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Actress Accused Of Child Abuse And Complaining That Victim, 14, Was Sexually Inexperienced

By Shelley Hazen
Published on: 02:52 PST, Aug 19, 2015

Thirty years ago, a troubled 14-year-old child got an opportunity to meet an actress from her favorite TV show. In 2013, that woman — now married — has come forward to say the star abused her.

She kept it secret because she thought everyone would call her crazy, the Herald Sun reported.

Now, the accused actress, Maggie Kirkpatrick, who played a prison officer named Joan “The Freak” Ferguson in the Australian soap opera Prisoner, is alluding to the child’s mental problems in her denial that any abuse took place.

Back in 1984, the unnamed girl was in a psychiatric hospital for substance abuse and a personality disorder. The actress said that in those years, she often visited patients there, the Sydney Morning Herald added.

Kirkpatrick met the teen through another patient and acquaintance. Now 74, she said it was kindness that led her to pick up the youth and take her to her house for a meal, giving her a break from her time at the hospital.

The alleged incident happened in June or July of that year. The child went to Maggie’s home for dinner and they “ended up in Kirkpatrick’s bedroom,” where the alleged abuse occurred, according to police. The abuse included two counts of indecent assault and one of gross indecency. She appeared in court this week to answer the charges.

Years afterward, the victim’s husband said his wife revealed a bit about what happened.

“She told me she had been invited to a person’s place, a lady’s place, and that person was ‘the nasty one from Prisoner. She just said there were some sexual things that happened, but didn’t elaborate.”

But there’s this sickening detail — during the alleged abuse of the child, the actress was evidently dissatisfied that she wasn’t “experienced in a sexual way,” police said.

Maggie denies anything improper, and her description of that night in 1984 is much different. She said that while the child was in her house, she was cooking rabbit stew for their dinner and drinking wine, when she discovered her poking around her stash of liquor. The actress then returned the girl to the hospital, because the incident made her “uncomfortable.”

“(The claims) are untrue. They are making me feel quite ill. I don’t know where the allegations are coming from. They are malicious in my mind.”

A high school friend of the child who was allegedly abused by the actress remembers her as a “big fan” of Prisoner and about meeting Kirkpatrick, ABC News added.

“By my memory it was when she was at Newhaven and I don’t recall any of the particulars, just her making reference to it and her being very excited. The only thing I recall was an invitation [for her] to go somewhere… with Maggie. I remember that she was a big fan of the show and watched it religiously and would often refer to what she’d seen in the show, different episodes.”

Court hearings on the case will continue this week.

[Photo Courtesy Gaye Gerard / Getty Images]

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