The silence breaker
Hayley Young was raped while serving in the Navy. Now she is trying to change the culture that let it happen. Today, she speaks openly for the first time. She tells her story to Tommy Livingston.
In October, the world woke to an American bombshell. Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein had been sexually abusing women for years, the New York Times reported. Within days, the handful of allegations became hundreds as actresses came forward detailing decades of bullying, manipulation, attacks and even rape by the famous producer.
Weinstein came tumbling down in spectacular fashion: his own company fired him and many influential people turned their backs on the man who had championed their careers.
‘‘This is the story of one predator and his many victims; but it is also a story about an overwhelming systemic enabling, and until that story is fully told we will fall far short of stopping future depredations on a similar scale,’’ film-maker James Schamus said.
The episode prompted a global conversation on sexual harassment. Social media erupted as people detailed their experience of abuse under the hashtag #MeToo.
Fast forward less than a month and the likes of Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose had all been caught up in the chorus of voices calling out men of power and influence for being for misogynistic, predatory, and worse. Time magazine awarded its Person of the Year cover to the Silence Breakers – the numerous women who had spoken out about sexual harassment.
Thousands of kilometres away, in Hawke’s Bay, Hayley Young watched the fallout of the Weinstein scandal. For four years she has been fighting to change the culture within her former workplace – the Royal New Zealand Navy.
While employed by the Navy, she was subjected to years of sexual objectification, and on one occasion she was raped. Last year, she brought an international legal case against both the New Zealand and British governments, arguing they failed to provide a safe workplace.
This week, Young was granted a High Court order lifting her name suppression so she, too, could break her silence.
‘‘It seems like the climate is now ready to hear a story like mine.’’
Young joined the Naval Reserves as a part-time job while at university. After graduating and working as a chemical engineer in Australia, she was drawn back to the forces. At 23, she applied to join the Navy fulltime.
During basic training, she and the other young female recruits were called into a meeting labelled ‘reputation management’. The meeting outlined the culture of harassment and sexual advances existing in the service and tried to provide tips on fending off unwanted advances.
‘‘It was things like, ‘The guys are going to try it on, they are going to hit on you. Just make sure you look after yourselves’,’’ she said.
‘‘In hindsight it disempowered me to be able to speak up when things did happen, because I felt like I was failing when I couldn’t stand up to it.’’
Days later, Young was posted to the United Kingdom to begin her training as an engineer at a British naval base. At first, the staff were treated like royalty, but slowly the unwelcome comments started and she began to sense eyes lingering for too long.
‘‘It started off with bits of banter and lewd sexual jokes. Then it changed to people coming up to me and asking when we would be having sex. It was so blatant and up-front. It was seen as a joke, and I always shut it down. It was so inappropriate.
‘‘After six months I felt like an object. I had really lost sight of what was acceptable and what was harassment.’’
On one occasion, a male staff member put his hand between her legs as a ‘joke’. When Young objected, the officer brushed it off as humorous.
‘‘He just looked at me like it was perfectly normal. I was so confused.’’
Amongst the constant heckling and cat-calling were some male officers who went further, betting buckets of KFC on which female officers could be sexually ‘‘conquered’’.
Things reached boiling point one evening in 2009 when Young was having a drink with workmates. She decided to go back to base after a male colleague said something offensive. She asked one of her close male mates if he wanted to share a cab. The pair agreed to leave, but when it came time to go their separate ways on base, the man followed her to her room.
Tears well in her eyes when she remembers that night. She’s forgotten what he smelt like, much of what he said, but the pain from the attack is still fresh.
‘‘When the rape happened I said no to him 30 times, I was crying.
‘‘I was in this predicament. I didn’t want to upset him, but I didn’t want it at all. Afterwards, I was curled up in the foetal position wanting to go to sleep, but he kept pestering me.’’
Following the incident, Young confided in her friends on base what had happened. They told her what she already knew – telling anyone would be career suicide.
‘‘I cried for a couple of weeks, picked myself up and carried on with my training.’’
For the next few years, Young kept quiet as she rose through the ranks to lieutenant. However, at the end of 2012 she decided to pull the pin on her Navy career. The pain of carrying her secret was too much of a burden.
With the risk of losing her job no longer a factor, she penned a letter to the top brass of the Navy. In it she detailed the years of abuse, degrading comments and the rape.
The leadership said they were appalled, and seemed to move quick to try to calm the storm. But little did Young know, worse was yet to come.
‘‘The process didn’t go smoothly,’’ she says.
‘‘It was by far the most traumatic experience of my life. I have never felt so alone, so scared and so vulnerable.’’
Young’s letter, it was promised, would be used as a way to change the culture of the Navy. The plan was to redact parts, take her name off it, and let her read it before it was sent wider for officials and others to learn from.
Instead, the letter landed on the Deputy Chief of Navy’s desk where, Young says, it sat for the next six months. In May 2013, nothing had been done, so she decided to go to the top, and contacted the Chief of Navy, Tony Parr.
For a while, it seemed like things began to improve. Young heard of new training modules about bystander awareness, sexual assault prevention workshops and more.
But her optimism was short-lived. In a attempt to keep women in the forces, and draw in others, the Navy released a poster showing a fake Facebook profile of a female naval officer. The woman on the poster was called Kate Miller, but the face was Young’s.
It had been less than two years since she had left the armed forces – a job where she was sexually abused – and now her face was being used to attract women to join.
What stung most was ‘‘Miller’’ boasting about how proud she was her daughter had joined the Navy. Young felt cheated – she had detailed in her letter how she would not let her children join the armed forces after what she went through.
‘‘I felt so objectified and so victimised and used all over again. It put me back a good six to twelve months in my therapy. I couldn’t sleep again, I was crying and shaking.
‘‘I decided I would not let the Navy use me any more.’’
Young pushed back, the lawyers got involved, and things got serious.
‘‘It kept escalating until it got to the point when it was Hayley Young v the Attorney General of New Zealand and the Attorney General of England and Wales in the High Court.’’
Along with her Napier-based lawyer Jol Bates, Hayley was arguing the New Zealand Defence Force had failed in their duty of care to provide a safe workplace. She didn’t want to go after the men who had abused her, but the culture which had enabled them to do so.
The New Zealand Attorney-General and the British Ministry of Defence pushed back, arguing her case should be heard in Britain.
If they were successful it would have put an end to her battle. There was no way she could pay legal bills that could reach into the millions.
In April, Young won the right to have the case against the attorney general heard in New Zealand. The hearing will take place soon.
The Attorney General of New Zealand will argue the Defence Force did not have any legal liability to provide duty of care because employees sign a unilateral service agreement, not an employment contract.
Young lost her bid to take on the UK Ministry of Defence on Kiwi soil. She is taking that case to the Court of Appeal.
The fact the Defence Force didn’t accept they failed in providing a safe workplace was particularly hard to comprehend, Young says.
‘‘To not accept a duty of care went to show how hard they didn’t want to accept how bad the culture really was.’’
Young never laid a criminal complaint against her attacker. It is one thing to go after the man, but an environment allowing sexualised behaviour to thrive holds responsibility too.
‘‘I was a victim of the culture. I understood how much I was affected by it. But equally, I could see the men being groomed by the culture as well. They came into the military as people who respected women, but it was eroded away.
‘‘That is a reflection of what is happening now. We are learning about industries all over the world where men were enabled and encouraged to abuse and mistreat others.’’
The Defence Force implemented Operated RESPECT last year, aimed at weeding out inappropriate and harmful sexual behaviour. Young is optimistic the new Labour-led Government will help to speed up that cultural shift.
For now, she will prepare for another court hearing, all in the hope the young women currently climbing the ranks will have a safer ascent than she did.
‘‘The sad thing is, I loved the Navy. They had seemed like they really looked after their people. Isn’t that sad.’’
It started off with bits of banter and lewd sexual jokes. Then it changed to people coming up to me and asking when we would be having sex. It was so blatant and up-front. It was seen as a joke, and I always shut it down. It was so inappropriate.