#(assuming work doesn't floor me when I get home I intend to work backward and show some of the planning for it in the diaries)

[heythereneighbor]

In light of a lore update this week and me being on vacation from tomorrow, I decided I would skip ahead and reveal the costumes for the boys.

Will anyone save Princess Barnaby from the vicious Wally-Dragon??

[gold24tvnews]

He took my innocence away': Millie was trying to get home safe. Instead, she was taken advantage of by a fake Uber driver

A brave young girl has spoken out about a heinous sexual assault by a fake rideshare driver, hoping it will encourage other victims to speak up.

Melbourne girl Millie was just 17 when she was sexually assaulted by a predator posing as her Uber driver.

She was waiting for an Uber home from a night out with friends when Pakistani national Faizan Abdullah spotted her in a dark Melbourne street.

He calmly approached her in his car as she waited outside her friend's apartment building.

Assuming he was her rideshare driver, Millie made her way over.

The predator was confident and convincing, luring her into the car.

"I went to go automatically in the back door, (because of) COVID... and he goes, 'Oh no, the front door, the back door doesn't work'," Millie recounted to A Current Affair.

"It didn't look normal in there, like a normal presentable rideshare vehicle - it was messy, there were cups in the cup holder, but I kind of just shrugged that aside."

Trusting it was her rideshare, she did not check the number plate of the vehicle.

The teen was on the phone to her boyfriend, who heard the driver ask Millie for her address.

"He's like, 'I need to put the location in again'," Millie said.

"And my partner was in my ear saying 'that's not right'. He's like, 'That doesn't sound right'."

With her phone on low battery, she told her boyfriend she would call him when she got home and hung up the call.

When Abdullah took her up and down back streets, Millie knew she was in trouble.

"He was like, 'Oh was that your boyfriend, do you have a boyfriend?'" she recalled.

"And I said, 'Yeah, that was my boyfriend'."

Abdullah eventually drove Millie to a street in Brunswick, only minutes away from restaurants and bars where he stopped the car and got out.

It was at that point that Millie received a notification from her intended Uber driver to notify her he had arrived.

"At that point, it's like my eyes and my brain, went black," she said.

"There was no way that that could possibly happen to me.

"So I got out of the car because I'm not going to be a sitting duck."

That was when Abdullah grabbed the teenage girl.

"It happened so quickly, there wasn't any space for me to run away," she said.

"There was nothing I could have done to get him off me.

"He was bigger than me and he pushed me against the brick fence metal."

Millie tearfully described how the man aggressively assaulted her.

"He put his arm up and then his hand and he was trying to grab down there really quickly," she said.

"I was trying to pull his hand away, and he got his hand up my skirt and my dress and he was grabbing it so aggressively.

"I was trying so hard to fight it but I was also like I don't want him to hurt me anymore, I don't want to make him angry, I've seen movies before."

In the middle of it all, a noise startled her attacker and he stopped.

She screamed at him that she was calling police.

"The face he gave me when he was walking backwards, he gave me, 'You do that. You go do that' and he was smiling and laughing," she recalled.

"Then he opened the car still, looking at me, gets in the car and zooms off.

"At that point, I dropped to the floor, all consciousness is gone, I don't know what's happening."

Millie managed to pull herself up and she ran, finding people outside a bar and pleading for help through tears.

It was the early hours of the morning and one of the bar staff drove her home.

"I just fell into my dad's arms," she said.

"That was the best feeling to have him hug me."

Three years since her daughter's ordeal and Millie's mum Simone is still distraught.

"I just remember the door opening and my husband got out of bed and all I heard was 'he touched me'," Simone said.

"All you want to do is protect your children and we couldn't.

"We always said to the girls, ring us at anytime, we will come and pick you up."

Detective Senior Constable Liam Comrie from Victoria Police's Sexual Crime Squad trawled through hours of security vision to track Abdullah down.

"If we didn't get the CCTV, he'd probably be still out there, to be honest," he said.

"He was in the area just sort of driving around in circles for some time prior to this offence.

"Eventually we ended up getting a number plate for the vehicle and traced it that way."

Abdullah was 27 and working as a security guard at the time of the attack.

The Pakistani national was convicted of sexual assault and possessing child abuse material.

He was deported from Australia after serving 15 months in jail.

Comrie said Millie's decision to give a victim impact statement in court "would have helped sentencing to no end".

"She's shown so much strength through the whole process," he said.

"He's gone because of what and made it safe for others because of what she's done, essentially."

"It's one of the best decisions I made in that time to read it out personally," Millie said.

But even with the knowledge her attacker can't harm her again, the nightmare hasn't ended for the now 20-year-old.

"He took my innocence away," she said.

"Every day it haunts me, even when I'm happy it comes back.

"I can't describe the empty pit in my chest when I see some man in the street that has that has some similarities to this man.

"I'm so scared, I freeze up ... my mind and thoughts will never be the same."

She decided to open up about her traumatic ordeal to encourage other victims to speak up.

"I don't care if it happened 10 years ago - speak up," she said.

"It is so important because you are protecting other girls from it happening to them."

Rideshare Driver Network's Debra Weddall said riders can use added safety features in the Uber app to enhance their safety.

"There's a facility in the app that's in the settings, in safety, that a passenger can go to and turn on," she said.

"The driver and the rider are both sent a pin, the driver in the app and the rider in their app, and those pins have to match."

In a statement, Uber said its safety toolkit uses cutting-edge technology to help improve safety.

"If the driver doesn't match the photo or number plate, we encourage riders to report it to Uber right away so we can take action," an Uber spokesperson said.