
“I was so suspicious. It was probably one of the lowest times of my life, and no one would listen. They all just thought I was jealous.”
Bec Rosen had the gut feeling her husband was having an affair with her son’s 17-year-old girlfriend, but his manipulation, gas-lighting and continuous denial made her feel like she was going crazy.
She was the victim of master criminal Hamish McClaren. A man who has been convicted of swindling $7 million from 15 different victims.
But it wasn’t just money he lied about – his manipulation tore relationships, and families, apart. In Bec’s case, Hamish broke their marriage, and almost turned Bec’s son against her.
Listen to Mia’s full chat with Bec on No Filter. Post continues after the podcast.
Bec met Hamish shortly after moving from Singapore to Blueys Beach on the NSW coast with her three young sons.
She was escaping a bad marriage, and after initially disliking the “fading surfy dude” who used to be her worst customer, she found herself falling for his supposed kindness.
He’d surf with her kids, buy her groceries, and take her boy to the dentist when he had a fall.
It wasn’t long before they were married. Soon, Bec started to grow suspicious.
Hamish was getting way to comfortable with her son Jack’s 17-year-old girlfriend Jane*. He’d started flirting with her.
“She’d come up for breakfast and she wouldn’t have much on… just like a girl would be hanging around with her family. He’d start doing things like flicking her bum with the tea towel,” Bec told No Filter.
“It’s so bizarre how your body reacts, just straight away after seeing that it made me feel weird. I approached him and told him it wasn’t cool… and he’d say ‘get over yourself Bec for f***sake, she’s a kid’.”
In The Australian podcast investigation Who The Hell Is Hamish, which has been unravelling the deceit of Hamish McLaren, Bec describes another incident that felt a bit off.
“Hamish and I were going down to the beach. I got to the top of the stairs at the beach and I don’t know what it was about this sight, but I saw Jane walking down to the water and Hamish leaning on his haunches watching her.
“I felt repulsed. I thought this is not right. I thought this is wrong,” she told the podcast.
“You’re a lunatic,” he’d tell her, when she’d raise her suspicions with him.
Hamish and Jane started spending a lot of time together. They’d go on runs together and train together.
“People would see them out on paddleboards by themselves [just Hamish and Jane], or at a cafe having coffee together,” Bec told No Filter.
Initially, Bec voiced her concerns to Hamish. Then, she started asking her son. They both assured her everything was fine, and that she was making a fuss over nothing.
Hamish had managed to gaslight not just her, but her sons.
