Twelve months later, she left to start what she referred to as her "dream job", cutting up offal at the local abattoir. Upon leaving school at 15, without having learned to read or write, she gained employment as a cutter in a clothing factory. By contrast, when not in a rage, Knight was a model student and often earned awards for her good behaviour. She assaulted at least one boy at school with a weapon and was once injured by a teacher – who was subsequently found to have acted in self-defence. When she attended Muswellbrook high school, Knight became a loner and is remembered by classmates as a bully who stood over smaller children. The family moved back to Aberdeen the same year. She was devastated when he committed suicide in 1969 and continues to maintain that his ghost visits her. Apart from her twin sister, the only person whom Knight was close to was her uncle, Oscar Knight, who was a champion horseman. This was kept a family secret as there was considerable racism in the area at the time, and Barbara's descent was a source of tension for the children. Barbara was proud of this fact and identified as Aboriginal. īarbara's great-grandmother was an Indigenous Australian from the Moree area who had married an Irishman. Although there are doubts about the details, psychiatrists accept her claims and the events have been largely confirmed by other members of the family. Later, when Knight complained to her mother that one of her partners wanted her to take part in a sex act she did not want to perform, Barbara told her to "put up with it and stop complaining." Knight claims she was frequently sexually assaulted by several members of her family (though not by her father), which continued until she was aged 11. Barbara, in turn, often told her daughters intimate details of her sex life and how much she hated sex and men. Knight's father was an alcoholic who openly used violence and intimidation, and would rape his wife Barbara up to ten times a day. In 1959, when Knight was four, Jack Roughan died and his two older boys, who had been living with him, moved in with Barbara (their mother) and Ken. Katherine Knight was the younger of these twin daughters. Barbara had four additional children with Ken, including twin girls born in 1955 in Tenterfield. None of her four sons went with her the two eldest boys continued to reside with their father, while the two younger sons were sent to be raised by an aunt in Sydney. Local backlash forced Barbara and Ken to move to Moree. The Roughan and Knight families were well known in the conservative rural town, and the affair caused a major scandal. Barbara and Jack had four sons before Barbara began an adulterous relationship with Ken Knight, a friend and co-worker of her husband. Her mother, Barbara Roughan (born Thorley), had been married to Jack Roughan and lived with him in the small town of Aberdeen in New South Wales' Hunter Valley. Katherine Knight was born and raised in an unconventional and dysfunctional family environment.