WEBVTT - Justice Shouldn’t Hurt: Nina Funnell Pt.1 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:04.920 The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:07.840 Detective sy a side of life the average person is 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:11.120 never exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop. 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:14.040 For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers. 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:16.239 That's what I did for a living. I was a 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:20.560 homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:23.160 I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:26.439 The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:28.800 from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:31.479 and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:34.640 of the content and language might be confronting. That's because 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:36.680 no one who comes in the contact with crime is 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:39.880 left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:48.360 this world. Welcome to another episode of I Catch Killers. 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:52.880 Today's guest, Nina Fanell, is a passionate advocate for sexual 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:57.600 assault awareness, prevention, and survivor's rights. Now we all know 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:00.880 this is a difficult subject to talk about, but I 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:04.280 think discussion needs to be had. Nina has become a 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:08.319 prominent voice across the country, starting conversations about consent and 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:13.200 sexual violence. Through her advocacy, she aims to educate the public, 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:18.479 challenge harmful societal norms, and push for systemic changes that 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:23.600 support survivors and hold perpetrators accountable. It's important work that 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:26.000 Nina does and I'm looking forward to sitting down with 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:28.720 her today and having a chat, finding out who she is, 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:31.880 and we're also going to discuss her own experience as 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:35.679 a survivor of a violent sexual assault, an experience that 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:38.840 has driven her to make a difference in society. Nina 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:41.880 is also an award winning journalist and I've got to say, 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.200 a very impressive person. I think today's conversation is going 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:49.200 to be very informative. So let's get into it. Nina Fan, Now, 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:52.120 welcome to I Catch Killers. Hello, how are you? 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:53.720 Yeah? Pretty good. 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:58.880 Hot day where we're in the luxury of air conditioned studio, 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:02.480 but it was very hot outside. Your name keeps coming 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:05.080 up to me with people. Have you spoken to Nina? 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:07.600 Have you spoken to Nina? So this sit down has 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:10.080 been a long long time coming. You have a bit 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:14.399 of a reputation, do I? And now is that ever good? 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:17.640 Or yeah? Well, it's interesting because your name keeps coming 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:19.840 up to me as well, so I think it's yeah. 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:24.400 I deny that allegation. Well, we mentioned when before we 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:26.880 started here, Claire Harvey, and that's a person who was 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:32.359 mentored me when my early stages in striking into the media. 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:35.359 And you've worked with Claire as well. 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:38.000 I have, and Claire she's been phenomenal. She's been a 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:40.800 really good support as well as editor and mentor. 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.800 Yeah, what Claire taught me a lot about the integrity. 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:48.240 I admired her integrity, about the importance of getting the 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.400 truth out and stories. And she was fearless too. 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:55.160 And funny. She's actually, she's one of the funniest people I've met. 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:57.639 I was trying to say she was professional, but she's 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:01.560 very funny. She's a good lady, good lady allround. Your background, 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:05.560 first of all your personal life, as in your where 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:06.080 you grew up. 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:09.440 Who's Nina? Tell us a little bit about Nina. 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:14.720 Okay, So I grew up in Sydney, lived here, studied 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:25.640 here until my twenties, and then pursued a career in journalism. 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:27.640 And what were you studying at UNI? 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:30.840 So I studied meta in communications. I'd always wanted to 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:33.799 be a journalist. At high school, I'd been editor of 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:39.520 the school newspaper, and you know that was my goal. 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:42.240 Either that or law, and it was sort of a 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:44.200 flip of a coin in the end, but I decided 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:47.800 that I wanted to pursue a career in journalism, so 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:54.520 off I went studied that, and then I, through a 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:58.640 series of events, decided that I would specialize in reporting 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:01.160 on sexual violence. That was an area that I wanted 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:04.360 to dedicate my time to. 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.800 Okay, it seems like a prerequisite for people that get 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:10.880 into the media or journalists. They head up the school 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:13.960 school paper or have some involvement, So it's got to 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:14.880 be a passion, hasn't it. 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:19.920 Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, I guess. I guess I've 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:23.560 always been interested in people and people's stories and where 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:26.680 they're coming from. This is this is quite unusual for 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:29.120 me to be on this side, usually in your seat, 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:31.600 and I'm the one who's asking people about their lives, 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:33.400 so I'm not I'm not so used to talking about 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:36.800 my life, but I've always been curious about what drives 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:40.359 people and what their objectives are and sharing their stories. 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:45.600 Okay, your professional career and well, I've got a list 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.440 of things here that I don't want to embarrass you. 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:53.680 But your Walkley Award winning journalists yep, and what was 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:54.840 that in relation. 0:04:54.560 --> 0:05:00.240 To I've won a couple. So so I did. A 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:03.720 couple of years ago I started the Let Her Speak campaign, 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:06.480 which was to reform sexual assault victim gag laws around 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:10.400 the country. So I'd met a young woman called Grace 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:12.960 tame Well. Actually at the time, what I was doing 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:17.120 is I was reporting on sexual assault within universities, and 0:05:17.240 --> 0:05:19.440 I was trying to do fifty two articles in fifty 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:24.280 two weeks about university campus rape. I had ended up 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:28.640 teaching in the media department at Sydney University, and because 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:33.040 I'd gone public as a survivor myself, a number of 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:37.080 my students had recognized me, and so if they had 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:39.960 their own stories, they saw me, I guess, as a 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:43.160 safe person that they could come and disclose to. So 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:49.159 I was receiving quite a number of disclosures of sexual violence, 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:52.279 particularly within the residential colleges at Sydney University. And so 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:54.839 when I became a journalist, I decided that I would 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:58.400 One of the projects I'd always wanted to do was 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:04.120 a seer. He's focusing on sexual assault within universities and colleges, 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:08.560 and so it was in that year that I got 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:12.839 a tip off about this guy a convicted sex offender 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:16.200 called Nicholas best who now most Australians would know of 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:20.080 as the person who had groomed and assaulted Grace Tame. 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:23.680 And at the time, Nicholas Bester was down at the 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:27.279 University of Tasmania studying his PhD and living on campus 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:31.799 in a residential college with in a co educational residential 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:35.960 college with you know, he was in his sixties and 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:39.599 he was living alongside eighteen year olds and with shared 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:42.600 bathroom facilities and so on. It was very creepy. And 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:45.440 so the students at UTAZ were saying, can you report 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:50.000 on this guy who's who's who's on our campus and 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:54.560 who's making a number of students feel very uncomfortable, And 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:56.600 so I said, yeah, you know, I'd be happy to 0:06:57.200 --> 0:06:59.760 look at the story, but I'd want to know what 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:03.120 his original victim feel about this, and is she comfortable 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.360 with the story being told in the media and so on, 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:08.760 And so I tracked her down and at the time, 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:12.240 Grace was living in la and so at first I 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:14.480 was just really feeling out whether she'd be comfortable with 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:17.760 me running this story about Besta living on campus, and 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:21.680 she then indicated that she would actually like to comment 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:25.080 and to tell her story as well, and so I thought, great, sure, 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:28.760 so I ran it past our lawyers at News dot 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:32.240 com dot au and they said, well, you can run 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:35.480 the story, but you just can't name the victim survivor. 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:41.440 And I was quite perplex Why not. She's over eighteen, now, 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:44.680 she's given consent, there's no defamation issues, you know, all 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:46.960 the things that we would usually go through and tick off. 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:52.640 And they, Gina McWilliams, the lawyer, said well, there's this 0:07:52.680 --> 0:07:54.800 thing in TASMANI called Section one nine four K of 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:58.960 the Evidence Act, which prohibits sexual assault survivors from being 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:01.920 able to self identify the media unless they go to 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:04.840 court and seek a court order from a judge. And 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:08.000 I was absolutely perplexed. I've never heard anything like this 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:10.440 because most of the reporting that I've done has been 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:15.560 New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, et cetera. So, 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:19.880 to cut a long story short, we went back to 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:22.640 Grace and said would she like us to obtain her 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:25.280 a court order so that she can self identify? And 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:27.559 she said yes. And the more I sort of began 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:29.480 to dig in with our lawyers, I realized it was 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:31.640 costing about ten thousand dollars, and I thought, well, what 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:34.840 would she do if she didn't have a news organization 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:36.480 willing to do that work? What would she do if 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:40.040 she just wanted to write her own Facebook post or 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:43.800 an autobiography? Would she actually have to wear this cost? 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:46.320 And the answer was yes. And for me as a 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.760 survivor myself, I'd gone public when I was twenty three 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:53.760 years old in New South Wales and that had been 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:57.800 a very cathartic and healing thing for me to be 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:00.080 able to do. So to realize that there was an 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:03.000 entire jurisdiction, and it turns out not just one. Both 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:08.280 the Northern Territory and Tasmania had these laws where no 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:12.160 sexual assault survivor regardless. It wasn't just child sexual salt survivors, 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:15.880 it was any survivors. They couldn't tell their story without 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:18.760 having to go jump through this hope and seeking a 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:22.119 court order. So I pitched the idea of a campaign 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:24.240 to my editors at news dot com dot a you 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:26.600 could let her speak. At first, it was just going 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:30.440 to be about Grace, and in the end, of course, 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:33.200 once we got Grace's court order, I then got flooded 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:36.400 with other survivors who said I didn't realize I'm living 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:38.760 in Tasmania or I'm living in the Northern Territory and 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:41.120 I want to tell my story too. So I set 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:42.880 up a go fund me and raised a couple of 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:47.240 one hundred thousand dollars and engaged Mark lawyers to progressively 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:49.400 obtain these court orders. And then what I would do 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:51.760 is each time we'd get a court order for one 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:54.000 of the survivors, I would then break their story going 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:56.880 public and we would then use that as an opportunity 0:09:56.880 --> 0:10:00.640 to once again highlight the punitive impacts of the laws. 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:03.640 And so I ran that campaign for three years and 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:09.480 in twenty twenty the various gag laws around Australia were 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:11.560 all reformed. So that was. 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:13.720 That was. 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:18.040 One of the reasons why I got the WALKLEYFF for 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:20.240 Women's leadership and for public service journalism. 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:23.240 Okay, well, full credit to you, because if you can 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:27.400 do something in the media, in journalism that makes a difference, 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:31.120 makes a difference to people's lives. With that campaign, how 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:34.160 many people came out that were called up in that 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:37.360 legislation that they couldn't couldn't speak out. 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:41.760 So in the end we ended up making twenty two 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:47.360 applications for court orders. One of the crazy things that 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:52.880 happened was just after Tasmania had reformed their legislation, I 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:57.439 got a phone call from another journalist called Scherrell Moody 0:10:57.640 --> 0:11:01.960 to say that Victoria had just introduced a gag law. 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:06.199 They'd gone backwards. And what was remarkable about that was 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:08.720 when I was running the campaign in Tasmania and the 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:12.760 Northern Territory, no one was defending the law. These were 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:15.440 old laws that were still on the books. They'd been 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:20.079 introduced at a time when no one had actually conceived 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:22.720 of something like the Me Too movement. No one had 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:27.040 preempted that survivors would ever want to be attached to 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:30.160 their stories, into their names, having their names attached to 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:33.080 their stories. So the laws had been introduced with the 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:37.120 idea that they were actually protecting victim survivors from exploitative 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:41.319 media who might try to harass or pressure people into 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:45.640 revealing their name exactly. So when we began the campaign 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:49.680 in Tasmania and the NT, there were no natural defenders 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:53.520 of the legislation. People pretty quickly realized, yeah, this is 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:56.920 outdated and it's time for reform. Victoria was a very, 0:11:57.080 --> 0:12:01.240 very different fight because the legislation was liberately introduced in 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:05.280 early twenty twenty. And the other thing that made it 0:12:05.360 --> 0:12:07.920 very fact is it made that a very different fight. 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:12.560 Was firstly, Victoria has a very long and proud history 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:15.280 of victim survivors doing advocacy. If you look at things 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:19.160 like the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:22.880 a lot of that was driven out of Ballarat by 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:26.120 survivors who waived their right to anonymity. So we already 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:31.160 had a very vocal group of survivor advocates down in Victoria, 0:12:31.760 --> 0:12:33.880 and then all of a sudden in twenty twenty, the 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:38.720 Victorian government introduces this legislation that overnight puts these people 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:41.560 back in the closet and tells them you can't continue 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.640 your advocacy, you can't be named anymore. And some of 0:12:44.640 --> 0:12:47.400 those people had their books out, they had autobiographies, and 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:51.000 overnight those books were in contempt of court. So it 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:55.599 was it was extremely different because it wasn't just survivors 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:58.199 had to fight for their rights. It was survivors who 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:03.319 had already exercised their to be public overnight was suddenly. 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:05.800 Gagged and have to justify themselves. 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:08.600 Yeah, and so that was very, very traumatic for them, 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.120 and it also meant that the government when we initially 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:14.920 launched the campaign and were contacting them about the laws, 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.040 they were very defensive and they dug their heels in 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:21.120 and it took quite a lot of persuasion for them 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:25.880 to eventually agree to overturn the laws. And when I 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:31.640 was going through there was one particular survivor, Jamie Lee 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:36.920 in Victoria. She her cases. It was a terrible case. 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:40.200 She was sexually abused by her biological father and so 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:44.680 was her older stepsister, and her older stepsister reported the 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:49.640 father to police, and before it got to trial, the 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:53.280 father murdered the stepsister so to shut her up so 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:56.959 she couldn't give evidence. So the father then went to 0:13:57.040 --> 0:14:01.439 jail for murder, and as he was approaching the release date, 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:05.840 Jamie realized he actually he doesn't have any sexual offenses 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:08.560 convicted because he only went to jail for the murder. 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:11.199 So Jamie decided, as an adult that she would then 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:14.320 give evidence so that he would be he would become 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:17.480 a registered sex offender, which then of course has different 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:21.440 implications exactly. So Jamie had just gone to court as 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:25.120 an adult to have her father reconvicted this time as 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:27.920 a sex offender, and was successful in doing that, and 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:31.560 her entire goal in doing that was so that she 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:35.920 could then publicize his name and warn people about who 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:38.720 he was and what he had really done. And so 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:40.800 while she was successful in the court case and he 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:43.360 was convicted of the sex offenses, when the gag law 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:46.600 was introduced, it meant that Jamie couldn't be named. And 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:50.480 one of the perverse outcomes of that was neither could 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:53.640 her father because they share a surname. So all of 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:58.520 a sudden, her entire purpose of going to court, And 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:01.120 keep in mind, this was back during code, so it 0:15:01.160 --> 0:15:03.680 was a very different you know, there were not a 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:06.080 lot of supports, it was a very different climate. So 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:11.480 Jamie had gone through this horrendous, horrendous series of events, 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:13.960 and when we went to fight for her right to 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:18.440 get a court order, we were then told that not 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:20.680 only would we have to fight for her right to 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:23.280 name herself, we would also have to apply for a 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:26.560 court order to name her deceased sister. Because at the 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:28.760 same time that the government had the Victorian government had 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:34.520 introduced the legislation gagging living sexual assault victims, they'd also 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:39.600 introduced legislation that made it a criminal offense for journalists 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:42.600 to name any deceased sexual assault victims. 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:45.920 Can I ask what was made evading Victorian government, because 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:48.400 it seems to be like swimming against the tide. What 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:53.440 evated them in twenty twenty to reintroduce that legislation. 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:56.360 We still don't know. And we've been through handside and 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:59.440 everything at the time, and there wasn't a very clear 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:05.880 justification for the introduction of that legislation. It was a 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:07.920 massive cock up basically, and that. 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:11.600 Call me suspicious, but I'm wondering why that was being 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:13.520 driven yeah, boor then. 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:16.080 You know, the only group that was actually being protected 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:19.640 by that were offenders. But we still don't have a 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.720 clear answer from government. In the end, they did so 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:26.760 one of the things that happened was because they also 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:30.000 introduced this gag on deceased victim so overnight it became 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.360 a criminal offense to name Jill mar or Eurydice Dixon 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:35.560 or any of those, and a lot of their parents 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:38.360 came out saying, what do you mean I can't remember 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:42.760 my child? You know. So when we made the applications 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:45.120 with Jamie, we actually kept getting knocked back by the court. 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:47.520 The prosecution were actually fighting it too. They were actually 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.360 arguing that they didn't think Jamie should be able to 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:53.480 name her deceased sister. In the end, we were victorious, 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:58.200 but it was a really it was a very very 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:01.520 different fight and a very difficult fight in Victoria and 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:06.520 the survivors who participated in By that time, I'd rebranded 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:08.959 the campaign from let Her Speak to let Us Speak, 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:11.679 and we also had male survivors join, so there were 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:14.240 five male survivors who we did their legal work for, 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:20.320 and so in time the legislation was reformed. So by 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:23.760 then I'd obviously pivoted away from reporting just on university 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:27.080 sexual assault and was now reporting more widely on sexual assault. 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:29.480 And as I began to listen to people's stories, I 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:33.760 realized that there was a much bigger story to tell 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:37.159 about the criminal justice system and how it impacts on 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:40.240 sexual assault survivors. So the campaign I'm doing now, which 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:44.000 is called Justice Shouldn't Hurt. I've been following twenty survivors 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:49.040 through their journeys with criminal justice since about twenty twenty one, 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:53.240 and you know, stepping through that process with them and 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:56.640 watching all the things unfold, which has been an incredible 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:58.440 by Yeah, yeah. 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:01.199 I want to break that down and get into that 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:06.280 before we moved past the University of Culture. There I 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:11.120 would imagine you taking a stand on it. How old 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:13.359 were you at the time when you were at UNI? 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:16.560 So I started UNI at age eighteen, okay, and then 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:20.840 I began I got a job in the department when 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.439 I was twenty three, So I started working there as 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:24.080 a very junior. 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:29.280 So what so that type of campaign in the university environment, 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:32.680 living on campus and all that. First firstly, why did 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:37.200 you decide to target that and focus on that particular issue? 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:40.119 But what was the culture of Was it almost like 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:42.320 UNIQ kids buring unique kids? 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:46.879 And yeah, it's is that I'm trying to get a sense. 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:49.879 So sure, because I wouldn't imagine it didn't make you 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.000 the most popular person on campus. 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:55.240 People would have gone what she on about? 0:18:55.480 --> 0:19:02.040 Because you're trying to change a culture thinking. So I was. 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:06.800 So I attended Sidney UNI. So, as I mentioned it, 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:10.879 So at age twenty three, I was sexually assaulted while 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:13.560 I was in my honors year and I went public 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:16.480 and so then because of that, I then got a 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.399 job as a tutor in the media department. And I 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:21.240 think because I was only a few years older than 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:26.159 my students. They saw me as someone Yeah. So in 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:28.480 two thousand and eight I had a student disclosed to 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:31.680 me that she'd been very brutally raped by Saint Paul's student. 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:36.679 And the following year I'd started my PhD. And she 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:39.640 recontacted me and she told me his name and so on. 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:43.080 She recontacted in two thousand and nine she said, have 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:46.240 a look at this, and it was a Saint Paul's 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:52.160 Facebook group called defined Statutory pro Rape Anti Consent, and 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:54.960 the image for the Facebook group was a T shirt 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:57.680 that says does this shirt make me look like a rapist? 0:19:58.359 --> 0:19:59.680 And all of the members of the group was Saint 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:03.080 Paul's students. And I asked my student, what would you 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:04.720 like to do with this, and she said, I want 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:08.879 to take it to the media because we've tried to 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:11.639 address the problems. At the time at the college, there 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.439 were all kinds of things like above the bar at 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:16.160 Saint Paul's they had a thing that says she can't 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:18.879 say no with a cock in her mouth. There were 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:23.520 chalkings on the pavements around some of the other colleges 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:26.000 with things like naked women saying every hole is the goal? 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:30.760 Just really crass, rape culture type of things. This was 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:33.720 a sort of tone of the time. So she took 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:38.280 the story and it was front page news about this 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.320 Facebook group, and this was one of the things that 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:43.760 really shocked me. What happened next was the people that 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:49.640 came out to defend and line up and excuse that 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:56.080 Facebook group were some very senior, powerful individuals. So in 0:20:56.080 --> 0:20:58.840 twenty eighteen, I ended up writing a report called the 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:02.320 Red Zone Report. We call Orientation Week or O week 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:05.200 the Red Zone because one in eight of all rapes 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:07.560 or sexual assaults will happen on campus will happen in 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:10.520 that one week. So sexual assault services like the New 0:21:10.560 --> 0:21:14.119 South Wales Rape Crisis Center receive a spike in phone 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:18.000 calls immediately during and then following Orientation Week on campus. 0:21:18.880 --> 0:21:20.600 When I wrote the Red Zone Report, one of the 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:26.520 saddest stories that I heard was about what actually happens 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:29.040 to students in the colleges when they blow the whistle. 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:32.080 You said before, you didn't think, you know, you thought 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:34.760 I wouldn't be very popular on campus. I was fine 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:37.439 because I was a staff member. I didn't live in 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:39.480 any of the colleges. I would go back to my 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:43.840 home every night. But these students of mine who did 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:46.800 live on campus, the stories that they would tell me. 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:50.000 And you know, if people read the red Zone report, 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:53.400 there's one one particular story of one student who blew 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:56.600 the whistle on what was happening in the Sydney University colleges. 0:21:57.320 --> 0:22:00.159 And she would walk into after she did that, she 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:03.199 would walk into the dining hall and sit down at 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:05.800 one of those long trestle tables that they have, and 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:08.440 everybody else at the dining table would stand up, turn 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:12.240 their backs on her and walk away. It was the worst, 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:15.440 the absolute worst part of this, and a trigger warning obviously, 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:18.119 but the worst part of this was so at college. 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:19.720 One of the things that they do is they take 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:22.240 photos of each other and they put them they decorate 0:22:22.240 --> 0:22:26.119 their bedroom doors in the hallways. And she said, after 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:29.000 she'd written some articles and she was studying media as well, 0:22:29.040 --> 0:22:32.639 and she had exposed what was happening in the colleges, 0:22:33.320 --> 0:22:36.040 she said, every Monday she would come back and just 0:22:36.160 --> 0:22:39.760 one photo would be pulled down off her door. And 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:43.480 she didn't know who was doing this or what their 0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:50.000 motivation was, but she knew that it was a psychological 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:53.240 dig at her and a sign that people didn't want 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:56.399 her there, and she said every week, every week one 0:22:56.440 --> 0:22:58.880 would be pulled down, one would be pulled down, until 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:01.480 the final week she came there was only one photo left, 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:04.400 and she pulled it down herself, and she went inside 0:23:04.400 --> 0:23:10.880 her room and she cut her wrists and she survived. 0:23:11.600 --> 0:23:14.960