“No one’s ever gonna love me, no one’s ever gonna take me seriously. I’m just gonna be a joke.”
These were the heartbreaking thoughts that went through Casey Donovan’s head in the aftermath of her catfishing saga, which saw her strung along by a woman pretending to be a man named Campbell for six whole years.
She had been led to believe the woman – referred to as “Olga” – was a friend of Campbell’s, and was someone she could trust wholeheartedly. A friend, a confidant.
Instead, she had isolated Casey from her friends and family, and coerced her into having sex with her, using the guise of Campbell to request a night of intimacy with his friend. This, devastatingly, was Casey’s first ever sexual experience.
“You know, it really stuffed with my head. There were so many things happening, I didn’t know which was was up. I was grabbing at anything,” she told Andrew Denton last night.
Watch a snippet of Andrew Denton’s interview with Casey. Post continues after.
As months rolled into years, Casey began to suspect things were not as they seem. But having lied to friends and family about having met Campbell in person, she felt stuck.
“I stupidly didn’t tell anyone that I’d never met this guy, Olga was the only one that knew the truth,” she said.
“My mother had spoken to him on the phone, my aunt had spoken to him on the phone… Every time they asked ‘Did you see Campbell this weekend?’ I’d say ‘Yep, we hung out’. I was creating this big ball of lies until one day I thought ‘something’s not right’.”
She admits that while those around her had expressed their concerns about Campbell and Olga over the six years, it didn’t click until she felt it herself. In the meantime, she’d grown more and more distant from her loved ones.
“No matter whether it be my mother or family member saying ‘This isn’t right’… I didn’t want to hear it… I couldn’t see it for myself. It took me six years to realise.”
“She’d p*ssed all of my friends away. I had no one.”
Then, she says, she became like her own private investigator.
