I met Barclay McGain at a UQ social club event, I attended with a high school friend of mine, and I hoped to get an opportunity to make new friends at UQ, network with potential future colleagues. After a night of drinking and networking, the event began to wind up at about 11pm, Barclay then invited me to join him and others for drinks in a sort of afterparty and offered to give me a lift there, my friend had work the next day and decided to head home. As a first-year student this was my first club event relating to the university of Queensland and I didnt yet have a bearing of how events were structured at UQ.
When we arrived at an apartment, he told me that the others would be arriving soon and asked me if I would like another drink, I was already very intoxicated but I accepted a drink while we spoke about economics and politics, after 15 minutes I asked grew concerned about where the other students were and asked Barclay about it. He then stepped out of the room to make a phone call and when he returned, he told me that they werent coming, I tried to make a reason to leave but Barclay pressured me to stay and begun to put his arm around me then he kissed my cheek and neck.
I asked him to stop but he didnt respond, went completely silent and continued to kiss my neck, while touching my chest after this I felt paralysed, scared and powerless to resist him and it all then lead to an unwanted sexual encounter.
I reported this incident to an executive of the universitys social club the next day who was dismissive and told me they couldnt take it further without a police report, I later learned that this executive is a personal friend of Barclay and taken him on as a political campaign manager. I also later learned that this is not the only time this sort of thing that has happened through this particular club and that another similar incident was quashed by club executives.
That same night I received a phone call to my personal number, which I never gave to Barclay, I only gave my number to the social club as part of my sign-up process on UQ club market day. Where Barclay identified himself and asked why I was spreading lies about him and that he had done nothing wrong, at this point I was so horrified to be speaking to him. I immediately hung up the phone and called my parents. While I was crying explaining the situation to my mother, I received two Facebook messages from Barclay which threatened a defamation lawsuit against me if I didnt retract what I had said to the club executive. Shortly after I had seen these messages the messages were unsent. The fact that I went through this experience, and he then turned around and played a victim still affects me to this day, I find it difficult to trust anybody. My innocence was completely shattered and to even discuss this brings up strong emotions and fear, the thing that scares me the most is that he truly believes that he did nothing wrong and tried to intimidate and silence me afterwards. I cant speak to him or look at him and shortly afterwards dropped my university degree. I feel like hes gotten away with so much and bullied his way out of it. I just want to share this horrible experience to warn other people so he cant victimise others like he has done to me.