Speaker 1: Kiyota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. There are
Speaker 2: calls for urgent changes to modernize our laws to better
Speaker 2: protect victims of sexual violence. A new Helen Clark Foundation
Speaker 2: report identifies several gaps in our laws that need closing
Speaker 2: and changes to our justice system to reduce under reporting.
Speaker 2: Ministry of Justice data estimates about two hundred and nine
Speaker 2: thousand incidents of sexual assault occur every year, affecting around
Speaker 2: eighty two thousand victims.
Speaker 3: Nearly one in.
Speaker 2: Four adults report having experienced sexual assault in their lifetime.
Speaker 2: Today on the Front Page, Senior researcher Sarah Bell is
Speaker 2: with us to take us through the report. First off, Sarah,
Speaker 2: tell me about the purpose of this.
Speaker 3: Report, Thanks, Chelsea.
Speaker 1: So we know that New Zealander's face really alarming at
Speaker 1: unacceptual rates of sexual violence, and that causes huge harm
Speaker 1: to those individuals and to their families and their communities,
Speaker 1: and also causes huge costs for New Zealand and our society.
Speaker 1: So we know that nearly one in four New Zealand
Speaker 1: adults has experienced sexual violence in their lifetimes and that's
Speaker 1: about eighty two thousand victims a year, which is obviously
Speaker 1: far too many. So a lot is already happening to
Speaker 1: address sexual violence. But our report looked at a number
Speaker 1: of areas in which New Zealand laws and policies are
Speaker 1: falling behind and international best practice, or falling behind technological changes,
Speaker 1: or falling behind the way that society thinks about sexual norms.
Speaker 1: So we looked at a number of different areas where
Speaker 1: we felt that was the case. One of the big
Speaker 1: ones was around very low levels of reporting of sexual
Speaker 1: violence in New Zealand and the low rates of reported
Speaker 1: cases that make it through to a verdict. So we
Speaker 1: know that only around ten percent of sexual violence is
Speaker 1: reported to police in New Zealand, and of those reported cases,
Speaker 1: only about twelve percent to make it through to a
Speaker 1: conviction within two years. That's a huge amount of sexual
Speaker 1: violence going unreported, undealt with perpetrators not being addressed. So
Speaker 1: we've come up with a number of practical recommendations to
Speaker 1: support victims and survivors to report sexual violence, to support
Speaker 1: them through the process, to make trials less traumatic for them,
Speaker 1: and to provide some alternative pathways where we can address
Speaker 1: offending without the perpetrators necessarily need to go to prison
Speaker 1: if that's not what the survivors are actually looking for,
Speaker 1: and that might encourage more people to actually come forward
Speaker 1: if they know that the perpetrator is not necessarily going
Speaker 1: to face a long jail sentence, but they do want
Speaker 1: the offending addressed. And we also looked at some ways
Speaker 1: of modernizing New Zealand laws to update our definition of
Speaker 1: consent to an affirmative consent or yes means yes consent,
Speaker 1: to address the harm from sexually explicit deep bakes, and
Speaker 1: to eradicate the practice of virginity testing. And we looked
Speaker 1: at a common theme around education across all of the topics.
Speaker 1: We looked at people really emphasize the importance of education,
Speaker 1: both for young people and for society as a whole,
Speaker 1: and to support the kind of behavioral change that we
Speaker 1: would like to see.
Speaker 2: I suppose a good place to start is what does
Speaker 2: the law say about consent at the moment?
Speaker 1: Sure so people will be familiar I think with the
Speaker 1: old no means no concept where you respect it if
Speaker 1: someone says nor, things have been moving in society and
Speaker 1: in educational settings towards more of a yes men's yes model,
Speaker 1: which means that you can't assume that someone is consenting
Speaker 1: to sex just because they don't say no. Now, our
Speaker 1: law at the moment is a sort of partial affirmative
Speaker 1: consent model, so you can't assume that someone's consenting just
Speaker 1: because they don't say no. But the Supreme Court has
Speaker 1: said that there are some situations where if there's an
Speaker 1: the factor in play, you can assume cent sometimes, so
Speaker 1: they call it passivity plus X. And one of the
Speaker 1: examples they've given for when that might be the case
Speaker 1: is relationship expectations. So if the person has consented or
Speaker 1: not resisted before, maybe you can assume that they're consenting
Speaker 1: on this occasion. That can be really problematic. We know
Speaker 1: that a freeze response is not uncommon when people are
Speaker 1: sexually assaulted, and we also know that people in adducive
Speaker 1: relationships have real trouble communicating about consent. So that ability
Speaker 1: in some cases to assume consent, we think, is a
Speaker 1: problem that needs to be fixed.
Speaker 2: It sounds simple to change that messaging, going from no
Speaker 2: means no to yes means yes, But how do you
Speaker 2: actually do that?
Speaker 1: It's relatively simple. In law, we've got some pretty sort
Speaker 1: of simple and concrete changes to the law that we
Speaker 1: would propose. It's not a hugely radical change, as I say,
Speaker 1: our laws most of the way they're already, So we
Speaker 1: would just recommend that instead of saying, you know, a
Speaker 1: person has not consented just because they don't say or
Speaker 1: do anything, we recommend saying a person doesn't consent unless
Speaker 1: they say or do something to communicate consent, and we
Speaker 1: don't say how they need to do that. Right, So
Speaker 1: you don't have to say the word yes, You just
Speaker 1: have to have given some indication that this is wanted
Speaker 1: to sex, which is, you know, what we want in
Speaker 1: society for people to be able to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've heard quite a lot of heroin stories that
Speaker 4: are really motivating me to push on with us and
Speaker 4: actually show how urgent it is. One of the main stories,
Speaker 4: or the key stories that I've been saying, is about
Speaker 4: a thirteen year old girl and I've got a twelve
Speaker 4: year old boy. So Sophiel was very awfully young. She
Speaker 4: was deep faked, and we shared amongst her peers at
Speaker 4: school just year nine, and she attempted suicide on school site.
Speaker 4: It was absolutely terrifying and traumatizing, not for the just
Speaker 4: for the individual, but for her, the peers and the
Speaker 4: school and the lack of support and resource around this
Speaker 4: is really terrifying. It would be on the extreme side
Speaker 4: of things, But other than that case, I've heard of many,
Speaker 4: many other young, predominantly females where this is happening to her,
Speaker 4: whether it's at school, university for example, or within the workplace.
Speaker 2: We've heard a lot about sexually explicit deep fakes, especially recently.
Speaker 2: I remember this year at MP Laura McClure held up
Speaker 2: a naked quote unquote photo of herself in Parliament just
Speaker 2: to prove how easy it was to manufacture. Now, that
Speaker 2: was a deep fake image, it wasn't actually a naked
Speaker 2: photograph of herself. And we know that existing laws are
Speaker 2: quite behind the eight ball when it comes to this technology.
Speaker 2: So you guys are saying that we should really speed
Speaker 2: up our processes on this exactly.
Speaker 3: No, you're right. There has been a lot of publicity.
Speaker 1: About that encoding through Laura's bravery and holding up that image,
Speaker 1: and Laura's bill addresses exactly the gap that our project
Speaker 1: couldified in terms of the way that facts are treated.
Speaker 1: So we know that these images can be generated really easily,
Speaker 1: they're extremely realistic. You can take someone's profile picture off
Speaker 1: their online accounts and turn it into a video of
Speaker 1: them doing sexually explicit things that of course they have
Speaker 1: not done. They haven't consented to it. And we know
Speaker 1: that the harms from sharing those images without consent can
Speaker 1: be just as damaging to the individuals as if they
Speaker 1: were real images, because people can't tell whether they're real
Speaker 1: or not. And so one of our recommendations is that
Speaker 1: Laura's they'll be passed. We're recommending a tiny tweak just
Speaker 1: to make sure that it covers images that it was
Speaker 1: so created with consent, that shared without consent. So if
Speaker 1: you agree with someone that you know you're for fun
Speaker 1: or whatever, that you're.
Speaker 3: Going to make one of these images, but then they.
Speaker 1: Share it without your consent, that should, so we think,
Speaker 1: be covered by the bill. But we were really pleased
Speaker 1: that that bill was drawn from the ballot just recently
Speaker 1: and we're hoping it will pass when it comes around.
Speaker 2: And the report also mentions the need to a rat
Speaker 2: kate the practice of virginity testing in New Zealand. Can
Speaker 2: you tell us what that is? And I believe that
Speaker 2: the UN is actually called on governments to ban this
Speaker 2: practice altogether already.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: So virginity testing relates to the myth that you can
Speaker 1: tell from an examination whether someone has had sex before.
Speaker 1: Now that's not actually true.
Speaker 3: So the UN and.
Speaker 1: Medical practitioners a New Zealand all agree that virginity is
Speaker 1: a social construct, so a construct that's really important to
Speaker 1: some people obviously, but you can't establish via an examination
Speaker 1: whether someone is a so called virgin. Unfortunately, there is
Speaker 1: a practice still occurring whereby women and usually very young
Speaker 1: women or children are subjected to a really invasive internal
Speaker 1: exam to check whether they have supposedly had sex or not.
Speaker 1: That obviously causes you know, physical harm in mental trauma
Speaker 1: to those people when it's occurring, and it's associated with
Speaker 1: a lot of harms kind of after the fact as well.
Speaker 1: So the UN has called you some time ago for
Speaker 1: the practice to be eradicated. We know and dotally that
Speaker 1: that practice is occurring in New Zealand.
Speaker 3: We don't know how.
Speaker 1: Much it's occurring or in exactly which communities because it's
Speaker 1: obviously not something that people talk about, but we think
Speaker 1: that's enough information to move ahead with in terms of
Speaker 1: both banning it legally but also supporting community lead campaigns
Speaker 1: to educate people around the harms and the inaccuracy of
Speaker 1: the practice. But what we did with female genital mutilation
Speaker 1: some years ago, likewise, that's a practice that's not widely
Speaker 1: practiced in New Zealand and we didn't have good information
Speaker 1: about when and how it was being practiced, but the
Speaker 1: fact that it shouldn't be practiced at all was sufficient
Speaker 1: for us to go ahead and again combine a legal
Speaker 1: ban with community led education and advocacy to eradicate it.
Speaker 2: So when it comes to modernizing our laws, I know
Speaker 2: that there has been some recent changes to strength and
Speaker 2: protections for victims of crime and including sexual assault and
Speaker 2: things like that include you know, not having to give
Speaker 2: evidence in court, being able to video response or be
Speaker 2: in a different room and be a vled or or
Speaker 2: audio visual linked into a court room, for instance. And
Speaker 2: then there are some changes to suppression laws things like that.
Speaker 2: So there has been kind of steps, but would you
Speaker 2: call them baby steps? Should we be taking bigger leaps
Speaker 2: when it comes to this.
Speaker 1: It's great to see those steps being taken, and to
Speaker 1: that I would add one of the other recent developments
Speaker 1: that was relevant to our research was the Stalking and
Speaker 1: Harassment Bill it's just passed, and that's relevant to the
Speaker 1: deep Facts.
Speaker 3: Legislation.
Speaker 1: Again, we think it's great that deep facts are covered
Speaker 1: by that bill. So if someone is using sexual explicit
Speaker 1: deep facts to harass and stalk someone, then that's an
Speaker 1: avenue to pursue them. But we still think they should
Speaker 1: be banned altogether without having to demonstrate that someone's talking
Speaker 1: or harassing you. Likewise, with the other law changes, and
Speaker 1: we didn't know, Project didn't look into all of the
Speaker 1: aspects like name suppression for example, that were covered by
Speaker 1: the recent changes, but it is always positive to see
Speaker 1: steps being taken. We've recommended another a number of other ones,
Speaker 1: including rolling out some trial practices that are already used
Speaker 1: in the sexual violence courts, for example, which were piloted
Speaker 1: an Auckland and FUGA day, rolling those out throughout the country.
Speaker 1: Requiring judges to be accredited and trained when overseeing sexual
Speaker 1: violence cases so that they're better equipped to handle cross examination.
Speaker 1: That's sort of creating greater trauma for victims, which we
Speaker 1: know is a real issue, and better address rate myths
Speaker 1: that come up around what real victims do or don't do,
Speaker 1: which again we know don't really reflect the way that
Speaker 1: sexual violence takes place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean it was it's shocking to know
Speaker 2: that it was only until quite recently, and by recent
Speaker 2: I mean within the last couple of years where you
Speaker 2: could ask a child who had been let's face it,
Speaker 2: raped on the stand whether they liked it or not,
Speaker 2: and that was kind of common practice amongst you know,
Speaker 2: questioning children in these kind of cases. And so those
Speaker 2: those kind of things still crop up and you go, huh.
Speaker 3: I can't still happening.
Speaker 1: That was a doctor Anahi who authored the consent part
Speaker 1: of our report. You know, she obviously is an expert
Speaker 1: on these issues. I am not. And when I read
Speaker 1: that part of the report that children were you know,
Speaker 1: up until very recently able to be questioned about whether
Speaker 1: they had consented to sex. Because of the different ways
Speaker 1: our law was structured around charging sexual violation versus charging
Speaker 1: sexual interaction with the minor, you could get a bigger
Speaker 1: sentence via charging sexual violation, which meant they could be
Speaker 1: questioned about consent. That has been fixed for under twelves,
Speaker 1: and the latest law, which is a really positive step,
Speaker 1: it's still the case for young people age twelve to fifteen.
Speaker 1: We haven't necessarily recommended fixing that because it's slightly more
Speaker 1: complicated for people of that age, but it does show
Speaker 1: why the consent changes that we're recommending are really important,
Speaker 1: because you can imagine for young people communicating about consent
Speaker 1: is pretty challenging.
Speaker 3: Primarily that I did not want my family did it.
Speaker 1: I don't want people to look at me and think, oh,
Speaker 1: how sad or how hope breaking.
Speaker 3: You didn't tell those things.
Speaker 4: If there were so many ways in where I could
Speaker 4: be discredited that I didn't want to put myself through that.
Speaker 2: So we've spoken about before. The report dives into issues
Speaker 2: around underreporting and attrition, of course, and there's a multitude
Speaker 2: of reasons why there is under reporting, and you won't
Speaker 2: understand those reasons until you're actually in the situation. And
Speaker 2: even when you're in the situation, every situation is different,
Speaker 2: and every person is different, and every person's response is different.
Speaker 2: And I said that I found that the report said
Speaker 2: current options available under the criminal justice system do not
Speaker 2: meet survivors definitions of justice or what they think is
Speaker 2: an appropriate response to the offending. Now, straight off the bat,
Speaker 2: I remember, you know, when I'm not picking up any
Speaker 2: story in particular here, but when you say so X
Speaker 2: has been charged with rape, X has been sentenced to
Speaker 2: a year's home detention or something, and then you've got
Speaker 2: the public outraged saying this isn't good enough. And then
Speaker 2: on the flip side, though, and what we hear about
Speaker 2: less often is sometimes victims not wanting the perpetrator to
Speaker 2: go to court and to have You know, there are
Speaker 2: all different kind of intricacies in how people want justice,
Speaker 2: and so was that an interesting part of your report
Speaker 2: and of the research learning about different forms of justice
Speaker 2: and what victims actually want and how it differs across
Speaker 2: the spectrum.
Speaker 1: Absolutely no, and that was Emily Henderson who led this
Speaker 1: part of the research looked really widely at research from
Speaker 1: a number of countries into a number of different situations,
Speaker 1: and it was something we talked around quite a bit,
Speaker 1: as none of the solutions that we propose or the
Speaker 1: adjustments that we propose would fix things for everyone, because,
Speaker 1: as you say, everyone's situation is different, right, there are
Speaker 1: people who want to see longer penalties and jail penalties.
Speaker 1: That's something that the research suggests doesn't necessarily reduce offending particularly,
Speaker 1: But what we do know is that there are a
Speaker 1: number of people who don't come forward with the sexual
Speaker 1: violence stories because they don't want the perpetrator to go
Speaker 1: to prison. You can imagine all kinds of reasons for
Speaker 1: at family relationships obviously, and again it's not to say
Speaker 1: that everyone who has a family relationship with the offender
Speaker 1: doesn't want them to go to prison. It really is
Speaker 1: an individual story. We know that Indigenous people generally and
Speaker 1: maldi don't find incarceration to necessarily be the most desirable outcome. Again,
Speaker 1: not always, but sometimes you know, there's a preference to
Speaker 1: deal with things.
Speaker 3: In a different way.
Speaker 1: And so one of the recommendations we made is for
Speaker 1: alternative pathways that don't say people shouldn't go to jail,
Speaker 1: but they say we should offer alternative options to encourage
Speaker 1: more people to come forward to address the offending in
Speaker 1: a way that meets people's justice needs. So that might
Speaker 1: be through a restorative justice, which is already available in
Speaker 1: some cases, we're suggesting it be expanded, but also the
Speaker 1: idea of treatment courts, which we currently have for drug
Speaker 1: and alcohol offenses. But Emily's suggested that in some cases
Speaker 1: sexual offending is quite treatable, and you know, we should
Speaker 1: look at models where instead of going to prison, people
Speaker 1: are sentenced to treatment and then they sort of report
Speaker 1: back to the judge after that treatment's carried out.
Speaker 3: So again, none of these things is meant.
Speaker 1: To be for everyone, but if you offer more options
Speaker 1: along the way, then we might pick up more cases.
Speaker 2: And so at the moment, what are young people taught
Speaker 2: about sexual violence, sexual consent, or even to sex in
Speaker 2: general in school?
Speaker 1: The problem is we don't know, and so there is
Speaker 1: a curriculum, but school boards consult with their communities around
Speaker 1: what it's taught, and what we understand from our research
Speaker 1: is that it's very patchy across the country from school
Speaker 1: to school what kids are learning, who's delivering their education,
Speaker 1: and therefore what ideas they're coming away with. And there
Speaker 1: have been some recent updates to the curriculum, so again
Speaker 1: that's kind of at a high level what's suggested, but
Speaker 1: again we don't know what will end up being taught
Speaker 1: under those What we do know is what they're missing
Speaker 1: from the curriculum, which is content around what kids are
Speaker 1: actually being exposed to. So we're recommending age appropriate content
Speaker 1: around things like pornography, digital harm, you know, particularly the
Speaker 1: kind of harm that can be delivered via AI, via
Speaker 1: the deep fax, issue online companions and.
Speaker 3: Things like that.
Speaker 1: And there's also not really anything in the curriculum at
Speaker 1: the moment around intimate partner violence, you know, how to
Speaker 1: understand whether you're in a violent relationship. So one of
Speaker 1: the messages we heard from a few different angles and
Speaker 1: we were talking to people for the project, was a desire,
Speaker 1: including from young people, for there to be more consistently
Speaker 1: across the education.
Speaker 3: You know, people want to know that their peers are being.
Speaker 1: Taught the same things, particularly an environment with this so
Speaker 1: much misogynistic, awful messaging out there now, we need to
Speaker 1: be countering that in some way with real information and
Speaker 1: with positive messaging about healthy relationships.
Speaker 2: It seems wild to me that there still isn't kind
Speaker 2: of a curriculum that's across the board everyone. I kind
Speaker 2: of mentioned it in the newsroom because I went through
Speaker 2: sex ed Fath a couple of decades ago, and it
Speaker 2: was a Catholic or girls' school, so it was abstinence.
Speaker 2: But I kind of chatted to a couple of other
Speaker 2: people in the newsroom saying, what was your sex head
Speaker 2: like at school? And they'd be like, yeah, we had
Speaker 2: a couple like this is how to use a condom,
Speaker 2: and then the next lesson would be like fruit and
Speaker 2: veggies like so it was a part of their health
Speaker 2: kind of group. And especially it's wild to me that
Speaker 2: you know, in the last couple of decades it hasn't
Speaker 2: actually moved It doesn't seem like it's moved on. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, there is more access to pornography,
Speaker 2: more access to quite hardcore pornography, and we do know
Speaker 2: so much more about relationships and lgbt Q relationships and
Speaker 2: all of this stuff that these kids are having to
Speaker 2: navigate with and they're still, presumably and this is anecdotally
Speaker 2: learning about condoms and periods.
Speaker 5: Which is also important, but yeah, absolutely, And for a start,
Speaker 5: there's so much to cover, and we know that teachers
Speaker 5: have a lot to cover already, and we know that
Speaker 5: some of these issues are sensitive for families, that people
Speaker 5: have different beliefs around these issues.
Speaker 1: There's not kind of one single truth about some of
Speaker 1: these things that everybody would agree on. But we don't
Speaker 1: think it's right for kids to get through school, and
Speaker 1: you know, young people to get through school and not
Speaker 1: be aware of these issues and will only be aware
Speaker 1: of them through what they're exposed to online, right, because
Speaker 1: you can't really keep young people away.
Speaker 3: From these issues.
Speaker 1: Almost all of them are online, and we know their
Speaker 1: efforts to address that. It's not that we didn't really
Speaker 1: look at age related measures in our report, but what
Speaker 1: we did look at is the fact that the stuff
Speaker 1: is happening anyway. Kids are getting access to this material,
Speaker 1: particularly online, whether it's viewing pornography, whether it's hearing these
Speaker 1: kind of, as I say, misogynistic messages from online influences
Speaker 1: about women's place and.
Speaker 3: What real men do.
Speaker 1: And we think it's really really important that the young
Speaker 1: people are given consistent messaging around.
Speaker 3: How to navigate that and how to.
Speaker 1: Have healthy relationships and how to go to if they
Speaker 1: are encountering things that make them uncomfortable or if they
Speaker 1: are victims of inject fact sexual abuse, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It's not something that parents are necessarily equipped to teach
Speaker 1: them about. I say, as a parent of a very
Speaker 1: young person at the moment, but you know, I've learned
Speaker 1: a huge amount through this project that most parents don't
Speaker 1: have access to all of the information.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks so much for joining us, Sarah, Thank you, Chelsea.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode. Of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzidherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Jane Yee and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page
Speaker 2: on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune
Speaker 2: in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.