Victim Two

Illawarra Mercury

Saturday December 8, 2007

JODIE DUFFY

Sally (not her real name) was embarrassed and frightened when at 14 she plucked up the courage to confide in her mother that self-proclaimed prophet William Kamm had ordered her to have sex with him.

She expected her mother to be outraged, but instead she supported the middle-aged, married man.

"It was God's will," her mother told her.

"I had sex with him because I trusted my mum," says Sally, now 28.

"I didn't want to do it but mum kept saying it was real, it was from God and that if I had sex with him we'd all be going to a beautiful place, we'd all go to heaven."

She was 11 when her family moved to the Cambewarra property.

At 13 she accepted Kamm's proposal to be one of his queens, believing she'd been handpicked by the Virgin Mary and that she was going to one day live a Cinderella existence as one of his future queens.

"The queens were given all these rewards in the new era," explains Sally. "He told me we would all have different roles and that I was going to teach the children arts and craft.

"All the queens he said would live in a big castle and would get whatever they wanted."

She continued to satisfy his sexual depravity for five years, believing it was heaven's plan.

"It would be weekly, sometimes fortnightly and sometimes monthly and then it would be back to weekly again," she says. "It was hundreds and hundreds of times."

Kamm would announce the names of his new wives from the pulpit, but they would be forbidden to tell anyone details of their intimate relationship.

Kamm especially warned they were never to tell his wife Bettina.

"He used to pick me up from my mum's place in his car and I would have to hide down in the seat so no-one in the community would see me leave with him," she says.

Kamm would then drive to Wollongong where she would be allowed to go to the movies and shop while he visited his children from his first marriage.

He would later pick her up and they would spend the night always at the same Figtree hotel.

"The first time it happened I knew I was going there to have sex with him and I was terrified, I was scared, but at the same time I wanted to do what God wanted me to do," she says. "From then on every time I was there with him it was horrible."

The sexual demands stopped when, at 19, she fell pregnant with Kamm's child.

"At the time I fell pregnant I was really depressed, I had already decided that I wanted to get out of there," she says. "I was so down all the time and I would hurt myself physically, usually I'd hit myself."

After her son was born Kamm set her up in her own caravan on the property and she locked herself inside for days at a time.

Sally had few friends to confide in, having left school in Year 8 with Kamm's permission.

"He said I could come and work for him, so I'd work in his grocery shops (in Cambewarra and Brisbane) and help out in the community and at one stage I helped Bettina with their children," she says. "If I was lucky he'd pay me $50 dollars a week."

In 2002 she left the order and has spent the past four years in Queensland building a new life for her and her son.

It was only after she had left the order she realised she had been abused.

"He took my childhood, my innocence, my virginity," she says. "I still sometimes get sad when I think about that, I think it would be wonderful to have had a childhood with no responsibilities. I feel like I'm still catching up, I've missed out on so much in life."

Although they do sometimes talk on the phone, Sally has strained communications with her mother who is still deeply involved in Kamm's cult.

"It's hard to talk to her, it's hard to believe what she says anymore," Sally says. "Even after the court case she continues to stand by him and not by me."

Early this year, a District Court jury found Kamm guilty of five counts of sexual intercourse with Sally when she was 14 and one of committing an act of indecency.

In August Judge Berman sentenced him to a maximum term of 10 years and he will be eligible for parole in 2013.

In sentencing Judge Berman said Kamm had used his religious beliefs to have sex with an underage girl.

As Sally's victim's impact statement was read out in court Kamm's followers covered their ears not wanting to hear the damage and pain their holy prophet had inflicted on a young teenage girl.

Kamm strongly maintains his innocence and has appealed his conviction and sentence.