Speaker 1: Before you listen today. This episode contains stories of child
Speaker 1: sexual abuse, sexual assault, and suicide. Nina Fanelle is lying
Speaker 1: in the dirt. It's two thousand and seven and she'd
Speaker 1: been walking home from a university celebration to her parents'
Speaker 1: house in Sydney's Lower north Shore when she was attacked
Speaker 1: by a stranger. At first, her reaction to being punched, threatened,
Speaker 1: pulled into a nearby park and sexually assaulted was to freeze.
Speaker 1: But right now she's ready to fight. The man's grasp
Speaker 1: is still on her throat. She can't breathe, she can't move.
Speaker 1: I don't want to die, not like this, she thinks.
Speaker 1: Then she's fighting him, thrashing, kicking, punching, anything to get
Speaker 1: his body off hers. It works, He retreats and she runs.
Speaker 1: I'm Jemma Bath and you're listening to True Crime Conversations,
Speaker 1: a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking
Speaker 1: to the people who know the most about them. Nina
Speaker 1: Fanel didn't get justice in her own story. They never
Speaker 1: found the guy who sexually assaulted and attacked her, but
Speaker 1: her experience lit a fire in her belly, and she
Speaker 1: has used her career as a journalist to help other
Speaker 1: victim survivors of assault. She has changed laws across the country,
Speaker 1: held systems and people and abuses to account, and helped
Speaker 1: reshape the way the Australian media tells the stories of survivors.
Speaker 1: Her various campaigns, such as the let Her Speak campaign,
Speaker 1: which targeted gag laws preventing victims from naming themselves, introduced
Speaker 1: us to survivors like Grace Tamee, who went on to
Speaker 1: become Australian of the Year for her own advocacy in
Speaker 1: this space. The Justice Shouldn't Hurt campaign helped Pipper and
Speaker 1: Rose Milthorpe share their experience as child victim survivors in
Speaker 1: the new South Wales court system, ultimately leading to an
Speaker 1: enormous change for the state in the way young people
Speaker 1: give evidence. We've actually had their mum Michelle speak on
Speaker 1: a recent episode of this podcast right now, she's in
Speaker 1: the midst of another campaign. It's called Keep Counseling Confidential,
Speaker 1: which I'll let her explain. Nina is a force to
Speaker 1: be reckoned with. She is a tireless advocate and has
Speaker 1: become a safe place for people to share their truth.
Speaker 1: She has won various awards for her work, including the
Speaker 1: Australian Human Rights Award and a Kennedy Award. She joins
Speaker 1: us now to talk about it all. Nina, thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us on True Crime Conversations. You have built
Speaker 1: your career on telling the stories of victim survivors as
Speaker 1: a victim survivor yourself. How hard is that to do
Speaker 1: this day in and day out, to tell these stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it's a bit of a double edged
Speaker 2: sword in the sense that a lot of the details
Speaker 2: that I'm looking at, particularly in police reports, are very
Speaker 2: graphic and very harrowing, but the people themselves are extraordinary.
Speaker 2: And the thing about my work is that I'm not
Speaker 2: a court reporter. I'm not going And I did that
Speaker 2: for one day and I actually didn't survive it because, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I was reporting on a rape case and I went
Speaker 2: to trial and I was watching a survivor being cross examined,
Speaker 2: and I actually felt like I was watching someone being tortured.
Speaker 2: It was very very clear that they did not want
Speaker 2: to be there, and I felt sick. I couldn't do
Speaker 2: that kind of reporting. I learned court reporting is not
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 1: It's very hard. I've done it before too, and it's
Speaker 1: very confronting. It is.
Speaker 2: It is, whereas the sort of reporting that I'm doing
Speaker 2: is I'm usually so the way that I work is
Speaker 2: that victim survivors approach me. I never do call out,
Speaker 2: and there are a range of reasons why I don't
Speaker 2: do callouts. But when victim survivors approach me, if I
Speaker 2: have capacity to do the story, usually they're at a
Speaker 2: point in their own recovery and healing where they've actually
Speaker 2: had some therapy, they've regained some agency, They're at a
Speaker 2: point where they're reclaiming, and so I'm meeting people not
Speaker 2: on the worst day of their life. I'm actually usually
Speaker 2: meeting them at a point where they're beginning to become
Speaker 2: re empowered, and I view my role as walking alongside
Speaker 2: them in that process. And so the people themselves are
Speaker 2: actually quite extraordinary. The details are harrowing, but I actually
Speaker 2: really enjoy the work with the people.
Speaker 1: That's such an amazing way to look at it, like
Speaker 1: you are the vehicle that helps them kind of yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: get back out there and reclaim everything.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly how I view it, as I'm facilitating
Speaker 2: them at taking that next step in their process towards
Speaker 2: healing and recovery or you know, reclaiming agency over their story.
Speaker 1: I want to start with your story. Sure, lots of
Speaker 1: people might not have heard it us about what happened
Speaker 1: to you in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure. So I was studying Media and Communications at
Speaker 2: Sydney University. I wanted to be a journalist, and I
Speaker 2: was doing my honors year in Media and Comms. And
Speaker 2: it was actually on the day of my honors presentation.
Speaker 2: I was traveling home afterwards, and I was walking down
Speaker 2: my street, which is in Sydney. At the time, I
Speaker 2: was living with my parents and it's in a pretty
Speaker 2: safe suburbs in Hunters Hill, and I was I had
Speaker 2: headphones on, and I remember I was carrying my university
Speaker 2: notes and a bottle of Coachs Hero and I had
Speaker 2: a guy approach me from behind and he grabbed me
Speaker 2: around here and he held a box cut of blade
Speaker 2: to my throat and he dragged me into a park
Speaker 2: and he said he released me, and he came in and
Speaker 2: he stood in front of me and he said, point blank,
Speaker 2: he said, I'm going to kill you. And he made
Speaker 2: a fist and he struck me and I fell back
Speaker 2: on my back and he climbed on top of me
Speaker 2: and began strangling me and bashing me and then indecently
Speaker 2: sexually assaulting me. And you know, this is nineteen years
Speaker 2: ago now, so it's I've had a lot of therapy
Speaker 2: and a lot of processing since then. But I fought back,
Speaker 2: and there's parts of my memory that are missing or
Speaker 2: that are fragmented. I do remember a feeling. I mean,
Speaker 2: the most terrifying part was actually when I was being
Speaker 2: strangled because I couldn't breathe and I thought I was
Speaker 2: going to die. When he got off me, I remember
Speaker 2: like just the sensation, the feeling of lightness on my
Speaker 2: chest that I could breathe again. And then the next
Speaker 2: memory that I have is actually standing up and looking
Speaker 2: down and I had blood on my hands, and because
Speaker 2: he'd had a box cut of blade, I didn't know,
Speaker 2: you know, I was in shock. I didn't know if
Speaker 2: I'd been stabbed. I didn't know why I had blood
Speaker 2: on my hands. I didn't I was disoriented and confused.
Speaker 2: The first thing I did was I checked my body
Speaker 2: to see if I was bleeding anywhere, And when I
Speaker 2: couldn't find anywhere that I was bleeding, I just grabbed
Speaker 2: my bag which was on the ground, and got out
Speaker 2: my phone and began running. And I called the police
Speaker 2: as I was running down my street and telling them
Speaker 2: my name, where I live, what had happened to me.
Speaker 2: And I got to the front door of my parents'
Speaker 2: house and I got out my key, and I just
Speaker 2: remember my hands were shaking so much that I couldn't
Speaker 2: get my key in the front door, and I just
Speaker 2: remember having this sort of another surge of the adrenaline,
Speaker 2: thinking like, is he going to grab me again because
Speaker 2: I can't get inside anyway. Eventually I calmed my hand
Speaker 2: down enough to get the key in the door, and
Speaker 2: I got inside, and soon after the police arrived. They
Speaker 2: took me back to the park where it happened, straightway,
Speaker 2: straight away. Yeah, but it was interesting because you don't
Speaker 2: necessarily respond in these moments where you think you're going
Speaker 2: to respond, like people have often said, you know, it
Speaker 2: was that terrifying. And I was like no, I was like,
Speaker 2: by then I had gone from freeze mode to fight mode,
Speaker 2: into flight mode, then back into fight mode, and so
Speaker 2: when we went back to the park, I was ready
Speaker 2: to fight like I had by then. There were a
Speaker 2: number of police, there were police dogs, I thought that
Speaker 2: they were going to catch him. I was like, let's
Speaker 2: get him, let's get him. Yeah, they I mean they
Speaker 2: found a bunch of like he'd ripped my necklace off,
Speaker 2: they found there was scuff marks in the ground, like
Speaker 2: all of that. I remember seeing my coke, my bottle
Speaker 2: of cokes here on the ground and instinctively going to
Speaker 2: pick it up because it was like like rubbish, like
Speaker 2: you clean up, you know, and then being like, no,
Speaker 2: don't touch that. That's now evidence, and me just kind
Speaker 2: of going right like right of course, okay, this is
Speaker 2: evidence now, and it being this weird anyway, So they
Speaker 2: took me to the police station, and yeah, that night
Speaker 2: I went through the process of you know, the photographs, swabs,
Speaker 2: all of that sort of stuff, making the police report,
Speaker 2: and then getting referred to to raw No Sure sexual
Speaker 2: assault Service. So that was. Yeah, that was when I
Speaker 2: was twenty three, and yeah, like it changed my life.
Speaker 2: I talk about it now quite just passionately, probably because
Speaker 2: I've had sort of certain therapies and so on. But
Speaker 2: I don't think you do. You're just very matter of fact. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, firstly, I'm sorry that happened to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: How did you find your interactions with the police, because
Speaker 1: had you interacted with police before this?
Speaker 2: No, I don't think I'd ever been inside a police
Speaker 2: station before that. I had a challenging experience with the
Speaker 2: police in that I gave a description of the offender
Speaker 2: and they did what's called a comfit, which is like
Speaker 2: a sketch drawing yes. Yeah, And so they got me
Speaker 2: back in the station a few days later. I was still,
Speaker 2: you know, in acute trauma, and they got me to
Speaker 2: look through like these big binders of sex offenders who
Speaker 2: live in my area. And I had no idea that
Speaker 2: there were that many sex offenders that live locally. Like
Speaker 2: that in and of itself was actually really quite overwhelming
Speaker 2: and traumatic. So I'm flicking through these binders of these
Speaker 2: faces and they're essentially asking me do you recognize the person?
Speaker 2: And I didn't. He wasn't in there. But as I
Speaker 2: was doing that, there was a conversation happening behind me
Speaker 2: between a couple of guys, and they were talking about how, oh,
Speaker 2: you know the problem is, you know, these young women
Speaker 2: they don't understand the risk out there and the risks
Speaker 2: that they're putting themselves in. And I was just like
Speaker 2: you know, I was. The problem is not young women, no,
Speaker 2: full stop no. And the problem is not the decision.
Speaker 2: You know, I was walking down my street and I'd
Speaker 2: had that sort of attitude from other people in my
Speaker 2: life who I disclosed to already of you know, how
Speaker 2: could you be so stupid to be walking home alone?
Speaker 2: Da da da da da. You know, and you know,
Speaker 2: when your human rights have just been violated, the last
Speaker 2: thing that you expect is that people are then going
Speaker 2: to turn around and blame you or question you or
Speaker 2: suggest that you've made the mistake as opposed to the
Speaker 2: person that's violated your human rights. And that was both.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, it was at the time, it was
Speaker 2: incredibly challenging. In retrospect, it's been incredibly motivating.
Speaker 1: Very motivating, I would say, yeah.
Speaker 2: So I look. I actually subsequently found out that so
Speaker 2: that police station was Glades Or Police station, and several
Speaker 2: years later, in twenty thirteen, I got an alert that
Speaker 2: the station was actually there was a culture in that
Speaker 2: station where one of the cops there had been secretly
Speaker 2: recording himself having sex with women using a pinhole camera
Speaker 2: and then bringing the footage to work and showing it
Speaker 2: around to no. No, and I remember reading that going,
Speaker 2: are you fucking kidding me? My goodness, So that was
Speaker 2: the culture of that police station, where he would this
Speaker 2: individual was bringing this footage to work, showing it to
Speaker 2: his mates, are the coppers, so that they could all
Speaker 2: have a good laugh at this woman whose human rights
Speaker 2: were being.
Speaker 1: Exploited and people fighting for.
Speaker 2: These were the people who were meant to support me
Speaker 2: in my most vulnerable moment of my life. So when
Speaker 2: I found that story in twenty thirteen, it was, you know,
Speaker 2: it was horrifying to think about the women that that
Speaker 2: had happened to, who had been filmed without their consent,
Speaker 2: and how they would be filming feeling sorry. It was
Speaker 2: also oddly vindicating in that because this isn't the first
Speaker 2: time I've spoken publicly about the fact that the police,
Speaker 2: the attitudes that I experienced from police were not ideal,
Speaker 2: and when I spoke about that, I copped backlash and
Speaker 2: intimidation from police, and I felt like this moment of like,
Speaker 2: have I done the wrong thing? Now? I absolutely don't
Speaker 2: think I've done the wrong at all, and would make
Speaker 2: the same decision again.
Speaker 1: Did they ever find the guy?
Speaker 2: No? So that's an interesting story in and of itself.
Speaker 2: So that night they you know, they took the swabs
Speaker 2: and so on, and because I had blood, we didn't
Speaker 2: know if it was my blood or his blood, and
Speaker 2: there was a few things. They ended up being able
Speaker 2: to find his DNA on me, but they have never
Speaker 2: found a match in the system. Now, the interesting thing
Speaker 2: about that was it took them more than six months
Speaker 2: to actually test the DNA, and that was six months
Speaker 2: of my life where firstly I was thinking, you know,
Speaker 2: this is this guy fits the criteria of the serial rapist,
Speaker 2: wouldn't you and the level of violence involved in the
Speaker 2: fact that he was a complete stranger, you would think
Speaker 2: that they would make it a priority to test that
Speaker 2: kind of DNA. Evidently not. It wasn't until I wrote
Speaker 2: a press release and spoke to Channel seven and put
Speaker 2: pressure on the then Premier Morris Yemma to step in
Speaker 2: the back when and tested the DNA. They and again,
Speaker 2: like that begs the question of why victim survivors having
Speaker 2: to advocate for justice in their own cases, let alone
Speaker 2: systemic reform. And what happened was after I'd you know,
Speaker 2: highlighted the fact that six months had gone by and
Speaker 2: the DNA had still not been tested. The premier did
Speaker 2: step in and ask for it to be tested, and
Speaker 2: that was good for me in the sense that the
Speaker 2: squeaky wheel gets to the grease. I got my answer,
Speaker 2: but it just meant that everybody else in the queue
Speaker 2: now had to wait one extra day. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: think that was like, that was a in some ways,
Speaker 2: that was a real learning lesson for me in terms
Speaker 2: of campaigning and advocacy of I'd made a strategic error there.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't have asked for my the DNA in my case,
Speaker 2: to be tested. I should have asked for them to
Speaker 2: resolve the entire backlog.
Speaker 1: Now you can see why you were a bit more
Speaker 1: selfish in that scenario.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean in that moment, I was, you know,
Speaker 2: I you know, I think I was twenty four by
Speaker 2: then and in deep trauma. But yeah, like I walked
Speaker 2: away from that going, huh, there's a lesson there for
Speaker 2: next time.
Speaker 1: So that's obviously why you decided to speak out and
Speaker 1: tell your story so soon after.
Speaker 2: So I spoke out five weeks after, and it was
Speaker 2: because he hadn't been apprehended, Like my goal at that
Speaker 2: point in time was to get him arrested and removed
Speaker 2: from the street so that he couldn't do this to
Speaker 2: anyone else. And that was my motivation in speaking publicly,
Speaker 2: because we know, as you know working in media, that
Speaker 2: when you attach a face and a name to a story,
Speaker 2: it gives it more prominence in the media. So that's
Speaker 2: why I did it Initially. They now have his DNA
Speaker 2: on file, they've never found a match. That's not to
Speaker 2: say that they won't now find a match given advances,
Speaker 2: particularly in genealogy, DNA.
Speaker 1: Testing and so on. Yeah, not having a day in court,
Speaker 1: not having a resolution to your own story, has that
Speaker 1: had an impact on you?
Speaker 2: Yes, But I think mainly for that first six months
Speaker 2: when I was waiting every day to get the phone
Speaker 2: call to tell me whether or not they'd found his
Speaker 2: DNA and whether or not, because for that six months
Speaker 2: I was in complete paralysis because I didn't know. Are
Speaker 2: they going to call me and say we've got his
Speaker 2: DNA and we know who he is and we're going
Speaker 2: off to a rest of the guy. You need to
Speaker 2: get ready for court, in which case I need to
Speaker 2: preserve every detail in my mind of what happened, you know,
Speaker 2: for the purposes of cross examination and so on. Or
Speaker 2: am I going to get the phone call saying you know, sorry, love,
Speaker 2: we couldn't work. You know, we didn't get any DNA.
Speaker 2: We don't know who he is, in which case I
Speaker 2: need to, you know, process that in a way, which
Speaker 2: is about trying to get to a point of acceptance
Speaker 2: and moving on with the rest of my life. And
Speaker 2: so for that six months, I was like seesawing between
Speaker 2: am I meant to be moving on with my life
Speaker 2: or am I meant to be preserving every detail and
Speaker 2: sort of mentally preparing for court? And they're two very
Speaker 2: different emotional states they are. So that was and that's
Speaker 2: why when it got to the six month mark and
Speaker 2: the DNA still hadn't been tested, I was in an
Speaker 2: absolute frenzy and was like, I just need this answer
Speaker 2: so that I can plan the rest of my life. Yeah,
Speaker 2: after I got that answer that they had male DNA
Speaker 2: but they didn't have a match, at least gave me
Speaker 2: some resolution, which meant that I could sort of park
Speaker 2: it a little bit and focus on, well, what are
Speaker 2: the things that I do have control over in my life?
Speaker 2: And obviously the nature of sexual violence is that it
Speaker 2: robs you of power and control, and so within therapy,
Speaker 2: one of the things that you know, we plotted out
Speaker 2: was well, what do I have agency in control over
Speaker 2: and how can I put my energy into those things?
Speaker 2: In a way that's become my therapy of well, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to get justice in the traditional sense,
Speaker 2: you know, through the criminal justice system, but justice comes
Speaker 2: in many forms, and for some of us, telling our
Speaker 2: story is justice, or you know, working in solidarity with
Speaker 2: other survivors is a form of.
Speaker 1: Healing and justice changing the system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned that you were studying journalism at the time.
Speaker 1: Had you thought about where you might specialize, what you
Speaker 1: wanted to do, and how did that change after what
Speaker 1: happened to you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I did want to be a journalist. I
Speaker 2: hadn't thought about what area I would specialize in. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: I had actually I was very interested in human rights,
Speaker 2: and I had done some gender studies subjects at university.
Speaker 2: But it was a bit of a baptism by fire
Speaker 2: in the sense that my first experience of journalism other
Speaker 2: than as a consumer, was not me reporting the news.
Speaker 2: It was me being to the subjective news. And at
Speaker 2: the time, like back in two thousand and seven, when
Speaker 2: my story broke, there were very few public survivors, you know,
Speaker 2: like this was an era before the Me Too movement,
Speaker 2: before there was that sort of public push for survivors,
Speaker 2: or not even a public pusher, an awareness that the
Speaker 2: shame sits on the other side, and that we can
Speaker 2: tell our stories without fear or stigma.
Speaker 1: And so when I was wild that we didn't do
Speaker 1: that back then, Yeah, I mean, it's so common now
Speaker 1: for people to tell their stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's reasons for that. I mean, back then,
Speaker 2: we didn't have social media, at least not to the
Speaker 2: extent that we have now, and so there were real
Speaker 2: gatekeepers around which stories get told in media and how
Speaker 2: they get told. And the way that victim survivors stories
Speaker 2: were traditionally told was in this really paternalist stick way,
Speaker 2: which was not necessarily inspiring or empowering from the victim
Speaker 2: survivors to come forward. So I mean, and there was still,
Speaker 2: you know, as there are now many pervasive rape myths,
Speaker 2: but back then it was even worse. So when I
Speaker 2: went public, it was a really interesting experience in that
Speaker 2: I now know personally firsthand what it's like to be
Speaker 2: in the vulnerable seat, you know, on the vulnerable side
Speaker 2: of you know, the camera or the microphone and to
Speaker 2: feel like you're handing over trust to the journalist to
Speaker 2: tell your story. And at twenty three and I had,
Speaker 2: you know, very little understanding of exactly what it meant
Speaker 2: to go public as a survivor back then. So I
Speaker 2: learned the hard way, really, and I had some very
Speaker 2: positi experiences with some journalists. I had some really challenging
Speaker 2: experiences with a couple of journalists, but it taught me
Speaker 2: that there is a way to do you know, the
Speaker 2: positive experience has made me think, yeah, there is a
Speaker 2: way to do this work, and it is important work.
Speaker 2: I also noticed that a lot of the things that
Speaker 2: really harmed me at the time were not necessarily intentional
Speaker 2: on behalf of the journalist. So back back in the day,
Speaker 2: back in two thousand and seven, the Sydney Morning Herald
Speaker 2: is too and all the newspapers they would refresh at midnight.
Speaker 2: So I would be up at eleven fifty nine pressing refresh, Refresh, refresh,
Speaker 2: waiting for my story to come up about what had
Speaker 2: happened to me, And then when it's not there, I
Speaker 2: panic and I start spiraling, going, you know, has something
Speaker 2: happened did they not believe me? Is something wrong? And
Speaker 2: by the time nine am rolls around and I can
Speaker 2: call the journalist and find out the story just got
Speaker 2: held over. As you know, stories get held over all
Speaker 2: the time for all kinds of reasons. I've been up
Speaker 2: half the night having an anxiety attack. Now that's not
Speaker 2: because of a bad journalist. It's because of they weren't
Speaker 2: aware of the fact that for someone in my situation,
Speaker 2: I would be hyper anxious about that story. You know.
Speaker 2: There were other things like one journalist went to the
Speaker 2: police and asked for a copy of my police report,
Speaker 2: and I experienced that as her disbelieving me, because I thought, well,
Speaker 2: why wouldn't you just you know, I told you my story.
Speaker 2: If you wanted a copy of my police report, you
Speaker 2: could have just asked me and I would have given
Speaker 2: it to you. By you going behind my back without
Speaker 2: my knowledge to the police, that makes me feel like
Speaker 2: you don't trust my work. Now, as a journalist, I
Speaker 2: know exactly what she was doing. She was fact checking.
Speaker 2: But had she taken an extra five minutes and explained
Speaker 2: that to me that that's what she was doing, I
Speaker 2: would have experienced that quite differently. So little things like
Speaker 2: that like just you know, letting the person know that
Speaker 2: you know you need to you know what fact checking
Speaker 2: is and why we do it. Or another really big
Speaker 2: one that comes up all the time in my work now,
Speaker 2: so now I work as a journalist specifically reporting on
Speaker 2: victim survivors, is every time we make a really serious allegation,
Speaker 2: say about an institution that has maybe covered up sexual assault,
Speaker 2: as a journalist, I have an obligation to go to
Speaker 2: that institution and offer them a right of reply. Now,
Speaker 2: if you don't tell the victim survivor that and suddenly
Speaker 2: they're reading the article and they see that you've gone
Speaker 2: and quoted the institution that has harmed them, they will
Speaker 2: feel betrayed. So it's as simple as just explaining to
Speaker 2: the person, here is what a right of reply is,
Speaker 2: here is why I'm obliged to do it as part
Speaker 2: of our journalistic code of ethics. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: I disbelieve you or anything like that. It's just part
Speaker 2: of the process. After my story being in the news,
Speaker 2: I did graduate. I had a very very I had
Speaker 2: a wonderful honor supervisor, Professor Catherine Lumby in the Media
Speaker 2: Schools in the Union, and she realized that I was
Speaker 2: really spiraling, and so she put a lot of support
Speaker 2: in place around me to help me. Like I went
Speaker 2: part time to finish my honest thesis, and I ended
Speaker 2: up I was at risk of disengaging and dropping out
Speaker 2: of my degree, my honors degree. And I always say
Speaker 2: it was because of her support that I graduated and
Speaker 2: I got first class honors, and I got a scholarship
Speaker 2: to deal PhD. And ended up working with Catherine for
Speaker 2: quite a while as well, and doing work with some
Speaker 2: of her work with NRL football players and their attitudes
Speaker 2: towards women and consent in domestic violence and so on.
Speaker 2: So I did that for a bit, and then finally
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, I was like, oh, that's right. I
Speaker 2: always wanted to be a journalist. Maybe I should actually
Speaker 2: try my hand at that and see if I'd be
Speaker 2: any good at it, given that that had been the
Speaker 2: master plan since high school. You know, I was one
Speaker 2: of the editors at school newspaper. I'd always wanted to
Speaker 2: go in that direction, and I'd sort of gone off
Speaker 2: course for a bit, and then I came back and
Speaker 2: also corrected, Yeah, of course, corrected, that's right.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, it's only a few years after course
Speaker 1: correcting you published the Red Zone Report, which was an
Speaker 1: investigation into sexual violence and hazing in Australian university residential colleges.
Speaker 1: What made you hone in on.
Speaker 2: University Yes, sure so, good question. So in twenty and sixteen,
Speaker 2: when I decided to become a journalist, my first project
Speaker 2: that I set for myself was I wanted to do
Speaker 2: fifty two articles in fifty two weeks on university campus
Speaker 2: sexual assault. And the reason I chose that was I
Speaker 2: had gone into working at a university and because I
Speaker 2: was a public survivor, you become a little bit of
Speaker 2: a lightning rod for disclosure when you're public, and so
Speaker 2: I'm working on a university campus. I was relatively young,
Speaker 2: you know. I became a university lecturer at twenty four
Speaker 2: and I suddenly start receiving disclosures from my students because
Speaker 2: they recognized that I would be presumably a safer person
Speaker 2: to tell. And the story I kept hearing over and
Speaker 2: over and over again was about sexual assault within the
Speaker 2: residential colleges at Sydney University, and one student in particular
Speaker 2: disclosed that she'd been sexual assaulted by Saint Paul's student.
Speaker 2: And then the next year she came back and she said,
Speaker 2: do you remember the name of that person that I mentioned?
Speaker 2: And I said yes, and she said, look at this.
Speaker 2: It was a Facebook group that he'd made called defined
Speaker 2: Statutory pro Rape Anti Consent And the picture for the
Speaker 2: Facebook group was a T shirt that says, does this
Speaker 2: shit make me look like a rapist? And all of
Speaker 2: the members of the group were Saint Paul's students.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And she made the decision that she was going to
Speaker 2: take that to the media. And when she did, her
Speaker 2: motivation was to get cultural change and to get consent
Speaker 2: education within Saint Paul's College and the residential colleges. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: when and it went to the media, blew up on
Speaker 2: page one of the Ciney Morning Herald. But when that happened,
Speaker 2: the reaction from the colleges was not shock and horror.
Speaker 2: It was defensiveness and minimization and davo and it was
Speaker 2: pretending like they were being the victims of the big
Speaker 2: bad media. And that was you know, as back then
Speaker 2: as a tutor and as a lecturer and or junior lecturer,
Speaker 2: and I was seeing the trauma and the impacts the
Speaker 2: sexual assault was having on students. And these were very,
Speaker 2: very talented students, and you know, students that had gained
Speaker 2: an atar of I think it was like ninety eight
Speaker 2: point four five to be in the class in the
Speaker 2: first place, and then they experienced sexual assault. And I'm
Speaker 2: watching them disengage from university, drop out of their degrees,
Speaker 2: and little things that our university could have done, or
Speaker 2: that the colleges could have done, including things as simple
Speaker 2: as allowing a victim survivor to change bedroom so that
Speaker 2: they don't have to sleep in the same bedroom where
Speaker 2: the assault took place. It's not hard, and I was outraged.
Speaker 2: I mentioned before that when my own assault happened, Professor
Speaker 2: Catherine Lumby supported me and I always and because of
Speaker 2: her support, I didn't disengage from my own education. I
Speaker 2: completed my education, and so I became really outraged that
Speaker 2: that now my own students were not receiving the same support,
Speaker 2: love and compassion that I had received, and that I
Speaker 2: was watching them drop out of their education that they
Speaker 2: had fought so hard to be there. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: one of my very firm beliefs is that all people
Speaker 2: should be entitled to an education free of sexual violence.
Speaker 2: But if sexual violence has occurred, then the educational institution
Speaker 2: should do everything in their power to help support the victim,
Speaker 2: survivor and to keep them engaged in education. So when
Speaker 2: I moved into journalism, that was why that was my
Speaker 2: first project to do the fifty two articles on university
Speaker 2: campus sexual ASUL because I knew that that was like
Speaker 2: I knew it was a powder keg waiting to be
Speaker 2: ignited because.
Speaker 1: You're talking about one university, but your report was on
Speaker 1: Australian university, so you found that risk experience was pretty
Speaker 1: universal across the country. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in that year of reporting, I was reporting across
Speaker 2: all thirty nine public universities in Australia and we did
Speaker 2: a number of freedom of information requests with in partnership
Speaker 2: with Channel seven, and we found out things like, of
Speaker 2: five hundred and seventy five reported sexual misconduct defenses, only
Speaker 2: six had resulted in an expulsion, and that universities were
Speaker 2: more likely to expel people for play than rape. And
Speaker 2: in cases where there was one case at one university
Speaker 2: where a student had admitted rape and his punishment was
Speaker 2: I think it was a two hundred dollar fine and
Speaker 2: to write an apology letter and I mean the cost
Speaker 2: of a parking ticket at that university was more than
Speaker 2: two hundred dollars. There was, you know, there were other
Speaker 2: things that we found a number of the universities refused
Speaker 2: to comply with the freedom of information requests for their
Speaker 2: data around how many sexual misconduct complaints they were receiving.
Speaker 2: And so Alison Sandy from Channel seven and I decided
Speaker 2: that we would FOI the non compliant. We would FI
Speaker 2: the police for police reports are sexual assault at these
Speaker 2: street addresses. And then we listed the street addresses of
Speaker 2: the non compliant universities and we got five hundred pages
Speaker 2: of police reports back from that, and so my job
Speaker 2: was to go through these five hundred pages into catalog.
Speaker 2: And so I knew that there was so much going
Speaker 2: on here, and I'd done all these news reports and
Speaker 2: then what had happened was because of a bunch of
Speaker 2: student activism and the reporting in twenty sixteen that had
Speaker 2: highlighted a number of the hazing and sexual assault problems
Speaker 2: at Sydney University. Sydney University Colleges commissioned a woman called
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Broderick to do a review, a million dollar review
Speaker 2: of their culture. Now that came out in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: and when I read the report, I was I mean,
Speaker 2: I have a lot of respect for Liz in general,
Speaker 2: but I do not have respect for that report. It
Speaker 2: was so watered down and diluted and whitewashed, and we
Speaker 2: now know why. We know that the colleges had a
Speaker 2: lot of control over the final product. I was so outraged,
Speaker 2: as was a colleague of mind, Shanna Bremner, that we
Speaker 2: just thought, well, we're sitting on this mine field of
Speaker 2: data here, because we've got so much stuff through freedom
Speaker 2: of information, through student accounts, through photographs, through screenshots of
Speaker 2: Facebook groups, why don't we just pull it all together
Speaker 2: into a two hundred page report. Which is what we
Speaker 2: did and what made it different from every other report
Speaker 2: that had come out before then, because the Human Rights
Speaker 2: Comission had also done a report into the universities. Was
Speaker 2: we named names. We named the universities, we weren't afraid
Speaker 2: to we named the colleges. We weren't afraid to include
Speaker 2: photographs of the hazing rituals. We weren't afraid to detail
Speaker 2: the hazing rituals, and we just we produced receipts. That's
Speaker 2: what made it different. We didn't de identify unless you
Speaker 2: know a victim survivor wanted something to identified. But we
Speaker 2: also had a number of victim survivors speak out publicly
Speaker 2: in that report. And so that Red Zone Report, and
Speaker 2: the reason we call it the Red Zone report is
Speaker 2: OH week Orientation Week is known as the red Zone.
Speaker 2: It's the one week of the year where the most
Speaker 2: sexual assaults are likely to happen. I think it's about
Speaker 2: from memory, it was about twelve percent of all sexual
Speaker 2: assaults on campus will happen in that one week.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So it's known as the red Zone. And we know
Speaker 2: that sexual assault services receive a spike in phone calls
Speaker 2: immediately following OH Week and during OH.
Speaker 1: Week And is that from the hazing that you mentioned.
Speaker 2: And sexual assault? So the hazing that we found around
Speaker 2: the whole country within the colleges was really disturbing. So,
Speaker 2: I mean there was a lot of stuff up at
Speaker 2: University of Newcastle. You know, we got footage of a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff. So things like young men being forced
Speaker 2: to kneel down, having their heads shaved and then having
Speaker 2: a man put his penis, an older man standing up
Speaker 2: putting his penis into into the guy's young guy's mouth,
Speaker 2: and pouring beer down the penis into the mouth. That
Speaker 2: was a penis drinking ritual. We got footage of that
Speaker 2: happening a number of times. We got footage of students
Speaker 2: being required to drink vomit. We got footage of kids
Speaker 2: crawling around on their hands and knees, eating out of
Speaker 2: dog bowls like it was, you know, and obviously a
Speaker 2: lot of very heavy drinking like it was. Yeah, really
Speaker 2: just very disturbing stuff.
Speaker 1: So when you put this report public, how did the
Speaker 1: universities react because you named a lot in there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did so, Red Zone Report.
Speaker 1: Look it up, Yeah, go for some like reading.
Speaker 2: It was interesting in the sense that so prior to that,
Speaker 2: when I'd been doing the articles, the news articles, I
Speaker 2: had received more defamation threats in that year than I
Speaker 2: have ever received cumulative since. Yeah, And it was incredibly
Speaker 2: intimidating because you know, universities, of their multimillion dollar businesses,
Speaker 2: it's an industry they have, they are very vested in
Speaker 2: protecting their reputations, and so when you start exposing problems
Speaker 2: at a university, they will hit back, and they will
Speaker 2: hit back hard. And as an example, you know, I'd
Speaker 2: done this story about James Cook University, where a staff
Speaker 2: member called Douglas Steele had been accused of raping an
Speaker 2: unconscious Indigenous student. Now he was charged with rape, and
Speaker 2: when he was charged with rape, the university did not
Speaker 2: stand him down. He was promoted as a white man
Speaker 2: and made academic advisor to Indigenous students WHOA. And so
Speaker 2: I ended up writing an opinion piece where I compared
Speaker 2: their strategies of firstly, deny it, lie, cover up, threaten
Speaker 2: to the strategies used by the offender himself Douglas still
Speaker 2: following the assault, which were very similar and those sort
Speaker 2: of strategies used by offenders like to deny, minimize, reframe responsibility,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And I ended up concluding that the university
Speaker 2: has a mentality of a rapist. And in my opinion piece,
Speaker 2: now they were.
Speaker 1: Definitely doubled down.
Speaker 2: So because of doubling down, other media then piled in
Speaker 2: as well, I'm in.
Speaker 1: Shock, like I'm actually in shock in that story.
Speaker 2: So that ended up resulting in a million dollar review
Speaker 2: of James Cook University and are a million dollar inquiry
Speaker 2: into James Cook University and the entire culture of James
Speaker 2: Cork University. So not just that one incident, but the
Speaker 2: whole culture. So that was you know, and for me again,
Speaker 2: like I reflect back on my career about like what
Speaker 2: were the learning moments, that was another learning moment of
Speaker 2: In that moment, of course, I was nervous about doubling down.
Speaker 2: I remember being in my house and actually like shaking
Speaker 2: at one point, I can imagine, But it was one
Speaker 2: hundred percent the right decision, and I'm really glad that
Speaker 2: I had that editorial support to double down in that
Speaker 2: moment because it produced an outcome that led to an inquiry.
Speaker 2: And the thing that was interesting about when I did
Speaker 2: the Red Zone report was I knew that there was
Speaker 2: going to be backlash, and I knew it was going
Speaker 2: to come not just from the colleges but also that
Speaker 2: some of the students. But I also knew that there
Speaker 2: would be students living in the colleges who were suffering
Speaker 2: who would feel seen and heard and supported because of
Speaker 2: the report and the media reporting. When that report came out,
Speaker 2: it got international coverage like the New York Times BB
Speaker 2: so everybody picked it up. It was sort of a
Speaker 2: watershed moment. And while some of the universities that the
Speaker 2: spotlight was on retaliated, a lot of the ones that
Speaker 2: were maybe not necessarily the focus of the report actually
Speaker 2: saw the writing on the wall and read the tea
Speaker 2: leaves and went shivers. We actually now need to really
Speaker 2: do something about this on our own campuses. So it
Speaker 2: actually did produce change, but not where I expected the change.
Speaker 2: It was actually the ones who are under the spotlight
Speaker 2: became defensive, and it's called siege mentality, where they sort
Speaker 2: of bunker down, they declare themselves the victim of the media.
Speaker 2: If anything, for a period of time, the culture might
Speaker 2: even become even worse because they become so hyper defensive.
Speaker 2: But it's actually the other universities and the other colleges
Speaker 2: around the country that were looking at this going I
Speaker 2: don't want that to be me exactly exactly, And that's
Speaker 2: actually where we saw the change.
Speaker 1: Universities where it was the worst. Do you think it's improved?
Speaker 1: There has have university O weeks improved.
Speaker 2: Look, I think they have to a degree, But I
Speaker 2: actually don't necessarily think, Yeah, I would love to take
Speaker 2: some credit, but I actually don't think it was anything
Speaker 2: to do with me. I actually think that there was
Speaker 2: a series of things that have happened, one of which
Speaker 2: was actually COVID. I think COVID was a circuit breaker
Speaker 2: in because a lot of these traditions are handed down,
Speaker 2: and when you have a circuit breakerlike COVID where people
Speaker 2: aren't on campus for quite a long time, that was
Speaker 2: actually a massive interrupter in terms of that transition of
Speaker 2: really toxic cultural true.
Speaker 1: Where do you get the traditions from when there's no
Speaker 1: one to hand it down exactly?
Speaker 2: And look, there's other things that have gone on. I
Speaker 2: mentioned a woman, Shanna Brevna before. Shanna and a number
Speaker 2: of her colleagues have worked really really hard to introduce
Speaker 2: for the very first time, a national student ombudsman. There's
Speaker 2: actually been legislative change at the federal level to hold
Speaker 2: universities and colleges more accountable. And there's been a huge
Speaker 2: amount of student activism as well as things like the
Speaker 2: Mecho movement, which has normalized speaking about these sorts of things.
Speaker 2: So I think when you look at all of those
Speaker 2: factors coming together simultaneously, that's actually produced at least a
Speaker 2: start of a cultural shift. That doesn't mean that there
Speaker 2: aren't significant problems still there that need to be ironed out,
Speaker 2: but I do think that there has been an interesting shift.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to part one of my conversation
Speaker 1: with Nina Fanell. To listen to part two, head to
Speaker 1: the link in our show notes