

They are young men who she has known since primary school, but immediately, the mood shifts.

"I don't think Sheree would've been fully inside the house. It's hard to explain, but it all happened so quickly and I was so scared," Elise said.

Warning: The following passage describes a sexual assault, if you would prefer, you can skip ahead.

Luke squeezes into bed beside Elise, so he's between her and the caravan wall.

She immediately rolls away from him, but comes up against Shaun, who is now lying down on her other side.

It's a tight space, it's dark and there's no room to move.

Luke suggests a threesome, and Elise says, "No, no way".

He puts his hands under her shirt. "No," she says, trying to elbow him away.

Meanwhile, Shaun has his hand inside Elise's underpants, and is kissing her face and neck.

"I just felt scared and like there was no humility in the room," Elise said.

"I felt like an animal, like I don't think it would've mattered what I said or did. I was not a person to them in that moment."

Luke gets up on his knees, pulls off Elise's jeans and rapes her. When he's finished, he gets up to leave, turns to Shaun and mutters something along the lines of: "She's all yours".

He leaves the door wide open. "Just zero care," Elise said.

Shaun takes his turn next and stops only when Elise pushes with all her might against his chest.

He joins Luke outside by the fire before they both walk home together.

It's just after four in the morning. Everyone else at the party has gone to bed.

Elise lies alone on the thin mattress, the caravan door open to the crisp night air.

"It was horrific.

"I just remember looking down and seeing that I was naked — half — and I was really confused.

"Like, I knew what had happened 'cause I was there, but I was still confused."

Within minutes, she starts making panicked phone calls.

"I was calling people at university. I was calling people that were home, like at their parents' place.

"Just anyone that would answer."

Rosie, the nursing student from the party, is the first to pick up. She's known Elise since primary school.

"They wouldn't leave," Elise tells her, "I told them to stop but they wouldn't."

Rosie wakes her mum Lisa, who runs the local bush nursing centre.

Together they go to collect Elise from the caravan.

When Rosie finds Elise, she is distraught. Elise tells Lisa she's "not a slut", that she "didn't want this to happen".

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The three of them drive through the night, on the deserted road to the Hutchins's residence.

"Lisa was almost like a second mum. Rosie was one of my best friends. Safe people," Elise said.

Lisa Hutchins calls Elise's mum Catherine.

When Elise's parents arrive, Catherine sees Elise in the kitchen with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

"I've never ever seen my child that upset," Catherine recalled.

"And then she told us that Luke and Shaun had raped her."

They decide to call the police, and by 7:10am, the caravan has become a crime scene.

'I just knew it was gonna be messy'

Alison Manniche-Brown, a veteran detective from Warrnambool's Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team, meets Elise at the hospital in Warrnambool, 160 kilometres away.

"It was quite a traumatic time for her, and I could see that," Alison said.

Everything Elise is wearing will need to be taken into police evidence, but first Alison needs to take a full-length photograph.

The picture is meant to capture what she had been wearing, but for Alison it's the look of shell shock on Elise's face that never leaves her.

"It was a very forlorn look on her face, I remember it as clear as day," Alison said.

By late afternoon, Luke and Shaun present to local police.

Both opt not to give a statement, and are released pending further investigation.

The ABC tried to contact both men on numerous occasions as part of its reporting. Shaun declined to participate and Luke did not respond.

As the days tick by, Elise's 18-year-old brother James, watches the news spread through the community.

"[I] was pretty aware that it was gonna be a bit of a shit storm because I knew that Luke and his family had a pretty high standing," he said.

"I just knew it was gonna be messy."

The town's only cop, Geoff Barcham, is pumped for information by the locals at the Western Hotel as he sits down to his weekly parma.

"The people were talking, and they wanted to talk to me because they wanted to know what was going on," Geoff, who is now retired and living interstate, said.

"There's only so much information I could give because it was an investigation," he said.

He watches as a narrative forms in the pub.

"You could sense the way some people were talking, that some people thought that the girl deserved it.

"Others would say, 'No, people should know better, should behave better.'"

As speculation grows about who did what, one name gives Geoff a sense of unease. One of the accused men is the popular local footy player, Luke Merryfull.

"They're a lovely family, very well thought of within the community," Geoff said.

"I just thought, 'What are the ramifications going to be?'"

'The Mayoress of Balmoral'

Detective Alison Manniche-Brown is running the police investigation, but Geoff is available to help on the ground.

Alison asks him to collect a signature from Lisa Hutchins, the bush nurse who collected Elise from the party, for a police statement. It's an easy job for Geoff — he already knows Lisa well.

"A lovely lady, very professional, well respected within town," Geoff said.

"Her and her husband, they had the nickname of the Mayor and Mayoress of Balmoral."

Geoff and Lisa's kids play football together, and they've had beers together at the pub.

Lisa's statement is key. She is someone who had been there in the immediate aftermath, who wrapped Elise up in a blanket and encouraged her to involve the police.

Lisa had seen Elise "really upset" and "crying" moments after being in the caravan.

Elise had told Lisa that she'd "been raped" and that it was Luke and Shaun who had raped her.

Lisa has also known all three of the people involved — Luke, Shaun and Elise — since they were kids.

But police aren't interested in family ties, or the difficult position that she's been placed in.

They're focused purely on what she remembers from that morning.

After she signs her statement, she says something to Geoff in passing.

But Lisa doesn't ask to change her statement, and signs it as is.

"I walked outta there sort of shaking my head," Geoff said, "thinking with all that's happened, I just couldn't see how she thought he didn't do it."

Lisa Hutchins declined an interview, but in a written response to questions from the ABC, she said the conversation with Geoff took place "on a busy clinic day," and that she was just "sharing initial thoughts".

"I was only interested in the truth and facts" and "relying on the court system to deliver a fair process".

'We had a ripper night'

A week after the 21st birthday party, Luke Merryful turns up to play the first game of the season for the Harrow Balmoral Southern Roos.

It's a resounding victory, with the seniors beating their rivals in nearby Edenhope by 90 points. Luke is among the players awarded best on ground.

On the Sunday, Sheree, the birthday girl, uploads an album of photos from her party the weekend earlier.

"A huge thank-you to everyone that came to party with Dad and I last weekend for our joint 60th and 21st party," she writes.

"And thank-you to everyone for your wonderful and generous gifts and cards.

"We had a ripper night xoxo."

In the album, there's photos of Elise inside the wooden picture frame, with a sparkling party hat, grinning with her school friends.

The clothes she is wearing in the photo are now in police evidence.

The caravan has been towed away.

But it's almost as if nothing happened.

Each weekend, Luke plays for the Harrow Balmoral Southern Roos.

Four months later, the team wins an elimination final by three points.

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Luke stands shoulder to shoulder with his team mates in the locker room after the match, singing the club song.

He's also there for the post-season party dressed up as a Pokemon for a club pub crawl.

Rosie Hutchins, Elise's old school friend who had picked her up from the caravan, is there too.

"I was thinking that some of my friends would message me and see if I was OK because they'd all had the police and everything," Elise said.

"But that never happened. I left the party and I never saw anyone again."

Rosie Hutchins declined an interview but responded to written questions.

She said what happened between Elise and Luke had "nothing to do with" her and that she had "done nothing wrong" by socialising with Luke.

"Balmoral is a small community with limited opportunity to socialise," she wrote.

"There should not have been an expectation for me to stay home and avoid contact with everyone for the YEARS it took to finalise this case.

"Mr Merryfull has always been and will always be a close friend of mine regardless of what he has or has not done.

"That's what friends do, they support each other during difficult times."

Strangers in the street

Slowly, Elise's family feel like they are being frozen out.

Over the weeks and months after the party, they realise they are no longer in the fold.

On Balmoral's main drag, Elise's mum Catherine is working as a bank teller, stamping cheques and dolling out cash, when one of Luke's relatives enters.

Catherine waits for her to come forward. But this time, the woman refuses to be served by her.

Elise's dad, Bevan, feels it too.

When he pops into town for a bottle of milk or a newspaper, people look at him strangely.

"It was quite weird. People that would normally have said [hello], they'd just stare at you.

"It makes you feel as though I'd raped the girl or something."

Even old friends have gone quiet, like Lisa Hutchins, the bush nurse, who had collected Elise from the caravan with her daughter Rosie.

As the months go by, they become strangers in the street.

"The worst part was seeing the relationships that my parents had with everyone sort of decaying away," said James, Elise's brother.

"It definitely had a profound effect on my family."

James tries to ignore the growing sense of isolation. One night, he decides to head to the pub.

"I guess I was like, 'Why should I miss out on going and having a beer with my mates?'"

He's drinking with some friends when Luke Merryfull's dad, Peter, walks over to the table.

Peter, a tall and imposing man, stretches his hand out to James, who's just turned 18. He's barely an adult.

"He's like, 'Are you gonna be a man and shake it or what?'" James recalled.

"I had my back to the wall and either had to push through him or put up with him."

James feels sick and stuck.

"I'm embarrassed to say that I did just shake his hand just to get out of there.

"My best mate was there and he watched it happen."

His best mate is Tom Hutchins. Lisa's son. Tom's also Peter Merryful's cousin.

Tom witnesses the whole scene, but he doesn't get involved.

"I just felt alone and I felt like I'd let my sister and my family down … allowing that to happen felt like it made me pretty weak," James said.

He never returns to his hometown pub.

The ABC contacted Luke's dad, Peter Merryfull, and Tom Hutchins to hear their version of events, but neither of them responded to questions.

In her written response, Lisa Hutchins said Elise's family had a "skewed perspective of the support that was available to them in the community" and "chose to isolate themselves".

Lisa said she was ultimately "committed to staying objective, like many other community members" and denied that she had sympathised with the boys.

"There appeared to be an expectation by the family that my family's life too should stop," Lisa said.

Play on

Eight months after the party, police charge Luke and Shaun with rape. Shaun is also charged with a second count of rape and sexual assault.

He is living in nearby Horsham, working as a diesel mechanic.

Luke is still in town, and continues playing for the local football club, despite the criminal charge.

About six weeks into the footy season, Lisa Hutchins, the bush nurse, puts up a post on Facebook.

It's a photo of Luke and his sister, with two of her own three children.

The caption reads: "Four out of five of my favourites".

Luke and Shaun are committed to stand trial a few months later.

Lisa will be a key prosecution witness.

For Elise's family, the post is a public declaration of support.

But Lisa told the ABC it was simply to highlight that one of her children was missing from the photo, and overseas.

She said there was no "alternate intent" to the post.

Clear divisions

It's not until January 2019, almost three years after the 21st birthday party, that the trial begins at the Geelong County Court.

By now, Elise is living interstate. She returns to Geelong to give evidence via video link from a small white room away from the courtroom.

"I could only see the judge and the two lawyers. So I didn't see the people that hurt me."

As witnesses gather outside court during breaks in the hearing, the detective Alison notices something unusual.

"Normally the victim … and associated witnesses would be at one end and the accused at the other end."

She said in this case, the witnesses, almost all of whom are from Balmoral, were standing with the accused men.

"So that appeared to be a fairly clear division on where the support lay."

The case will be argued around the question of consent.

The prosecution argues it's clear cut: Elise had said "no" when the touching started and "no way" to the idea of a threesome.

The defence argues the sex was consensual and Elise was just embarrassed about it — and tried to rationalise it afterwards.

They say she didn't want to be seen as a "slut".

Luke and Shaun each take the stand to give their version of events.

Shaun tells the court he never heard Elise say "no", and that he thought they had a "spark".

Luke tells the court that Elise was consenting, and that "at no time did she seem uncomfortable or struggling".

But when he's pressed to explain how Elise communicated this, Luke is lost for words.

"Can't really, yeah, she seemed comfortable. She seemed happy."

Just before he finishes his testimony, Luke is asked one more question: Why did he leave the caravan if everything had been so friendly?

"I just thought I'd give Shaun and Elise some privacy," he tells the court, "I felt like I needed a drink of water."

"There's no point in me sitting in the caravan after, um, I've ejaculated, I don't think."

The verdict

When the jury returns to deliver their verdict, it's guilty on all counts.

In the courtroom, voices cry out spontaneously in horror.

"He didn't do it!" one supporter yells out.

"These are tense times. I understand," says Judge Mullaly, "but please now, ladies and gentlemen."

Elise is not in the courtroom.

When the news comes through, she's driving with her mum.

"It was like the opposite of being overwhelmed.

"Like I don't have to keep screaming into the void that this actually happened. It just allowed me to breathe a little."

But soon after she gets home, a note comes through on Messenger.

It's from an old classmate:

Congratulations on ruining two people's lives for your own immature mistake. I have known Shaun and Luke my entire life and know they would have never of done the things you have falsely accused them of. You have sent two innocent people to jail and I hope you live the rest of your life feeling guilty for what you have done. Karma will catch up with you.

"I remember I just opened it and it just broke me," Elise said.

The ABC contacted the former classmate. She didn't want to do an interview, but said she regretted sending the message but "can't take it back".

'Welcome in my house'

The courtroom fills again for sentencing.

Seventeen people have provided written references in support of the two men.

Brendan Thompson, a man with deep ties to Balmoral and the former president of Luke's new football club at Leopold, stands up to read his.

He tells the court Luke will be welcome to return to the club when his time is done.

"He'd be welcome in my house as well," he says.

Despite the positive show in court, Judge Mullaly sentences both men to jail.

"These were opportunistic crimes, but they were serious and selfish, where you put your sexual gratification above the ordinary human dignity and feelings of your once long-term friend.

"That is shameful and the devastating impact on her is still resonating," Judge Mullaly says.

Shaun is given five years and eight months in prison, with a minimum of three years and four months.

Luke is jailed for four years and 10 months, with a non-parole period of two years and 10 months.

The men are taken into custody.

But within 24 hours of the men going to prison, a seismic event takes place that will throw the verdict on its head.

A key witness flips

Lisa Hutchins, the bush nurse and "second mum" who picked Elise up from the party, comes forward with a new statement.

In it, she writes that Elise seemed like she "was seeking to present information to save face and take control of an embarrassing situation".

And she adds something new, a memory from that night that she did not mention in her police statement back in 2016 or when questioned in court during the trial.

"When sitting in my kitchen I questioned Elise about what had occurred," Lisa writes in the statement.

"I asked her 'did you consent to this?' … she folded her arms across herself, put her head down and in a low voice said 'Luke maybe, but not Shaun.'"

Luke maybe.

These two words will start the whole thing all over again.

They form the key plank in a successful appeal to the Victorian Supreme Court.

In September 2020, having served half their minimum sentences, the men are freed from jail.

When Elise learns the case is to be heard all over again, she is dumbstruck.

"I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think, I couldn't see. All I could feel was just like, I, I don't know if I can do this again," Elise said.

"But once I calmed down a little bit and mum kind of explained what the statement said, then I got angry.

"Then I got really, really, really f***ing angry, 'cause that conversation didn't happen."

'Not a witness of truth'

After a few false starts during COVID, the retrial begins in August, 2022 — more than six years since the 21st birthday party.

The men have chosen not to give evidence.

Lisa Hutchins will appear again, but this time she's testifying for the defence.

In this trial, the key focus will be on Lisa's credibility as a witness, rather than anyone who was in that caravan.

On the stand, Lisa tells the court that, on the night of the party, she'd wanted Elise to come home with her.

"She was being quite amorous, open, flirtatious, I would say, with a number of the males there," Lisa tells the court.

The judge dismisses this evidence as irrelevant.

He tells the jury young people can behave in a certain way. It doesn't mean that they consent to something.

Lisa tells the court she had known both men since they were babies, and that she had been close friends with Luke's mother.

"I cared for her … when she was palliative with cancer," she says.

Luke's mother had died just four months after the 21st birthday party.

Shaun's mother had died a month later, in September 2016 — also after a long illness.

Lisa had been there when both mothers died.

The defence lawyer asks whether she has any "special relationship or bond" that would mean she is "not telling the truth to this jury".

"Absolutely not," Lisa tells the court.

"And I would never do anything to risk my professional registration."

But the prosecutor works to dismantle Lisa's credibility on the stand.

She tells the jury that Lisa's "not a witness of truth", that her new recollection of Elise "maybe" consenting to Luke is a fabrication, designed to get Luke out of jail.

The jury weighs up the evidence.

For a second time, the men are found guilty.

Men of 'good character'

Eight months after the verdict, in April 2023, the courtroom once again fills with the men's supporters.

The judge receives dozens of glowing character references for them.

The men have now been found guilty of these crimes by two different juries, but some still refer to the rape as an "allegation" and refuse to accept the verdict.

Elise is there as well, and stands before the judge to deliver her victim impact statement.

Elise tells the court she's been diagnosed with a severe depressive disorder after being raped by people she trusted, then "discarded" by her community.

"Depression is a daily battle with yourself," she tells the court, "the burning desire to live is still there but the illness tells you that there is nothing to live for."

During her statement, the men's supporters whisper loudly to each other and scoff in a way that's audible to Alison, the detective.

"It's just a lack of respect. A lack of respect for another human," she said.

The judge does not intervene, and Elise finishes her statement through the chatter.

"For her to get up and give that victim impact statement, is probably one of the strongest things I've seen in my career in investigating sexual offending," Alison said.

The men are sentenced for the second time, more than seven years after the 21st party.

But they won't be returning to prison.

The delay and the many character references lead the judge to hand down a community corrections order.

They walk free from court, having served about 19 months of their original sentence.

The family club

It's 2025, and Luke Merryfull is back in Balmoral to celebrate with his old footy club, the Harrow Balmoral Southern Roos, which has just won the grand final for the third year in a row.

The Harrow Balmoral Southern Roos are riding high and the jubilant senior coach praises the "family-orientated" club that has welcomed him with open arms.

The senior coach is a close friend of Luke's and gave him a character reference in court.

For months, the ABC has been in a back and forth with the current Harrow Balmoral president, hoping to get the club's perspective on this dark chapter of its history.

But eventually, the club, via its committee, declines to speak. It also refuses to answer written questions.

Instead, it gives the ABC a one line statement:

"Upon review, external advice and consideration, the committee respectfully declines to provide a response to this request," the statement says.

But there are pockets of unease amongst club members.

Key decision-makers at the time are still at the helm, and the club continues to grapple with the fallout.

Amongst its members are people who believe the club has not properly dealt with the issues at hand.

The under 14s coach, Ed Ferguson, is among them.

He doesn't want people outside the community to have the wrong impression of this place.

After months of anguish, the club's treasurer Simon "Twiggy" Hodgson also decides to speak up "as an individual".

"It just beggars belief how many people have taken the side of the rapists," Twiggy says.

"Luke and Shaun completely f***ed up. [They] did something horrendous and atrocious.

"And they've not owned up to it and they've been found guilty twice and people are still on their side."

Twiggy is part of the furniture in Balmoral. He lives on a street named after his great-grandfather, who was a soldier settler.

He lives and breathes the football club.

But he says there is no sense in blindly supporting members who fail to acknowledge wrongdoing.

"You support people that are going through hard times, but this is a rape and victim case, and [the] rapists have been found guilty twice and [are] still welcome," he says.

For Twiggy, the whole saga sends a terrible message to anyone who might think about coming forward.

"Imagine this sort of thing happens again," he says.

"You would nearly think twice about reporting it if you know that that's how, that's how you're gonna get treated.

"I'd love to think we've changed, but God, I dunno if we have."

Almost 10 years on from the 21st birthday party, Elise is at a new stage in her life.

She's applied for more study at university, bought a campervan and is hoping to explore the rest of Australia with her two dogs.

"I just like feeling like I can do things without people asking me if I'm OK or if I'll manage," she said.

"Just driving in my van, it just feels like, yep, this is who I am, I'm at home. I'm in my place."

She is starting to feel for the first time, like she can separate herself from everything that happened that night in the caravan.

"I haven't felt like this in a long, long time. Like I have difficulties obviously, but everyone does with different things. You just kind of figure it out."

When she's asked if she has a message for her hometown, she hesitates for a moment.

"Think about your actions in those moments … where you had a choice to stand up and say something," she said.

"It would've made a huge difference for me and for my family if people after the fact cared."

Credits

Reporting: Charlotte King and Andy Burns

Illustrations: Sharon Gordon

Digital production: Loretta Florance

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