Hunter paedophile victim talks of pain and suffering 40 years later

He's a big bloke, just over six foot in the old scale, 55, heavily tattooed, earrings, a full head of greying hair.

He speaks in deep staccato bursts - usually in the fewest words possible - the sort of bloke who would be more comfortable in a wharfie pub than a wine bar.

He's also a child victim of a paedophile. And his life is a mess.

He wandered into the Mercury office last week with a story to tell, the one he'd been bottling up all his life. He was also desperately in search of a photo of his abuser, but for now, let's focus on Max's story.

It's the 1970s  and he's a happy, normal 13-year-old boy with a knack for woodwork, and dreams of being a builder or maybe a cabinetmaker. 

He joins the youth group of the Assembly of God Church at Charlestown where he comes under the guidance of Chris Bridge, a youth pastor of the church and well liked by all. The boys, in particular, liked his knockabout style, how he treated them as grown-ups.

Some years later Bridge would go on to be a successful Maitland businessman, running the Subway franchise in High Street in the mid-90s.

"I was 13 and he taught me to drive," Max recalled. "He would take me out of town onto dirt roads. It was great, 13 and driving. Wow! He would have his hand on mine on the gearstick, but I thought that was just a precaution and didn't think anything of it.

"Then we would play football and he would join in, tackling us. And when we were on the ground he would wrestle us. It was fun."

Grooming, too.

The moment that changed Max's life was when he was one of about 30 boys on an excursion - he can't remember where - and when he was asleep in the dormitory, he awoke to find Bridge with his hand under the sheets and down his pyjamas, fondling him.

"I woke and started trying to choke him, but he ran off."

Max, in the way of teens, bottled it up. Nothing was said the next day and he didn't tell his mates or his parents who viewed Bridge as a great bloke.

From that moment, his life changed.

Within a year, at age 14, Max was drinking schooners in some of Newcastle roughest pubs. He started getting tattoos ... decades before they would become fashionable.

His parents wondered why their son had gone off the rails, but paedophilia wasn't even a blip on the radar back then.

"I put my parents through hell," Max admits. "At one stage I was in New Zealand getting drunk while they were searching the streets of the Gold Coast with my picture in their hands, asking people if they had seen me."

Max  knows there are people out there who have suffered far worse sexual abuse than him, but nonetheless his life is now a shell.

"I'm an alcoholic. My marriage ended after three years. I live in a warehouse. I have anger management problems, I can be violent, and I certainly don't blame my wife for walking out."

I ask how bad the anger management problem is.

"I've punched blokes out at the pub for absolutely no reason ... more than once.

"I've fought the cops and been arrested. The last time they came to get me there were three police cars and 12 police." It's not some misguided boast, but a reluctant acceptance of a life gone off the rails.

Then there was the attempted suicide about 10 years ago. Ironically it was the police who found him just in time. 

Max was "known to police" all right. Four DUIs,  two convictions for assault and one for assaulting police can do that to you. Not that Max would have been alone in suicide. He was one of five known victims of Bridge at Charlestown, Hamilton and Dubbo, and one had already taken his own life.

While living with this internal nightmare for 42 years was hard enough - he didn't even tell his wife - he still managed to run a successful removalist business and buy a house, all the while hitting the booze hard, beer or bourbon, either would do.

"It helps me sleep, frees my head," he says.

But then came the phone call about six months back that changed things.

Detective Senior Constable Tom Magann of Dubbo police had tracked Max down and wondered if he could help in a child abuse investigation. To this day Max doesn't know where the link came from.

Suddenly, memories he had fought so hard to suppress under a haze of Jack Daniel's just refused to go away. As painful as it was, he agreed to tell his story.

Which brings us to Gosford District Court and the trial of Chris Bridge.

There, sitting in the courtroom wasn't just the man who continues to torment him to this day, but sitting alongside Bridge was the head of the church to offer support.

"I couldn't believe it," Max said. "Surely the pastor should have been sitting there supporting us?"

But here's the rub: back in the '70s there was no such thing as paedophilia - they were innocent days - and the only crime that Bridge could be charged with was of performing a homosexual act. The very same charge as two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home would face.

With a guilty plea, Bridge received a 25 per cent reduction in his sentence, meaning he could be out on parole by March 2019.

And Max is angry on two fronts. Firstly, after finally deciding he needed to tell his story and unburden himself, he was denied the opportunity because of Bridge's guilty plea.

And after finally looking his demons in he eye, he saw this deeply flawed man of the church walk away with two years in jail, 15 months non parole.

"I've been sentenced to life and he gets a slap on the wrist. It's just wrong. And so is the fact the church is still there to support him. What message is that sending out?"

Which brings us to the picture.

Max wants pictures of Bridge as he believes seeing his face will bring other victims forward.

"There will be other people out there like me. We know that Bridge used to go to orphanages in the Philippines. I hate to think what he got up to there.

"He was a predator. There will be others for sure."