SHE WAS TOLD SHE WAS IN SAFE HANDS. THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED..! – Former police officer Caroline Clarke has shared her story after alleging she was s*xually assaulted by a massage therapist she had been told she could trust.
When Caroline Clarke left the police force after almost a decade due to a bad car accident, she did so with a lingering back injury that would plague her for years.
“I had a really bad back, and I was recommended a massage therapist,” she tells former homicide detective Gary Jubelin on this week’s episode of his I Catch Killers podcast.
“I’d tried chiropractor, various other things, and when you’re in pain you’ll do anything to quell it.”
The masseuse was a man named Cameron Michael Petrie, and after initially balking at the idea of a male massage therapist, Clarke was quickly reassured by the friend who had recommended him.
“My friend said, ‘no, he’s got the safest hands,’ and it’s amazing how if someone who you trust has said that he’s safe, then [you automatically] go with that,” she reflects.
After the first three sessions with Petrie passed without incident, Clarke had returned for a fourth session when she noticed something was very wrong.
“We’re probably three quarters of the way through,” she recalls, “I’m on my back, fully relaxed, eyes closed. I mean, you’re almost in an unconscious dream-state.”
“Then I just remember thinking, ‘what the heck is that sensation?’”
Suddenly, Clarke realised Petrie had begun assaulting her. But to her horror, she was unable to fight back.
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Caroline Clarke served in the police force for almost a decade before a bad car accident left her suffering chronic back pain. Picture: Supplied
The mum went to a male massage therapist – who a friend recommended as having “the safest hands” for treatment. Picture: Supplied
‘When’s it gonna stop?’
“Time just slowed down,” she continues, “then I realised what he was doing. This whole feeling came over my body of ‘surely not, surely not’, and then just this panic.”
“It was like this little tiny part of me was going, ‘no, no, no, stop, stop, stop,’ and it was like this childlike cry.”
Trapped by her own terror, Clarke experienced what she now knows was a physiological phenomenon called ‘tonic immobility’, or ‘the freeze response’.
“It was this feeling of- how can I be crying and screaming so loudly, but nothing is coming out?’” she explains.
“It’s like the noise was bouncing off my ribs. My whole body went limp. And I would say that it felt like there was a disassociation, but also a part of me just thinking, ‘when’s it gonna stop? when’s it gonna stop?’”
During her fourth massage, she “froze” as she realised she was being raped by the man. Picture: Supplied
The brave mum (pictured with her children) reported the rape but initially “ran” from the police station after realising she would likely have to go to trial. Picture: Supplied
Tonic immobility: The biological survival switch
Tonic immobility is an involuntary, reflexive biological response to an inescapable threat or extreme fear.
“It’s a nervous system response,” Clarke explains, “so you have fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Fawn is like people-pleasing – like, ‘I just give in. I just don’t speak up for myself’. Fight obviously speaks for itself. Flight is running away.”
“Freeze is when fight and flight isn’t available,” she explains, adding that because she was in a darkened room, where nobody knew where she was, her fear of not making it out of a confrontation alive took over.
“In that moment, it’s a survival response.”
“You know, you could look up on YouTube an impala chased by a lion, and you’ll watch the lion take the impala down,” Clarke continues.
“Before it gets eaten, the impala will start to play dead. It slows its breathing to the point where its ribs are hardly moving, its eyes are staring. It’s called tonic immobility. It’s biology.”
Ex-Cop Breaks Silence on Assault: Caroline Clarke | I Catch Killers
Former West Yorkshire police…
It was a detective’s three powerful words – “We believe you” – that convinced Clarke to go through with the process. Picture: Supplied
Clarke (pictured with Gary Jubelin) launched an online movement ‘No More Silence’ in a bid to empower and support other sexual abuse survivors. Picture: Supplied
Shame, fear and three words that made a difference
After Petrie’s assault was over and Clarke was safely out of his reach, she disclosed what had happened to a friend who connected her with DV support services.
But after initially reporting the assault to Noosa police, Clarke – aware of the brutality of the trial process due to her time in the police force – backed out.
“I asked the detective what was going to happen next. He said, ‘well, there’s probably a high chance it would go to trial,’” Clarke recalls.
“As soon as I heard ‘trial’ that’s when [I realised] I’m not ready, and I literally got up and ran out of the police station.”
A few days later, after processing what lay ahead, Clarke returned to Noosa police station ready to proceed.
“I remember the detective said to me, ‘we believe you, Caroline,’” she says.
“And I can’t tell you what those three words meant.”
Clarke was ultimately able to use her police training to secretly record a confession from Petrie, which enabled prosecutors to bring a strong case against the rapist.
In May, he pleaded guilty to rape and aggravated sexual assault, and was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment, suspended after eight months.
Clarke (pictured outside of Maroochydore Court House) took on her rapist. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 2.5 years in jail
‘No more silence’
Clarke, who chose to identify herself as a way to encourage other women not to be silenced by their abusers, says she has struggled with the shame and shock of not being able to fight back in the moment.
“I couldn’t understand [with my police background], if I could take men down in the street… if someone grabs me in an alley, I would fight back,” she says.
“There’s two parts of me going, ‘what the heck happened that put me into such a limp state that I not only couldn’t fight him, I couldn’t even speak?’ And that’s what left me with so much shame, guilt and humiliation of not being able to understand why, why I couldn’t protect myself.”
Clarke has launched an online movement called ‘No More Silence’ as a means by which to support other survivors.
“It was created to help people to break their silence, and then to hand the shame back to where it belongs,” she explains, adding that the platform quickly grew to over 20,000 members – an indictment on how prevalent sexual assault is.
“I’d already been working with a lot of women in domestic violence and sexual assault prior [to the massage room assault],” Clarke explains.
“I realised that what prevented me in that moment from stepping forward was the silence. So what if we started to break our silence? And I’m not talking about everyone just gathering at a police station, that’s not the path for everyone.”
“But the first step to healing is actually voicing what happened. I’ve got about 20,000 people from all around the world who are saying, ‘finally.’”
“I believe if one person goes first, the other person has permission to go next,” Clarke continues, “and it becomes almost like a ripple effect.”
