It’s a story that has made international headlines. Yet its owner, Jess Denham*, has never once spoken to the media until today.

Her father, Rob Gilfillan, 69, is known as “Australia’s most evil dad”.

The former athletics coach and senior university lecturer is currently behind bars serving the longest jail sentence ever handed out in Australia for child sexual offending, following the depraved and sadistic abuse he committed against his own biological daughter, Jess, who he also homeschooled and coached on a remote property in Northern NSW in the 1990s and 2000s.

In 2016, William “Rob” Gilfillan was convicted of more than 70 charges against Jess, and sentenced to 48 years in jail, a record in Australia.

Yet for the past decade, Jess – who is a world champion runner and lawyer – has been legally gagged from telling her story, while Rob Gilfillan awaited yet another sexual abuse trial relating to his time as a PE teacher in Victoria in the 1980s.

That media gag, however, did not extend to Rob Gilfillan, who has been eagerly conducting podcast interviews from behind bars under a pseudonym, spitefully claiming that his daughter is a liar and that the various other schoolgirl victims he stood accused of raping merely had “jealous crushes” on him.

Finally, in December last year, those former schoolgirls were also vindicated when Rob Gilfillan was found guilty of another five sexual offences against the students, including penile vaginal penetration on school grounds and forcing a student to masturbate him in the school staffroom of Traralgon High School.

Jess is finally telling her story on her own terms. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/news.com.au
Now, with those outstanding legal matters resolved and the gag on Jess lifted, she is finally free to tell her story publicly for the first time.

WARNING: Distressing content

To the athletics community, the Australian media and the public, Jessica Gilfillan (now Jess Denham) was a sporting prodigy: a world champion runner who repeatedly smashed national and international records, and who by age 14 was competing on the world stage and being recruited by the Australian Institute of Sport.

Jess’s biological father, Rob Gilfillan – who had himself once qualified as a runner for the Olympics – was her militant coach and trainer, living out his own sporting dreams through his daughter.

Media headlines during Jess’s adolescence frequently marvel at her superhuman feats.

But behind closed doors, what the outside world didn’t know was that Jess’s domineering and controlling father was violently abusing her.

“He called it my punishments,” says Jess, now 34 and living in NSW.

“He always justified it as ‘I was weak and he was making me strong by toughening me up’. If I didn’t win a race, or if I didn’t set a personal best time, he would hold my head under water, whip me, and thrash me with whatever was at hand.”

If you knew Rob or Karen Gilfillan or have photos of them, contact: [email protected]

Karen and Rob Gilfillan. Picture: Jono Searle
Other punishments included being forced to stand in a freezing cold creek on their isolated property for extended periods, being locked in an enclosed box, being denied food or forced to eat chillies, or being made to complete dangerous and excessive physical endurance tasks.

“Everything was always a test with Dad, a test to toughen me up,” she says.

“Other coaches kept asking how I was setting these record-breaking times. What they didn’t realise is that I was literally running for my life. My motivation wasn’t to win: it was to stay alive by keeping Dad happy.”

Rob Gilfillan would often force Jess, a national champion, to compete through injury. Picture: Mark Dadswell/Getty Images

‘As a child I had no formal sex education so I didn’t understand what dad was doing to me,’ Jess says. Picture: Supplied
Jess’s father, who also coached other squads, was widely known as an intimidating and aggressive man. But living on an isolated bush property located inland of Byron Bay meant the worst of the abuse was easily concealed from outside eyes.

“We had no phone reception on the property. It was so isolated that when it rained, the property would be cut off from the roads,” she says.

“I always had bruises and injuries from abuse, but he would explain that away, as the result of where we lived and leading an outdoors lifestyle.

Jess was homeschooled on the family’s isolated rural property. Picture: Supplied

The property had no phone reception.
“And I knew if I ever spoke up, I’d be dead meat.”

At events, Jess began to closely study how other athletes were treated and, gradually, she began to wonder if her normal was every athlete’s normal.

“I remember carefully watching how other coaches reacted when an athlete lost, and I’d watch them say ‘better luck next time’ or give constructive advice,” she says.

“For me, the only question was ever which sort of punishment I would be getting when we got home: the creek, the shed, or the bedroom.”

Jess’s powerful message to her abusive father

Jess Denham…

more

Disturbingly, interspersed with the physical violence and psychological punishments was something even darker: from a young age, Jess’s father raped and sexually abused her, and confusingly for the child, this had also been presented as another form of her punishment.

“The first time I remember being raped, I was five, my mum was away and I was alone in my bedroom at night. Dad came in. I didn’t know or understand what rape was but I remember the pain,” she says.

Jess pictured as a child. Picture: Supplied

‘The first time I remember being raped, I was five,’ Jess says. Picture: Supplied
From there, the sexual abuse became routine.

“I thought this was another way he was trying to toughen me up. To make me ‘not weak’, so I could prove I could endure anything,” Jess says.

“It was so confusing. I was a little girl. My undies would have blood on them and I didn’t want to get in trouble so I would bury them on the property.

“When he began to use tools I would find them and bury them too.”

When Jess approached puberty, her parents withdrew her from school and decided to homeschool her.

“They monitored everything. What I ate. What I wore. Even my periods. One time, when my period was late, Dad took me outside and made me lie on the ground and thrashed a medicine ball into my stomach 50 times,” Jess says.

Karen Gilfillan was a teacher. Picture: Supplied

Rob Gilfillan homeschooled Jess. Picture: Supplied
“My mum was a teacher and my dad had taught as a PE teacher and had been a senior university lecturer at Southern Cross, teaching primary school sport science, so no one thought it was weird that they would homeschool me.”

But that decision meant every aspect of Jess’s life was now controlled by her father and there was no escape.

“There were times I didn’t think I would survive. I remember being locked in the shed and carving the words ‘Mum is coming’ on a piece of wood, over and over, with an old nail to try and hold onto hope that she would rescue me,” she says.

Tragically, that help would never arrive.

Instead, when Jess’s mother, Karen Gilfillan, became aware of the sexual abuse, she committed the ultimate betrayal.

“She told me, ‘Dad has his reasons for what he does’. She groomed me to think it was normal,” Jess says.

A court would later hear how Karen Gilfillan would tell Jess ways to sexually gratify her own father.

“She would tell me what noises to make while dad was raping me so he would enjoy it more,” Jess says.

“At the time I wanted to do anything to avoid being punished by Dad, so I thought she was trying to help me survive.”

Karen would tell Jess how to pleasure her father. Picture: Cathy Adams/The Northern Star

Court witnesses described Karen as ‘sex obsessed’. Picture: Supplied
Eventually, Karen Gilfillan would participate in the abuse, and years later, when NSW Police visited the property with a warrant, they found photographic evidence of Karen and a teenage Jess naked together.

That was not all.

Exactly as Jess had described, NSW Police were able to dig up the tools that had been buried on the property and in the shed they found an old, discarded pair of child’s bloodied undies. Soil experts confirmed the soil had not been disturbed for years.

Saddest of all, inside the shed where the most sadistic and cruel abuse had occurred, police found an old piece of wood with the words “Mum is coming”, “Dad” and “wee” engraved in a child’s handwriting.

“As a child I had no formal sex education so I didn’t understand what dad was doing to me,” Jess says. “And little children don’t use words like erection, sperm or ejaculation. So in my diary and on that piece of wood I would use the word ‘wee’ and record it as ‘Dad weed’ or ‘I had to make Dad wee’.”

The isolated shed where some of the abuse took place.
The diary, the photographs, the carved wood, the bloodied undies and the buried tools would all make compelling physical evidence for police.

But this wasn’t the only evidence.

Jess’s maternal grandmother had walked in on sexual abuse happening. She gave an eyewitness account. Then there were the physical injuries to Jess’s body and mind. And finally, there were all the other girls Rob Gilfillan had abused.

When Jess first reported to NSW Police in 2011, at age 19, she had no idea how many girls would later come forward also alleging sexual abuse by Rob Gilfillan.

Jess spent three months reporting to police. Picture: Supplied

‘I was literally running for my life’. Picture: Supplied
News.com.au is now aware of at least 15 individual women who have made allegations of sexual abuse by Rob Gilfillan.

But back in 2011, as a terrified Jess spent three months making a 79-page police statement, she had no knowledge that her father had already been investigated by the Victorian Department of Education over allegations of raping former students in the 1980s, and that those allegations had been substantiated.

“I’d heard whispers of some sort of misconduct involving students in the decade before I was even born. But it wasn’t until last year, at his trial for those crimes, that I learned he’d been investigated for rape,” she says.

Nor was Jess aware that the Victorian Department of Education had known of the rape allegations at Traralgon High School, and had verified them, but had not contacted the police.

And she had absolutely no idea that he also stood accused of raping students at Presentation College in Moe, Gippsland Grammar and Caulfield High School (now Glen Eira College).

Indeed, back when she reported to police in 2011, she felt utterly petrified she wouldn’t be believed.

“But the Lismore police did their job. They did the investigation. And in 2013, my dad, who had fled to Papua New Guinea, was finally extradited back to Australia to face justice,” Jess says.

When he arrived, he was served with more than 100 charges relating to Jess and taken into custody.

Karen Gilfillan, too, had been arrested and charged over her involvement in the abuse.

Karen Gilfillan was arrested, charged, and later found guilty. Picture: Supplied
From there, it would take three long years for the matter to get to trial.

But when Jess turned up to the Sydney Downing Centre court to give evidence in 2016, she was ready.

“I spent a month on the stand giving evidence and being cross examined. I had to hold each of the tools and torture instruments, and the piece of wood. I was cross examined by not one but two defence barristers as both my parents got their own lawyer,” she says.

“When they were discussing my dad raping me, they asked me over and over ‘and did you consent?’ as though consent is even possible. The question made me feel sick.”

The evidence was overwhelming. And to cap it all off, Rob Gilfillan had also made several partial admissions while being phone tapped during the time he was under investigation in PNG.

When the jury came back, he was found guilty on all 73 charges that had gone to court, and later was sentenced to 48 years in jail.

Karen Gilfillan was also found guilty of 13 charges and sentenced to 16 years in jail.

Judge Sarah Huggett, who spent a full two days reading out the sentencing remarks, described the case as “depravity of an almost unimaginable magnitude”.

At first, Jess believed the legal ordeal was over. But a new chapter was just beginning.

Over the next six years, her parents launched a string of appeals. When their appeal to the Supreme Court failed, they made a final attempt to appeal to the High Court.

“They showed no remorse, no insight, no regret,” says Jess.

“And each time they appealed, I became terrified they might be let out on a technicality and so my healing would stop as I’d be plunged back into the terror of uncertainty.”

Finally in 2022, Jess received the news that the High Court had rejected their application to lodge an appeal, meaning her parents had exhausted their last appeal option.

For a short period, Jess had peace.

Photos of that time show her living her best life: skydiving, surfing and skiing with friends.

Jess obtained a law degree. Picture: Supplied

Photos of that time show her living her best life. Picture: Supplied
By then she had obtained a law degree and had been admitted to the Supreme Court of NSW as a lawyer in her own right. She’d also done a degree in architecture and was pursuing her Masters in that field.

“I had made the decision that I wasn’t going to give a single media interview until the last appeal was over. When it finally finished in 2022, I began to think about telling my story in a book,” she says.

But shortly after Jess began writing, her world came crashing down.

“In 2023 I received a message from a journalist, Richard Guilliatt. He contacted me on social media and told me he was in contact with the two pedophiles who raped me and was making a podcast about them,” she says.

Jess soon learnt the podcast was called Shadow of Doubt, the premise of which is that her parents could be innocent. Mr Guilliatt has previously written about admissibility of evidence and the intersection between memory and the law.

“I felt sick. After everything I had been through, the police reporting, the trial, the appeals, I couldn’t believe my parents were now being given a platform from jail. The High Court decision had already come down in my favour. What more proof could there possibly be?”

Jess’s lawyers, Marque Lawyers, contacted The Australian urging them to reconsider, but the podcast was released.

Within hours, members of the public discussing the podcast on public forums had worked out Jess’s real name and identity.

“Just as my lawyers predicted, my mental health plummeted,” she says.

Jess attempted suicide. She received more than 600 internal and external stitches.

Jess also suffered a stress induced neurological episode akin to a stroke and would spend the next six months in hospital learning how to walk and talk again.

“My privacy, my progress and my healing was shattered. Not only were my pedophile parents given a free platform to lie, but very private matters were discussed like the appearance of my genitals, without any consent from me whatsoever,” Jess says.

“Even worse, boxes of my sexual assault counselling notes which had been subpoenaed as part of the trial were accessed.”

Mr Guilliatt said: “At all times my editors and I made strenuous efforts to comply with the non-identification order imposed by Judge Sarah Huggett in the NSW District Court.

“The podcast was explicit in acknowledging that Jessica’s mental health issues may well stem from childhood abuse.

“I was and am aware of the deep distress Jessica Gilfillan has suffered since 2010. Much of my reporting has focused on whether substandard counselling and mental health treatment has contributed to her suffering.

“I take my professional responsibilities very seriously. Efforts were made to present a nuanced picture of this case and the many issues it raises.”

Jess had to learn how to walk again after suffering a neurological episode akin to a stroke. Picture: Supplied

It took months before Jess could talk without stuttering. Picture: Supplied

Jess had gone from being a world champion runner to being to bedridden.

She had to learn how to play piano again. How to hold her guitar again. Any fine motor skills – how to hold a pen, open a can of soft drink, turn a key in a lock – she had to relearn.

The stroke-like impacts were severe.

It took months before she could talk without stuttering. Slowly she began to rebuild.

The podcast also questioned Jess’s credibility as a rape victim because she took some months in therapy to disclose the extent of the sexual assaults.

Jess, a world champion here aged 10, was trained beyond safe limits. Picture: Supplied

She went from being a world champion runner to being to bedridden. Picture: Supplied
“Who suggests that a child might be lying about sexual abuse, because I didn’t divulge all in the first counselling session I had?

“I’d been groomed and abused for years. I was terrified of telling. So of course it took months to develop the trust and rapport with my counsellor to open up.

“I’d been told counselling would be confidential. Then when those notes were subpoenaed as part of the trial – meaning my parents could look at them – that shattered all my trust and I stopped going to therapy.

“But I was told those notes would never be used outside the courtroom. The fact they have now been used in a public podcast without my consent, makes me ill. No wonder I lost any hope to keep going.

“To this day I still don’t know where those boxes of counselling notes are.”

Mr Guilliatt did not respond to questions about the current location of the notes, or whether Jess can expect to receive them back. There is no suggestion Mr Guilliatt engaged in any unlawful conduct in receiving the leaked counselling notes.

Jess is now campaigning for the Australian Press Council to develop a minimum standard in how sexual violence cases are reported, and she wants NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley to review laws on how sexual assault counselling notes are protected.

She is spearheading news.com.au’s campaign, Keep Counselling Confidential: Don’t subpoena our support, and she is backed by more than a dozen experts, including academics, lawyers, sexual assault services and advocates who will be speaking out in coming weeks.

Her parents, meanwhile, are also petitioning NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley. According to a report in The Australian, they are hoping to get a public pardon, as they are still protesting their innocence. They are doing this, while her father is awaiting yet more sentencing to be handed out in April this year, for his convictions in December 2025 following the sexual abuse of former students.

Meanwhile, an investigation by news.com.au has also learnt that even more alleged victims of his have recently made police complaints and Rob Gilfillan was named to the Royal Commission for Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse National Redress Scheme by another former student he taught, who was not involved in the criminal proceedings last year.

Jess is now campaigning for reform. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/news.com.au
“The thing that terrifies me most is that when he was under investigation he fled to Papua New Guinea where he worked at remote primary schools located along the Kokoda Track. He’s also spent time in Nauru,” says Jess.

“I just want every victim out there to know they are not alone. I stand with you.

“I am Jess, and I will continue to keep surviving.

“I will not rest until all victim-survivors of sexual abuse are treated with the compassion, dignity and respect that they deserve.”