For Bridget Malcolm, speaking out about Tribunal findings over her high school music teacher's serious misconduct towards her is the "final piece" in her recovery process.
The former Victoria's Secret model shared her experience on social media, after it was revealed Aurelio Gallo’s teaching license had been suspended for three years.
In March 2021, Ms Malcolm sent an email to the Board alleging the 53-year-old had behaved inappropriately while teaching at Methodist Ladies' College in 2007 and 2008.
Speaking to ABC Radio Perth, Ms Malcolm, 30, said sending that email felt like running down a flight of stairs and missing a step.
"I had started something [where] I didn't know what was going to happen," she said.
"I was proud of myself because it had taken so much work to get to a place where I would even be comfortable enough to share this with someone else."
After the matter was brought forward by the Teachers Board of Western Australia, Mr Gallo admitted to the serious misconduct over a series of emails to Ms Malcolm, fostering a friendship with her.
On Friday, the State Administrative Tribunal handed down its decision to disqualify him from teaching for three years.
"I was benefiting from the extra tutoring," Ms Malcolm said.
"I was a very serious musician at that time, and he was a fantastic teacher, so from my end I thought it was great, I thought I had a mentor.
"Then as I progressed through high school and beyond high school, the communication moved outside the realm of a student-teacher dynamic that I was comfortable with."
'At the time I had no idea'
When Ms Malcolm graduated at the end of 2008, Mr Gallo gave her a silver charm as a personal graduation gift.
He maintained contact with her once she left school through personal emails, where he requested photos from Ms Malcolm and asked to meet up when she returned to Perth from holidays.
"That's a big reason why I've decided to speak out about this because at the time I had no idea that it was inappropriate," she said.
"I think the nature of these sorts of dynamics is that when you're in it, you don't realise how unbalanced it is."
It took more than 10 years for Ms Malcolm to share her story, and she said over that decade she carried the burden of self-blame and feared she would be judged if she spoke out.
Losing her anonymity has been quite the opposite.
"I had talked myself into thinking that I wouldn't be believed and to me that speaks to a much larger issue, but right from the beginning there was no attempting to poke holes in what I told them [the Board]," she said.
"It felt like the beginning of my true healing through all of this, because as difficult as the process has been, it's also been incredibly cathartic and incredibly healing."
An end to the nightmares
Ms Malcolm has more than 300,000 followers on Instagram and more than 68,000 on TikTok, and said she felt the weight of sharing her experience with her audience.
"I've always felt that I owed it to them to have a level of transparency with how I present myself online and the stories I tell, because I know social media can be damaging when you only get a very one-sided picture of someone's life," she said.
The Tribunal decision noted that the Board and Mr Gallo agreed to relevant facts which stated that Mr Gallo denied that he engaged in grooming behaviour, but accepted it constituted serious misconduct.
He will not be able to reapply for registration until 2025.
Ms Malcolm said she felt an incredible sense of relief and gratitude to hear the news.
"I used to have nightmares a lot and I haven't had a single one since [learning] his license will be suspended," she said.
"Things grow horns in the dark, things get scary when you don't talk about them, and I know this because I didn't talk about it for many, many years."
