Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective sy a side of life the average person is
Speaker 1: never exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to part two of my chat with Nina Fanell,
Speaker 1: who is an advocate for education and reform in regardless
Speaker 1: to sexual assault and reform and prevention. And Nina, I'm
Speaker 1: going to give up looking at my notes because that
Speaker 1: was a fascinating in conversation we had in the first
Speaker 1: part of Eye Catch Killers, and you made me look
Speaker 1: at things a little bit differently in a simplistic way
Speaker 1: of giving examples of how things can gave skew if
Speaker 1: and ethical bystander behavior, and the important role there is
Speaker 1: for all of us to make sure that we embrace that.
Speaker 1: You're clearly passionate about the work that you do, your
Speaker 1: advocacy for sexual assault victims, and all the issues that
Speaker 1: relate to the culture that causes those type of things.
Speaker 1: It's a personal story too for you when we sit
Speaker 1: down here, because you are actually a victim of a violent,
Speaker 1: violent sexual assault. And I know in speaking to you
Speaker 1: that I checked with you because I think that's important
Speaker 1: that you're comfortable to talk about it. I think it
Speaker 1: might enlighten people into what drives you for the work
Speaker 1: that you do and the importance of the work that
Speaker 1: you do. Are you comfortable to talk about the situation
Speaker 1: you found yourself in? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And thank you for checking so kindly and seeking
Speaker 2: my consent first. But yeah, definitely. I'm an open book, so.
Speaker 1: Shoot, okay, And I think on that too, and what
Speaker 1: we talked about in part one. If you've been a
Speaker 1: victim of a sexual assault, there's so many other things
Speaker 1: that traumatize you following it, and you need to have
Speaker 1: control when people would come to me to report the
Speaker 1: sexual assault I always gave them advice on these are
Speaker 1: all the options. These are all the options. I think
Speaker 1: you need to allow people to have that power of
Speaker 1: control on their situation and it helps in that little bit.
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk to us now then about
Speaker 1: the incident that happened to you? How old were you
Speaker 1: at the time? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sure, and sorry, just before we get to that, just
Speaker 2: on that as well. What you've just said of I
Speaker 2: think you know, sexual violence is a crime about power
Speaker 2: and control, where your agency and your control and your
Speaker 2: choices are removed from you. And that's why in any
Speaker 2: process that follows, whether it's a legal process or a
Speaker 2: medical process or a journalistic process, being given options and
Speaker 2: being afforded choice an agency is healing because it reverses
Speaker 2: that feeling of powerlessness. And so what you just said
Speaker 2: then that's perfect of providing people with their options rather
Speaker 2: than trying to control or steer what they should do
Speaker 2: or ought to do or must do in that situation.
Speaker 2: And for anyone out there, you know, if you ever
Speaker 2: receive a disclosure of sexual violence, what that tells me
Speaker 2: is firstly that whoever's chosen to disclose to you really
Speaker 2: really respects you and your opinion, but also that you're
Speaker 2: in a very powerful position to then help that person,
Speaker 2: and the best way is by giving them them options
Speaker 2: and choices and affirming what they decide is best for them.
Speaker 2: And yeah, for me, this is obviously personal. I was
Speaker 2: twenty three and as mentioned in the first half, I
Speaker 2: was studying journalism, media and communications at UNI and I
Speaker 2: decided to do my honors year in media. And it
Speaker 2: was actually the day of my honors presentation afterwards, I
Speaker 2: was traveling home. At the time, I was living with
Speaker 2: my parents in Sydney's Lower North Shore, and I was
Speaker 2: walking home down our street and it's, you know, a
Speaker 2: place that I have walked every day since I was
Speaker 2: very little place where I walk my dog, and I
Speaker 2: had headphones, phones in and I was listening to music
Speaker 2: and I can still remember the song I was listening to.
Speaker 2: And I had a man who I'd never seen before.
Speaker 2: I just the first thing that I that alerted me
Speaker 2: to the fact that something was happening was I felt
Speaker 2: this whack across my back and it was here a
Speaker 2: man had come up from behind and grabbed me. And
Speaker 2: the next thing I remember, he was standing in front
Speaker 2: of me and he was holding a box cut of
Speaker 2: blade with the blade extended, and he said, I'm going
Speaker 2: to kill you. And then he made a fist and
Speaker 2: he punched me in the face and I fell onto
Speaker 2: the ground, and the next thing I remember after that
Speaker 2: was he was on top of me, strangling me, and
Speaker 2: he he again. I remember he repeated the words that
Speaker 2: he was going to kill me, and I understood what
Speaker 2: he was saying, that he was going to rape me,
Speaker 2: and that he was going to use force and violence
Speaker 2: if I resisted. And I lay there and he indecently
Speaker 2: sexually assaulted me, and then I and my memory flashes
Speaker 2: backwards and forwards in different bits. I still don't even
Speaker 2: now I've had a lot of therapy, I still don't
Speaker 2: have complete chronological recall of what happened exactly in which order,
Speaker 2: which again I should say, is not unusual for PTSD,
Speaker 2: but I do. I did at one point then get
Speaker 2: a surge of adrenaline. And people talk about the fight
Speaker 2: flight fight flight freeze response. There's also the foreign response.
Speaker 2: I know now with the benefit of having some education
Speaker 2: around it, that initially I was in a complete freeze
Speaker 2: paralysis response, but halfway through the attack that suddenly switched
Speaker 2: and it was like a light switch. It just went
Speaker 2: like that, and I got this surge of adrenaline and
Speaker 2: it clicked in for me what turned into a fight response,
Speaker 2: and I began fighting and thrashing, and because he'd been
Speaker 2: strangling me, my throat had been somewhat you know, I
Speaker 2: couldn't breathe and it had been somewhat crushed. But I
Speaker 2: tried to scream, and I tried to yell, I'll kill
Speaker 2: you first, and I went for his eyes with my hands.
Speaker 2: I remember it as a scream, but in reality it
Speaker 2: was probably a horse or a very coarse attempt. And
Speaker 2: what happened was when I started fighting, he then stopped
Speaker 2: what he was doing. He and there was a moment
Speaker 2: and where it was clear that he'd lost control, and
Speaker 2: he then stood and fled. And the next thing I
Speaker 2: remember after that is being in a standing position. I
Speaker 2: don't remember climbing off my back. I just remember I
Speaker 2: was suddenly standing and looking down at my hands, and
Speaker 2: there were blood on my hand, there was blood on
Speaker 2: my hats, and I remember I do remember having consciously
Speaker 2: having a thought of I don't know if this is
Speaker 2: my blood or his blood, because I'd fought, and so
Speaker 2: I remember looking down at my body to see if
Speaker 2: I was bleeding, because I was worried that because I'd
Speaker 2: seen the box cut blad, I was worried I might
Speaker 2: have been stabbed. And I had so much adrenaline, and
Speaker 2: if you've ever had that kind of adrenaline, it's it
Speaker 2: was so intense that I knew that if I had
Speaker 2: been stabbed, I wasn't feeling it. So I checked my
Speaker 2: body to see if I'd been stabbed, and I hadn't.
Speaker 2: We found I discovered later it was just some defensive
Speaker 2: scuffs that had caused blood. But and then I picked
Speaker 2: up my phone and called the police, called Triple zero,
Speaker 2: as I was then running home, and I remember saying,
Speaker 2: you know, my name's Nina Fanel, I live it. Blah
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah. I've just been attacked. And they
Speaker 2: took the details, and I remember at the time on
Speaker 2: the phone thinking I need to be calm, I need
Speaker 2: to be calm and try and give my address and
Speaker 2: give the information. And the person who who was on
Speaker 2: the phone to me took the information and then hung
Speaker 2: up and I wasn't home yet, and I remember in
Speaker 2: that moment, I have never felt so abandoned in my
Speaker 2: life as I did in that moment, because that was
Speaker 2: my one lifeline, and I didn't know whether he was
Speaker 2: still in the area, whether he was going to attack
Speaker 2: me again, whether he was I had that kind of
Speaker 2: image in my head of you know, the horror movie,
Speaker 2: whether the hand comes back and grabs the person. And
Speaker 2: I called back and I said, you know, I repeated
Speaker 2: the information and said I think I've been cut off
Speaker 2: the phone, and they said, no, you weren't cut off. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and you weren't cut off. No, that we're sending someone.
Speaker 2: And I just remember thinking, I mean, I think now
Speaker 2: there's much better training and they know you have to
Speaker 2: stay on the line to someone until you get to safety.
Speaker 2: But so I got home and because this was all
Speaker 2: a few hundred meters from my front door that this happened,
Speaker 2: and I remember getting my key out and my hand
Speaker 2: was shaking so much. I couldn't couldn't hold the key
Speaker 2: stable to get it into the door initially, but then
Speaker 2: I got in and pretty shortly after the police arrived
Speaker 2: and it was the weirdest It was the weirdest conversation
Speaker 2: I think I've ever had because it was such a horrific,
Speaker 2: shocking thing that had happened that I didn't know how to.
Speaker 2: You know, the police arrived at my front door, and
Speaker 2: my reaction was to kind of play host, like would
Speaker 2: you like to come in? Would you like a cup
Speaker 2: of tea? Like, because I was like, how does somebody
Speaker 2: what do you do in this moment? How do you
Speaker 2: make sense?
Speaker 1: You know, we shouldn't be laughing, but I understand it's
Speaker 1: because people like yourself haven't had situations like that occur,
Speaker 1: and so your your behavior is understandable, weird but weird,
Speaker 1: weird but understandable.
Speaker 2: So they they took me back to the park straight
Speaker 2: away where and looking back, I'm so glad that they
Speaker 2: did that because I was still in such a heightened
Speaker 2: fight stage.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I was ready to get the guy, like I wanted
Speaker 2: to go back with them, and I thought they would
Speaker 2: find him and getting there, like.
Speaker 1: And I was go back and hunt him down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanted and I wanted to kill him like
Speaker 2: I was. I was angry, And I'm glad that we
Speaker 2: went back then when I was in that stage, because
Speaker 2: I went back with guys and by then the dog
Speaker 2: squad the dogs had there was a dog person there
Speaker 2: and other people. There were other police cars there, and
Speaker 2: I felt safe because there was all of this energy
Speaker 2: and you know there, so I didn't feel afraid. And
Speaker 2: I'm really glad that that happened before the next day
Speaker 2: because I think it would have been I think it
Speaker 2: made going back to that place in that park much
Speaker 2: easier than it would have been had I avoided still
Speaker 2: in the moment. Yeah, So we went back to the park.
Speaker 2: They could see the signs of the scuffle. My necklace
Speaker 2: had been ripped off, I'd dropped my university notes, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd been drinking a bottle of soft drink that was
Speaker 2: lying like you could see what had happened sort of thing.
Speaker 2: And then they took me to the police station and
Speaker 2: you know, for me to give a statement about what
Speaker 2: had happened. And I remember, because this is going back
Speaker 2: to two thousand and seven, so it's been a while now,
Speaker 2: but one of the things that I had a very
Speaker 2: good female sexual assault detective who came out that night
Speaker 2: and she was great, but I remember them saying, would
Speaker 2: you like a support person with you through this? And
Speaker 2: at the time, my mum was in perth on business
Speaker 2: and my dad was at home and he hadn't seen
Speaker 2: me because of the way the layout of our house
Speaker 2: is such that he was upstairs in his bedroom and
Speaker 2: he hadn't heard me come in and hadn't heard me
Speaker 2: bring the police in. We just I'd done that very
Speaker 2: very quietly and then gone. And I'd made that decision
Speaker 2: because I knew that if my dad was there and
Speaker 2: he heard what had happened to me, he would want
Speaker 2: to go out and probably kill the first person he
Speaker 2: found that looked remotely like the person who had done
Speaker 2: this to me. And I knew that if he was
Speaker 2: sitting there having to hear what had happened, I would
Speaker 2: probably self censor some of the more graphic detail to
Speaker 2: protect and and shield his emotional response into And so
Speaker 2: for that reason, I made the decision that I was
Speaker 2: going to report alone, which I did, and then they
Speaker 2: linked me in with the Sexual Assault Service after that,
Speaker 2: and I remember the Sexual Assault Service. The counselor an
Speaker 2: amazing woman. This was over at role not sure sexual
Speaker 2: Assault Service, so I very much credit with kind of
Speaker 2: piecing me back together in the aftermath. And the counselor
Speaker 2: is an amazing woman called Susan Kendall, and she said
Speaker 2: one of the first things that she said when I
Speaker 2: came in, she said, I want to tell you that
Speaker 2: this is not your fault. You're not to blame. And
Speaker 2: my response to that was, of course, not my fucking fault.
Speaker 2: What's wrong with you? I didn't say it was my fault, like,
Speaker 2: is that what you think? And she stopped and she said, no,
Speaker 2: I don't. But most people who walk through that doorframe
Speaker 2: do think it's their fault, and that really kind of
Speaker 2: it's always sat I've always remembered that moment because I
Speaker 2: remember being very offended that she had even kind of
Speaker 2: suggested that I might. Yeah, but then when she put
Speaker 2: it in that context, and I realized, like, right, that's right,
Speaker 2: Like people come through this door every day thinking that
Speaker 2: this is their fault. And I think that, you know,
Speaker 2: part of the reason why I, very very early on
Speaker 2: in the process didn't feel blame, self blame or self
Speaker 2: shame is probably because I grew up with a very
Speaker 2: strong feminist understanding of the causes of these crimes and
Speaker 2: that it's not a person's fault. But also, I think
Speaker 2: the other thing is is that you know, if we
Speaker 2: look at the statistics around sexual violence, most sexual violence
Speaker 2: is not the stranger danger stuff like I experienced. It
Speaker 2: is the family member, the friend, the boyfriend, the person known.
Speaker 2: And because my experience did fit that, and it's a cliche,
Speaker 2: you know, the stranger danger thing, but it's because it
Speaker 2: fit with that. I already had an available narrative or
Speaker 2: mold or stereotype to place my assault as rapist, yeah,
Speaker 2: and that this guy was a bad guy and that
Speaker 2: this was not my fault. And of course it's never
Speaker 2: the person's fault, but I I that night at the
Speaker 2: police station. They took photographs of my injuries because I've
Speaker 2: been punched and strangled and so on, and my hands
Speaker 2: and everything, and they also took DNA swabs. And my
Speaker 2: primary response after that was anger. And it's actually interesting
Speaker 2: that we talked before about the NRL work that I've done,
Speaker 2: and we used to ask the players to imagine a
Speaker 2: female friend of theirs coming to them and revealing that
Speaker 2: she'd been sexually assaulted, and we would ask the players
Speaker 2: what feelings she'd be feeling, or if someone's been sexually sulted,
Speaker 2: what might they feel, And some of their responses would
Speaker 2: be things like a shamed, embarrassed, so on, And then
Speaker 2: I would ask them and how would you feel if
Speaker 2: you'd been sexually assaulted? And you can see them like
Speaker 2: double in size, and they immediately go angry, angry, And
Speaker 2: that was my reaction. I was angry. And it's interesting
Speaker 2: that culturally, I think anger is often an emotion that
Speaker 2: we reserve for men, and it's not often it's not
Speaker 2: the most common reaction when you say, how do you
Speaker 2: think a woman would feel who's been sexual assaulted? But
Speaker 2: a lot of women do feel angry. They feel really
Speaker 2: fucking pissed off that their rights have been violated in
Speaker 2: this way. But of course, you know, and I should say,
Speaker 2: there is no one normal way to feel following a
Speaker 2: sexu assault. That was just my response.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's the division between the male response and
Speaker 1: the female I understand what you're saying. And yeah, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: isn't it the group of blokes or shame and yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm a victim and their responses.
Speaker 2: Anger and yeah, like you're And so where this had happened.
Speaker 2: It was the street that I lived on at the time.
Speaker 2: It was opposite a girl's high school. And I remember
Speaker 2: also feeling very angry that, yes, he had attacked me
Speaker 2: because I happened to be the person walking there at
Speaker 2: that particular moment. But had it not been me, it
Speaker 2: could have been any one of those girls, or one
Speaker 2: of the teachers, or you know, it could have been
Speaker 2: any woman. And so in that moment, I understood that
Speaker 2: this was not just an attack on me. This is
Speaker 2: an attack on all women and girls and their right
Speaker 2: to feel safe. And so so I went public five
Speaker 2: weeks after the assault. And part of that was because
Speaker 2: they hadn't found the guy. And I knew, you know,
Speaker 2: having studied journalism, I knew that if I put my
Speaker 2: face and my name to my story it would help.
Speaker 1: Had it attracted some media attention prior to you speaking out.
Speaker 2: No, No, So the police were doing their investigation. They
Speaker 2: had that I'd done the comfit, which.
Speaker 1: You might want to explain that a comfit is you
Speaker 1: would have sat down, don't provide the description of what
Speaker 1: the person looked like. And then then are you talking
Speaker 1: about being shown fatos as well or just a comfit?
Speaker 1: First up? When it's done the artists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they did the impression. They did the artist
Speaker 2: impression first start.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they all look the same look, sometimes they work,
Speaker 1: sometimes they don't. But I've jake sometimes throughout my career.
Speaker 1: How come this one looks like that one looks like
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, they all look the same.
Speaker 2: So I'd done, I've done the comfit, they'd drawn the sketch,
Speaker 2: and then they'd brought me in to go through the
Speaker 2: through these big folders of photos.
Speaker 1: Of fenders folds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he wasn't in there, and I felt like
Speaker 2: I would have recognized I got a good look at him,
Speaker 2: so I felt like I would have recognized him. So
Speaker 2: after five weeks, I.
Speaker 1: You told me is something yesterday and I said, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about it too, because I just think
Speaker 1: that these type of subtle things need to be understood.
Speaker 1: And you've said, full credit to the female sexual assault detective,
Speaker 1: that was very good. But when you were being showing
Speaker 1: the photos, there were two police probably detectives standing behind
Speaker 1: you having a conversation. And what was the conversation, So.
Speaker 2: The conversation that they were having, and you know, to
Speaker 2: set the scene, this is an incredibly stressful you know,
Speaker 2: my injuries had not healed at this point, and it
Speaker 2: was an incredibly stressful I'm looking through these images and
Speaker 2: quite scary to be looking at all these different offenders'
Speaker 2: faces and the conversation was about girls and the problem
Speaker 2: like the risky situations that women put themselves in, and
Speaker 2: how women don't understand the risks, and it was.
Speaker 1: It lacked sensitivity and awareness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in that moment, and you know, this is
Speaker 2: something I've reflected on quite a lot. I was it
Speaker 2: was so raw, it was so incredibly raw, and anything
Speaker 2: other than calm, compassionate support was going to trigger feelings
Speaker 2: of like that that they are victim blaming me. I
Speaker 2: don't think that was their intention. I think that they
Speaker 2: were almost that they almost may have had a benevolent,
Speaker 2: paternalistic kind of approach to young women or these poor
Speaker 2: young women they just don't understand the risks are putting
Speaker 2: themselves in. But in that moment, what I heard was
Speaker 2: them saying, this is your fault. Love, That's what I heard.
Speaker 2: And so I think, you know, it's really important that
Speaker 2: we do a lot of education and support for any
Speaker 2: kind of person who's working in a frontline role who
Speaker 2: might be interfacing with sexual assault survivors because the damage.
Speaker 2: You know, we know now that one of the the
Speaker 2: number one thing that impacts on a person's capacity to
Speaker 2: recover following a sexual assault is the attitudes that they
Speaker 2: hear on disclosure and if those attitudes are I believe you,
Speaker 2: this is you know, I believe you, this is serious.
Speaker 2: What's happened is not your fault, and I am here
Speaker 2: to support you in whatever way that looks like for you.
Speaker 2: That can have a really profound impact on a person's
Speaker 2: capacity to other whereas comments like oh you know girl,
Speaker 2: you know, like whatever the comment is, if it deviates
Speaker 2: from that, that can cause a person to shut down.
Speaker 2: And some people may not ever disclose again.
Speaker 1: Because the traumas happened. But then you've been re traumatized
Speaker 1: if it's not handled handled properly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I did you know, I did have There
Speaker 2: were people in my life at that point who did
Speaker 2: say unhelpful things like I had one one friend say,
Speaker 2: you have to admit it was pretty stupid of you
Speaker 2: to be walking home alone. There's no other way to
Speaker 2: get it, you know, like that's how I get.
Speaker 1: Home, idiot, what were you thinking walking on the street.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, lots of when my story did
Speaker 2: go public, there was a lot of you know, silly girl,
Speaker 2: she shouldn't have been wearing her headphones, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: The worst comment And again like, this was back in
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, so very different in terms of
Speaker 2: social media. Facebook. I remember Facebook, I think was established
Speaker 2: that year and someone made the comment underneath an article
Speaker 2: about me that said, what can I still remember? It
Speaker 2: was what a conceited bitch for thinking she was worthy
Speaker 2: of being raped? The guy just probably gave her a
Speaker 2: good bashing, in which case, job well done. And I
Speaker 2: just like, now I look back and go, well, that's
Speaker 2: you know, that's why we turned comments off. That's why
Speaker 2: we don't have open comment sections on articles. And I
Speaker 2: don't know why back then they didn't, but I still
Speaker 2: remember word for word that comment. And of course now
Speaker 2: you know, I can see that that's clearly a nutter,
Speaker 2: but back then I didn't. When I went public, I
Speaker 2: didn't actually have anyone steering me through that process. So
Speaker 2: one of the things that I do now when I'm
Speaker 2: working with sexual assault survivors who are going public for
Speaker 2: the first time, is I have a whole checklist, and
Speaker 2: one of those one of the things on the checklist
Speaker 2: is is there anyone in your family, all your friends
Speaker 2: who hasn't heard your story yet who you would like
Speaker 2: to tell before it comes out in the media, Because
Speaker 2: by the time I went public my I told my
Speaker 2: parents the very next day. I waited till my mum
Speaker 2: got home from Perth, and I sat them down at
Speaker 2: the kitchen table and they could see something was obviously
Speaker 2: very wrong. And I sat them down and I just said,
Speaker 2: I told them, and then I said, before you say anything,
Speaker 2: here are the things I need you not to do.
Speaker 2: And I sort of gave them a script of what
Speaker 2: I wanted them to do and not do. And they
Speaker 2: were They were great, they were fantastic.
Speaker 1: What can I ask? What were they?
Speaker 2: I said to them, I need you not to ask
Speaker 2: me while I was walking home alone, or what I
Speaker 2: was wearing, or if I'd been drinking, or because I
Speaker 2: actually had had a couple of drinks after unique because
Speaker 2: we've done our presentation, celebrated and sold and so I
Speaker 2: kind of went through, like I need you when I
Speaker 2: when that question had come up with the female detective,
Speaker 2: Actually that was quite interesting. She was as I said,
Speaker 2: she was great. She said to me, I'm going to
Speaker 2: have to ask you some questions. And some of those
Speaker 2: questions might sound like I'm blaming you, but I'm not.
Speaker 2: But I need to ask these questions. Clarification, Yeah, and
Speaker 2: she said, so, I'm needing. I need to ask you
Speaker 2: if you've had anything to drink tonight. And the reason
Speaker 2: why I need to ask you is because of Da
Speaker 2: da da da da, and by her putting that framing
Speaker 2: around it, then when she asked the question, I didn't
Speaker 2: take offense or feel slighted by it. And I think
Speaker 2: because of that, then when I was speaking to my parents,
Speaker 2: I almost adopted that of that script of saying, here
Speaker 2: are the things I don't want you to say to me,
Speaker 2: and here are the things that I do want want,
Speaker 2: which is I want to you know, I need a
Speaker 2: hug and yeah, so so yeah. Five weeks later I oh, yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the when I said the thing about who
Speaker 2: is there anyone in your family or friends, the reason
Speaker 2: for that was because my immediate family knew by the
Speaker 2: time I went public, but extended it. Standard relatives, for example, didn't,
Speaker 2: and so they were finding out via the front page.
Speaker 2: And that of course sets off a round robin of
Speaker 2: phone calls and panic and confusion about you know, should
Speaker 2: we be sharing this story, should we be like does
Speaker 2: she want us to call?
Speaker 1: Do we not go? So?
Speaker 2: Now with survivors, one of the things that we'll do
Speaker 2: is we'll we'll actually talk them through. Before your story
Speaker 2: comes out, you might want to think about who you
Speaker 2: tell if you haven't told everybody, But you also might
Speaker 2: want to think about putting up something on your own
Speaker 2: social media that guides people on what response you want,
Speaker 2: so that says to them, you know, ways to support me.
Speaker 2: You know, later this week you might see my story
Speaker 2: coming out in the media. Some really useful things that
Speaker 2: would help me would be if you share my story
Speaker 2: because I want it, because that shows people what you want.
Speaker 2: I'm you know, sometimes people might write, I'm going to
Speaker 2: be logging off for the next couple of weeks, but
Speaker 2: by all means send me a text message of support.
Speaker 2: Just don't call me right now. I need some space, so,
Speaker 2: you know, actually mapping out for people and managing people's expectations. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So with the I guess the process of going public
Speaker 2: and having some bumps in that then also taught me
Speaker 2: why I wanted to become a journalist who specialized in
Speaker 2: reporting sexual violence in a way that was safer or
Speaker 2: more empowering for the survivor that returned agency and control.
Speaker 2: Because I did have some journalists tell my story very
Speaker 2: respectfully but I also had a couple of shockers.
Speaker 1: And they're the bumps you're talking of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there were, but also just like little things
Speaker 2: like I remember one editor she she had gone around
Speaker 2: me to the police to ask for a copy of
Speaker 2: my police state. And when that happened again, because I'm
Speaker 2: so hypersensitized at the time, I experienced that as her
Speaker 2: disbelieving me, because I thought, why are you why checking
Speaker 2: up on my like and why not just ask me
Speaker 2: for a copy of my police statement? Why have you
Speaker 2: gone around me? And so I experienced that as her
Speaker 2: disbelieving me. Now, as a journalist with a different hat,
Speaker 2: I go, oh, she was fact checking like that, it's standard,
Speaker 2: But no one explained that to me in that moment.
Speaker 2: And so part of what you know, a trauma informed
Speaker 2: practice as a journalist is about is understanding things like
Speaker 2: why it's really important to explain every single step to
Speaker 2: the person of what you're doing and why you're doing
Speaker 2: it and when you're doing it. So now if I
Speaker 2: have to, you know, and if I was in that
Speaker 2: same situation now as the journalist, I would tell the person, Hey,
Speaker 2: I need to contact the police and ask for a
Speaker 2: copy of your police statement. The reason why I'm doing
Speaker 2: that is X, Y and Z, and in that way,
Speaker 2: when it happens, it doesn't feel uncomfortable. So yeah, there
Speaker 2: were things things like that. I also had one male
Speaker 2: journalist and this is astonishing looking back, and I hope
Speaker 2: you know it's an era. It's a marker of the era.
Speaker 2: I had one male journalist who interviewed me about the
Speaker 2: attack and then proceeded to hit on.
Speaker 1: Me, Hello, you're missing the point there a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that was probably the most looking about that
Speaker 2: was probably the most shocking thing. And I had one
Speaker 2: female journalist say, oh, she said, you're a pretty girl.
Speaker 2: You could take it as a compliment that he selected.
Speaker 1: You, and I just again missing missing the point completely.
Speaker 2: And I think in that moment it was because she
Speaker 2: didn't know what to say, and so she reached the awkward.
Speaker 2: She reached for something, and she realized as soon as
Speaker 2: she'd said it, how stupid, stupid it was, and how
Speaker 2: clumsy it was. The the thing though, that I probably
Speaker 2: learned most from that process of going public was, or
Speaker 2: the thing that I hadn't anticipated, was that when you
Speaker 2: go public with your story, yes, there are unexpected bumps
Speaker 2: that you that happened, But the biggest one was the
Speaker 2: amount of disclosures I received from other survivors, and that
Speaker 2: was the thing I wasn't expecting, and no one had
Speaker 2: actually preconditioned or prepared me of what do you do
Speaker 2: with that information? And at you know, all of twenty three,
Speaker 2: I thought it was my responsibility to try to. You know,
Speaker 2: someone opens up and they tell you that they're hurting,
Speaker 2: so you want to heal that hurt. You want to
Speaker 2: respond in a way.
Speaker 1: That's it's not empathy, just your small circle of friends.
Speaker 1: You've opened yourself up to so many people getting undated.
Speaker 2: So I was getting I was getting yeah, complete strangers,
Speaker 2: as well as people in my own life. And I
Speaker 2: remember like one of the things that happened was some
Speaker 2: of my high school teachers contacted me after I'd gone
Speaker 2: public and disclose their own experiences of sexual violence, which
Speaker 2: was really overwhelming for me, not just because I was
Speaker 2: suddenly coping with my own trauma, but now I'm also
Speaker 2: taking on all of these additional stories without necessarily having
Speaker 2: the right boundaries and frameworks in place. But also when
Speaker 2: you're in school, you kind of see teachers as that
Speaker 2: you know, you don't think of them as having a
Speaker 2: life outside of being that teacher. They're you know, they're
Speaker 2: kind of their existence and so to suddenly have this
Speaker 2: information was somewhat overwhelming. So again, now when survivors do
Speaker 2: go public, one of the things that we're working through
Speaker 2: journalistically is preparing them for what the impact or fallout
Speaker 2: might be. Also preparing them by giving them strategy so
Speaker 2: that if they do receive a disclosure, understanding if we're
Speaker 2: not trained counselors. You know, one of my beliefs is
Speaker 2: that anyone who's been impacted by sexual balance is entitled
Speaker 2: to the best to help out there. And I'm not
Speaker 2: a counselor, so that's not me. The best thing I
Speaker 2: can do is refer that person on to a professional service. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's a conversation that I now have with any
Speaker 2: survivors who are going public. If you receive a disclosure,
Speaker 2: it is not our job to play therapist. The best,
Speaker 2: most respectful thing that we can do in that moment
Speaker 2: is to help refer to a warm referral by all means,
Speaker 2: but which means, you know, helping connect that person in
Speaker 2: with service.
Speaker 1: So the experience that you got from from being a victim,
Speaker 1: there there was some other aspects of it there that
Speaker 1: in discussions we've had that the DNA samples taken hadn't
Speaker 1: been tested for what seemed to be an extraordinary time frame.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was. So they took the DNA
Speaker 2: that night from me with swabs, and I think it
Speaker 2: was about five I'd have to check, but about five
Speaker 2: months that had passed and it still hadn't been tested.
Speaker 2: And I in that the headspace that I was in
Speaker 2: at the time was like every day I couldn't think
Speaker 2: about anything else. The assault was in like replaying every
Speaker 2: day in my mind, and I wasn't sleeping, I was
Speaker 2: having panic attacks. I was a mess. And I remember
Speaker 2: really needing that answer of have they tested the DNA
Speaker 2: and do they have a match? Because if they do
Speaker 2: have a match, then they're going to go off and
Speaker 2: arrest the guy, and that means that I'm going to
Speaker 2: need to prepare for a trial. And so that's one course.
Speaker 2: The alternative is they don't have a match or they
Speaker 2: don't get any DNA, in which case I may never
Speaker 2: get justice, and I need to start making thinking about
Speaker 2: what does recovery mean? What does justice mean if there
Speaker 2: is no formal criminals.
Speaker 1: So it requires a different mindset totally.
Speaker 2: One mindset is about preparing for court. It's about not
Speaker 2: wanting to lose any of the detail. It's about retaining
Speaker 2: as much of the memory as possible, so revisiting and
Speaker 2: replaying the memory every day in my mind so that
Speaker 2: I'm not losing words or colors or whatever. The alternative
Speaker 2: is trying to make peace with the fact that I
Speaker 2: don't control the outcome of this and I may never
Speaker 2: go to trial, and I am allowing myself to forget
Speaker 2: or to I guess you'll never forget, but allowing myself
Speaker 2: to not obsess over the memory. And you know, since then,
Speaker 2: I've had a type oftherapy called E MDR therapy, which
Speaker 2: actually helps put some distance between you and the memory.
Speaker 2: And that's the kind of thing that you know, I
Speaker 2: could only make that decision that I was going to
Speaker 2: do that kind of therapy. I mean, this gives it
Speaker 2: away of what happened. But once I realized that I
Speaker 2: was very unlikely to get my day in court. So yeah,
Speaker 2: so after five months of me not hearing and wondering
Speaker 2: every single day, is today that I get the phone call.
Speaker 2: I couldn't handle it anymore. So I, and I'd been
Speaker 2: asking for updates and so on, and it just hadn't happened.
Speaker 2: So I wrote a press release and I sent it
Speaker 2: off to the media to say, you know, this is
Speaker 2: the crime. It happened office at a girl's high school,
Speaker 2: and the DNA has not been tested. And that's because
Speaker 2: of the nature of the crime and because of the
Speaker 2: fact that he represents a threat not just to me,
Speaker 2: Nina Fanel, but a threat to the entire community. I
Speaker 2: would have thought it would have been a priority to
Speaker 2: get that DNA tested, And so it was picked up
Speaker 2: on the seven nightly News. They run it as their
Speaker 2: lead story that night, and the following day the Premier,
Speaker 2: Morris Yemma gave a doorstop interview about it and he
Speaker 2: said that he had seen the report and that he
Speaker 2: was insisting that they test the DNA that had been provided.
Speaker 2: So that got tested within about twenty four to forty
Speaker 2: eight hours from doing that media story, and what they
Speaker 2: found was they did get male DNA, but they didn't
Speaker 2: have a match in the system, which was a part
Speaker 2: like that for me was it was helpful vindication that
Speaker 2: there was male DNA because it meant that no one
Speaker 2: could then ever I mean, like not that they could anyway,
Speaker 2: like I had bruising and all this, but it was
Speaker 2: good to get an answer and at least to know
Speaker 2: where I stood. But of course it was frustrating that
Speaker 2: they didn't have a match in the system, but it
Speaker 2: did allow me to, I guess, begin planning a little
Speaker 2: bit for the future, because I realized that as time
Speaker 2: went on and there were no leads, I had to
Speaker 2: begin to kind of make peace with the fact that
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to control the outcoming. Again, you know,
Speaker 2: I said before sexual assault, it's all about, you know,
Speaker 2: feelings of loss of control and powerlessness and helplessness. And
Speaker 2: to not be able to be in the driver's seat afterwards,
Speaker 2: and not to be able to control the outcome and
Speaker 2: to have to surrender that to the cops and the
Speaker 2: universe is a really hard thing to do. But in
Speaker 2: that moment where the premiere stepped in and said, okay,
Speaker 2: test this girl's DNA, I also realized I'd made a
Speaker 2: really categorical error, which is I'd only ask for my
Speaker 2: DNA to be tested and.
Speaker 1: Could have been on the platform.
Speaker 2: And looking back, I wish and this is probably what
Speaker 2: also so to seed in me to become a campaigner
Speaker 2: because I realized. I mean, look, I was so traumatized
Speaker 2: at the time that I wasn't thinking straight anyway and
Speaker 2: hardly sleeping and so on. But looking back, I can
Speaker 2: say like in that moment, I missed a campaigning opportunity,
Speaker 2: which was I should have asked for there to be
Speaker 2: a complete resolution in the backlog of DNA testing so
Speaker 2: that otherwise what's happened is I've just jumped to the
Speaker 2: front of the queue and everybody else has been pushed
Speaker 2: by one day in the qere.
Speaker 1: But the sad part on that, there's a couple couple
Speaker 1: of points. I'd just like to make the nature of
Speaker 1: that crime. What's happened to you that is, that's right
Speaker 1: up there with this is danger, as in this person
Speaker 1: could reoffend again. And I think I mentioned to you
Speaker 1: yesterday I worked on the North Shore rapist, which I
Speaker 1: think predated this attack. But he was attacking people on
Speaker 1: the north Shore at night walking home, just ladies walking
Speaker 1: walking home on their own. Graham Kay, his name is.
Speaker 1: He's been in the media a bit. It frustrates me
Speaker 1: that police can't identify that there's a serious matter that
Speaker 1: you had to go to the media and then get
Speaker 1: the premiere involved and then all of a sudden it
Speaker 1: can be done. I take on board what you're saying
Speaker 1: that was a campaign opportunity, but we would like to
Speaker 1: think that is done and that any victim that goes
Speaker 1: to the police that yeah, the world has changed in
Speaker 1: terms of crime investigation, DNA and forensic science is such
Speaker 1: a crucial part as a victim. It would be frustrating
Speaker 1: to you that you have to keep contacting and then
Speaker 1: had to go. At least you had the ability to
Speaker 1: go to the media. But could you imagine if you
Speaker 1: didn't have the ability do well or yeah.
Speaker 2: And the ability to go, but also the willingness to
Speaker 2: be identified, you know. And of course it shouldn't be
Speaker 2: it should never be on the backs of survivors to
Speaker 2: have to advocate for their own justice where you know
Speaker 2: that they survivors should be focused on their healing and recovery,
Speaker 2: not on having to hold this system to account. But
Speaker 2: it's interesting now in the work that I do journalistically
Speaker 2: that one of the most common concerns or complaints that
Speaker 2: I hear from sexual assault survivors about the criminal justice
Speaker 2: system are the long delays and the radio silence. It's
Speaker 2: such a common frustration. And again it's the reason why
Speaker 2: it's so traumatizing or re traumatizing to be met with
Speaker 2: radio silence and long delays is because it again makes
Speaker 2: you feel powerless. So it again puts you.
Speaker 1: Back in that that trauma, that.
Speaker 2: Trauma of feeling helpless and unable to control the outcome,
Speaker 2: which you know, I sort of look back at my
Speaker 2: career and I can now you know certainly that night
Speaker 2: it's twenty fifth of May two thousand and seven. It
Speaker 2: is the line in the sand for me. There was
Speaker 2: Nina before and Nina after.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask that very thing. How has
Speaker 1: it impacted on you? And I can see you're talking
Speaker 1: about it. I can see you actually processing your emotions
Speaker 1: as you talk talk about it.
Speaker 2: It's been a really long time since I have talked
Speaker 2: about it like this. This is the first time in
Speaker 2: a very long time that I've revisited the memory in
Speaker 2: a sense, it is there every day because it's just
Speaker 2: part of the back of my like it's in the
Speaker 2: back of my brain, and it's part of why I
Speaker 2: do what I do, but I don't often verbalize it.
Speaker 2: And it definitely was as I said, it was a
Speaker 2: line in the sand. But before that moment, my outlook
Speaker 2: on the world was quite different.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that was robbed from
Speaker 2: me that night was my sense of safety in the
Speaker 2: world and my belief that the world is generally a
Speaker 2: safe place. And so I do have PTSD and it
Speaker 2: does impact a whole bunch of things.
Speaker 1: But the.
Speaker 2: Aftermath of that has been I have tried to use
Speaker 2: it as a springboard and as the fuel to drive
Speaker 2: the advocacy, the journalism and so on that I do now,
Speaker 2: and to try to take what was essentially an event
Speaker 2: in my life that I had absolutely no choice or
Speaker 2: control over it happening to me, and I've then tried
Speaker 2: to use that and turn it into a platform to
Speaker 2: assist others or to draw constructive meaning out of something
Speaker 2: that was inherently senseless. And I suppose part of that
Speaker 2: is also because I didn't get formal justice and won't well,
Speaker 2: it's unlikely at this point that I've had to find
Speaker 2: what does justice mean for me? And if I'm not
Speaker 2: going to get formal justice from the criminal system, what
Speaker 2: does it mean to recover in a community? And how
Speaker 2: do I use the skills or the tools or whatever
Speaker 2: that I do have to extract justice. And for me,
Speaker 2: part of that is, like if you look at when
Speaker 2: I was doing the let Her Speak campaign, part of
Speaker 2: that was, you know, I'd met Grace when she was
Speaker 2: twenty two and I was twenty three when I went public,
Speaker 2: and it very much struck me that had my assault
Speaker 2: happened in Hobart instead of Sydney, I wouldn't have had
Speaker 2: that ability to go public, And so fighting for the
Speaker 2: rights of other survivors to be able to tell their story,
Speaker 2: for me, that's part of my justice because that's part
Speaker 2: of me getting agency back.
Speaker 1: The longer I see the world of crime and the
Speaker 1: things that happened, justice comes in many ways. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I also see how people turn negative events into not
Speaker 1: let the anger define them, but channel it into something positive.
Speaker 1: We talked about Thomas Kelly's parents and the work that
Speaker 1: they've done, and there's countless people that have been touched
Speaker 1: by crime in the most horrific of circumstances and turned
Speaker 1: it round. But looking at the work work that you're
Speaker 1: doing and the messaging that's getting out, the campaign you're
Speaker 1: working on, now, do you want to talk about that?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? So it's called justice shouldn't hurt take the stand,
Speaker 2: which the idea came back in twenty twenty two, I
Speaker 2: was contact by two sisters, Rose and Pipper Milthorpe who
Speaker 2: had been sexually abused as children. And they had and
Speaker 2: this was in Aubrey, which you don't know it. It's
Speaker 2: a little country town on the New South Wales border
Speaker 2: with Victoria. And those girls had told their parents when
Speaker 2: the youngest was age five. The guy was charged. It
Speaker 2: took two and a half years to get to court.
Speaker 2: And for those two little girls, because they were both
Speaker 2: going to be giving evidence, and because their parents were
Speaker 2: both going to be giving evidence as well, it was
Speaker 2: the offender was a family friend, they were not allowed
Speaker 2: to talk to each other about the crime in that
Speaker 2: two and a half year lead up because you know,
Speaker 2: as you know, it contaminate evidence, etc. So for two
Speaker 2: and a half years, these little girls were carrying that
Speaker 2: knowledge of what had happened to them without being able
Speaker 2: to speak to their parents. Then when it got to court,
Speaker 2: they ran into the pedophile of the offender. Like most
Speaker 2: people don't realize that courts don't have separate waiting areas
Speaker 2: of separate entrances, so they literally ran into the offender
Speaker 2: in the foyer. It was then the case was moved
Speaker 2: to Sydney, and so these little girls had to live
Speaker 2: out of their suitcases for three months for the trial
Speaker 2: in a different city, with their parents who weren't allowed
Speaker 2: in the courtroom while they were giving evidence. And then
Speaker 2: one of the little girls, she faced days of cross
Speaker 2: examination before a jury member fell asleep, and when the
Speaker 2: jury member fell asleep, the judge decided they had no
Speaker 2: other option than to release the entire jury and panel
Speaker 2: a new jury and start all over again. And both
Speaker 2: of the girls said that they left that system more
Speaker 2: traumatized than when they entered it.
Speaker 1: What you've just explained, I can understand, understand.
Speaker 2: It's horrendou And so for years that family were writing
Speaker 2: to the Attorney General saying this is not acceptable. And
Speaker 2: by that stage a program called the Child Sexual Offense
Speaker 2: Evidence Program had been developed, and the point of that
Speaker 2: program is to make court far less traumatic for child
Speaker 2: sexual assault survivors and also to massively reduce the amount
Speaker 2: of time so that from that moment of giving your
Speaker 2: first police interview to the end should be no longer
Speaker 2: than about six months, so that you don't have your
Speaker 2: life put on hold. And you know, it's horrendous enough
Speaker 2: when an adult has their life put on hold for
Speaker 2: two to three years going through the system, but at
Speaker 2: that age developmentally, to have those girls aging, you know,
Speaker 2: graduating from year five, you.
Speaker 1: Know it could be stunting them emotional.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. So this program called the Child Sexual Offense Evidence
Speaker 2: Program was developed and it was evaluated and it's been
Speaker 2: proven to be incredibly effective at reducing trauma. But the
Speaker 2: problem was that it was only available in two courts
Speaker 2: in New South Wales, being Newcastle on the Downing Center.
Speaker 2: And this is what we call post code justice, where
Speaker 2: your ability to access a program or a service or
Speaker 2: justice is conditional on the post code that you live in.
Speaker 2: And so for kids who were in rural, regional or
Speaker 2: remote areas, you know, it was tough luck. You don't
Speaker 2: get access to this program that's proven to be effective
Speaker 2: in reducing trauma. So the sisters contacted me and they said,
Speaker 2: we want to advocate for this program to be properly
Speaker 2: funded so that it's available in every district court. And
Speaker 2: I thought this has all of the makings of a
Speaker 2: really good campaign. The ask is clear, measurable and specific.
Speaker 2: There is a clear decision maker, and there is a
Speaker 2: clear evidence base that shows the program works and they
Speaker 2: have a very strong case study. My concern is that
Speaker 2: at the time that they contacted me, the youngest of
Speaker 2: the sisters were still fourteen, and I thought, ah, she's
Speaker 2: too young to go public. And in New South Wales, incidentally,
Speaker 2: the age is fourteen that you can go public. But
Speaker 2: I just thought it is such a big decision. And
Speaker 2: she wrote me a letter and she said, Nina, at
Speaker 2: age five, I was old enough to sit in a
Speaker 2: room and tell the police what had happened to me.
Speaker 2: At age seven and a half, I was old enough
Speaker 2: to sit on the stand and be cross examined for
Speaker 2: days on end. Who are you to tell me that
Speaker 2: at age fourteen, I'm not old enough to own my story,
Speaker 2: she said, Nina, she wrote. And I'll never forget, she wrote,
Speaker 2: I've been a survivor longer than not. This is a
Speaker 2: part of my story. I should be the one to
Speaker 2: control when I tell her. And they were the exact
Speaker 2: themes that I talked about. And they'll let her speak,
Speaker 2: let us speak campaigns, I thought, shit, Yeah. So, as
Speaker 2: it turned out, for a different reason, which is a
Speaker 2: technical legal reason, we did have to get a court
Speaker 2: order to name them, and I thought, all right, if
Speaker 2: we get a court order and we go through those
Speaker 2: steps and they still want to be named, because that
Speaker 2: builds in a calling off period, we'll do the paign.
Speaker 2: And six months later, when we got the court order,
Speaker 2: they still wanted to do the campaign. And by that
Speaker 2: stage they'd also the sisters had also told people in
Speaker 2: their local communities about what they were planning to do.
Speaker 2: They'd had school assemblies, they'd done they'd raised money for
Speaker 2: Brave Hearts with a bike ride, they'd done a footy
Speaker 2: awareness night, they'd had movie nights to raise money for
Speaker 2: Brave Hearts. So in that process they had told their
Speaker 2: community about their story, so they wouldn't be outing themselves,
Speaker 2: and they also had the other reasons why I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: all right, we can tell the story is they had
Speaker 2: full support of both parents, full support of their counselors,
Speaker 2: their lawyers. They also they'd also we did a lot
Speaker 2: of work with both of the girls' schools to make
Speaker 2: sure that there was support there. And so we went
Speaker 2: ahead and I broke that story back in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: and this was the beginning of the justice shouldn't Hurt
Speaker 2: campaign and we campaigned with the Millthorpe family really strongly
Speaker 2: for three months and in three months time the premiere
Speaker 2: at the time in New South Wales agreed and committed
Speaker 2: sixty four point three million dollars to expand that brilliant program.
Speaker 2: So it's now available because of the MILLFORLK family, that
Speaker 2: program is now available in every district court in New
Speaker 2: South Wales, which is a was a great success. So
Speaker 2: that was twenty three and then after that I thought,
Speaker 2: using that as a template for the campaign, let's now
Speaker 2: expand it nationally, but not just you know, court isn't
Speaker 2: just traumatizing for children, it's traumatizing for anyone who's been
Speaker 2: sexually violated. So and we know as well that most
Speaker 2: people who have experienced sexual assault in childhood don't report
Speaker 2: that experience until adulthood, so they're not going through the
Speaker 2: court as children. And this program was really only to
Speaker 2: help people who were still under the age of eighteen.
Speaker 2: But we know very clearly from the evidence that when
Speaker 2: you have a forty year old who is on the
Speaker 2: stand giving evidence about what happened to them at age five,
Speaker 2: you absolutely return to that psychology and the vulnerability of
Speaker 2: a five year old. So for the last few years,
Speaker 2: a couple of years, I've been following twenty individuals who
Speaker 2: made a report of rape in Australia to the police,
Speaker 2: through their experiences from war to go with the criminal
Speaker 2: justice system, to find out so in all different states
Speaker 2: and territories, to find out through their eyes, what is
Speaker 2: that pathway, what is it that their experience in going
Speaker 2: through And unsurprisingly, every single one of them has said that,
Speaker 2: including all of those who did receive a guilty verdict,
Speaker 2: they have all said that they left the system more
Speaker 2: traumatized than when they first entered it, but also that
Speaker 2: it doesn't have to be that way, and that with
Speaker 2: some of the things that were in the original Child
Speaker 2: Sexual Offense Evidence program and which have been trialed around
Speaker 2: the world and evaluated, there can be things that can
Speaker 2: be done to make that pathway less traumatic. So the
Speaker 2: new campaign, which builds on the original justice shouldn't hurt.
Speaker 2: But we've rebooted it for twenty twenty four and we've
Speaker 2: now made it a national campaign, so it's been hosted
Speaker 2: on news dot com dot Au and we're calling for
Speaker 2: all governments to invest in these reforms to the criminal
Speaker 2: justice system to make that pathway more streamline, less stressful,
Speaker 2: fewer delays, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Okay, and some of the reforms breaking down the reforms
Speaker 1: that you're looking at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, right from the very first step, which is
Speaker 2: that for some people anyway, is the forensic step. We
Speaker 2: want there to be so at the moment, sometimes when
Speaker 2: people are particularly in rural and regional areas, when they're
Speaker 2: presenting to hospitals, they're sometimes having to wait over forty
Speaker 2: eight hours before they can have a rape kit done,
Speaker 2: and in that time they're told not to wash or shower,
Speaker 2: So you can imagine how.
Speaker 1: It's degrading, just the continued trauma.
Speaker 2: It's horrendous. And you know, I remember not that long ago,
Speaker 2: I got a call from someone who had been sexually
Speaker 2: assaulted in Gosford. Gosford is an hour from Sydney, you know,
Speaker 2: and they this person had to wait over a day
Speaker 2: for someone for rape kit and someone who could perform
Speaker 2: the rape kits. So from the first step, we would
Speaker 2: and you know, there are other countries, like I believe
Speaker 2: it's Sweden, where any GP can perform a rape kit.
Speaker 2: You know, Australia's really far behind with this. So from
Speaker 2: the first from that first interaction with the criminal justice system.
Speaker 2: We'd like there to be better resourcing and better training
Speaker 2: through to what's happening in court rooms. There needs to
Speaker 2: be a lot of work and there are some really
Speaker 2: great initiatives that are out there now. Like one of
Speaker 2: them that I love is the Court Support Dog program, which.
Speaker 1: I saw that in the documentation that you sent, So
Speaker 1: talk us through that, because when I'm looking at that,
Speaker 1: I'm going support dogs. Yeah, okay, so that's some of
Speaker 1: the dogs. I know it wouldn't be great support, but
Speaker 1: these are especially trained dogs. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the court support dogs, they actually receive more training
Speaker 2: than guide dogs. They trained from when they're very very
Speaker 2: young puppies to remain calm under all circumstances. And the
Speaker 2: programs come out of America. They've had had it in
Speaker 2: America and Canada since about two thousand and four. And
Speaker 2: the idea is that right from at least in America,
Speaker 2: right from the first interview with the police, the dog
Speaker 2: is there to help calm and ground the survivor. And
Speaker 2: what they've found is that when people are in the
Speaker 2: presence of a dog, their heart rate slows down, blood
Speaker 2: pressure drops, stress levels drop, and that allows you if
Speaker 2: you think about the brain when it's in its trauma
Speaker 2: fight flight mode, when your brain calms down, you can
Speaker 2: actually access your memory, You have better recollection, you can
Speaker 2: access your memory better, and your speech functions, et cetera,
Speaker 2: those parts of your brain. So people are able to
Speaker 2: give clearer evidence, and that's leading to more convictions in America.
Speaker 2: With the program, they've found that there are children like
Speaker 2: if you look at what makes a good sexual assault counselor,
Speaker 2: they're people who are good listeners, who are non judgmental,
Speaker 2: and who have unlimited positive regard for the client. You
Speaker 2: look at a.
Speaker 1: Dog, bring out rover.
Speaker 2: They're good listeners, they're completely non judgmental, and they have
Speaker 2: that unconditional love which for a person who's feeling traumatized.
Speaker 2: And I remember, you know I talked before about my
Speaker 2: own case and how on the night of my assault,
Speaker 2: I didn't want my family member in the room with
Speaker 2: me giving giving evidence because I would self censor. But
Speaker 2: I grew up with a Golden Retriever and had I
Speaker 2: had a dog there, you know, I didn't want the
Speaker 2: police to touch me, but I would have really appreciated that.
Speaker 1: Warmth of Yeah, I understand, I understand it.
Speaker 2: So in Australia we now have the Court Support dog
Speaker 2: program in Victoria, but they've only got two dogs and
Speaker 2: what they're finding is that, well, they found a few things,
Speaker 2: one of which is fascinating, which is that when a
Speaker 2: survivor is supported by the dog in court, they take
Speaker 2: fuel breaks because they can get through more more material
Speaker 2: before there too high emotionally. And so because they're taking
Speaker 2: fuel breaks, they're getting through cases quicker, which is saving
Speaker 2: the courts a lot of money because you know, every
Speaker 2: time a survivor takes a break, the charge everybody has
Speaker 2: to stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they're also finding that survivors are overall, they're less
Speaker 2: traumatized because if they've been supported by the dog because
Speaker 2: of that calm, unconditional support that they give. So one
Speaker 2: of the goals of the campaign is to ensure that
Speaker 2: in Victoria there is an expansion of that program because
Speaker 2: it's I mean, like if you look at the American
Speaker 2: case study as well, they've found over there that there's
Speaker 2: benefits for everybody. The police have less burnout, there's less
Speaker 2: turnover if there's a police, if there's a dog running around.
Speaker 1: Look I'm not laughing because I was in a maximum
Speaker 1: security prison. Then they're training dogs as support dogs, and
Speaker 1: the way the dogs behaves and just to calm prisoners. Now,
Speaker 1: the way that the dog had seense if someone's getting
Speaker 1: agitated then would come up and just sit down beside
Speaker 1: their feet.
Speaker 2: Then and sometimes I was speaking a couple of years
Speaker 2: back when we were first introducing the program out here
Speaker 2: in Australia. I'd gone over to the US to the
Speaker 2: International Court Support Dog Conference and we'd come back out
Speaker 2: here and I was presenting to a room full of
Speaker 2: prosecutors and I was shit scared because it's a room
Speaker 2: for prosecutors. And I was standing there with a court
Speaker 2: support dog next to me, and I was telling my
Speaker 2: story and explaining how I believe the court support dog
Speaker 2: would have made a difference to me on the night
Speaker 2: of the police interview. And the dog Coop started licking
Speaker 2: my hand, and the handler explained and said, so the
Speaker 2: dog is trained to pick up on stress pheromones, and
Speaker 2: Nina's giving off stress pheromones, which is why the dog
Speaker 2: has started licking her hand, and that's to kind of
Speaker 2: ground me and bring me back into my body and
Speaker 2: to settle me. And it did. That's exactly the effect
Speaker 2: that it had. And I've raised one of the women
Speaker 2: whose case I've been following for the last few years.
Speaker 2: She's experienced extreme domestic violence and extreme trauma in her life.
Speaker 2: And I've had countless conversations with this woman and when
Speaker 2: I went to interview her for the campaign, and I thought,
Speaker 2: this is going to be really hard on her because
Speaker 2: it's you know, having a camera in your face is stressful,
Speaker 2: and talking about very personal experience of violence is stressful.
Speaker 2: So for the interview, we brought in the dog, and
Speaker 2: she had the dog throughout the interview and she has
Speaker 2: never been I have never heard her so articulate as
Speaker 2: she was, Like in all the phone calls I've had
Speaker 2: with her, she's never been as articulate as she was
Speaker 2: in interview. When supported by the dogs, I've seen it
Speaker 2: work first time. So that's I mean, that's just one
Speaker 2: of the reforms. But the other reforms are things like
Speaker 2: specialist judges making sure that there are fewer delays in courts,
Speaker 2: having witness intermediaries so there are people who help particularly
Speaker 2: children or people with complex communication needs, independent lawyers for survivors.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things, and I think that was
Speaker 1: under the heading I've got human rights survivors, victims go
Speaker 1: and the way what I was reading about it and
Speaker 1: it articulated it very clearly in that people were victims
Speaker 1: of crime attend court thinking they've got someone representing them. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah it's a prosecutor. The prosecutors not looking after
Speaker 1: their interests. The prosecutions prosecuting their case. You'll get some
Speaker 1: good prosecutors aware of protecting the victim. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: want to give more money to the legal fraternity, but
Speaker 1: there should be I think at some point in time,
Speaker 1: some legal representation that victims can get because the prosecutor
Speaker 1: is not representing the victims and that's such a foreign
Speaker 1: thing for them. They don't understand.
Speaker 2: This is one of the biggest misconceptions. So many people
Speaker 2: think that when you report a sexual assault, Okay, we
Speaker 2: all understand that the defendant is represented by the defense.
Speaker 2: The prosecution does not represent the rights of the victim.
Speaker 2: The prosecution represents the rights of the state or the communities.
Speaker 2: As the victim survivor, you are classified as a witness
Speaker 2: and you are there as evidence. You're not actually even
Speaker 2: a party to proceeding, and that has implications. It been
Speaker 2: things like you know, I've worked with a lot of
Speaker 2: survivors who have real difficulty getting things like updates or
Speaker 2: access to the transcript, which you don't automatically get because
Speaker 2: you are not a party to proceedings. So in other
Speaker 2: countries around the world, like there's there's a bunch of India, Japan, Canada, Ireland, Germany,
Speaker 2: they actually allow a victim to have their own lawyer
Speaker 2: present in court, which I mean, it's fascinating. I remember
Speaker 2: speaking to one victim survivor who said to me, so
Speaker 2: I went to court and I knew that he would
Speaker 2: have the defend the defense. And I said to them,
Speaker 2: you know, so the prosecution who objects if I'm being
Speaker 2: harassed or whatever. Well, the prosecution can object, but they're
Speaker 2: not legally obligated to because I don't actually represent you
Speaker 2: as their client. And she said, okay, so who does
Speaker 2: speak up for me? Who does stand up for me
Speaker 2: if something happens?
Speaker 1: Who objects?
Speaker 2: And the answer was no one, No one is. Legally
Speaker 2: the prosecution might, but they're not obligated to. And that's
Speaker 2: actually where the name of the campaign, the second part,
Speaker 2: the justice shouldn't hurt take the stand, came from because
Speaker 2: she said, who stands for me, And I thought, that's
Speaker 2: a bloody good question. And you know, we know that
Speaker 2: when sexual assault survivors. If you ask any sexual assault
Speaker 2: survivor who has been to call, why did you go
Speaker 2: through it? Overwhelmingly it's not actually for them. They're doing
Speaker 2: it to protect the community. Like they'll say, I'm doing
Speaker 2: it to protect to protect the next girl, I'm doing
Speaker 2: it to keep the next person safe. So they are
Speaker 2: taking the stand to protect us as the community. And
Speaker 2: so the belief of the campaign is to say, as
Speaker 2: a community, we should take a stand to protect these
Speaker 2: people because there's no fun going to court for these survivors.
Speaker 2: There's no you know, one of the myths I guess
Speaker 2: that I the you know, there are rate myths in
Speaker 2: terms of the rate myths that foster belief about why
Speaker 2: rape doesn't doesn't happen, But there's also rape myths in
Speaker 2: terms of media, and one of the most common ones
Speaker 2: is that people tell their story in the media for fame, money,
Speaker 2: or attention. And I can tell you none of that
Speaker 2: is true. That there's no there's no you know, magical
Speaker 2: leprechorn that arives with a big bunch of gold coins.
Speaker 2: When you tell your story. If anything, it costs survivors
Speaker 2: money to.
Speaker 1: Put yourself out there. You become public property then and
Speaker 1: you're not making any money from it in your life
Speaker 1: got a lot more.
Speaker 2: Difficult again, if you ask survival like every time I
Speaker 2: interview a survivor, the two questions that I start with,
Speaker 2: what are their objectives in telling their story? And what
Speaker 2: are their fears and concerns? And that first question of
Speaker 2: what are your objectives? Very individual some people it might be.
Speaker 2: You know, I've heard a lot of different things from
Speaker 2: I want to tell my story to raise awareness about
Speaker 2: the need for consent education, through to I want to
Speaker 2: raise awareness to about some reform in the criminal justice system, etc.
Speaker 2: What all of those answers have in common underpinning them
Speaker 2: is I want to tell my story so that it
Speaker 2: has some sort of impact and some sort of change,
Speaker 2: which means that somebody else doesn't have to walk through
Speaker 2: my nightmare again, that somebody else has a different out
Speaker 2: come to me. That's why it's driven by altruism. That's
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly I find that people who tell their story or
Speaker 2: people who go to court, they're doing it for an
Speaker 2: altruistic reason, which is to help other people and when
Speaker 2: I asked that second question of what are you afraid
Speaker 2: of again or what are the fears again? The answer
Speaker 2: is us are somewhat individual. But the one through line
Speaker 2: is I'm afraid some version of I'm afraid I'm going
Speaker 2: to be blamed or judged. And as a journalist, I
Speaker 2: can't lie and say that's not going to happen, because
Speaker 2: statistically I know it is going to happen.
Speaker 1: People make comments, people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the in terms of like trauma inform practice.
Speaker 2: As a journalist, the media is not a safe space.
Speaker 2: It is not you know, I know that by doing
Speaker 2: this interview, I'll probably get some you know, a handful
Speaker 2: of risks of emails that are nice, and I'll probably
Speaker 2: get a couple of wacko ones.
Speaker 1: You'll get attacked on something, yeah, you've said.
Speaker 2: And but the reality is is that survivors still make
Speaker 2: the choice to go to court, or they still make
Speaker 2: the choice to do the media because they make a
Speaker 2: calculation that the benefit or the possible good that can
Speaker 2: come from that offsets the risk and the personal risk.
Speaker 2: And it's always a personal risk. It's always a personal
Speaker 2: price that you're paying. So for me, when I you know,
Speaker 2: as I said, I didn't get my own day in court,
Speaker 2: but I have so much admiration for those who do
Speaker 2: go through that through that system because you know, if
Speaker 2: you win the case, you don't get you know, you
Speaker 2: don't get a civil payout, you don't.
Speaker 1: Gain another misconception life is going to be better for
Speaker 1: you when if you've got got a victory in court.
Speaker 2: And most people who do go through court, their life
Speaker 2: is on hold for two to three years when they
Speaker 2: do it. It impacts their relationships, their careers, like everything, but
Speaker 2: they're doing it to keep the community safe. So I
Speaker 2: think as a community, the least we can do is
Speaker 2: ensure that if someone is brave enough to go through
Speaker 2: that pipeline, that we make that pipeline as safe and
Speaker 2: easy and trauma informed as possible by doing things like
Speaker 2: not making sure that the cases don't drag out for
Speaker 2: three years, that they're done as quickly and it's some
Speaker 2: one as possible.
Speaker 1: The other thing with sexual assaults as well, there is
Speaker 1: a serial nature to it. Like sex offenders in my
Speaker 1: experience throughout my career, they don't stop. If they get
Speaker 1: away with it, there's a likelihood that they might reoffend,
Speaker 1: So there's a benefit in there in speaking up, going
Speaker 1: to court and making people account for their actions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean like like absolutely right, Like statistically
Speaker 2: we know that. And I remember going back to that
Speaker 2: question of why did I go public? And part of
Speaker 2: it was about trying to generate leads and solve the
Speaker 2: case and get an arrest and keep and within that
Speaker 2: keeping the community safe. Part of it was also for me,
Speaker 2: about me sending him a message of you didn't beat me,
Speaker 2: you didn't win. I'm not afraid of you anymore. Like
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm honest. I was shitting myself and having
Speaker 2: panic attacks. But on another level, I was saying, this
Speaker 2: does not define me, and I'm not going to live
Speaker 2: the rest of my life in fear of what's happened.
Speaker 1: And I get so much inspiration by people that have
Speaker 1: been victims of crime and then stand up and say
Speaker 1: this is not going to define me, and it's so
Speaker 1: important and it's quite inspirational. I find that when people
Speaker 1: adopt that approach.
Speaker 2: But I think that's I mean, that's the reality for
Speaker 2: me is, you know, and I'm conscious that there will
Speaker 2: be survivors listening. The reality for me is that someone
Speaker 2: else's choices do not define you. Those choices are a
Speaker 2: reflection on them. They defined the person who's made those choices,
Speaker 2: or they reflect on the person who's made those choices.
Speaker 2: My choices are what define me. My choice two you know,
Speaker 2: everything from my choice of what I eat for breakfast
Speaker 2: in the morning, how I parent my child, how I
Speaker 2: conduct my into personal relationship with my partner husband, through
Speaker 2: to how do I use my experience of what's happened
Speaker 2: to me without my you know, which I didn't have
Speaker 2: agency over. But how do I use it now to
Speaker 2: you know, as a platform for betterment? I guess Okay.
Speaker 1: If people want to find out mora or support your campaign,
Speaker 1: where can they Where can they find you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely so the justice shouldn't hurt. Take the Stand
Speaker 2: campaign is being hosted on news dot com dot you.
Speaker 2: You can also follow me on x formerly known as Twitter.
Speaker 1: I'm just it's a strange calling it expert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just at Nina Fanel. There's also a petition
Speaker 2: which it'll be great if people can jump on and
Speaker 2: sign the take the Stand petition. Again, what we're pushing
Speaker 2: for are really like other countries have been doing this
Speaker 2: stuff for years. Australia is a bit behind and there's
Speaker 2: no need for us to be so jump on sign
Speaker 2: the petition, give us a follow Thanks.
Speaker 1: Well, I'd greatly encourage people to do because I found
Speaker 1: it fascinating talking to you. I'm just packing up my
Speaker 1: notes here because there've been a total waste of time.
Speaker 1: We might have to get you back on the podcast
Speaker 1: so I can use the notes I've prepared to have
Speaker 1: a chat. But really, look, thank you for the work
Speaker 1: that you're doing. Honestly, the work that you're doing is
Speaker 1: so important, and the way that you're getting your message
Speaker 1: across is where people can understand that it's useful and
Speaker 1: people can relate to it. So congratulates on what you're doing.
Speaker 1: All the best for the future, and I'm sure you're
Speaker 1: going to keep making the difference out there, and you've
Speaker 1: made a huge difference in a lot of people's lives.
Speaker 2: So thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for your efforts. Now, thanks cheers. Well, just in
Speaker 1: that conversation I have with Nina, she's taught me so
Speaker 1: much about how we should view sexual assault in the society,
Speaker 1: and about changing cultures and the way that we look
Speaker 1: at things, how victims of sexual assaults should be treated
Speaker 1: through the court system, and a whole range of things.
Speaker 1: It was really impressive conversation and I learned a lot
Speaker 1: from it.