Speaker 1: This is part two of my conversation with Nina Fanell.
Speaker 1: Before you listen to this, make sure you've listened to
Speaker 1: part one. There's a link in our show notes before
Speaker 1: you listen today. This episode contains stories of child sexual abuse,
Speaker 1: sexual assault, and suicide. I want to move on to
Speaker 1: another huge campaign that you worked on, the let Her Speak,
Speaker 1: which turned into the let Us Speak campaign.
Speaker 2: Where did that start for you? Okay, So interestingly that
Speaker 2: actually also started in that year of university reporting it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so back in twenty sixteen seventeen, when I was doing
Speaker 2: all of that work, I got a phone call from
Speaker 2: the student Women's offices at the University of Tasmania to
Speaker 2: tell me that there was a convicted sex offender living
Speaker 2: on campus in one of the residential colleges. I think
Speaker 2: it was John Flynn Residential College. And he was an
Speaker 2: elderly convicted child sex offender and his name's Nicholas Sbester,
Speaker 2: and he was living in co ed facilities and he
Speaker 2: was making a number of the students on campus feel
Speaker 2: very very uncomfortable, and they didn't understand why he was
Speaker 2: living along side seventeen and eighteen year old girls. And
Speaker 2: I mean they had shared bathroom facilities as well, and
Speaker 2: he was I think a sixty eight year old man
Speaker 2: at the time. Anyway, I said, yeah, I'll do that
Speaker 2: story as part of the fifty two and then I said,
Speaker 2: but I just want to check how to his original victims,
Speaker 2: because he'd been to jail. I said, how, how do
Speaker 2: you know who that is? Do you know how they
Speaker 2: feel about this? Do you know if they feel comfortable
Speaker 2: with the story coming out? And they said yes. Her
Speaker 2: name's Grace Tame. She lives in LA And I said, okay, well,
Speaker 2: I'd like to check him with her first about how
Speaker 2: she feels about me reporting on him living at college,
Speaker 2: and also she'd like to say anything. And I made
Speaker 2: contact with Grace, who he had abused as a fifteen
Speaker 2: year old school girl when he was her maths teacher
Speaker 2: at Saint Michael's Collegiate Girls School in Hobart, and Grace
Speaker 2: said that yes, absolutely, she was happy for the story
Speaker 2: to go ahead. And actually her mum, Penny, was a
Speaker 2: mature age student on campus at the time and had
Speaker 2: been running into her daughter's offender, so you can imagine,
Speaker 2: so that was impacting her right to access education. So
Speaker 2: Grace also said that she would like to be quoted
Speaker 2: in the article. And so you know, I wrote up
Speaker 2: this piece and as with every article, we run it
Speaker 2: past our legal department first before we publish it. And
Speaker 2: my lawyer, Gena McWilliams came back and she said the
Speaker 2: piece is good to go, but you can't name Grace.
Speaker 2: And I was like, why the offender has been convicted,
Speaker 2: he's gone to jail. There's no defamation, there's no sub
Speaker 2: judicy or contempt issues, you know, the normal stuff we
Speaker 2: come up against. And she said, well, there's a thing
Speaker 2: called Section one nine four K of the Evidence Act
Speaker 2: in Tasmani, which prohibits survivors from being identified unless they
Speaker 2: go to court and get a court order. And I
Speaker 2: remember going, well, can we do that? Can we get
Speaker 2: her a court order if she wants to be named?
Speaker 2: And Gina was like, look, if she wants to be
Speaker 2: named that badly, we can do it. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's a bit of work. And I went away and
Speaker 2: I thought about it and I was like, so wait,
Speaker 2: every survivor in that state who wants to tell their
Speaker 2: story has to go to court or has to get
Speaker 2: the media organization to go to court first before they
Speaker 2: can tell their story that doesn't seem right. And Grace
Speaker 2: was twenty two at the time, and I'd gone public
Speaker 2: when I was twenty three, and it suddenly occurred to
Speaker 2: me that had my assault happened in Hobart instead of Sydney,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have been able to tell my story. I
Speaker 2: would have had to or I would have at least
Speaker 2: had to go to court get a court order. And
Speaker 2: that's that can be you know, up to ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: It's going to say it's a lot of money. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So we did Grace's work. I went to Grace and
Speaker 2: I said, how would you feel about us doing getting
Speaker 2: you a court order? Will cover the cost. So we
Speaker 2: did the work and Gina did it and it costs about,
Speaker 2: I think with about nine two hundred dollars to do it. Now,
Speaker 2: if the individual survivor was expected to wear the cost
Speaker 2: of that, that's outrageous. But more than that, I started
Speaker 2: to go, well, this is really problematic because it means
Speaker 2: that the media get to pick and choose which survivors
Speaker 2: end up telling their story based on where you know.
Speaker 2: And it also means that commercial media media with big,
Speaker 2: deep pockets are the ones that are going to be
Speaker 2: able to tell these stories. What happens if a survivor
Speaker 2: doesn't want to tell their story to mainstream media and
Speaker 2: they just want to tell it through their own blog
Speaker 2: or through an autobiography, does that mean that they then
Speaker 2: wear the cost? And even more than that, I was
Speaker 2: realizing this actually reinscribes the victim survivor back into the
Speaker 2: criminal justice system, which was often very traumatic to begin with,
Speaker 2: and it puts them in this position where they have
Speaker 2: to ask a judge for permission to say their own name,
Speaker 2: like it's so paternalistic.
Speaker 1: It's also making them feel shame when there is no
Speaker 1: shame there one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: And also the offender, the offender doesn't need a court
Speaker 2: order to tell what they want to say. And Nicholas Besta,
Speaker 2: the offender had actually gone and done a seventeen minute
Speaker 2: interview with a woman called Bettina Aren't where they had
Speaker 2: actually mocked Grace and made light of the offending. So
Speaker 2: I ended up speaking to my editors at the time
Speaker 2: and saying, I think this is more than a story.
Speaker 2: I actually think we should campaign on this, and they said,
Speaker 2: all right, go away and put together a pitch. And
Speaker 2: so that was an interesting process in and of itself,
Speaker 2: because I remember thinking, like, you know, I'm writing for
Speaker 2: a national outlet. I'm trying to draw attention to a
Speaker 2: law that, frankly, no one in Tasmania even seems to
Speaker 2: think is that much of a problem. No one was
Speaker 2: calling it a gag law at the time, they were
Speaker 2: just calling it. In fact, the local Sexual Assault Service
Speaker 2: in TASMANI thought it was a good thing that survivors
Speaker 2: had to go to court and ask for permission, because
Speaker 2: they thought that that would stop exploitative journalism by adding
Speaker 2: an extra step. It was bizarre, but they asked survivors
Speaker 2: about yeah, good, yeah, very good question. So I was like,
Speaker 2: how do I design a campaign. My one and only
Speaker 2: case study is living in la and can't be named
Speaker 2: or photographed. So it's very hard to humanize the issue
Speaker 2: when you can't name and photograph people. I'm writing about
Speaker 2: the smallest state, which people around the country don't necessarily
Speaker 2: click on articles about how do I make this national
Speaker 2: news and how do I get people to care about it?
Speaker 2: And so the answer to that was the first thing
Speaker 2: that we decided to do was to call it a
Speaker 2: gag law. It immediately kind of constructs what the problem is.
Speaker 2: The second thing was I decided that I would interview
Speaker 2: victim survivors from every other state that didn't have gag
Speaker 2: laws who had already gone public, to ask them why
Speaker 2: that had been important for them to be able to
Speaker 2: tell their story on their own terms. So I photographed
Speaker 2: and I got them all to hold a sign that
Speaker 2: said let her Speak. So that became the name of
Speaker 2: the campaign, hashtag let her Speak, So people like Saxon Mullins,
Speaker 2: Tara Moss and in the end, I interviewed fourteen survivors
Speaker 2: from around the whole country who had gone public to
Speaker 2: ask them why was that important for them? And because
Speaker 2: I'd been doing all this work with university survivors, a
Speaker 2: number of those fourteen were themselves university from universities. So
Speaker 2: the campaign actually really was born out of those series
Speaker 2: of events. And when we launched on day one, I'd
Speaker 2: partnered with sixty Minutes. We did it as this big
Speaker 2: sort of news dot com dot a u slash sixty
Speaker 2: Minutes launch to say, there is this absurd law in Tasmania.
Speaker 2: Here are all these survivors around the country calling out Tasmania,
Speaker 2: and so that makes it national.
Speaker 1: Makes it national, and everyone else care and.
Speaker 2: It also means that you've got faces, you've got other survivors,
Speaker 2: and then it becomes a survivor led campaign. And I
Speaker 2: decided to also include my own name and story in
Speaker 2: that as well as a survivor, to say, you know,
Speaker 2: at twenty three, telling my own story had actually been
Speaker 2: really important for me because it was how I reclaimed
Speaker 2: some of my agency in a moment when I felt
Speaker 2: very powerless, and so I sort of reinserted myself as
Speaker 2: both a journalist and victim survivor. And obviously we got
Speaker 2: Grace's court order for her and she was able to
Speaker 2: tell her story. But I knew that once we told
Speaker 2: her story with her face, I would get inundated with
Speaker 2: other victim survivors from Tasmania who would realize, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: like most survivors in Tasmania didn't even realize that there
Speaker 2: was this requirement that they go to court if they
Speaker 2: want to tell their story. I get these other survivors
Speaker 2: coming forward saying, hey, could you get me a court order?
Speaker 2: Could you get me a court order? And knowing that
Speaker 2: that's going to be about ten thousand dollars each time.
Speaker 1: Can't do that?
Speaker 2: Well, No, we actually decided we should do that.
Speaker 1: So really the yeah, the media company decided they could
Speaker 1: do ten thousand.
Speaker 2: No I decided we should do it. So I decided
Speaker 2: to set up a go fundme and to partner with
Speaker 2: two organizations and Rape on Campus Australia because this was
Speaker 2: this was born out of university student activism and also
Speaker 2: Mark Lawyers, who are a brilliant law firm here in Sydney,
Speaker 2: and Mark Lawyers said that they would do all the
Speaker 2: legal work pro bono and so the GoFundMe would cover
Speaker 2: the costs of So it cost about I think it
Speaker 2: was about two thousand dollars per application or something to
Speaker 2: pay for some of the court fees and so on.
Speaker 2: We ended up doing it over twenty times, getting these
Speaker 2: court orders, and every time we'd get a court order,
Speaker 2: I would then tell the story of the victim survivor
Speaker 2: who wanted to go public. And now it turned out
Speaker 2: it wasn't just TASMANI that had that law, it was
Speaker 2: also the Northern Territory. So I was running to let
Speaker 2: her speak campaign in both Tasmania and the NT. The
Speaker 2: idea being that we would go to court get these
Speaker 2: court orders so that survivors could tell their story I
Speaker 2: would then do their story and as part of that story,
Speaker 2: I would once again highlight the fact that oh, by
Speaker 2: the way, we had to go to court to do this,
Speaker 2: that's not sustainable. We need legal change, and so we
Speaker 2: were pressuring that. So the campaign was pressuring the attorney
Speaker 2: generals in both jurisdictions to say change the legislation, and
Speaker 2: in it was April twenty twenty that the Tasmanian law
Speaker 2: changed and in July twenty twenty the Northern Territory law change.
Speaker 2: So survivors in those two jurisdictions now are able to
Speaker 2: tell their stories under their own names without having to
Speaker 2: go to court. And I do want to shout out
Speaker 2: to the other survivors because obviously Grace was named Australian
Speaker 2: of the Year for her bravery in telling her stories
Speaker 2: an adult survivor of child sexual abuse, but there were
Speaker 2: multiple other survivors in the campaign who did the same
Speaker 2: thing of going to court getting a court order, so
Speaker 2: like to Meeka, Janelle Lavinia in particular, like up in
Speaker 2: the NT Sandra, they all did an amazing job. And
Speaker 2: I want to give credit to all of the survivors
Speaker 2: in the.
Speaker 1: Campaign that did that such an amazing effort that you
Speaker 1: were able to get those laws changed. What was that
Speaker 1: campaign like for you?
Speaker 2: It sounds exhausting, Yeah, I mean like the worst part
Speaker 2: was the week that I got notification that the Tasmanian
Speaker 2: law was going to change. I also got notification that
Speaker 2: Victoria had just introduced a gag law, the exact gag
Speaker 2: law that we'd just gotten changed in Tasmania, and it
Speaker 2: went one step further. Not only were victim survivors in
Speaker 2: Victoria now required to go to court and get court
Speaker 2: permission to tell their stories, but any women or anyone,
Speaker 2: sorry I should say, who had been the victim of
Speaker 2: sexual assault and murder, or anyone who was now a
Speaker 2: deceased victim of sexual assault could no longer be named.
Speaker 2: So people like Jill Maher Urriticy Dixon, I'm Masawa overnight
Speaker 2: came illegal to publish their names, including by their own
Speaker 2: family members, on memorial pages and so on. So when
Speaker 2: I got that news and sidebar, I'd also just found
Speaker 2: out I was pregnant. Information overload, I just my heart
Speaker 2: sank and I knew. I knew that this was going
Speaker 2: to be a really different fight in Victoria because Tasmania,
Speaker 2: in the northern territory are very small jurisdictions population wise,
Speaker 2: and these laws had been on the books forever. In
Speaker 2: Tasmania in the NT no one was particularly attached to
Speaker 2: them or wanted to defend them, whereas in Victoria, the
Speaker 2: Attorney General Jill Hennessy at the time had actually just
Speaker 2: passed and introduced this gag law, which meant that she
Speaker 2: was going and her government was going to defend it
Speaker 2: as a good thing. But why do they think it
Speaker 2: is a good thing. We now think that what they
Speaker 2: did was an error in like drafting the legislation which
Speaker 2: was so sloppy and so embarrassing for them that they
Speaker 2: had to double down and defend it. But the other
Speaker 2: thing that was really different in Victoria. Victoria has a
Speaker 2: very very large population of victim survivors who have already
Speaker 2: been very public and active at that time. So if
Speaker 2: we think about things like the Royal Commission into Institutional
Speaker 2: Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, a whole lot of survivors
Speaker 2: in places like Ballarat, yeah had you know, to do
Speaker 2: with clergy abuse, had gone public to get that inquiry
Speaker 2: up in the first place, that Royal Commission up. It's
Speaker 2: also just it's a bigger jurisdiction, it's got a more
Speaker 2: lively and active feminist community. There were lots of survivors
Speaker 2: who had already exercised their right to go public, who
Speaker 2: had written autobiographies. Overnight, those autobiographies were in contempt of
Speaker 2: court because of this new law. So I knew that
Speaker 2: when I broke that story, it was going to go
Speaker 2: fucking ballistic, and it did like it went it. To
Speaker 2: give you context, the let her Speak petition in Tasmania
Speaker 2: got total of late seven thousand signatures. This one, which
Speaker 2: I didn't even create, some random created at just copying
Speaker 2: and pasting my article got over two hundred thousand signatures
Speaker 2: within twenty four hours. Wow, Like in Victoria, like it went,
Speaker 2: it was huge. All were angry, Yeah, And because survivors
Speaker 2: who had already exercised their right to be public were
Speaker 2: suddenly being put back in the closet and being told
Speaker 2: you now need to shut up and you can't say
Speaker 2: your name until you go to court and get a
Speaker 2: court order. And that was really really distressing and traumatic
Speaker 2: for them, as well as for those survivors who were
Speaker 2: right on the cusp of wanting to tell their story.
Speaker 2: And there was one in particular, a woman called Jamie, And.
Speaker 1: I think Jamie's story is a really good way to
Speaker 1: explain just how damaging these laws could be. Can you
Speaker 1: tell us a bit about her story and how these
Speaker 1: laws affected her?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so. Jamie Lee Page, in the same way
Speaker 2: that Grace Tame was our I guess, original case study
Speaker 2: in Tasmania, Jamie Lee Page was our original survivor that
Speaker 2: we worked with in Victoria. Who And it's a very
Speaker 2: distressing story I should warn people. So, Jamie and her
Speaker 2: older sister had been sexually abused by Jamie's biological father,
Speaker 2: and Jamie had been abused from age eight. And when
Speaker 2: Jamie had disclosed to her older sister what had happened,
Speaker 2: her older sister, Carol, went to police and reported her
Speaker 2: own sexual abuse, and the father then turned around and
Speaker 2: murdered Carol. The father was then charged and convicted of
Speaker 2: the murder, but never of any of the sexual offenses.
Speaker 2: The father then served his jail term and was about
Speaker 2: to be released, and Jamie suddenly realized Jamie's now an adult,
Speaker 2: she's a mum, She's got three kids. Jamie realizes that
Speaker 2: this man is going to be released back into the community,
Speaker 2: and no one knows that he's a child sex offender,
Speaker 2: because that's not what he went down for. And so
Speaker 2: Jamie made the very brave decision to as an adult,
Speaker 2: to go back to court and to tell her story
Speaker 2: of he had done to her as a child, and
Speaker 2: she got him convicted of child sexual offenses. However, as
Speaker 2: often happens in these cases, the judge made the decision
Speaker 2: to give him a reduced concurrent sentence, so that basically,
Speaker 2: by the time he finished his murder sentence, he would
Speaker 2: also be completing his sexual offensive sentence. So Jamie at
Speaker 2: that point was irate and she was like, well, I
Speaker 2: want to name him so that everyone in the community
Speaker 2: knows that this man is a sex offender and a
Speaker 2: risk to children. Now, when that gag law came in place,
Speaker 2: it meant that Jamie couldn't be named now because her
Speaker 2: father is related to her. Had he been named, it
Speaker 2: would have indirectly identified Jamie, which is also against the law.
Speaker 2: So his name became because Jamie's name is suppressed. His
Speaker 2: name became suppressed because he's related to her, so he
Speaker 2: was actually protected by the law by this gag law
Speaker 2: on Jamie's name. So Jamie became determined that she would get.
Speaker 2: And we became determined, and I worked with Mark Lawyers
Speaker 2: on this. We became determined that we would get Jamie
Speaker 2: a court order so that she could be named. Now,
Speaker 2: I mentioned before that there was also a gag on
Speaker 2: any women, men, children who had been sexual assaulted and
Speaker 2: were now deceased. That included Jamie's sister. So when we
Speaker 2: went to court to get Jamie's court order so she
Speaker 2: could name herself and her father, the judge said, well,
Speaker 2: but there's also this secondary suppression on the sister's name
Speaker 2: which also affects all of you. So I'm sorry, but
Speaker 2: you can't name yourself, Jamie because you don't have permission.
Speaker 2: This whole circular logic anyway, so we had to keep
Speaker 2: going back. We had to in effect also get a
Speaker 2: court order to name the deceased sister as well, and
Speaker 2: pay each time, and pay each time, and so that
Speaker 2: was the go fund me. So thank you to everyone
Speaker 2: in the public that donated to that gro fundan. We
Speaker 2: ended up getting over two hundred thousand dollars that paid
Speaker 2: for all of the court orders across Tasmania, the NT
Speaker 2: and Victoria. And each time I would go to court
Speaker 2: with these people and Mark Lloyd would do the legal work,
Speaker 2: we'd get these court orders and then I'd break the story.
Speaker 2: But of course this was in twenty twenty, which was
Speaker 2: Victoria was in lockdown because of COVID, and so the
Speaker 2: survivors that I was working with in Victoria they were
Speaker 2: kind of holding this double trauma of being silenced by
Speaker 2: the law, also having the Attorney General defend the law,
Speaker 2: and also then having COVID and being in lockdown. So
Speaker 2: that part of the campaign was actually incredibly traumatic. And
Speaker 2: I was pregnant and I had a complex pregnancy. So
Speaker 2: in the end, eventually, finally in November twenty twenty, we
Speaker 2: actually got the Victorians to reverse course and to finally
Speaker 2: change that law. And I'm obviously very pleased that they
Speaker 2: did change the law, but it was by the end
Speaker 2: of that year. I was completely burnt out and traumatized,
Speaker 2: I have to say, And I was heading into twenty one,
Speaker 2: had no idea that Grace Hand was just about to
Speaker 2: be named Australian the year and the Brittney Higgins stuff
Speaker 2: was all about to explode, and I was yeah, I
Speaker 2: was now heavily, heavily pregnant, and I had the baby
Speaker 2: and as soon as I had the baby, I had
Speaker 2: to became actually developed an auto imune condition, and I
Speaker 2: had to then completely step back for quite a while. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I've got the same autoimmune condition that Michael Klym has.
Speaker 2: It's a degenerative nerve condition. And I lost the ability
Speaker 2: to walk for a while, and it was actually very
Speaker 2: traumatic because we didn't know what it was and I
Speaker 2: was in excruciating pain and I lost the ability to walk.
Speaker 2: And I would hold my newborn and I couldn't feel,
Speaker 2: So it effects your sensory nerves. I couldn't actually feel him,
Speaker 2: my hands couldn't hold like I would hold him, but
Speaker 2: I couldn't feel, but my lips still had feeling, and
Speaker 2: I would just kiss the back of his head. Cons
Speaker 2: Like in every photo my lips are on the back
Speaker 2: of his head because that's where I could still feel
Speaker 2: in Yeah, so I had to really really step back
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one for health reason, and then it's
Speaker 2: sort of only been in the last few years that
Speaker 2: I've been able to get back to work.
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people won't know that context.
Speaker 1: And thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I still again like big thanks to everybody
Speaker 2: who donates plasma or blood products I get every four weeks,
Speaker 2: I have a four to five hour plasma transfusion to
Speaker 2: manage my illness and that's why I'm able to walk again.
Speaker 1: And it still has a huge impact on your life.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely, Like I've had to relocate back to Sydney,
Speaker 2: you know, because there's better hospitals here. I've Yeah, it
Speaker 2: impacts my movement, my day to day physicality and so on,
Speaker 2: but thankfully because of plasma transfusions. So it's called chronic
Speaker 2: inflammatory demolinating polynuropathy, which is a bit of a mouth
Speaker 2: CIDP for sure, And it's been its own journey and
Speaker 2: it's made me quite interested actually in the relationship between
Speaker 2: trauma and autoimmune connections or autoimmune conditions, because there is
Speaker 2: a connection between the two. And it's highly likely that
Speaker 2: the amount of dress and trauma that I was under
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty is actually really a direct trigger to
Speaker 2: me developing the illness. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's what made you want to go back in
Speaker 1: and do more, because in twenty twenty two you did
Speaker 1: a whole new campaign, yes, called Justice Shouldn't Hurt. So
Speaker 1: it didn't stop you.
Speaker 2: Tell me for a while, but no, well, what made
Speaker 2: me want to come back was it was an email
Speaker 2: that I received from a guest that you've had on recently,
Speaker 2: Michelle Milthorpe. I got this email from Michelle, who's a mum,
Speaker 2: saying that her daughters had gone through the criminal justice
Speaker 2: process in New South Wales and that the process was
Speaker 2: worse than the abuse itself, which is not an uncommon thing.
Speaker 2: I hear that all the time. But what was different
Speaker 2: about this email was that the daughters had done research
Speaker 2: and they had found a program called the Child Sexual
Speaker 2: Offense Evidence Program which has proven to make court less
Speaker 2: traumatic the children and young people going through sexual offense matters.
Speaker 2: And the problem was and the program, and this is
Speaker 2: really significant, and you know, having worked in a university context,
Speaker 2: I know the importance of things being evidence based and
Speaker 2: evaluated and best practice. And this program had been evaluated
Speaker 2: by some academics who I happened to know, who are
Speaker 2: very very good academics, and it was an independent evaluation
Speaker 2: that showed it worked and that it was highly effective
Speaker 2: in reducing trauma. The problem was that the program was
Speaker 2: only available in Sydney and in Newcastle, which meant that
Speaker 2: for every other child outside of those two locations in
Speaker 2: New South Wales. They did not have access to that program,
Speaker 2: which also means that they don't have equitable access to justice.
Speaker 2: And this is what we call post code justice, this
Speaker 2: idea that your access to justice is conditional on the
Speaker 2: post code you living. The Millthorpe sisters had done this
Speaker 2: research and were saying that they wanted to tell their
Speaker 2: stories in order to push for this program to be
Speaker 2: expanded across the state so that every child in need
Speaker 2: of the program had access to it. And I thought, firstly,
Speaker 2: that's incredibly impressive that not only have they identified the problem,
Speaker 2: they've also identified a solution, and it's a solution that's
Speaker 2: got an evidence base around it. Secondly, it's a campaign
Speaker 2: waiting to happen because you've got all the elements. You know.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I when I teach other
Speaker 2: people about campaigning is that you need to be able
Speaker 2: to really clearly explain the problem and also have a
Speaker 2: really clear solution which is clear, measurable and specific. You
Speaker 2: also need to have a clearly defined decision maker, the
Speaker 2: person that has the power to actually make that change,
Speaker 2: because often times I see campaigns where they spend an
Speaker 2: awful lot of time convincing the wrong people. They're convincing
Speaker 2: people that actually don't have the power to make the
Speaker 2: change right. So I thought, I think I can help
Speaker 2: the Millthorpe family and the Millthorpe sisters because they've done
Speaker 2: the research, they had the lived experience to talk about
Speaker 2: the impact of the justice system. What they don't have
Speaker 2: is a megaphone and needed you to amplify them. And
Speaker 2: so that is essentially what became Justice Shouldn't Hurt campaign.
Speaker 2: To do that, we actually had to because in New
Speaker 2: South Wales, you know, survivors can self identify in media
Speaker 2: provided there over a certain age, and because of the
Speaker 2: girl's young ages, we did actually need to go to
Speaker 2: court and get them a court order to exempt them
Speaker 2: so that they could self identify in the media. And
Speaker 2: we made a lot of very We worked really hard
Speaker 2: with the family to tell their story in a way
Speaker 2: that were sensitive and ethical and respectful. You know, I
Speaker 2: didn't ask them a single question about the abuse or
Speaker 2: the abuse, or I didn't name the abuse, or I
Speaker 2: didn't go into a single detail about any of that.
Speaker 2: Really no, no, because they're because of their age. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: so there were five and eight when the abuse happened.
Speaker 2: They had to wait two and a half years for
Speaker 2: it to even get to court, during which time they
Speaker 2: couldn't speak to each other or their parents about what
Speaker 2: had happened to them, because that's considered contaminating the witnesses.
Speaker 2: If you can imagine you're five years old and then too,
Speaker 2: you've got to retain this memory by yourself for two
Speaker 2: and a half years before like that in and of
Speaker 2: itself is possible. Well, it's cruel. It's actually cruel and heartless.
Speaker 1: You spoke about it the start. Having to put your
Speaker 1: life on hold for six months, two and a half years.
Speaker 2: I mean, and that's half your life over again. They're
Speaker 2: from Aubrey Wodonga. They had to relocate to Sydney and
Speaker 2: live in a hotel room for three months when it
Speaker 2: actually went to try or they couldn't have their parents present.
Speaker 2: As you said, they were cross examined for days and
Speaker 2: days on end. Then a jury member fell asleep, so
Speaker 2: they had to release the jury in panel a new
Speaker 2: jury and start the process all over again. I mean,
Speaker 2: these and these are just these are young girls who
Speaker 2: have already been through something incredibly incredibly distressing and traumatic.
Speaker 2: Also the nature of our justice system in general, Like
Speaker 2: we know that in terms of if somebody's been impacted
Speaker 2: by sexual assault trauma, what they need is to be
Speaker 2: able to tell their story, and particularly children, they need
Speaker 2: to be able to tell their story in their own words,
Speaker 2: in their own time and space, without intrusive interrogating, questioning.
Speaker 2: They need to be able to, you know, ideally, like
Speaker 2: in a therapeutic set setting, be believed and listened to.
Speaker 2: And our justice system is the exact opposite of that.
Speaker 2: The starting premise is that the accused person is innocent,
Speaker 2: and so that therefore you must be lying. We're going
Speaker 2: to interrogate, interrogate, interrogate. We're not going to let you
Speaker 2: tell your story in your own way. We're going to
Speaker 2: force it out of you in a way that suits
Speaker 2: our purposes. There's a great quote by Judith Herman that
Speaker 2: if you set out to design a system to provoke
Speaker 2: the symptoms of trauma, it would look very much like
Speaker 2: our current criminal justice system. So the girls, very bravely,
Speaker 2: as part of the Justice Shouldn't Hurt campaign, told their
Speaker 2: story and had written a petition and the goal was
Speaker 2: to get twenty thousand signatures on the petition. Because if
Speaker 2: you get twenty thousand signatures in New South Wales, then
Speaker 2: Parliament is committed to at least debating the issue. When
Speaker 2: we broke the story on new stot Com dot a,
Speaker 2: you we got those twenty thousand signatures within eight hours,
Speaker 2: which you know, it was such a mage for the girls. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and huge kudos to the girls. And then three months later,
Speaker 2: so we continue to write story after story about their
Speaker 2: plight as a family, but also about other people's experiences
Speaker 2: within New South Wales have access to this program and
Speaker 2: the fact that it needed to be rolled out across
Speaker 2: the whole state. And three months later the government came
Speaker 2: to the party and they committed sixty four point three
Speaker 2: million dollars to roll out that program across the whole state.
Speaker 2: I raised that because I just think that those sisters,
Speaker 2: what they did is extraordinary and deserves every accolade under
Speaker 2: the sun.
Speaker 1: They are so strong.
Speaker 2: As you know Michelle Millthorpe. Their mother is now running
Speaker 2: for a sept she is, so the people are fara
Speaker 2: ye get around it on it. Tell me about what
Speaker 2: you're doing now, because you're you're straight back into something new. Okay,
Speaker 2: So my latest campaign, it.
Speaker 1: Feels like you get each idea from the idea that
Speaker 1: you're in, is that what's happened here?
Speaker 2: Well, I think that, Like I'm I love campaigning, and
Speaker 2: the thing about campaigning is you need a clearly defined problem,
Speaker 2: a clearly defined solution, and then you need people who
Speaker 2: are able to speak to that issue and humanize that issue.
Speaker 2: And so it tends to be the other way around that.
Speaker 2: Like someone will approach me like the Millthorpes will or
Speaker 2: I'll just sort of, you know, I randomly met Grace.
Speaker 2: I'll learn a problem, and then I'll start thinking, Okay,
Speaker 2: now how do I work with this person to tell
Speaker 2: their story and also to somehow get some sort of
Speaker 2: positive reform out of it. So I was approached by
Speaker 2: a young woman called Jess Denham. Now Jess's story is
Speaker 2: again horrific. Jess is an adult survivor of child sexual abuse.
Speaker 2: Both of her parents are currently in jail for what
Speaker 2: they did to her starting at age five. Her father
Speaker 2: is actually serving the longest jail sentence ever recorded in
Speaker 2: Australian history for child sexual offending. His name's William Robert Gilfillan,
Speaker 2: and I've been doing an investigation on him and I'm
Speaker 2: now up to seventeen victims of his. Yeah, he used
Speaker 2: to be a pe teacher in Victoria before he relocated
Speaker 2: to New South Wales and had a family. As part
Speaker 2: of the criminal case in two thousand and six against
Speaker 2: the two parents, Jess's counseling notes were her sexual self
Speaker 2: counseling notes were subpoened into evidence. Now, if you can imagine,
Speaker 2: for anyone who accesses sexual sault counseling, the automatic default
Speaker 2: assumption is that that material will be confidential. In fact, absolutely,
Speaker 2: and I remember being in sexual self counseling at raw,
Speaker 2: not sure after my own assault, and the very first
Speaker 2: thing that my counselor said to me was what is
Speaker 2: said in these four walls stays in these four walls.
Speaker 2: And I believe that and that counseling actually probably it's
Speaker 2: what kept me together, you know what, I have no
Speaker 2: doubt it's what kept me alive at points. Now for Jess,
Speaker 2: when her counseling notes were subpoened, that meant that her
Speaker 2: father could then read the very detail like her deepest
Speaker 2: darkest thoughts, fears, nightmares, everything and the impact of what
Speaker 2: he had done to her. And we know that this
Speaker 2: is actually happening all the time offenders or accused people
Speaker 2: in sexual offense matters across Australia are subpoenaing the sexual
Speaker 2: self counseling notes of victims. Now, what that does to
Speaker 2: a person is that it erodes trust in vital mental
Speaker 2: health counseling services, and often, as what happened with Jess,
Speaker 2: they then disengage from that service.
Speaker 1: So you're telling Jess's story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So basically I've told I've recently published Jess's story
Speaker 2: where she has now gone public for the very first
Speaker 2: time to tell her entire story of what happened to
Speaker 2: her growing up, who her father is. He was convicted
Speaker 2: of these additional offenses in December, facing he's actually facing
Speaker 2: more sentencing right now. Since breaking that story, multiple other
Speaker 2: victim survivors of his have come forward and made more
Speaker 2: police statements. But Jess also wants to tell her story
Speaker 2: to highlight the fact that the fact that her offender
Speaker 2: could read her sexual assault counseling notes without her consent
Speaker 2: is a violation and a retraumatization that should have never
Speaker 2: ever happened. The fact that those counseling notes were then
Speaker 2: shared with media who used them without consent is a
Speaker 2: further egregious violation of her dignity and her and the
Speaker 2: fact that we know it's not just Jess Denham who
Speaker 2: has experienced this. So I've now done a freedom of
Speaker 2: information investigation to find out how often is one eight
Speaker 2: hundred respect being subpoened. It turns out one eight hundred
Speaker 2: respect is being subpoened on average once a week, every week,
Speaker 2: once a week yep. And not only are they handing
Speaker 2: over the written client notes, they are handing over the
Speaker 2: actual audio recordings of counseling phone calls and video recordings
Speaker 2: of video calls. And I've spoken to a young woman,
Speaker 2: Madeline Lane. So Madeline Lane was raped in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: by a man named Boyd Kramer, a man from Mossman
Speaker 2: who she met on Tinder, and he was subsequently convicted
Speaker 2: of rape. The night of the rape, Madeline had fled
Speaker 2: his apartment and called one eight hundred Respect and then
Speaker 2: called Full Stop Australia. Both one eight hundred Respect and
Speaker 2: Full Stop Australia were subpoened for the phone calls or
Speaker 2: the contacts that she made to their services that night.
Speaker 2: One eight hundred Respect didn't even check in with Maddie
Speaker 2: before handing over word for word the beatim the entire
Speaker 2: train script of that contact full stop. Australia did fight,
Speaker 2: did challenge their subpoena and were successful. So what the
Speaker 2: key Counseling Confidential campaign is all about is to say
Speaker 2: that in this country, sexual assault survivors who access counseling
Speaker 2: make the assumption that that is confidential, and they should
Speaker 2: be able to make that assumption because counseling is not
Speaker 2: safe if it's not confidential. People are not going to
Speaker 2: open up if they think that anyone could eavesdrop, let
Speaker 2: alone their rapist eavesdropping in on what they're talking.
Speaker 1: The whole courtroom could hear it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Maddie's Madeline Lane's contact to one eight hundred
Speaker 2: respect was not only read by her offender, Boyd Kramer,
Speaker 2: it was actually read out word for word in court.
Speaker 2: So basically the idea of the campaign is to say
Speaker 2: that we need an absolute privilege or an absolute protection
Speaker 2: on counseling notes in these matters. So in the same
Speaker 2: way that you know, if you go and talk to
Speaker 2: your lawyer, you have client attorney privilege. What you say
Speaker 2: in that room is sacred, it's safe, it's protected. Likewise,
Speaker 2: you know some people go to their priests. That can
Speaker 2: be a privileged conversation that can be protected. If people
Speaker 2: come and speak to me as a journalist, I can
Speaker 2: actually invoke media shield laws to refuse to hand that over.
Speaker 2: And yet if you go to a sexual assault counselor
Speaker 2: right now, that conversation is not protected. Scary it is.
Speaker 2: It's really alarming, and I think particularly when I got
Speaker 2: that Freedom of Information data back and discovered that they're
Speaker 2: being foied once a week every week, that for me
Speaker 2: was like this watershed moment of going, Okay, this is
Speaker 2: not jess Denham's case is not an absurd outlier. This
Speaker 2: is actually happening on the rag and we need to
Speaker 2: stop this. So we started a petition called Don't Subpoena,
Speaker 2: Our support Keep Counseling Confidential. People get on it right
Speaker 2: now because that's the campaign that we're really pushing for
Speaker 2: at the moment, and we're really hoping that the new
Speaker 2: South Wales Attorney General, Michael Daily will will hear the
Speaker 2: call and will realize that you know, what is said
Speaker 2: in those moments in counseling. I mean from a legal perspective,
Speaker 2: it's not even that useful because it's hearsay evidence anyway,
Speaker 2: that's the first thing, But far more important than that
Speaker 2: is that following a sexual assault, people should be able
Speaker 2: to access that counseling safe in the knowledge that it
Speaker 2: genuinely is confidential, and that they can park their feelings,
Speaker 2: their fears, their impact, the impact, they can talk about
Speaker 2: the impacts of trauma without their offender ever being able
Speaker 2: to read that. And I think you know, I've spoken
Speaker 2: to one person who when she reported to the police,
Speaker 2: the police said to her, don't get counseling until after
Speaker 2: the criminal trial is over, which might be two to
Speaker 2: three years. But don't get counseling before then, because if
Speaker 2: you do, we can't guarantee it will be safe.
Speaker 1: What's the point of that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I need it earlier, you need it during
Speaker 2: Absolutely And if people are then delaying access to counseling
Speaker 2: for two to three years, or they're being forced to
Speaker 2: choose between your access to justice or your access to
Speaker 2: confidential count that's a binarized choice that survivors should never
Speaker 2: be put in. And you're exactly right. People need that
Speaker 2: counselor the earlier you get counseling, the better the outcomes.
Speaker 2: And particularly when you're going through something as traumatic as
Speaker 2: a trial or an investigation. Having that additional support is
Speaker 2: really really important. We launched the campaign last month and
Speaker 2: already a lot of services and others have joined it
Speaker 2: and have so because this doesn't only affect the sexual
Speaker 2: assult survivors, it also affects the counselors as well. When
Speaker 2: their notes are subpoenaed and they feel powerless to stop it,
Speaker 2: or you know, it's going to cost them an arm
Speaker 2: and a leg to hire a barrister for the day
Speaker 2: to try and challenge that subpoena or the notes. There
Speaker 2: is no way for them to block it, and the
Speaker 2: notes are just handed over. They will often feel very
Speaker 2: violated themselves, or they might feel like they let their
Speaker 2: client down because you know, I've had one counselor say
Speaker 2: to me, I lie in better wake at night thinking
Speaker 2: maybe she never came to me, she'd be better off. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So we we want this law reformed and we want
Speaker 2: people to get behind it.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll definitely be putting that petition in our show notes.
Speaker 1: I feel like I could talk to you for hours,
Speaker 1: you know, but lastly I just wanted to ask you,
Speaker 1: is this the only way we make reform? Bit by
Speaker 1: bit when we find these big but little issues in
Speaker 1: a complex system that really needs a huge overhaul, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: how do we change it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: On a bigger scale.
Speaker 2: This is like one of those age old things that
Speaker 2: I often wrestle with. Am I just rearranging deck chairs
Speaker 2: on the Titanic?
Speaker 1: Like, well, you're making meaningful change, but how to?
Speaker 2: But the system itself is flawed? Yeah, and the origins
Speaker 2: of the system itself is flawed, which I agree. I
Speaker 2: agree with that too. I also am pragmatic and realistic,
Speaker 2: and it is the system we have, and incremental change
Speaker 2: is still still has value. I think though, in the
Speaker 2: same way that I said at the beginning, justice comes
Speaker 2: in all different shapes and sizes, and traditional justice is
Speaker 2: just one idea of justice. You know, some people get
Speaker 2: justice by sharing their stories. Some people get justice, you know,
Speaker 2: through that. There's a myriad ways in which we can
Speaker 2: think about what that looks like for an individual. I
Speaker 2: also think change comes in all different shapes and sizes,
Speaker 2: and what people do. You know. My form of activism
Speaker 2: or advocacy and change is using the media as a
Speaker 2: vehicle to spark law reform or to generate try to
Speaker 2: generate systemic reform that's one type. But there's all kinds
Speaker 2: of change that people are already doing within their own communities,
Speaker 2: changing attitudes within their own families, changing attitudes within their schools,
Speaker 2: doing education, doing you know, community based work. You know,
Speaker 2: a whole lot of social work is about change. Like
Speaker 2: there's all different types of reform. This is just my
Speaker 2: little piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a pretty big piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 1: I think you've also really changed the way the media
Speaker 1: in Australia talks about victim survivors. I think you model
Speaker 1: the behavior that I hope a lot of other places
Speaker 1: are starting to adopt.
Speaker 2: I think it's more that the survivors that I have profiled,
Speaker 2: Like when I was doing let Her Speak campaign, there
Speaker 2: was this great moment where I was working with one
Speaker 2: of the survivors in Tasmania. Sur name's Janelle O'Connor, and
Speaker 2: at the time we had not got her court audio
Speaker 2: yet and so we couldn't identify her real name and
Speaker 2: face yet, and so she had chosen pseudonym for herself
Speaker 2: and we had to take a photograph where she wasn't
Speaker 2: her face wasn't visible. The photographer had the brief went
Speaker 2: out took a photo of her, and it was her
Speaker 2: head in her hands, sort of crouched down, very fatal position.
Speaker 2: It almost looked like she was crying in her hands.
Speaker 2: It was so disempowering. It was the typical kind of
Speaker 2: old school way in which victim survivors stories have presented,
Speaker 2: you know, very sort of you know, fatal position, almost
Speaker 2: like you know, rocking in the corner, often in shadowy
Speaker 2: sort of. I looked at it. I hated it. I
Speaker 2: showed it to Janelle. She hated it as well, and
Speaker 2: we were like, this photographer has not understood the brief.
Speaker 2: You know, this is a strong, empowered woman who wants
Speaker 2: to say her name and who is demanding law reform,
Speaker 2: having experienced child sexual abuse. How dare we present her
Speaker 2: in that, you know, in that light of being you know,
Speaker 2: feeble and almost broken. So I said to the editor, no,
Speaker 2: we're not using that photo. Janelle's fourteen year old son
Speaker 2: picked up a camera, took her hand and because he
Speaker 2: saw it to and he was like, nah's bullshit, and
Speaker 2: wrote the words let us speak on her hand.
Speaker 1: That's how it came about.
Speaker 2: She put her hand then in front of her face
Speaker 2: to kind so that she couldn't be identified. He took
Speaker 2: the photo of her hand but covering her face so
Speaker 2: that we could still use it legally, and it was
Speaker 2: the most and it was a really strong photo because
Speaker 2: it was her hand down the borrowl of the camera
Speaker 2: saying let us speak. And that not only became not
Speaker 2: only did we use that photo in print in the
Speaker 2: newspaper the next day, but that became the iconic image
Speaker 2: of the entire campaign, and we recreated that image over
Speaker 2: and over and over again. Now that didn't come from me.
Speaker 2: That came from a fourteen year old boy who knew
Speaker 2: his mom was about us and who was refusing to
Speaker 2: see her portrayed. And she and I were also in
Speaker 2: full agreement that she should not be portrayed in the
Speaker 2: stereotypical way that victim survivors are portrayed. And I think
Speaker 2: like one of the things that I'm really proud of
Speaker 2: with the let Her Speak, Let Us Speak campaign was
Speaker 2: that we really did, at every point, you know, want
Speaker 2: to reposition and revisit how we portray victim survivors. The
Speaker 2: victim survivors. You know, so often in the media, victim
Speaker 2: survivors historically have been positioned as broken down, trodden, to
Speaker 2: be pitied, to be sympathized, and that's not empowering at all.
Speaker 2: Whereas I think one of the things that was successful
Speaker 2: about the campaign, you know, I often reflect on when
Speaker 2: we do a campaigns, we reflect on the things that
Speaker 2: maybe didn't work so well and also the things that
Speaker 2: did work well so that we learned for next time.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that I think did work
Speaker 2: well in that campaign was obviously, you know, we got
Speaker 2: the law reform, which was the major goal, but the
Speaker 2: other thing was like, we really actually reimagined how we
Speaker 2: do photography in this in this campaign. And I think
Speaker 2: the other thing that for me was the win of
Speaker 2: that campaign was that generally when we report stories about
Speaker 2: sexual violence, the audience tends to skew very heavily female. Suddenly,
Speaker 2: when I was doing the let Her Speak, let Us
Speaker 2: Speak campaign, we had huge numbers of men reading and
Speaker 2: we didn't know why initially. Then we realized it was
Speaker 2: because we were hooking it on freedom of speech. Turns
Speaker 2: out men really care about that, really, particularly like conservative
Speaker 2: old white men. Yeah, so suddenly we had this, We
Speaker 2: had this captive audience of men and don't generally click
Speaker 2: on those stories, but who we are now engaged and listening.
Speaker 2: So my editor and I were like, all right, well,
Speaker 2: now we've got them, why don't we use this as
Speaker 2: like a bit of a trojan horse to get some
Speaker 2: feminist vegetables into them and to educate them about things
Speaker 2: like victim blaming and rate myths, which is what we did.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm really I'm proud of that campaign and
Speaker 2: the reforms that it has achieved, but I'm also proud
Speaker 2: of some of the conversations that it started in some
Speaker 2: unexpected places.
Speaker 1: You definitely should be thank you, Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being you, Nina.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for having me today.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Nina for sharing her story and the
Speaker 1: multiple stories of other victim survivors with us. You can
Speaker 1: find out more about her work and her most recent
Speaker 1: campaign in our show notes. If you're experiencing sexual violence,
Speaker 1: please head to our show notes force some numbers to contact.
Speaker 1: If you want to see visuals from this episode, head
Speaker 1: over to our Instagram page at True Crime Conversations and
Speaker 1: for in depth case explain follow us on TikTok under
Speaker 1: the same name. True Crime Conversations is hosted by me
Speaker 1: Jemma Bath, our senior producer is Tarlie Blackman, the group
Speaker 1: executive producer is Alaria Brophy, and there's been audio designed
Speaker 1: by Jacob Brown and video editing by Julian Rosario. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening. I'll be back next week with
Speaker 1: another true crime conversation