Victims’ voices create revolution

On International Women’s Day, whose words could be more appropriate than those of Australian of the Year Grace Tame. This is a heavily edited (only for space) version of her extraordinary speech to the National Press Club on March 3.

IN April of 2010, I was battling severe anorexia. This illness had nearly taken my life the year prior and seen me hospitalised twice, bedridden and tube-fed.

One of my teachers noticed me walking around aimlessly in the courtyard. I thought he was funny. He asked me about my illness. I talked, he listened. He promised to help me, to guide me in my recovery. I was a teenager with no frame of reference, and therefore thought nothing odd of this.

My parents were against me, he insisted. I was not to tell them, because they simply wouldn’t understand.

Over a period of months he built my trust to a point where I felt safe sharing my fears and past trauma that underpinned my illness, like my experience with being sexually abused as a sixyear-old by an older child.

He told me he would never hurt me. Until he did . . . and I spent the next six months being raped by him at school nearly every

HISTORY, LIVED EXPERIENCE, THE WHOLE TRUTH, UNSANITISED AND UNEDITED IS OUR GREATEST LEARNING RESOURCE. IT IS WHAT INFORMS SOCIAL AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE.

day on the floor of his office.

When I finally reported him to police, they found 28 multimedia files of child pornography on his computer. But as per the lasting impact of intense and manipulative grooming, I effectively defended him in my statement, terrified he would find out that I had betrayed him and that he would kill me. He was sentenced to 34 months in jail.

Repairing myself in the aftermath of all this was certainly not a simple, linear undertaking. For every step forward, there were steps back, to the side and some almost off the edge.

One of the toughest challenges on my road to recovery was trying to speak about something we are taught is unspeakable. I felt completely disconnected from myself and everyone around me.

Still, the doubt lingered. How could I have been so stupid, as to not see what this man was doing from the outset? Was it my fault?

It was when the perpetrator was released after serving only 19 months and then spoke freely about how awesome and enviable it was, that I realised we had this all around the wrong way.

In 2017, I connected with ground-breaking freelance journalist and fellow survivor,

Nina Funnell. With 16 other survivors, we needed to share our story publicly to raise awareness and educate others about sexual abuse and the prolonged psychological manipulation that belies it.

Yet we discovered we were barred from sharing these stories by Section 194K of Tasmania’s Evidence Act, which made it illegal for survivors of child sexual abuse to be identified in the media, even after turning 18, even with their consent.

Using my case as the foundation, Nina created the Let Her Speak campaign to reform this law.

The law was officially changed in April last year, almost 10 years to the day from the beginning of my story.

It is so important for our nation to listen to survivors’ stories.

While disturbing to hear, the reality of what goes on behind closed doors is more so. And the more details we omit for fear of disturbance, the more we soften these crimes, the more we shield perpetrators from the shame that is resultantly misdirected to their targets.

When we share, we heal, reconnect and grow, both as individuals and as a united strengthened collective. History, lived experience, the whole truth, unsanitised and unedited is our greatest learning resource. It is what informs social and structural change.

Every story is imbued with unique catalytic educative potential that can only be told by its subject. Let us genuinely listen, actively, without judgment and without advice to demonstrate empathy and re-ensure it is and never was our fault.

It is my mission and my duty as a survivor and as a survivor with a voice to continue working towards eradicating child sexual abuse. I won’t stop until it does.

We are on the precipice of a revolution whose call to action needs to be heard loud and clear. Let’s keep making noise, Australia.