Sitting in a gynecologist's office with her mum by her side, a 16-year-old Peta Powell was told she had the human papillomavirus (HPV).
"I don't understand, what is that?" she asked.
The gynecologist looked at her awkwardly. "It's a sexually transmitted disease," was the reply.
Peta was stunned. "But I haven't had sex?" she said.
"Well you must have, because that's the only way it can be passed," she was told.
Watch: HPV explained. Post continues after video.
It was in that instant, sitting in an uncomfortable doctor's chair, that a flood of memories that Peta had kept suppressed for years in a little box in the back of her brain came rushing back.
He must have given it to her.
"That was the first time I sat there and thought about the nightmares I had been having for two-three years and I realised they weren't just nightmares," Peta, now 40, told Mamamia.
From the age of five, Peta was allegedly sexually abused by a male relative. Her brain had suppressed the memories so much that when her brother and two cousins took the same man to court, she was unable to testify beside them.
"I got interviewed by the police, but I couldn't remember my childhood. Like I had just locked it," she explained. "It was after that consult that it all started coming out. The brain is such a powerful thing. My brain had literally blocked it all out."
By the time Peta was ready to put her alleged abuser on the stand in 2010, he'd already been sentenced to six years for crimes against her family members. He was released after three.