Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mother and Mia podcast. MoMA Mia
Speaker 1: acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters. This podcast
Speaker 1: was recorded on It's nine p thirty pm on a
Speaker 1: muggy spring night in Sydney. And you're walking home from
Speaker 1: a friend's house. You're still a good fifteen minutes away
Speaker 1: and just starting to feel nervous. Your sense you're being followed.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know you are in the shadows. About
Speaker 1: twenty meters behind you is a man. As you walk faster,
Speaker 1: so does he. The hair prickles on the back of
Speaker 1: your neck and you quickly cross the road, trying to
Speaker 1: put some distance between you. It doesn't work. He has
Speaker 1: crossed the road as well, and now he's closing in.
Speaker 1: What do you do? Keep walking and hope for the best,
Speaker 1: stop and wait for him to walk past. Just ignore
Speaker 1: the whole city and tell yourself to stop being so paranoid,
Speaker 1: or actually accept that you might be in danger and
Speaker 1: do something constructive, something that studies have proven could very
Speaker 1: well save your life. I'm Jemma Bath and this is
Speaker 1: True Crime Conversations Amoma mea podcast exploring the world's most
Speaker 1: notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the
Speaker 1: most about them. If you were to ask Brent Sanders,
Speaker 1: doing something constructive is the only answer to that scenario
Speaker 1: you just heard. In his experience, this situation is not
Speaker 1: likely to be anything other than sexually motivated. Brent is
Speaker 1: a former police officer who was deployed in riot control
Speaker 1: and did extensive work investigating rapes and studying the methods
Speaker 1: and psychology of rapists. For the last thirty years, he
Speaker 1: has dedicated his career to sex crime education. He has
Speaker 1: provided more than a million people with the tools and
Speaker 1: mindset to both protect themselves in a violent or escalating
Speaker 1: situation or avoid one altogether. He also wants his students,
Speaker 1: who are mainly young women and girls, to know how
Speaker 1: the law works, to know what the legal definitions for
Speaker 1: consent and drunkenness are, and to know where to physically
Speaker 1: strike someone if you find yourself in danger. Brent lives
Speaker 1: and breathes this world. When he's not teaching high school
Speaker 1: kids about life choices, he's hosting his own podcast, Crime Insiders.
Speaker 1: Brent joins us, Now, Brent, take me back to the
Speaker 1: start of your career. Was being a cop everything you
Speaker 1: thought it would be?
Speaker 2: Yeah, look it was. I joined the police. When I
Speaker 2: was nineteen, I was a kid. I was the youngest
Speaker 2: recruit in the academy, so I graduated as the youngest
Speaker 2: police officer in the country. I was in New Zealand,
Speaker 2: and if you told me back then that I would
Speaker 2: end up doing what I do now, million miles away
Speaker 2: from where my head was.
Speaker 1: What did your experience in the police force teach you
Speaker 1: about male violence and male sexual violence, particularly towards women.
Speaker 2: You know, in the police you don't just specifically work
Speaker 2: in that environment, but it certainly comes up a lot.
Speaker 2: I worked in a lot of very confrontational environments in
Speaker 2: the gangs. I was in the right police dealing with
Speaker 2: gangs and always around the fringes of that. You're very
Speaker 2: aware of high degrees of violence within those environments towards women.
Speaker 2: Sex crimes only really became a specialized area of policing
Speaker 2: in Australia New Zealand sort of late eighties, early nineties,
Speaker 2: which is wild. It is it's hard to believe that now,
Speaker 2: But that also sort of coincided with more awareness around
Speaker 2: criminal profiling, and that's sort of what put me on
Speaker 2: a little bit of a pathway to learning more about that.
Speaker 2: And it was a bit of a sliding door moment
Speaker 2: where I was approached having done a talk on profiling
Speaker 2: and sexual crime here in Australia, I was approached by
Speaker 2: a woman from the Education department. This is in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five, this is a long time ago. I remember.
Speaker 2: She came up with this big sort of Manila envelope.
Speaker 2: Wasn't even much in the way of emailing and things
Speaker 2: such as that, and she said, look, we're looking to
Speaker 2: team up with somebody with your background who could possibly
Speaker 2: help us put some courses together to go into schools
Speaker 2: and raise awareness around sexual crime, consent that type of thing.
Speaker 2: And she sort of gave me this very heavy envelope
Speaker 2: and I took it away. I had a look at
Speaker 2: and I thought, you know, that maybe something I could
Speaker 2: contribute to. But that was sort of the springboard from
Speaker 2: taking some leave from the police. I did my last
Speaker 2: talk on sexual crime this morning to two hundred boys
Speaker 2: at a boys school in Blacktown. So when I started,
Speaker 2: weirdly the education part only wanted me to talk to
Speaker 2: young women, not boys, which to me was always quite bizarre.
Speaker 2: And then trying to get into schools as a male
Speaker 2: police officer at that time, I came up against a
Speaker 2: heap of resistance from groups who felt that they didn't
Speaker 2: want a male talking to females about this stuff. I
Speaker 2: had situations where I had people physically trying to stop
Speaker 2: me get into a hall to speak to girls because
Speaker 2: I was a male. So you know, there was a
Speaker 2: little bit of resistance there, but I knew where that
Speaker 2: was coming from. It was coming from a good place.
Speaker 2: It wasn't against me so much. It was more like, well,
Speaker 2: it hadn't been done before. We didn't have ex coppers
Speaker 2: walking into schools and speaking to students about sexual crime.
Speaker 2: So when I first started doing it, a lot of
Speaker 2: schools weren't interested. They just wouldn't touch it. And the
Speaker 2: first school that got me in in Australia was actually
Speaker 2: a private girls school in North Sydney, and because they
Speaker 2: are a little bit more autonomous where the state schools
Speaker 2: were going, well where have you been before? And anyway,
Speaker 2: that school that got me in, I've been back there
Speaker 2: every year for twenty nine years. So after a couple
Speaker 2: of years, the Education department said, oh, we can't just
Speaker 2: have you speaking to girls, and I'm going, well, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: probably smart. So I started speaking to boys. I speak
Speaker 2: to as many young men as I do young women.
Speaker 1: Can you give us an overview of what that looks like.
Speaker 1: Do you have men in one group that you speak
Speaker 1: to women separately? Are they all together and what are
Speaker 1: you teaching them?
Speaker 2: Used to be separate in so much as that the
Speaker 2: coed schools that I was going into started saying, well, look,
Speaker 2: we want you to talk to the boys, but it
Speaker 2: was sort of never, well, we want a cab and
Speaker 2: copy of the girls session, because the session was originally
Speaker 2: designed for young women, because that's what the brief was.
Speaker 2: So when I started talking to young boys, I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about the same content, but I also wanted
Speaker 2: there to be a specific difference, and so I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk to the boys around choice, consequence, around peer pressure,
Speaker 2: around heartbeat decisions, how they can change your life, and
Speaker 2: a little bit of that was sort of going back
Speaker 2: to some of the troubles I got into as a
Speaker 2: young guy. So I spoke to boys about that. Now
Speaker 2: more frequently they're combined, which I think is good. I
Speaker 2: just ticked over a million students that have gone through
Speaker 2: my talk, so I speak to about thirty thousand, forty
Speaker 2: thousand a year, as many young men as young women.
Speaker 1: I'm curious to hear how the boys in particular react
Speaker 1: when you give them all of this information. What do
Speaker 1: they say to you? What questions do they ask you?
Speaker 2: They ask the same questions the girls do, to be fair,
Speaker 2: but often maybe from a slight different perspective. Back in
Speaker 2: the day, a lot of the girls' schools I was
Speaker 2: going into my presentation went all day. Now I pretty
Speaker 2: much do a presentation which is a couple of hours long,
Speaker 2: year ten, eleven and twelve. Primarily my focus is around
Speaker 2: putting the spotlight on what consent means, how consenters defined
Speaker 2: what sexual intercourse legally means versus inn a biological context.
Speaker 2: They know the slogans around an intimate exchange requires consent.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, yep, they all know that. But then
Speaker 2: if you say, okay, tell me what consent is, how
Speaker 2: do you know you have it? How do you know
Speaker 2: you've provided it? What if a friend comes to talk
Speaker 2: to you about something that they've gone through and they're
Speaker 2: sort of asking you, do you think I consented or
Speaker 2: didn't I? Where are you drawing your answers from on that?
Speaker 2: So leaving the police, I thought the last thing that
Speaker 2: students would want to hear in my seminars is legal stuff.
Speaker 2: It's ninety nine percent of the questions I get are
Speaker 2: legal questions, and it gives clarity for them. So we
Speaker 2: look at a term, say, for example, like consent, then
Speaker 2: I break it into its three legal components, age, effects
Speaker 2: of our colon drugs, and whether the permission was given freely.
Speaker 2: So we put the spotlight on those three. But I
Speaker 2: go from defining what it is to running it through
Speaker 2: real life scenarios for them and giving them really easy
Speaker 2: checkpoints around it. So rather than assuming that because all
Speaker 2: year eleven, year twelve students know a drunk person can't consent, well,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean they know what the test is legally.
Speaker 2: They've got no idea what the test is. So they
Speaker 2: know the slogan, but they don't really know what it means.
Speaker 2: So I explain to them how it's defined legally. Then
Speaker 2: I give them the practical application of that in a
Speaker 2: party environment or something like that. So I'm hoping that
Speaker 2: they can walk out with these key things around in
Speaker 2: that instance around consent. Consent is a very complex thing,
Speaker 2: but my job is to simplify it but still have
Speaker 2: application to the law. Talking about things like sexual intercourse
Speaker 2: without consent. I get disclosures every week, and it's usually
Speaker 2: young women. The bulk of them say to me, look,
Speaker 2: I didn't actually know that what happened to me was
Speaker 2: a criminal offense or what the offense was until I
Speaker 2: heard all these definitions. Simple stuff like the term sexual intercourse.
Speaker 2: I mean, they all have heard the term, but the
Speaker 2: definition that they have at high school comes from a
Speaker 2: biology textbook which bears no resemblance to the law. So
Speaker 2: just giving that piece of information, that opens up a
Speaker 2: whole lot of Oh my goodness, I've been through this,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know that when I went through that
Speaker 2: it fell into that legal category. A really common question
Speaker 2: I get speaking to young women is what if somebody
Speaker 2: does something to me sexually without my consent, but it
Speaker 2: doesn't go as far as intercourse. Now, people know that's wrong,
Speaker 2: people know that that shouldn't happen, But respectfully, most people
Speaker 2: would struggle to tell you what that offense is and
Speaker 2: what the ingredients are of it. That's the most common
Speaker 2: disclosure I get, particularly in co ed schools, often young
Speaker 2: women coming forward after my talk saying I had no
Speaker 2: idea of that unlawful sexual touching, stuff that's happened to
Speaker 2: me heaps without getting the malodrum about it. Each time
Speaker 2: someone does that in New South Wales carries a five
Speaker 2: year in prisonment term. I've had young women come forward
Speaker 2: say oh, that's happened to me every day at school
Speaker 2: this term.
Speaker 1: Does it surprise you the amount of women that come forward?
Speaker 2: No? No, not after thirty years. Yeah, doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 2: I'm more surprised when not too many come forward.
Speaker 1: Has it changed? You know you said you did your
Speaker 1: first seminar in nineteen ninety five. Are women more knowledgeable
Speaker 1: now more confident?
Speaker 2: I think so. I think there's sometimes a confusion that
Speaker 2: because we have more disclosures, because we probably have more
Speaker 2: cases reported, that it's happening more. I don't think that
Speaker 2: is the case. I don't think there's really much in
Speaker 2: the way of evidence to show that we have a
Speaker 2: increase in sexual crime against young women in Australia compared
Speaker 2: to nineteen ninety five to today. But what we do have,
Speaker 2: as you quite rightly point out, there's a lot more knowledge,
Speaker 2: and you know people can access all of this online.
Speaker 2: That can be good bad because you don't know how
Speaker 2: reliable the information is that they're getting courses going into
Speaker 2: schools currently talking about consent things which are appalling. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot of misinformation out there. I come from
Speaker 2: that policing background, and I've done this for a long
Speaker 2: long time, so I don't go outside of those rails.
Speaker 2: I think there is no doubt that we are seeing
Speaker 2: an increase in reporting, but I think that's indicative of
Speaker 2: an increase in people becoming more aware. Statistics would suggest
Speaker 2: there's no massive increase in incidences.
Speaker 1: A lot of what you do is actually giving the
Speaker 1: tools to your students, a lot of whom are women,
Speaker 1: about how to actually physically and mentally protect themselves if
Speaker 1: they're in a situation. And I want to address this
Speaker 1: question first because I can imagine it's been put to you.
Speaker 1: Some might say that the owners shouldn't be on women
Speaker 1: to kind of change their behavior and learn the tactics,
Speaker 1: that it should be on teaching men. Definitely, what do
Speaker 1: you say to that.
Speaker 2: I agree one hundred percent, but that's not going to
Speaker 2: help a woman who this afternoon is confronted an ideological
Speaker 2: view that we should come up with something that stops
Speaker 2: men from doing this. You won't get any argument from
Speaker 2: me I present to more young men I do young women.
Speaker 2: I've got a son and a daughter. Of course, in
Speaker 2: a perfect world, firstly, the stuff wouldn't happen. Secondly, if
Speaker 2: it does, we'd be able to address those who do
Speaker 2: it and they'd stop. Now, we can reduce this stuff,
Speaker 2: but we're never going to stop it completely. In my book,
Speaker 2: I put forward a lot of different strategies and things
Speaker 2: such as that based on the psychology of the type
Speaker 2: of offender that you're up against. I don't do that anymore.
Speaker 2: And the reason I don't do it anymore is because
Speaker 2: I've always walked this thin line as a male presenting
Speaker 2: on the stuff anyway, as a next police officer, you know,
Speaker 2: I've always been a very very easy target for people
Speaker 2: to push back against this, you know, and that target
Speaker 2: became even bigger in more recent times because, in the
Speaker 2: eyes of many, I had the audacity to share strategies
Speaker 2: with young women to help them get out of these situations.
Speaker 2: So I don't do it anymore now. The downside to
Speaker 2: that is that might ideologically make some people feel better
Speaker 2: about themselves because they've stopped this police officer going into
Speaker 2: schools and teaching strategies the downside is I taught a
Speaker 2: strategy for probably twenty five years to young women on
Speaker 2: how to get out of a date rape situation, and
Speaker 2: I never ever had one person contact me to tell
Speaker 2: me that that strategy had failed. Ever. But I don't
Speaker 2: teach it anymore because I got so much pushback more
Speaker 2: recently going into schools about teaching strategy, and that was
Speaker 2: then victim blaming. So I'm supportive of all of this stuff,
Speaker 2: but I know also working at the coal Face, that
Speaker 2: some of this stuff, even if it's done with good intent,
Speaker 2: the end result is detrimental to those who I'm trying
Speaker 2: to help see.
Speaker 1: I read through those strategies and felt quite empowered by them,
Speaker 1: so I'm surprised to hear that people have pushed back
Speaker 1: against you sharing them.
Speaker 2: Well, the only people who push back are people who've
Speaker 2: never read my book or never attended one of my seminars,
Speaker 2: but they're very vocal. But you know, after all these years,
Speaker 2: I just sort of thought, well, you know what, I'm
Speaker 2: going to keep going and I'm going to doing my
Speaker 2: talks and when people ask me about strategy, I say, yeah,
Speaker 2: I've got some fantastic strategies that you can have a
Speaker 2: look into my book.
Speaker 1: And things bring it on. There is a bit of
Speaker 1: advice that floats around a lot. Yes, with women, if
Speaker 1: you are presented with a situation where someone is trying
Speaker 1: to physically or sexually hurt you, to submit to them. Yes,
Speaker 1: Why do you think that that is a very bad idea.
Speaker 2: I think it's a bad idea in sexual crime particularly. Look,
Speaker 2: don't get me wrong. If I walked out of here
Speaker 2: today and somebody attacked me in a side street here
Speaker 2: in willem Aloo and one of my wallet, I'd probably
Speaker 2: hand it over to them. Now, I'm one hundred and
Speaker 2: five kilos, I've got no neck, you know. But I
Speaker 2: know the person that confronts me, he is a desperate
Speaker 2: person because I probably wouldn't confront me. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: So I don't want to make a bad situation even worse.
Speaker 2: So sometimes the best thing to do is the opposite
Speaker 2: to what we're told. See, guys aren't told to do that.
Speaker 2: Guys are told if someone fronts up to you monst
Speaker 2: your wallet, you'd stand your ground, you puff your chest out. Well,
Speaker 2: I've been in more physical confrontations and most blokes have
Speaker 2: had hot dinners, and I wouldn't do that, So I
Speaker 2: would never encourage someone to do that. Now, when we
Speaker 2: flick that over to sexual crime, why is my message different?
Speaker 2: Because the psychology of the person who selects you as
Speaker 2: a young woman to commit a sexual offense against you,
Speaker 2: the stranger offender, he is a totally different psychological study
Speaker 2: than the person who confronts me. See, I look like
Speaker 2: i'd fight back. So if I do that, I'm actually
Speaker 2: doing what they're anticipating. Nobody is going to confront me
Speaker 2: my size and think that I'm going to curl up
Speaker 2: on the ground and with my hands in there. They
Speaker 2: think I'm going to fight back, so I to empower
Speaker 2: them by not doing that. Now, if we look at
Speaker 2: the psychology of offender who selects you, and this is
Speaker 2: not an indictment on you, it's a reflection on why
Speaker 2: you're selected. You're selected by a sex offender because he believes,
Speaker 2: because you're female, you won't fight back. So you've got
Speaker 2: to start working from that psychology. So, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: you're quite right. There's been a generational message to girls
Speaker 2: and women handed down from their mums, which were handed
Speaker 2: down from their mums. So now we're back over one
Speaker 2: hundred years that the worst thing you could possibly do
Speaker 2: against that unknown sexual offender, who might I add as
Speaker 2: a very rare form of sexual crime, but it's something
Speaker 2: that occupies the minds of a lot of people because
Speaker 2: it brings to life what we see in TV in
Speaker 2: the movies. Ninety nine point nine percent of sexual offenders
Speaker 2: that are depicted through those services are strangers, even though
Speaker 2: they make up a tiny percentage of sexual crime. But
Speaker 2: I get that every woman I've ever met in my
Speaker 2: life has a desire to know what would you add
Speaker 2: actually do in that situation. So my approach has always been, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: let's look at the psychology of it. I get them
Speaker 2: to imagine, say, walking home from school on their own,
Speaker 2: car drives past slowly. Lone male offender in the car,
Speaker 2: you know, looks at the young woman, pulls up twenty
Speaker 2: minutes away, gets out of the car, which is making
Speaker 2: the young woman feel afraid. And I get to the
Speaker 2: point of saying, this guy runs out of the car
Speaker 2: and he grabs you, and he's taking you back towards
Speaker 2: the car, and I say, what I want you to
Speaker 2: do is I want you to picture yourself in that situation,
Speaker 2: at that moment yelling and screaming at the top of
Speaker 2: your voice and physically attacking your attacker, and then I
Speaker 2: stop it there. And the most common reaction I've got
Speaker 2: over the years of doing that is the girls will laugh.
Speaker 2: The laughter is the thought that they would actually see
Speaker 2: themselves fighting a back against a man attacker. It's like, yeah, right,
Speaker 2: as if you do that. So this is where we
Speaker 2: work from, right, because the way the girls are reacting
Speaker 2: is not through the experience of having been in the situation.
Speaker 2: They're reacting to their conditioning. So in any conflict situation
Speaker 2: you or I find ourselves in, we're not really responding
Speaker 2: to the situation. We've carried into the situation our conditioning.
Speaker 2: If you're trained to do the right thing, that's brilliant.
Speaker 2: If you're trained to do the wrong thing, that's not great. So, okay,
Speaker 2: this guy had hold of you, dragging in toowards the car.
Speaker 2: If you start yelling and screaming fight back, what would
Speaker 2: happen to the guy? What would he become? And they
Speaker 2: all like or get more angry, So there's our first barrier.
Speaker 2: Next thing I say is if the guy does get
Speaker 2: more angry because of how you respond, will that increase
Speaker 2: or decrease the likelihood of him physically hurting you. Now
Speaker 2: they're also a little increase. It's obvious he's an aggressive,
Speaker 2: angry person and he's violent. He's going to become more violent.
Speaker 2: Then the third thing I says, if you respond in
Speaker 2: a way that you believe will make this guy more
Speaker 2: angry and that will increase the lightlihood of you getting hurt,
Speaker 2: would you say that the situation for you as a
Speaker 2: result of that response is going to get better or worse?
Speaker 2: That will say, well, worse. So that just explains why
Speaker 2: so many don't fight back. All I've got them to
Speaker 2: do is to tell me what they've been conditioned to believe. Now, interestingly,
Speaker 2: if you look at any studies on this, the success
Speaker 2: rate of women yelling and screaming and fighting back against
Speaker 2: unarmed sex offenders is over ninety percent. You couldn't find
Speaker 2: a study that would dispute that. All the research, all
Speaker 2: the study, all the psychology provides the totally different information
Speaker 2: and knowledge than conditioning, because where do people get their
Speaker 2: conditioning from? TV? Movies? So what I do is I'll say, okay,
Speaker 2: let's break this down. When that guy drives past you
Speaker 2: and sees you, why does he stop the car and
Speaker 2: get out? And sometimes I'll say, do you reckon? If
Speaker 2: I was walking down the street, that guy would stop
Speaker 2: and confront me, and they'll laugh, of course, not what
Speaker 2: do I look like I do? Or you'd look like
Speaker 2: you'd fight back. So it's interesting here, isn't it. They're
Speaker 2: saying the reason he'll drive away from you is you
Speaker 2: look like you'll defend yourself. The reason he selects them
Speaker 2: is they look like they won't and then they're told
Speaker 2: not to. You can just see these lights going on
Speaker 2: like this, Hang on, I've been sold a bit of
Speaker 2: a lemon here, you know. I take them into the
Speaker 2: mind of the offender, and I said that offender's driving
Speaker 2: around a car looking for an ideal target. This is
Speaker 2: what they say when you interview them. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: looking for somebody who will follow the script that I've
Speaker 2: written for them, so he will select only somebody who
Speaker 2: he believes will offer no resistance. And I'll say something
Speaker 2: like with the sex offenders I've interviewed that I've written
Speaker 2: books about and what have you. If he had a
Speaker 2: crystal ball on the dashboard of his car and he
Speaker 2: drove past you, and he looked into the crystal ball,
Speaker 2: and he could see how you would respond if he
Speaker 2: saw you yelling, screaming, running, fighting back. Every single offender
Speaker 2: I have ever interviewed keep on driving. But he doesn't
Speaker 2: see that. He sees you as being somebody who will
Speaker 2: probably submit. Now, these girls and women are told that's
Speaker 2: the safest option. Now, it's an option if a guy
Speaker 2: produces a weapon police are trained to submit to talking about.
Speaker 2: But sex offenders in Australia hardly ever carry weapons. So
Speaker 2: it's breaking all that down. And it's not actually even
Speaker 2: me telling the audience what they should and shouldn't do.
Speaker 2: It's just presenting them with information that they didn't have.
Speaker 2: So you've got four options when that guy jumps out
Speaker 2: of the car. You can be submissive. That gives you
Speaker 2: no chance. You can yell and scream. That'll work probably
Speaker 2: fifty percent of the time. If you combine yelling and
Speaker 2: screaming with physical confrontation, your success rates so high you'd
Speaker 2: be hard pressed finding anyone who's done it who hasn't
Speaker 2: got away.
Speaker 1: So why aren't more people teaching us this?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: You're right. I had a light bulb moment when I
Speaker 1: read and I went, why on earth would I just
Speaker 1: happily get into a car with someone who is trying.
Speaker 2: Because you've been conditioned to believe anything else will make
Speaker 2: it worse. But then you've got to stop and go, Okay,
Speaker 2: that person who's put me into that car, what are
Speaker 2: his intentions? See, I'm going to say to that young woman,
Speaker 2: you're in the can't get worse basket? You're there? Yeah,
Speaker 2: Now can I just stay? Also, the better option than
Speaker 2: yelling and screaming and fighting back is running. If you
Speaker 2: can run, you run, you run, you yell, you scream,
Speaker 2: you get to somewhere where there's people. Because these guys
Speaker 2: are terrified. They're terrified to getting caught, absolutely paranoid to
Speaker 2: getting caught, and they're totally unprepared for anything other than submission.
Speaker 2: So running is the best option. But we have to
Speaker 2: accept that there are some circumstances where young women have
Speaker 2: said I was grabbed, I couldn't run, It wasn't an option.
Speaker 2: If running is not available, the next best option, well,
Speaker 2: what is it? Submission? That would be disputed by every
Speaker 2: study ever done on rape psychology as a strategy that
Speaker 2: anything more than make the situation worse. So anything is
Speaker 2: better than that.
Speaker 1: You're listening to true crime conversations with me Jemma Bath.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with Brent Sanders about how to protect yourself
Speaker 1: from sexual crime. Up next, we break down what consent
Speaker 1: actually means. I want to give listeners a real life
Speaker 1: example because it's so easy to say all the studies
Speaker 1: say it doesn't work, but you actually give real life examples.
Speaker 1: Ted Bundy, there's a serial rapist in New Zealand by
Speaker 1: the names.
Speaker 2: Of Joseph Thompson.
Speaker 1: Can you take us through what he did, because it's
Speaker 1: proof that this is true.
Speaker 2: I just give more the information and you would not
Speaker 2: find a serial sex offender that's been profiled since Albert DeSalvo.
Speaker 2: He was the first ever profiled sex offender. He raped
Speaker 2: and murdered a dozen or more women between c. Next
Speaker 2: two and sixty four. Was arrested in charge. But you
Speaker 2: know he was interviewed by homicide detects because in the
Speaker 2: sixties there were no sex crimes detectors. There was a
Speaker 2: book written about him, The Boston Strangler. I quote that
Speaker 2: book in my book because it's the first ever book
Speaker 2: written about a serial rapist. He's the first one ever studied.
Speaker 2: And as I read through that book, there were things
Speaker 2: jumping off the page at me, because they're the same
Speaker 2: as if I sat down and interviewed a sex offender today.
Speaker 2: One of the classic quotes from him is he was asked,
Speaker 2: how many women do you believe you've attacked in your lifetime?
Speaker 2: And he said, oh, I couldn't tell you. I don't know.
Speaker 2: So I committed my kim my first rate when I
Speaker 2: was sixteen, So I remember that one like it was yesterday.
Speaker 2: I remember everything about it. He said. Since then, some
Speaker 2: days I won't attack any girls and women. Some days
Speaker 2: I might attacked two or three. Then he was asked
Speaker 2: about those that he attacked, those that he didn't, and stuff,
Speaker 2: and he basically in one of the statements he said,
Speaker 2: I can't tell you how many girls and women I've selected.
Speaker 2: He said, what I can tell you of all the
Speaker 2: women I selected, the only ones who I didn't rate
Speaker 2: were the ones who fought back. Now, there wouldn't have
Speaker 2: been too many women who would have been told to
Speaker 2: do anything other than to do exactly what this guy wants.
Speaker 2: Following his arrest, he said he was killing his victims.
Speaker 2: The only ones I ran away from were the ones
Speaker 2: who fought back then you come forward, like you say.
Speaker 2: Joseph Thompson. Joseph Thompson was a New Zealand offender who
Speaker 2: I profiled. He was an offender in his thirties or nearly.
Speaker 2: All of his targets were young school girls. So he
Speaker 2: was asked in an interview why do you attack so
Speaker 2: many school girls? And he just he shrugged his shoulder
Speaker 2: and says, oh, because school girls don't fight back. What
Speaker 2: do you think I picked school girls? You look at
Speaker 2: some of these other offenders that I've worked with, and
Speaker 2: they all make these same comments. There's no exception. Now,
Speaker 2: we can't say with absolute certainty what will happen every
Speaker 2: time one of these type offenders attacks every one of
Speaker 2: their targets. But what we can do is look at
Speaker 2: all the studies, all the research from fifty odd years ago,
Speaker 2: nearly sixty years ago coming forward, and you won't find
Speaker 2: any much in the way discrepancy. Here. You mentioned Ted Bundy.
Speaker 2: The woman who gave evidence against Ted Bundy was the
Speaker 2: only one who survived.
Speaker 1: And she fought Bash.
Speaker 2: She fought back cat and Or he had a one
Speaker 2: handcuff on her and her father was a police officer,
Speaker 2: and she started to sust that he wasn't a police
Speaker 2: officer because he made himself out to be. You know,
Speaker 2: Bundy's just another example, and I mean Bundy was a
Speaker 2: serial killer, where most sex offenders don't get to that.
Speaker 2: But that is a line of continuum that they will
Speaker 2: go down eventually. We don't get as many now because
Speaker 2: our investigative techniques are so much better, we can get
Speaker 2: them before it gets to that point.
Speaker 1: You mentioned earlier that you had a strategy for date rate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can you share it with us? I can. The
Speaker 2: problem is the brevity of the time that we have
Speaker 2: to share it, because it's going to come across as
Speaker 2: been quite bisarre. Have you read it?
Speaker 1: You read it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's total reverse psychology.
Speaker 1: It goes against everything you've described it does.
Speaker 2: But what do you think when you read it? What
Speaker 2: did you think it made sense?
Speaker 1: Because in a date rape scenario, you likely know that
Speaker 1: person on some kind of level. You've had a few
Speaker 1: dates with them, they're an acquaintance. You've been put in
Speaker 1: a scenario where it's escalating to a point you don't
Speaker 1: want it to, and so to turn around and yell
Speaker 1: and scream doesn't feel like the right thing to do
Speaker 1: in that moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the strategy in the date rape is different,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In a date rape, the aggression is linked to the
Speaker 2: word no. Now I'm not condaining, I'm not saying that's okay.
Speaker 2: But young women who go through these type of sexual
Speaker 2: crimes where they have a sexual offense commit against them
Speaker 2: by someone you know, they've met at a party, or
Speaker 2: they've knowne or what have you. Everything's going along swimmingly
Speaker 2: until the women say no. And it's something about that
Speaker 2: word no that makes the guy aggressive. And it's because
Speaker 2: again time probably permits us from gameless too deeply. It's
Speaker 2: because the word no challenges his belief that he was
Speaker 2: going to get what he thinks he's entitled to get. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so if you keep saying no, it can increase
Speaker 2: the aggression in that scenario. And I get that. The
Speaker 2: thing in a date rape, though, and behind it is
Speaker 2: a belief that he believes within himself that you'll probably
Speaker 2: change your mind. See that is not a psychology present
Speaker 2: with a serial sex offender. He doesn't care less for you.
Speaker 2: That's not on his radar. The date rapist guy, he's
Speaker 2: the word no. It's not ful no. And when that
Speaker 2: leads to aggression. It's because he thinks he's entitled to
Speaker 2: put pressure on you to get you to stop saying
Speaker 2: no and to say what yes. So when he hears yes,
Speaker 2: what happens to aggression? Will it increase or decrease? It'll
Speaker 2: decrease because he's one, right, So it's that psychology playing
Speaker 2: a part again there. So now he thinks he's one.
Speaker 2: Now he's calmed down. You're in a much better situation
Speaker 2: to get from where you are to somewhere safer now
Speaker 2: that his defenses have been lowered. And so the component
Speaker 2: there is I don't say you don't say no. You
Speaker 2: say no, and you keep saying no until such time
Speaker 2: as you're like full, this is actually getting worse and
Speaker 2: I'm not going to get out of this saying no. Well,
Speaker 2: if saying no's making them angry, saying yes is the
Speaker 2: opposite to no. Saying yes can often make the angry
Speaker 2: guy here. Oh hang on, listen, listen, listen. She's keen.
Speaker 2: She's keen. Pull back, pull back what you've won. So
Speaker 2: then often comes a oh sorry, sorry, sorry, yeah I
Speaker 2: got a bit aggressive there. Yeah. Yeah, Now you're in
Speaker 2: a position where you've built yourself a good platform to
Speaker 2: get from where you are to somewhere safe.
Speaker 1: I can imagine that some girls and women would say,
Speaker 1: but if I say yes and I want to take
Speaker 1: this to court, he'll use that against me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do, which is great. I want them to
Speaker 2: say that, because that's based on the assumption that when
Speaker 2: you say yes, you've consented. My response to that is
Speaker 2: the word yes doesn't appear in any legal definition of consent.
Speaker 2: But it's a misheld belief that if you utter the
Speaker 2: word yes, you've consented. We'll go to the law and
Speaker 2: show me where that's in consent. He just doesn't even
Speaker 2: get a mention unconsent. Law consent says for you to consent,
Speaker 2: you must give your permission or change your mind freely
Speaker 2: without being subjected to any form of threats, force, violence,
Speaker 2: coercional manipulation. So that strategy is employed as a result
Speaker 2: of saying no and being subjected to what threats? Of course?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so many girls wouldn't for that reason.
Speaker 2: Well that's it. But then when they know that, it's like, ah,
Speaker 2: you've removed another one of those barriers. I spoke to
Speaker 2: just under two hundred boys this morning. Yeah, twelve boys
Speaker 2: school I've been going into for many, many years, and
Speaker 2: these are knock around blokes, you know, big football school,
Speaker 2: the whole one yards. You can't go in there with
Speaker 2: a big stick and crack them over the head and
Speaker 2: say sit down, shut up, because you're all males, you're
Speaker 2: all misogynists, you're all suffering from tosk at masculine. So
Speaker 2: listen to me, because I'll get up on the walkout.
Speaker 2: Because most young men I've met in my life a
Speaker 2: decent human beings, most of them, but some of them aren't.
Speaker 2: But you can't treat all of them like they're bad.
Speaker 2: So you've got to have respet back for the audience
Speaker 2: when you're talking to them. And if you do that,
Speaker 2: then they come forward and they going, oh, this is good.
Speaker 2: No one's ever told us this, no one's ever approached
Speaker 2: it from this perspective. And one of the things I
Speaker 2: said today, I said, now, boys, let's say you were
Speaker 2: to be with somebody having an intimate exchange at the weekend,
Speaker 2: whether that's male to male, male to female, if you're
Speaker 2: initiating some intimacy with that person, you know that they
Speaker 2: have to consent, right, And they go, yeah, of course,
Speaker 2: everyone knows that I said, okay, tell me what do
Speaker 2: they need to say or do to be consenting? And
Speaker 2: the word you get ninety nine percent of the time
Speaker 2: is the word yes. They'll say yes. Sorry when someone
Speaker 2: says yes, that's consent, yep. I said, right, well, boys,
Speaker 2: it's eleven minutes past ten on whatever today's dat is.
Speaker 2: That will be the last time you ever connect the
Speaker 2: word yes to consent, because whoever told you that has
Speaker 2: told you that is not someone you should be taking.
Speaker 2: An I legal advice from the word yes can mean,
Speaker 2: it often does, but this blanket idea that the utterance
Speaker 2: of that word equals consent is an absolute myth. I
Speaker 2: speak to young women every week I've said yes who
Speaker 2: haven't consented. They've said yes because they're frightened. How do
Speaker 2: they get frightened because the other person used pressure against
Speaker 2: verbally physically. So I go back to the boys and
Speaker 2: I say, boys, I have two issues with you, as
Speaker 2: young men believing that the word yes equals consent. The
Speaker 2: first one is you've chosen a word that doesn't exist
Speaker 2: in the legal definition, so you've hung your hat on
Speaker 2: a word that doesn't even exist legally. Secondly, I think
Speaker 2: for some young men, if we mistakenly tell them that
Speaker 2: the word yes, as if by magic, means that whatever's
Speaker 2: happened up to that point is now consent. We're saying
Speaker 2: to those young men, if you're initiating intimacy and you
Speaker 2: hear the word no, let's put a bit of pressure on,
Speaker 2: because you'll make them say yes. But the law says,
Speaker 2: hang on, how'd you get them to say yes? I
Speaker 2: just put a bit of pressure on. How do you
Speaker 2: do that? Threats force, violence, coercion, manipulation. So once the
Speaker 2: boys get that, I say that the most important that
Speaker 2: aspect of consent law is the word freely. So when
Speaker 2: you ask people what consent means. For example, if you
Speaker 2: were to ask, say to young women, tell me what
Speaker 2: consent me So, it's when I do this, it's when
Speaker 2: I do that. Interestingly, that aspect of consent law is
Speaker 2: defined by the other person, because if you or I
Speaker 2: are investigating from a sex crime perspective, whether this young
Speaker 2: woman consented or not, we don't define her consent by
Speaker 2: the fact that she said yes.
Speaker 1: It's her actions, it's her behavior.
Speaker 2: Well, it's more than that, it's whether she was allowed
Speaker 2: to take those actions freely. Yeah, because she could say oh,
Speaker 2: I said yes, and then she goes, I did that
Speaker 2: because he had a knife to my throat. Oh that's
Speaker 2: not consent. Well, see, we haven't asked enough questions, have
Speaker 2: we We don't define whether this young person is consented
Speaker 2: because of what they say, because of what they did,
Speaker 2: or whether they change their mind. We must ask one
Speaker 2: more question. Did they say it, do it? Or change
Speaker 2: their mind freely? Now what does that mean? Well, that
Speaker 2: means that we're now looking at this person. Did they
Speaker 2: allow them to do that freely? What does that mean? Legally?
Speaker 2: Without using threats force, violence, coercional manipulation, the Ted Bundy's,
Speaker 2: the Joseph Thompson's, they use physical violence, but date rape
Speaker 2: is far more likely to be coercive, verbal, psychological, And
Speaker 2: even that too many people comes as a bit of
Speaker 2: a surprise because we think the only thing that negates
Speaker 2: consent is physical threats of force. No coercion manipulation sits
Speaker 2: on the same plane. Legally.
Speaker 1: You're listening to true crime conversations with me, Jemma Bath,
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with Brent Sanders. You said you've had women
Speaker 1: come forward after your seminars and tell you about their experiences.
Speaker 1: What about men and boys. Have they come forward and
Speaker 1: told you the opposite, not that they've been assaulted, that
Speaker 1: they have assaulted.
Speaker 2: I've had men come forward who've been sexually assaulted, just
Speaker 2: to clarify that, yes, it doesn't happen nearly as much
Speaker 2: because the age group that I talk to the high
Speaker 2: risk gauge for males for sexual crime as primary school,
Speaker 2: and I don't do any talks in primary school. The
Speaker 2: highest risk gauge group for girls and women is fifteen
Speaker 2: to twenty one, which is ninety nine percent of my attendees.
Speaker 2: And the people committing those offenses are young men of
Speaker 2: similar age who they know socially. So your questions are a
Speaker 2: really good one. Look, respectfully, it's quite rare for guys
Speaker 2: to come forward and admit to me as an ex
Speaker 2: copper that they've committed a sex offense. Yeah, it's very
Speaker 2: common for guys to come forward. A bit sheepishly saying
Speaker 2: I had absolutely no idea of the legal test for
Speaker 2: drunkenness of when if someone says yes, that's not always
Speaker 2: so they're not taking that next step so much.
Speaker 1: The fact they've even come up to you and said
Speaker 1: that they didn't know is a big step.
Speaker 2: I can't remember the last time I did a seminar
Speaker 2: without students coming forward. But depending on the gender and
Speaker 2: the seminar depends on the reason they come forward. So
Speaker 2: twenty nine years, I'd be hard pressed remembering a seminar
Speaker 2: are presented to young women in year ten, eleven or
Speaker 2: twelve without young women coming forward who've been subjected to
Speaker 2: sexual crime. When I speak to young men, they come forward,
Speaker 2: and they often come forward very genuinely. I don't want
Speaker 2: to sound like a TOSSI, but they come forward just
Speaker 2: to shake your hand and say, I've never had a
Speaker 2: talk like this. No one's told me this stuff before.
Speaker 2: There's sometimes a bit of an assumption that when young
Speaker 2: people get to a certain age, as if by magic,
Speaker 2: they'll just know this. Like, you get to year twelve,
Speaker 2: you'll know how to wire up a house electrically. No
Speaker 2: you won't. You get to year twelve, you'll know the
Speaker 2: definition of consent? Really, who's told.
Speaker 1: You apart from some biology class like you mentioned before,
Speaker 1: a bit of sex ads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the problem of the biology class is all
Speaker 2: the terms are using it from a biological textbook. So's
Speaker 2: it's the thing, you know, all these kids know the
Speaker 2: definition of sexual intercourse, but the definition they know is
Speaker 2: from a biology textbook and that bears no resemblance to
Speaker 2: the legal definition. That's one of the major contributing factors
Speaker 2: to young women I speak to who have been subjected
Speaker 2: to sexual intercourse without consent, and they didn't know until
Speaker 2: they sat in the talk, And the moment in the
Speaker 2: talk that most of them realize is when I share
Speaker 2: with them the legal definition, and it's so different to
Speaker 2: what they thought.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we have listeners that don't know. Can you
Speaker 1: tell them?
Speaker 2: I'm going to paraphrase a little because I deliver talks
Speaker 2: in every state and territory. So last week I delivered
Speaker 2: talks in Canberra, Brisbane and Sydney. Right, they all have
Speaker 2: different crimes acts, all different pieces of legislation, but they're
Speaker 2: all pretty much the same. We get some different terminology,
Speaker 2: we have some slightly different maximum sentences and stuff around that,
Speaker 2: but when you actually look at definition, it's pretty uniform.
Speaker 2: So if you look at the definition of sexual intercourse,
Speaker 2: so we apply that to sexual intercourse without consent, right,
Speaker 2: most people think are sexual intercourse. I know what that is.
Speaker 2: That's penole penetration for pro creation. That's the biological definition,
Speaker 2: or if you go to a religious school, it's a
Speaker 2: theological definition, and that's cool. I got no problem with that.
Speaker 2: But they're often really surprised to hear the legal definition.
Speaker 2: And in every state and territory in Australia, the legal
Speaker 2: definition of sexual intercourse and I'm going to paraphrase it little,
Speaker 2: it's penetration to a sexual area with anything at all.
Speaker 2: So straight away, and we're only a fraction of the
Speaker 2: way through the definition. Straight away there people hear that going, oh,
Speaker 2: hang on, what no, no, no, no, intercourse can only
Speaker 2: be penole penetration or that's your biology class. Ye, wrong book,
Speaker 2: wrong definition. So the law says a person has had
Speaker 2: sexual intercourse with another person the moment they penetrate that
Speaker 2: person to a sexual area with anything at all, any
Speaker 2: part of an offender's body, anything held or manipulated by
Speaker 2: the offender, and it keeps going. Every state and territory
Speaker 2: in Australia also goes on to say sexual intercourse also
Speaker 2: includes the act performing oral sex. Now New South Wales,
Speaker 2: forced oral sex is legally defined or articulated in a
Speaker 2: courtroom as being the introduction of the penis to the
Speaker 2: mouth without full consent. So when you put that out
Speaker 2: in front of a couple of hundred young men, you
Speaker 2: can hear a pin drop because they're going, wow, I
Speaker 2: didn't know that. Two most common forms of intercourse without
Speaker 2: consent committed against young women in that high riskauge group
Speaker 2: fifteen to twenty one. Number one is penetration sexually by
Speaker 2: guy using his fingers without consent. Most young women who
Speaker 2: are subjected to that are told by well meaning friends,
Speaker 2: oh my god, that's awful. That's terrible. What an asshole.
Speaker 2: Thank god he didn't rape you. That's one good thing.
Speaker 2: And that advice is given with really good intent because
Speaker 2: they're listening to their friend's story and they're running it
Speaker 2: through their definition of sexual intercourse, which comes from page
Speaker 2: seventy six of the year twelve biology textbook. So because
Speaker 2: what happened to their friend doesn't fit into that exceedingly
Speaker 2: narrow definition, that means it's not intercourse, So it can't
Speaker 2: be intercourse without consent, so it's not rape.
Speaker 1: But to be clear, what you're saying is it is rape.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the number one most common form because if
Speaker 2: a person penetrates another person's sexu with their fingers without
Speaker 2: their consent. That's sexual intercourse without consent, second most common
Speaker 2: form of intercourse without consent that young women are subjected
Speaker 2: to it. It's been forced into performing oral sex. Oral
Speaker 2: sex is so far beyond most people's inclusion in that
Speaker 2: term sexual intercourse, it's not even on the radar. It's
Speaker 2: the second most common form of intercourse without consent. So
Speaker 2: it's important for young men to hear this. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: important for young women to hear this because the language
Speaker 2: around this dumbs it down. So I know, I didn't
Speaker 2: have sex with her. I just sort of touched her
Speaker 2: up a bit. Classic term from someone on the other
Speaker 2: side of an interview desk who's touching her up a
Speaker 2: bit means oh, yeah, she was saying no, she was
Speaker 2: pushing my hand away, but I sort of penetrated her
Speaker 2: with my finger is a bit, because yeah, she was
Speaker 2: saying no. She wasn't that keen, but I figured maybe
Speaker 2: if she might change her mind. Now you run that
Speaker 2: through legal definition, sexual intercourse without consent. I mean, even
Speaker 2: that term rape, it's an awful term.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: It's an awful term. People associate that with intercourse without consent.
Speaker 2: Of course they do. You can't even be charged with
Speaker 2: rape in New South Wales. There's no such a fense
Speaker 2: that crime doesn't even exist. That word has not existed
Speaker 2: legally in New South Wales since September nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: So it makes people think, bloody hell, what else don't
Speaker 2: I know? Now? You can be charged with rape in
Speaker 2: two states in Australia, Victorian and Queensland, but no other
Speaker 2: state or territory New South Wales. The term rape was
Speaker 2: replaced by the term sexual assault forty three years ago.
Speaker 2: So it gets sort of interesting when you get into
Speaker 2: that discussion with people all these terms that they're so
Speaker 2: familiar with, but they don't actually know what they mean.
Speaker 2: You know, like drunk person can't cossent, brilliant, what does
Speaker 2: that mean? Ask year twelve students today, you're at a party.
Speaker 2: You know that there's a drunk person part of they
Speaker 2: can't consent. What's the test to determine how drunk they are? Oh,
Speaker 2: it's a breathalyzer. What's not we do get a freaking
Speaker 2: breathalyzer from And what's the breathalyzer level that someone has
Speaker 2: to fail to not be able to consent? See, that's
Speaker 2: just a myth. So what our brain does it says, oh,
Speaker 2: I know the test for drunkenness. It's a breathalyzer. Well,
Speaker 2: it's a driving test. There's a specific test for consent.
Speaker 2: But all the young people I speak to pretty much
Speaker 2: know a drunk person can't consent. Most of them don't
Speaker 2: know what that means. Biggest study to come out of
Speaker 2: a strong universities more recently is telling us up to
Speaker 2: ninety percent of young women in high risk gauge they
Speaker 2: senior high school that have a sexual offense committed against
Speaker 2: them last weekend, they will be too affected by alcohol
Speaker 2: or drugs to be able to legally provide consent nine
Speaker 2: times out of ten. But ninety nine percent of students
Speaker 2: in those environments don't know what the actual legal test is.
Speaker 1: So what's the legal test.
Speaker 2: It's an observational test. That's how it's presented in the law.
Speaker 2: The law says to consent, a person must be sober,
Speaker 2: you know, there must be in a sober state of mind.
Speaker 2: And then it goes on to say a person is
Speaker 2: no longer sober enough to consent once they've consumed enough
Speaker 2: alcohol or drugs, that they are clearly showing the effects
Speaker 2: of drugs or alcohol, and they could be observed by
Speaker 2: any reasonable person. So that's the law. It's the same
Speaker 2: as the RSA test, the responsible service of alcohol test,
Speaker 2: that is identical to the test to consent. You fail
Speaker 2: them the same way. So we all know that if
Speaker 2: you've had a few too many drinks and you try
Speaker 2: to get into a pub, generally the person on their
Speaker 2: will say no, I'm sorry. It's not like you've done
Speaker 2: anything wrong. It's just they'll lose their job if they
Speaker 2: let you in because you fail the RSA. How do
Speaker 2: you fail the RSA when you're clearly showing the effects
Speaker 2: of alcoholic drugs that can be observed by any reasonable person. Now,
Speaker 2: in that case, the reasonable person's the dormant. When detectives
Speaker 2: from sex crimes investigate, say, allegations of a sexual offense
Speaker 2: they committed at a party or something such as that
Speaker 2: the off and looking at circumstances where somebody is too
Speaker 2: drunk or drug effected to give consent, you can apply
Speaker 2: the test anyone in that room that you can clearly
Speaker 2: see is affected by a color of drugs, And the
Speaker 2: legal test is the physical effects, verbal or cognitive or combination.
Speaker 2: This is what a judge tells a jury in a courtroom.
Speaker 2: But we've got to give this information to the kids
Speaker 2: going out to parties this weekend.
Speaker 1: Do you think that by giving them all of these
Speaker 1: legal definitions, what's it going to do? Is it scaring them?
Speaker 2: No, it's not scaring them. It's giving them the information
Speaker 2: they're entitled to. So my job is to go in
Speaker 2: and say, if you choose to have a few drinks
Speaker 2: at part is, if you choose to initiate an intimate exchange,
Speaker 2: or you are comfortable having somebody initiated an intimate exchange
Speaker 2: with you, that's fine. But if you're in that environment,
Speaker 2: you're entitled to know this stuff. Because if you don't
Speaker 2: know this stuff, how do you know whether you've given consent?
Speaker 2: How do you know whether you have consent? How do
Speaker 2: you know if that person's had too many drinks to
Speaker 2: fail the test? If you don't know what the test is,
Speaker 2: how do you know if you've had sex intercourse with somebody?
Speaker 2: If your definition comes from a biology textbook, See so it's.
Speaker 1: Knowledge and say knowledge is power.
Speaker 2: Well it is, and if you do it in the
Speaker 2: right way, I think I hope people can walk out
Speaker 2: going oh okay, I knew some of that stuff, but
Speaker 2: the stuff I didn't know makes a big difference to
Speaker 2: how I look at it. And you know, none of
Speaker 2: this stuff is rocket science. When you know this stuff,
Speaker 2: it makes so much sense. Like when you know that
Speaker 2: the utterance of the word yes doesn't equal consent, it's like, well,
Speaker 2: of course it doesn't. I have helping young guys. Stay
Speaker 2: to me. You be hand one. So are you saying,
Speaker 2: then when someone changes their mind from no to yes
Speaker 2: or no to whatever, that's consent. Yeah, So okay, Well
Speaker 2: let's put that into practice. So I'll say, okay, let's
Speaker 2: appride that principle. Give me ten dollars, to which they'll
Speaker 2: say no. I'll say, well, hang on, do you have
Speaker 2: ten dollars? Yeah, well give it to me. No, And
Speaker 2: then I might get a bit theatrical and go, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to out to three and if that ten
Speaker 2: dollars is not in my pocket, what if I start
Speaker 2: hitting you something? And I said, I reckon, Tom, I'll
Speaker 2: get to about two, the wall beout, and you'll give
Speaker 2: me the money. Don't let anyone tell you consented. That's
Speaker 2: a robbery. You changed your mind, but you didn't change
Speaker 2: it freely. You changed it because of the pressure. I applied.
Speaker 2: Exact same principle applies to your actions towards someone an
Speaker 2: intimate exchange, So the penny starts to drop.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt the last few years we've seen such
Speaker 1: an uproar about sexual violence and things that women go through,
Speaker 1: even just sexual harassment in workplaces, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Do you think this is the way we help change it?
Speaker 1: By getting to these schools and teaching these boys legal definitions,
Speaker 1: teaching these girls knowledge.
Speaker 2: It's the alternative, don't teach it. See. I spend about
Speaker 2: half of my time lecturing and corporations on harassment, sexual harassment, bullying.
Speaker 2: I do investigations and things such as that. Right, I've
Speaker 2: done that for twenty five years along with this work.
Speaker 2: Sexual harassment is still the number one most common form
Speaker 2: of an appropriate workplace conduct in the Australian workplace, and
Speaker 2: it has been for the twenty five years that I've
Speaker 2: done these talks. But we have dramatically reduced the amount
Speaker 2: of inappropriate workplace conduct. There's no argument. So if we
Speaker 2: go back twenty five years to today, today's workplace is
Speaker 2: generally a lot better. The expectations are higher, policies are better,
Speaker 2: implementation of policies are better all that type of thing,
Speaker 2: but we still recognize that, for example, sexual harassment is
Speaker 2: number one. Now, sex harassment doesn't have to be male
Speaker 2: to female. It usually is, though, but nothing in policy
Speaker 2: says that sexual harassment is really just a sub section
Speaker 2: of workplace harassment. Yeah, so it's uninvited, unwelcome, unreciprocated behavior
Speaker 2: of a sexual nature that makes somebody feel offended, intimidated
Speaker 2: human in a workspace. It's still the most common, but
Speaker 2: it is far less less common than what it once was.
Speaker 2: So we're making headway, we're making moves, But just to
Speaker 2: your point, you need to be really careful assuming that
Speaker 2: your staff that come into your workplace know all these
Speaker 2: policies because they don't teach them at school, they don't
Speaker 2: teach them at university. And a lot of young kids
Speaker 2: that will go to UNI, they're coming into the workplace
Speaker 2: twenty three, twenty four. It's their first job. But because
Speaker 2: they're twenty three or twenty four, sometimes their employers think, oh,
Speaker 2: they'll know all this. They don't know it. So you
Speaker 2: make a really good point. The more training that we
Speaker 2: can do, the more people are able to identify these
Speaker 2: behaviors call them out, but also regulate themselves, because there's
Speaker 2: a big push in the Australian workplace to get staff
Speaker 2: to call out harassment bullying. But you've got to make
Speaker 2: sure your staff know what the definitions of those terms are,
Speaker 2: because most of them don't know. If people have more knowledge,
Speaker 2: the choices that they're making are more informed on both
Speaker 2: sides of the equation with regard to their conduct, but also,
Speaker 2: perhaps just as importantly, with regard to being able to
Speaker 2: identify conduct directed to them as being Hang on, now,
Speaker 2: I don't have to cop that that's harassment. That's whatever
Speaker 2: it is. I'm going to call that out. But if
Speaker 2: you're not sure what it is, if no one's told
Speaker 2: you the definition, all the definition's wrong, you're going to
Speaker 2: sit back on your heels. It's the same principle as
Speaker 2: young women who aren't told the offense, like unlawful sexual
Speaker 2: touching and stuff. It happens the people who do it,
Speaker 2: usually young men, do it repeatedly. The girls speak to
Speaker 2: their girlfriends about it, and they're from toil. I don't
Speaker 2: worry about him. He's just an asshole. He does that
Speaker 2: to everybody. Then they'll go in one of the talks
Speaker 2: and suddenly realize this stuff that's happening to me is
Speaker 2: a criminal offense, and each time someone does it in
Speaker 2: you South Wales, it carries a five year imprisonment to him. Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe I will speak out about it so knowledge is powered.
Speaker 1: I want to finish by going to the other end
Speaker 1: of the scale. Yeah, you talk about this in your book,
Speaker 1: and I understand you probably don't put this into practice anymore.
Speaker 1: But if someone is confronted with the worst of the worst,
Speaker 1: someone is physically trying to attack them, how do you
Speaker 1: protect yourself, especially as a woman to a man. I've
Speaker 1: read you saying things like you hate that women are
Speaker 1: made to feel like because they're not physically big enough,
Speaker 1: they can't protect themselves. So how do they protect themselves?
Speaker 2: Well, look, the only way I could answer that is
Speaker 2: if you or my daughter asking me, who's about your size?
Speaker 2: My daughter, you know, if she said to me, Dad,
Speaker 2: if someone grabs me, and I have two options to
Speaker 2: either stay where I am or or fight back, how
Speaker 2: do I defend myself? Well, I guess to answer the question,
Speaker 2: the idea that self defense means you have to overpower
Speaker 2: somebody is a myth, you know, just ask anyone who's
Speaker 2: done martial arts. Martial arts have been around four thousands
Speaker 2: of years. There's not one There's not one martial art
Speaker 2: that you and I could study anywhere in the world
Speaker 2: that will teach us how to overparent attack it. So
Speaker 2: if we look at martial arts as being the sort
Speaker 2: of the Dawan of physical self defense, because it's got
Speaker 2: a thousand years of his behind it, how come not
Speaker 2: one martial arts teaches how to overparent attacker because that's
Speaker 2: the total opposite to what self defense is. So, and
Speaker 2: this is a really important message for women to hear
Speaker 2: because generally, not exclusively, but generally, if a woman is
Speaker 2: in a physical confrontation with a male, the male will
Speaker 2: generally be larger and probably physically stronger. So if you
Speaker 2: go into that thinking I can't defend myself because I
Speaker 2: can't overpower him, you've created a definition of self defense
Speaker 2: which not only is disputed by a thousand years of
Speaker 2: self defense history martial arts, but it's also going to
Speaker 2: stop you from doing anything. So martial arts do two things.
Speaker 2: The first thing martial arts do is they show you
Speaker 2: how to identify your opponent's weakness. The second thing martial
Speaker 2: arts do, and people spend years and years learning it is.
Speaker 2: They show you how to exploit the weakness. That's it.
Speaker 2: That's the two things martial arts teach. And the longer
Speaker 2: you do it, the more effectively you can do that.
Speaker 2: But you don't have through martial arts to do that.
Speaker 2: So if I grab you, I'm one hundred and five kilos,
Speaker 2: you're not. You can't overpower me. That's my advantage, So
Speaker 2: don't play to my advantage. So if you're my daughter,
Speaker 2: I would say if guy grabbed you, if you want
Speaker 2: to defend yourself, get out of your head this idea
Speaker 2: that that means that you've got to pick me up
Speaker 2: and throw me over your shoulder because you can't so
Speaker 2: identify my weakness or what's my weakness, eyes, nose, throat, groin, feet,
Speaker 2: So don't punch me in the stomach, they won't do
Speaker 2: a thing. Don't hit me ten times on the chest,
Speaker 2: hit me once across the bridge into my nose. My
Speaker 2: nose will shatter. I can't see anything. I'll let you go.
Speaker 2: Bring my hands up to my face, and you perhaps
Speaker 2: now in a better position to employ the number one
Speaker 2: strategy of self defense run one strike, so that doesn't
Speaker 2: require power knee me in the groin, slam your heel
Speaker 2: through the top of my foot to break the meta tassels,
Speaker 2: I gou me, punch me in the throat. Now, these
Speaker 2: are all things that some of your listeners would go, well,
Speaker 2: I couldn't do that. That's what you've got to overcome.
Speaker 2: Why couldn't you do that? Pick up a child who's
Speaker 2: six months old out of a bassinet. That child's afraid
Speaker 2: of you. They'll start screaming yep, and they'll start reaching
Speaker 2: out with their little feet in their little hands. And
Speaker 2: if a little one grabs hold of you and grabs
Speaker 2: hold it, you've got to ply them off. No one's
Speaker 2: taught them that that's a learnt response to being threatened.
Speaker 2: But what we tend to do for fifty percent of
Speaker 2: the population is when they're old enough to listen, we
Speaker 2: tell all, no goodness, me, don't do that. Boys aren't
Speaker 2: told not to fight back. Boys are told if you don't,
Speaker 2: there's something wrong with you. So it's only fifty percent
Speaker 2: of the population has sold this idea that to defend
Speaker 2: yourself you have to overbit you know.
Speaker 1: So it's challenging that it's really interesting when you brought
Speaker 1: up that child. I'm a mother to an eighteen month old,
Speaker 1: and I thought to myself, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: would have the confidence to protect myself by gouging someone's
Speaker 1: eyes out, but if someone went for him, yeah, there
Speaker 1: is no doubt in my mind that I would go
Speaker 1: for their eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Imagine someone telling you if you're walking home with
Speaker 2: your little one in a stroll and a car pulls up,
Speaker 2: guy jumps, he's not after yours, after your little one.
Speaker 2: The reaction in the reaction, it's like that's instinct. Well,
Speaker 2: the instinct's always there, it's just now you're thinking not
Speaker 2: about yourself. You're thinking about this little one that you've
Speaker 2: got to protect. You're not going to look at the
Speaker 2: size of the person, you know, and if three people
Speaker 2: jump out of the car, you'll go, well, I'll take
Speaker 2: on three of you. Or would you say, oh, three people,
Speaker 2: or you can have my son? Or would you say
Speaker 2: the guy that got out of the car he was
Speaker 2: a bit bigger than I think, so I let him
Speaker 2: take my son. You couldn't care less how big the
Speaker 2: guy was. He could have a neck the size of
Speaker 2: a rock wheeler. Good luck getting the son from the mother.
Speaker 2: You will flick the switch, the bitch switch. You know
Speaker 2: everyone's got one. It's just tapping into what makes it work.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I think that you might have read in my book
Speaker 2: I had a story about a woman. I said, just
Speaker 2: imagine you had your little one with your hair, and
Speaker 2: you got on the lift to go down to the
Speaker 2: car park underneath the building. Image if you're walking to
Speaker 2: your car and a car pulls up and a guy
Speaker 2: jumps heirs, he's not interested in you, but he's going
Speaker 2: to take your notice. Whatever the child's name was, what
Speaker 2: would you do? She just looked me straight in the eye,
Speaker 2: just cold, so I'd kill him. I said, okay, tell
Speaker 2: me how you do that, and she told me. She
Speaker 2: screamed like she all of a sudden was defending her child.
Speaker 2: And when she finished, I said, see, you can defend yourself.
Speaker 2: It's in there. You just got to be able to
Speaker 2: bring it out. And that doesn't mean that you can
Speaker 2: only defend yourself you're your child. It means it's always
Speaker 2: been there. It's there there within you, it's there within everybody.
Speaker 2: Then your reason we think it's not there is. People
Speaker 2: has told us it's not. Well, choose not to believe them.
Speaker 2: You defend your son, you defend yourself, same thing. It's
Speaker 2: no difference, just mindset.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Brent for sharing his knowledge with us and
Speaker 1: his book and podcast in our show notes. True Crime
Speaker 1: Conversations is a Muma MEA podcast hosted and produced by
Speaker 1: me Jemma Bath with audio design by Scott Stronik. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Crystal Kornielsen. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation