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Speaker 1: Celebrating International Women's Day.

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Speaker 2: It's a special woman Woody podcast Mini.

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Speaker 3: It is International Women's Day.

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Speaker 1: Yes, and it makes a lot of sense to have

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Speaker 1: a woman called Grace Tape who is this year's Australian

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Speaker 1: of the Year. And Grace, before we talked to you,

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Speaker 1: I thought it was worth playing your words when you

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Speaker 1: accepted Australian of the Year this year.

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Speaker 3: I remember him saying, don't make a sound.

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Speaker 2: Well, hear me now using my voice amongst a growing

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Speaker 2: chorus of voices that will not be silenced.

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Speaker 3: Powerful message. I want to thrill down a little bit

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Speaker 3: on exactly what you were a victim of, which is

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Speaker 3: child grooming. Yes, I know that's something that it's a

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Speaker 3: particular point of interest for you. Yes, can you talk

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Speaker 3: a little bit more about what you went through and

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Speaker 3: why this continues to be a campaign for you on

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Speaker 3: that front.

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Speaker 2: Well, when I was fifteen, I was abused by my teacher,

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Speaker 2: who was fifty eight at the time. Now, one of

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Speaker 2: the things that drove me in the first place to

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Speaker 2: wanting to speak out was a sort of gap that

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Speaker 2: I suppose I identified in our collective understanding of what

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Speaker 2: actually is child sexual abuse, and that gap is the

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Speaker 2: psychological manipulation that underpins it, and whether that's in the

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Speaker 2: form of grooming in the case of child sexual abuse,

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Speaker 2: or in the case of domestic violence, it's called coercive control.

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Speaker 2: But it really refers to that balance. I suppose that

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Speaker 2: that predators strike between causing pain but also providing relief

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Speaker 2: from that pain, and it's that. Yeah, it's that cognitive

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Speaker 2: dissonance that they lock you in that actually enables the

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Speaker 2: abuse because you are conditioned to feel guilt forever even

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Speaker 2: questioning your abuser, let alone, let alone telling somebody else. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: So it's not that it's not that simple. You know,

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Speaker 2: if it was just a clear cutcase of somebody abusing you,

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Speaker 2: you know, it'd be very easy to go, oh okay,

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Speaker 2: well just just get out this is this is horrible there,

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Speaker 2: but there is there's so much more to it. It's

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Speaker 2: a it's a constant push pull sort of building you up,

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Speaker 2: then breaking you down and making making you I mean,

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Speaker 2: you might have heard the term gas lighting, making you

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Speaker 2: feel crazy, making you completely doubt yourself. Because what predators

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Speaker 2: are so successful at doing is not only isolating you

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Speaker 2: from your genuine support systems. This is one of the

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Speaker 2: aspects of grooming. It's called the isolation process. Not only

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Speaker 2: are they really good at isolating you from your friends

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Speaker 2: and family and people around you who could possibly intervene,

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Speaker 2: they're really good at destroying your trust in yourself. So

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Speaker 2: it's I think it's twenty three point nine years is

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Speaker 2: the average time that it takes a survivor of child

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Speaker 2: sexual abuse to actually share their experience. Such is such

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Speaker 2: is the success of a predator at instilling fear and

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Speaker 2: self doubt in the minds of their targets. And that's

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Speaker 2: the reality of shame induced silence, is that it takes

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Speaker 2: that long because it's so complicated, right.

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Speaker 3: And hypnotic it is. It almost sounds like a fairy tale.

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Speaker 3: We got a witch with a spell on, Yes, exactly.

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Speaker 2: It is very much like that.

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Speaker 3: Your sense of perspective on the situation, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: You question everything. Yeah, and that's by design. You know.

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Speaker 2: One of the myths is that it's all you know,

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Speaker 2: it's a it's a gendered issue. You know, that it's

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Speaker 2: women against men, which is not the case at all.

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Speaker 2: In fact, very early on in the piece, when I

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Speaker 2: was first you know, pursuing my voice, a lot of

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Speaker 2: the fellow survivors that I spoke to were men, and

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Speaker 2: in fact, they were middle aged men who were victims

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Speaker 2: of clergy abuse, you know, because there are a lot

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Speaker 2: more parallels between their stories and my stories are being groomed. Yeah, right,

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Speaker 2: So yeah, it's not like everyone's welcome at everyone's welcome

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Speaker 2: at the table. You know, this doesn't have to be

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Speaker 2: the pursuit of change on any given issue doesn't have

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Speaker 2: to be adversarial. It's about it's not even about tearing

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Speaker 2: down is either. I think it's more about looking at

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Speaker 2: the behavior as being shameful and really shedding light on

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Speaker 2: that shameful behavior and redirecting the blame and shame towards

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Speaker 2: the behavior and away from from victims survival themselves. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: that's the whole point.

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Speaker 1: Guys.

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Speaker 3: It's a powerful message. Thank you so much for coming

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Speaker 3: in the studio today.

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Speaker 2: Thank you for having me on.

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Speaker 3: It's been really good, honestly, a wonderful thing, a wonderful

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Speaker 3: message to share. If you are listening to this and

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Speaker 3: you'd like to talk to someone immediately, One eight hundred

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Speaker 3: Respect is a twenty four hour hotline which is always

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Speaker 3: available to you.

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Speaker 1: Hear more of the boys on the Full Show podcast.

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Speaker 2: You know you want to