As a child Megan was full of promise. She did well at high school. She was liked and people used to tell her she should be a comedian.
She was vivacious, quick-witted and was a devoted teen athlete.
This story contains content that readers may find distressing.
But when the 59-year-old was five, a predator entered her life and his actions would eventually stamp out all that made her who she was — her sense of humour, her confidence and her pride.
Former Catholic priest Neville Creen was jailed in the early 2000s for abusing 22 other children.
On Friday he was sentenced to 12 months' prison, to be suspended after serving three months, for his abuse of Megan.
He pleaded guilty to four charges, including indecent assault and treatment, and maintaining an unlawful relationship with a child.
Megan says when she was growing up Creen ingratiated himself into her family and didn't leave her life for more than 30 years.
His crimes have left behind terrible scars that affected her relationships and defined much of her adult life.
Attacked in bed
Megan's first memory of Creen was in the late 1960s.
She remembers him climbing the stairs of her family home, wine in hand, in the Townsville suburb of Palleranda.
The house was not off limits to the priest, whose guise was that he "loved the view" from the verandah looking across the water out toward Magnetic Island.
"That's all Creen used to go on about to convince my parents. 'Oh what a beautiful house, what a beautiful view'. That's the reason he got away with coming up the stairs with the alcohol," she said.
Later he convinced her mum that he needed to bath and feed her as this was his only chance to know what it would feel like to have a family.
With no extended family around they could rely on after moving from Toowoomba, he became the family's babysitter, minding the kids on a Friday night to give their mother a break after her battle with rheumatic fever.
It was in their childhood beds that Creen attacked Megan and her little sister.
"I have a clear memory of his black hairy arm coming over me while I lay there," she said.
"I can remember him standing over me and see one arm touching me whilst I lay in the bed. I can still remember the sound of him rattling the brown paper bag to drink the wine."
To this day, the crinkling sound of the bottle in a bag takes her back to the horror she experienced, and the smell of alcohol on someone's breath brings her to panic.
The horror is not hers alone.
From the late 1960s, Creen abused children at homes, in swimming pools, in school yards, on church grounds and on school camps across the Townsville Catholic Dioceses.
Much of his abuse was carried out at Mount Isa and Townsville, but statements seen by the ABC suggest he abused in Charters Towers as well.
Creen was removed from service in 1994 and moved to Sydney. Records from the Townsville Diocese show he resigned as a priest in July 1994.
The church claims it had no knowledge of his abuse until that year.
The ABC has seen statements from survivors of Creen's abuse that claim at least 30 members of clergy and education staff either had knowledge or were told of his abuse in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Creen 'conned the family'
Megan said as Creen's abuse continued, it took a toll on her emotional and mental health.
She began to wet the bed and was often hysterical when trying to sleep.
His presence in her house had intensified and he began taking her for swimming lessons, another guise to abuse her.
He would take her down to the netted swimming area and molest her as he taught her to float on her back.
"Father Creen would take me to the swimming area every Saturday for approximately two months. He would then take me home and have lunch with my mother," she said.
"He would say 'close your eyes and float against my arm. Relax and trust me you're safe'."
He often forced her to sit on his lap, digging his hands into her ribs, telling her not to squirm and threatening to get her in trouble with her parents.
"He used to face the chair toward the kitchen. My mum would walk into the kitchen to make tea and that's when he'd be molesting us," she said.
"I'd try and jump off his lap and he'd go 'oh, I gotta control this one. She fidgets'."
She said he'd often "flick her parents away" asking for cups of tea so he could get time alone with Megan and her sister.
For a few years in later primary school, the family took a break from the church and the children went to a public school.
Megan said her mother had a falling out with the church over the use of the contraceptive pill and her and her sister left St Joseph's Primary School.
It was one of the few happy periods she remembers, but it wasn't long before Creen was back in their lives.
She thinks her place in the family as the mischievous sibling was what attracted him to her.
Megan played practical jokes and got a kick out of making adults laugh.
The house next door had a large coconut tree that would often drop fruit. She once rearranged their sign which read "Beware of coconuts" to read "Nuts live here".
She also remembers embarrassing her dad in the supermarket by jokingly asking him "can we please not have dog food again for dinner tonight?", loudly enough so that other shoppers could hear.
"If you were born with a bit of character and had a bit of spunk about you, that was his turn on," she said.
She thinks Creen effectively "conned the family" into thinking he was helping keep her in line and to ingratiate himself in the household.
"He used his position of power to control my family," she said.
'I knew I was stuffed'
Creen's abuse continued into high school.
The priest was a regular at school camps around the dioceses and while at one at Paluma, north of Townsville, he abused her during a "meditation session" he was running.
With the lights dimmed and everyone instructed to keep their eyes closed, he sat behind her, slid his hands up her top and onto her breasts.
She asked him if he should be touching her like that, to which he responded that it was a normal way for people to relax.
He asked her the next day if she had "enjoyed the massage".
It was after this that he began a "smear campaign", trying to convince her parents she was promiscuous and had been flirting with him.
She decided to tell her mother, but by the time she had returned home from the camp, Creen had beat her home.
"My mother did not believe me and told me the reason Father Creen had come out was to warn her that I had been flirting with him at camp," she said.
"After his visit that night, my mother told me to stop flirting with him."
She said she knew as soon as she saw him at her home that she would not be believed.
"I knew I was screwed the way he was looking at me. The smug look on his face," she said.
"He took a chair out of the table and sat it on the left side of him and patted the top of the chair, 'come and sit here'."
He tried to further discredit her to people in the church, and to her parents.
He told her she couldn't wear jeans to church because they were "too sexy" and told her she needed to wear a bra.
When she returned to Townsville after going to a university ball as the date of a friend, he made sure he was there to pick her up from the airport.
He began telling her that having sex outside marriage was sinful, and rubbing her leg.
"I hadn't even kissed the boy," she said.
When she refused to go to church for confession with him, he told her parents she had sinned and that she would go to hell.
Despite serving as a priest in Mount Isa, Creen returned to visit the family and the abuse would continue.
In sentencing on Friday, Judge Craig Chowdury told the Beenleigh District Court Creen's offending showed a "shocking break of trust".
"A Catholic priest in those days, and even still to this day, is in a position of esteem and authority and some power in the Catholic community," Judge Chowdury said.
"You took advantage of that."
He also said Creen manipulated Megan's mother with a "pre-emptive strike".
"You told the mother that the complainant had been behaving inappropriately and flirting with you, which was a disgraceful and disgusting thing to have said."
'He acted like a rock star'
When Megan left home to live in Sydney, he maintained a stranglehold on her life through the close relationship with her mother.
"My mother thought he was Elvis Presley. He acted like a rock star. He had an irritating giggle. He was like my mother's best friend," she said.
He performed the ceremony at Megan's wedding and christened her children.
"Not only did he do the ceremony, but he also gate crashed my wedding [reception]. I hated that guy and he offered to give a speech," she said.
In 1987 Creen, who was then a chaplain with the army in Sydney, insisted he would baptise her daughter.
He insisted he "re-baptise" her other children who were christened by another priest.
Megan said the last time she had any direct contact with Creen was in 2000.
A lifetime of scars
Megan said her abuse by Creen and his hold on her mother affected her in many ways.
As a teenager she became withdrawn and did not reach her academic potential.
Even now noises wake her up in the middle of the night and cause her to become hysterical with night terrors.
She said she has become resistant to many forms of therapy and experiences intense anxiety.
"I spend a lot of time at home alone. My husband does our shopping for us, so I do not have to leave the house," she said.
"I do not care for myself. My daughter tells me to brush my hair and put make up on. I hate looking at myself in the mirror."
She said she has trouble trusting men and she dislikes people who are "over the top" friendly.
"He just used to prime us and have us ready, waiting," she said.
"He was supposed to be God's shepherd, but instead he was a wolf in shepherd's clothes, waiting to prey on our innocence and devour us," Megan said.
"We had no power to fight him, that's how I feel. I felt I was trapped."
