Recording: Fixing our systems to stop sexual violence

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Thank you, everyone.  Thank you for joining us for today's event.  Firstly, I'd like to acknowledge that where I am, I'm at UTS today and I'm on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.  I want to pay special tribute and respect to the Gadigal people for the first custodians of knowledge for the land upon which the university is built, but also to acknowledge that this land was never ceded and it was, is and always will be Aboriginal land.  I'd also like to acknowledge that there may be many people all over Australia and we're all on the traditional lands of First Nations people, so I acknowledge the Elders of the land where you all are.
     
My name is Verity Firth and I'm the Pro ViceChancellor of Social Justice & Inclusion here at UTS.  It's my pleasure to be hosting today's event, 'Fixing our systems to stop sexual violence'.  We're joined by Karen Iles and Catharine Pruscino, who are both working on bringing systemic change to our institutions, and I'll introduce them properly in just a few moments.  

I'd also like to advise that today's discussion will cover topics such as sexual violence and assault.  Now, these are upsetting topics and they may be upsetting for you.  They could cause distress or be triggering.  If at any time you feel that you're becoming overwhelmed or distressed, just take a break from the webinar.  If you feel like it, you can rejoin when you feel better.  You don't need to sit here listening if it's making you upset.  If you do feel overwhelmed or distressed in any way, speak to someone you can trust or contact 1800 RESPECT, and we're posting those contact details in the chat box, which you can find in your Zoom control panel.
     
So now on to today's discussion.  Sexual violence is a national crisis in Australia.  Government data shows that 1 in 5 women, that's 22%, and 1 in 16 men, 6%, have experienced sexual violence after the age of 15.  Survivors often experience barriers to reporting, backlash from speaking out, and a loss of trust in the systems that are supposed to protect them.  
     
In recent times, preventing and responding to sexual violence has been discussed in Parliament, schools and universities, in workplaces and many other institutions.  We've seen the development of strategic action plans, prevention plans, training, policies and codes of conduct to try to address this issue.  But how far have we come?  
     
Today I'm joined by Karen Iles and Catharine Pruscino, who are working to bring about systemic change in our institutions and applying pressure from both outside and within.  We'll discuss what's needed to improve our laws, policies and systems to combat sexual violence in our institutions, and it's a real honour to welcome them both here today.
     
Karen Iles is a lawyer, consultant, board director, sexual assault survivor and Dharug Aboriginal woman.  Karen is the founder and principal solicitor of Violet Co Legal & Consulting, Violet Co Legal & Consulting, whose purpose is to create radical solutions and just outcomes for women and First Nations people.  She leads the Make the Police Investigate campaign and was recently appointed a Board Director of Our Watch, a national leader in the primary prevention of violence against women and their children in Australia.  We're also very proud that Karen is a UTS alumna.  Welcome, Karen.  
     
Catharine Pruscino leads the awardwinning UTS Respect.Now.Always. program.  It's an initiative that seeks to prevent sexual harm on university campuses.  Catharine has more than 20 years' experience working across the public and private sectors, including notforprofit think tanks and community organisations.  She is also the contributing author to the academic paper Violence against Women together with the Universities of Newcastle, Monash and Otago outlining UTS's wholeofuniversity approach in preventing genderbased violence.  Welcome, Catharine.  
     
So my first question is to both of you.  I might start with Karen because she's our guest and Catharine is one of us, though I suppose, Karen, as an alumna, you're also one of us. The question to both of you is there's been a growing awareness and push to address the deeply entrenched issues of sexual and genderbased violence in our society.  Are we at a moment in time where important changes can be enacted?

     
KAREN ILES:  Absolutely, Verity, and thank you for having me here.  It's lovely also to be a UTS alumni and be on this webinar.  
     
Look, absolutely.  We're at a point in time where I think we are on the precipice of making some real inroads into eliminating violence against women and particularly eliminating sexual violence.  It's a bold thing to say, but we've got our governments who are willing to look at these issues, we've got a new national plan in this area that we will eliminate violence against women in a generation, so that's a really bold, ambitious plan, but is also being backed in by a lot of resources through government.
     
I think as well, you know, the community and social debate and the discussions that are taking place, coupled with some highprofile cases, media reporting on the topic has really generated this as an issue that isn't going away.  Practically every day in the news you hear about, unfortunately  we're hearing about cases of women and men, but predominantly women, being sexually assaulted or abused by their partners and that is practically a daily occurrence in the news.  
     
So these issues aren't going anywhere and I think that we've got governments around Australia that are quite interested in taking action at the moment.  So, yeah, a real flush point I think for us.  If we look at the 200 years of Australia in the colonised state that it's been in, you know, I think this is a bit of a flash point.
     

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  What do you think, Catharine?
     
     
CATHARINE PRUSCINO:  I absolutely agree.  I absolutely agree.  You know, I know that perhaps I have a bit of a skewed view, but I feel like we've been at this moment for a little while now.  You know, if we look at the work that the Albanese Government is attempting, at the moment they're actively seeking to take a wholeofcommunity approach to addressing this kind of violence and while these issues have perhaps  maybe historically they haven't been considered to be the main work of government, they are now being considered seriously across the broad remit of government, including the industrial and educational portfolios, which is the stuff that we're seeing with the respect at work changes and a lot of the dialogue that's going on publicly when we look at Universities Accord and keeping students safe, things like that.  So what I think is absolutely heartening is this whole consideration about how all the different levers and mechanisms can be brought to bring together the kind of longterm, holistic, sustainable change that we're after.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Well, that's good.  Alright.  So my next  fingers crossed.  I don't know if people could see, but Catharine did that at the end.  Karen, only 10% of victims and survivors of sexual assault report to the police, that is really low, and only a handful of perpetrators  so of that 10%, then only a handful of perpetrators are convicted of their crimes.  Can you tell us all a bit about the Make the Police Investigate campaign that you are leading because you're leading it to reform the law so that police must investigate sexual assault cases.  So can you tell us a bit about that and also about what you hope to change?  

     
KAREN ILES:  Yes.  Look, the campaign has come about through my experience as a lawyer and having clients of mine have this common pattern of experience of if they are one of that approximate 10% of victim survivors who feel comfortable to report to police and have confidence that the police will do something, of that 10% only a handful ever have police actually actively investigate and to me, you know, I was getting quite frustrated with it and it also mirrors my own experience with having been sexually assaulted as a child and having basically followed up police in two states, in Queensland and New South Wales, where the offences occurred, for almost 20 years, next March is 20 years of me following up the police to do something.  

     
And I won't go into, you know, all the details in terms of myself.  It's been reported widely.  I think there should be a link in the chat to some news reporting on that.  But really, you know, it's about how do we instill justice  how do we instill confidence in our justice system and we saw, you know, Chris Minns on the news this week talking about in relation to the protests around Gaza and what's happening to Palestinian people and also the atrocities committed against Jewish people in Israel as well.  You know, the claims by government and Chris Minns in particular of saying look, hate speech, you've got to have the enforcement, otherwise the laws are really toothless and not worth the paper they're written on, we need the Commonwealth to step in and fund law enforcement in this area.  
     
For sexual assault it's exactly the same.  You have only a handful of victim survivors reporting to police and of them, only a fraction have the perpetrators charged with an offence and even where there's a charge, only a fraction go on to be prosecuted by the Department of Public Prosecutions and then if that perpetrator makes it into a courtroom, if there's not a plea deal done, then in a courtroom only about 30% of perpetrators are found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury and then, you know, some of them will not even have custodial sentences.  So it all ends up in less than 1% of perpetrators of rape and sexual violence ever facing any legal consequences in Australia and that to me, as a lawyer, I just think gosh, we need to change this system because why on earth would you bother reporting crimes when this is the trajectory?
     
If you think, you know, the crimes that happened against me carry in Queensland a life sentence and in New South Wales a maximum sentence of 25 years.  The other crime that carries that is murder and if we thought that that was the trajectory of family members reporting murders of their loved ones, we as a community would be horrified, and in fact that's exactly what's happened with many Aboriginal families and the families of gay men in Sydney that have also been murdered and there's an inquiry, but on the whole we expect that when we report very serious crimes to police, they will do something.  But unfortunately, the police doing something is the missing link in our criminal justice system.
     
So this campaign is really about compelling police to do three things.  One is that they have a duty of care to victim survivors so that when they go and report, they are connected with counselling and mental health services so that they don't take their own lives, which we have seen many, many victims do after reporting to police.
     
The second call is for a duty to investigate and a set of minimum standards, very minimum standards, such as interview a victim, interview witnesses where there are named perpetrators at the appropriate time, interview them, and collect and store evidence.  That's it, very basic, and I think that all of us that watch, you know, NCIE or anything like that would think it probably could go a lot further in what we'd expect, but just some basic bare minimums to make sure that all victims are treated the same in our justice system.
     
Then the third ask is around having an independent police conduct and complaints mechanism so that if you have reported to police and you haven't had your reports dealt with in a very basic and compassionate, respectful way, there is a complaints mechanism that is not this same old system of police investigating police.  
     
So that's the campaign.  I think we've got a link to it there in the chat if you want to check it out and jump on board and support it.  
     
But I think, to bring it back to a university and an institution context, you know, there is this real crossover with, you know, universities absolutely doing what they can to support victim survivors in coming forward and speaking out and the universities have their own, you know, mechanisms, civil mechanisms, for responding and dealing with these criminal acts, but at the end of the day that victim survivor, if they choose to report to police, statistically will have a very poor experience.  So that's what I'm trying to change in this campaign.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  It seems so unbelievably reasonable what you're proposing, like especially around the duty to investigate, you know, interview the victim survivor.  It's so basic.  It's sort of embarrassing that you even have to run the campaign in the first place, but it's really good that you're doing it and yes, there is a link in the chat, so if people are interested in getting involved or registering their support, click on that link.
     
Catharine, can you tell us a bit about the Respect.Now.Always. program because that's what we do at UTS.  Tell us about how it came about and a bit more information around the focus of your work within the university sector?

     
CATHARINE PRUSCINO:  Sure.  In 2016, Universities Australia, which is the peak body for Australian universities, launched the Respect.Now.Always. campaign, which is a national campaign, and at the time it was a global first.  So what they sought to do was understand, as reported by students, the prevalence of sexual harassment and sexual assault of university students within university settings.  So it was actually quite a specific qualification, I guess.
     
In August of 2017, the Australian Human Rights Commission released their report with the survey findings from that very first national survey and it was called Change the Course.  In 2022, the National Student Safety Survey, which was the second national prevalence survey  in 2022 the results were released of the second National Prevalence Survey and we are now in the midst of planning for a third national survey which will probably be conducted in 2025.  So that's what the sort of national campaign looks like as a global first in Australia.
     
Here at UTS I have a very small but mighty  I call them the Power Team and I lead the team and we exist solely to prevent and address the elimination of sexual violence within the UTS community, so campus  in our physical campus and also in the online affiliated spaces of our campus.  I mean, what we know is that we can't meaningfully deliver sustainable culture change to address and eliminate sexual violence for students without actually working across our whole system, our whole ecosystem, and this means also understanding and meeting the needs of our staff and our other stakeholders.  So change of this nature and scale actually requires everybody's involvement, different involvement at different times in different ways, but make no mistake, actually wholeofcommunity change requires wholeofcommunity involvement.
     
Last week here at UTS we released our community voice and our theory of change and I think Leah is going to add a link to our theory of change in the chat and our theory of change in the report, which was actually done by the Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion at UTS, is a communitydriven, assetbased, participatory research project that outlines the critical steps for UTS to deliver a wholeofcommunity, wholeofinstitution shift, sustainable culture change that seeks to eliminate sexual violence.  So that's what I do and I hand out lots and lots of ice cream.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  It's true, very delicious ice cream.  
     
So I'm now going to ask a question and I understand that this may end up forming a bit of a conversation between the two of you because we're really talking about both of you work to bring about change in our institutions, but you work in different ways, right?  Karen is working on the outside and Catharine is working on the inside.  So we thought a good question to have you sort of almost riff off each other with is around, Karen, can you tell us about the benefits and challenges of being independent or outside the institutions that you're trying to change and Catharine, can you give us your insights into the benefits and challenges of working from inside the institutions you are trying to change?  And I think first to you, Karen, as the outsider.

     
KAREN ILES:  Yes, I think it gives you the, I don't know, privilege, power, voice to just be very open and you don't need to mince words, you can call a spade a spade because, you know, you're not  you know, sometimes, let's be realistic, when you work for someone, you don't necessarily want to put your foot in it all the time.  So I think that, you know, just having that fearless and frank advice from an external perspective coming in, but also you get to  as an external person, you sometimes also get to see themes and patterns and what's happening in other institutions and other jurisdictions as well.  So it brings that, I suppose, collation of knowledge to your perspective.
     
I think it is, however, very important, while being very bold in what you're calling for, to also understand what's possible and pragmatic in the system or the institution that you're trying to change because I think change is always a negotiation, no matter what change we're talking about in our lives, and the outcomes where they're reached are often compromised outcomes that are best for everyone involved.  So it's important to have people on the inside at the table, but also, you know, those on the outside putting that really brave, bold kind of vision forward.
     
I think the challenge from being on the outside is you have to get in and be at the decisionmaking table, because change can happen really quickly if you have the right decision makers, the right external influencers, the right time, it can just snap and all fall into place.  So it's also about having that influence, you know, at the table as well and knowing the levers, having good relationships and really pick your timing.  I think they're some of the things that are important for me, especially as an outsider and independent.

     
CATHARINE PRUSCINO:  Yes, I would completely agree with all of those points.  I mean, Karen's first one was about being really open and from the perspective of an insider, I entirely endorse that.  I mean, I think we need to be both open and to be quite authentic.  So I think it's really important that our behaviour actually reflects the commitment to addressing and eliminating sexual violence in ways that build institutional trust.  
     
I mean, we talk about institutions as these giant, faceless organisms, but in fact each of us is wearing that face while we're at work and it is incumbent on  well, me in my role and everybody else within the institution to actually make sure that the behaviour that  how we conduct ourselves, the behaviour that we manifest in our capacity at work and ideally in our capacity outside of work actually reflects the commitment we have to this cause because both in the moments where we're on stage talking out loud and we are speaking, you know, as agents of the machine, but also in the private moments when nobody is watching where your boss doesn't see you or, you know, there is no media or you don't recognise anybody in your sphere, it is important that we are consistent and committed to those changes and that our behaviour reflects that commitment.  So that would be the first one.
     
Again, Karen was speaking about how all change is negotiated and again, I completely agree.  It's always a negotiation.  It's a negotiation regarding timing, it's a negotiation regarding resourcing.  It is a negotiation regarding capacity, and then there are a whole host of external factors that frequently will come into play.  Some things are really obvious, like, you know, we might be running a campaign around orientation about setting and managing expectations of behaviour with our incoming students.  Meanwhile, there is media breaking around the experience of what's going on in Parliament with Brittany Higgins or, you know, a national inquiry is going into abuse in some other way and these  we would be foolish to assume that what plays out in the broader ecosystem doesn't have a direct effect on the work that we do within our own organisational community.  
     
So change is negotiated and I think the point to hold there is to not be blown off course by sort of temporary delays, but to stay focused on the longterm goal, and so for the purpose of this moment, I will call it the new world order, so stay focused on the new world order and understand that sometimes it's a step back, but actually it is the ongoing and consistent commitment to go forward.  
     
Karen spoke about making sure that you have a seat at the decisionmaking table and ultimately leadership is key.  So I would say bold and authentic leadership is critical and how that flows into senior institutional support and the alignment of commitment with practice and implementation and resourcing is essential and it has to flow that way.  So we need  it isn't just having the CEO or the Vice Chancellor or the Commissioner stand up and give platitudes around the new world order, but it is making sure that all of the other people moving through the hierarchy understand how they embody that in ways so that their behaviour serves the change process that is in play, even in those small moments.
     
And then Karen spoke quite a bit about the components of effective campaigns for change and that's something we do a lot of here in RNA at UTS.  So the sorts of things I wanted to add to that, you know, understanding the levers and things like that, is for us we do a lot of grassroots work, so it is meet your people where they're at and be curious, listen to their views, understand their stories of failure and frustration and recognise them as actual genuine, generous gifts of loyalty.  Make time to listen to the dissenters because it's here that we learn the most about what's actually going on.  If all we do is talk to people who tell us we're doing a great job, change is very limited, right?  So actually hold your humility and go and chat with the people who think that you've gotten it wrong and understand why they think you've gotten it wrong and why that experience for them was unsatisfactory.
     
I think that by making time to listen to the dissenters, this is where we learn the most about where intention and reality actually meet.  Be clear about the vision that you're working towards, new world order, and grow your community, work across the boundaries, the teams, the faculties, the division, like recruit as you go because there is work for everybody in this space.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  That was great.  I really liked what you had to say about the private moments and about how culture is more than just saying  the CEO standing up and saying everything in front of a whole lot of people, it's what happens when the cameras are off and when you're just alone.  So I think that's a really important point to make.  
     
I'm going to go to some audience questions now because they're really good and people are being very engaged and putting a whole lot of questions up here.  The one at the moment that's got the most upvotes, but it's a really interesting one, is around the change to the definition of consent, which of course has happened in New South Wales but across a number of jurisdictions, hasn't it, Karen?  And the question from Michael Soo is has this change to the definition of consent helped to swing the burden of proof back towards the victim survivor?  Maybe, Karen, as a lawyer you may have a view on that.
     
     
KAREN ILES:  I think the changes in many jurisdictions and at the moment the Federal Government, the Albanese Government, with Mark Dreyfus as AttorneyGeneral are going through a process of harmonising and trying to work with the states and territories to harmonise the definition of consent in Australia because for my personal circumstances, you know, having been assaulted in two states, it would be weird for the same perpetrators and the same victim to be, you know, under two different definitions.
     
You know, I think that that's all really important.  I think the increased discussion within schools, the community, universities about consent is really important.  However, I think as well it can take us down a bit of a very narrow conversation.  The vast majority of women and men that are raped and sexually assaulted in our society do not report to police, so they don't have confidence that police will take action.  
     
So I think we have to fix those front ends because otherwise the tinkering with court processes and very nuanced definitions that will play out in a courtroom setting, they are important, absolutely, and they do build confidence in the system.  However, it really is, you know, some slight adjustments.  I think the position that I've kind of landed at with all of this is the system is so broken that the tinkering of, you know, wording here and there, it isn't solving the problem, you know.  We've got 1 in  it's now looking like 1 in 4 women experience sexual violence in their lifetime and of young women, disturbingly, 1 in 2.  So this problem  sexual violence is the largest  it's the only crime in Australia that is increasing, not decreasing.  I mean, we have got to do some really bold stuff here and thinking outside of the box is really needed at a really big scale.  Of course there's lots of little changes that add up to, you know, a big change and those consent  you know, improving the conversation around consent, improving the definition is important.
     
I would also say, though, that for every other crime we expect that ignorance of the law is no excuse and the ageold defence of yes means no and no means yes and I'm all very confused has been a defence that accused have used in court rooms for decades and decades and decades and I suspect that even after these changes to consent, you know, still confusion or, you know, "I wasn't taught well enough at school", or what have you, but we don't see those kind of defences coming through in crimes like murder or aggravated assault or robbery.  So I think as a society we also need to  especially for adults, adults who are capable themselves of consenting, it's also on them to understand what the law is and comply respectfully, as we do with all other laws.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Mmm, I think that's really important.  Catharine, do you want to add anything around the definition of consent?

     
CATHARINE PRUSCINO:  With regard to the sort of changes around the definition, the work that we did for that here at UTS was around awareness raising with our students and our community.  So we did quite a lot of publicfacing work and while there's quite a lot of discussion about it, I think the full effect is going to take a really long time to see it play out.  But I agree with Karen that actually the kind of change that we're after needs wholesale and significant bold and brave changes and while that's important and harmonising the kind of definitions across the country is critical to that, it is a small but important step in the face of a tsunami of work that needs to get done, yes.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  So the next question I want to put to you is from Jack Kitchin.  He talks about research, "Private Lives 3 found 34% of gay men, 45% of lesbian women and upwards of 60% of people with other sexual identities who responded have experienced sexual violence but very few queer people will report to police and national and state level strategies tend to be silent on the issue.  What policy and/or legal changes need to be made to address sexual violence against people with queer identities?"  Karen.

     
KAREN ILES:  Yes, I absolutely agree.  I think you've also got women and people with intellectual disability, those with dementia are particularly vulnerable, and Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander women and those with English as a second, third, fourth language all show up in the stats, but certainly trans women are particularly vulnerable to being victims of sexual assault and rape.
     
I would also just like to, you know, try to swing the view to the perpetrators as well because we focus so much on the victims, but I think it's really important to talk about, you know, perpetrators and why they are picking on and overly victim  you know, overly raping, that's not the word that I'm looking for, but perpetrating predominantly against  disproportionately against specific groups in our community and the LGBTQIA+ community is one of those.  
     
You know, when you couple it with the gay hate crimes inquiry that's happening at the moment in New South Wales, where police over decades failed in their duties and are still failing in their duties, as we saw in the investigation or lack thereof of the death of Crispin Dye that, you know, it simply  when we have police forces that are using their discretion and their unconscious bias or very overt biases are coming into how they perform their job, then I think it's incumbent on our society to say well, that's not really cool, that's not good enough, we actually need some better regulation.
     
In Queensland late last year there was a big inquiry, judicial inquiry, into the conduct of police and how they responded to domestic and family violence.  Judge Richards in Queensland in November 2022 in her findings found that the Queensland Police Force is systemically misogynist, racist and sexist and I have no reason to think that any inquiry into any other police force in this country would be any different and I think that that misogyny and colonialism absolutely impacts the LGBTQIA+ community and they deserve better and predictability and the same response that a very well to do white woman from the Eastern Suburbs would expect when she reports to police.
     

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Catharine, what do universities do in this space in terms of addressing violence against queer people or at least encouraging the reporting of such sexual violence?

     
CATHARINE PRUSCINO:  So there are a number of strategies and they vary across universities, the various universities, with regard to how they create  look to create traumainformed safe spaces that are particularly welcoming and supportive of our queer students and our queer staff members.  But I think one of the things that more broadly we need to think about adding to all of the issues that Karen has identified is that when we are looking at the statistics that are collected that reflect the experiences of queer people within our society, I think an audit of how the statistics are collected and reported is probably worthwhile because for gender binary people it is often identified as forms of sexual violence, but for queer people it isn't  they don't necessarily flow into the same categories and are captured based on their gender identity and sexuality.  So what we have are these sort of fractured content around trying to understand exactly what the experience is of people in our community generally and until we can be really clear and absolute about whether or not we're talking about the forms of violence or whether we're talking about the identities of the people reporting it, we don't have a solid base against which to actually even map and understand the nature and size and scope of the problem to begin with.
     
Separate from that, how we individually within our institutions go about creating safe spaces I think is of critical importance and what I would say is from our perspective, we do a lot of that work with the service providers on campus and with the custodians of those areas.  So whether we're working with our project officers who are our queer project officers on campus, the student leaders in that space, sort of the queer reps, the students association, the clubs and societies, making sure that we bring in the voices of all of those people and collaborating with them on their own initiatives is part of demonstrating the behaviour that we want to build trust and authenticity in our institutions.

     
KAREN ILES:  What we are clear about, though, is that perpetrators, more than 95% are men and I think that while we have certain groups in society as victim survivors overrepresented, you know, the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of perpetrators are men and that concept around male privilege and entitlement and misogyny really feed into that and I'd encourage people to check out a great resource that Our Watch has called Change the Story that talks about the continuum of how attitudes and beliefs shape actions and that those actions tend to escalate, as we saw quite tragically in Sydney only a few weeks ago.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Mmm, mmm.  So Jelena Rosic has asked a question around police attitudes which probably harks back a bit to what you were talking, Karen, about in the inquiry in Queensland and she says do you think that police  sorry, my young child just called me, I'll call her back  do you think that police 'attitudes', ie, unconscious bias, whatever you want to call it, racism, sexism, what you've just described, do you think it's part of the underlying problem, ie, how victims are treated, and noting that this workforce has the same problem of sexual violence?  

     
KAREN ILES:  Absolutely.  The recent New South Wales study into the LECC, which is the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, they received complaints about police and they recently looked at reports where police officers themselves were accused of domestic violence and sexual violence offences and, you know, again it was this police investigating police situation and I think that the attitudes  so attitudes in Australia are consistently mapped in a variety of studies.  The one that I tend to call out a bit is the Australia Talks survey from I think it was 2020 that basically says 40% of Australians do not believe, and it was couched as women, women when they disclose sexual violence, and it's actually  that's 40% average.  There's actually a gender difference in that.  So it's almost about 60% of men do not believe women when they make disclosures and about 30% of women won't believe other women.
     
So if we look at the component of police force, they're typically a maledominated industry, so just statistically you're going to have a large proportion that don't believe, but also you've got a culture and a system that perpetuates those ideas that has been, you know, revealed time and time again to contain a lot of sexual harassment towards female and LGBTQIA+ members of the force and it's also  you know, in addition to sexual harassment you've got police as perpetrators themselves and the sense of power and entitlement that comes with the occupation.  So it's an interesting hot bed of a mess sometimes I think, the police force, in that respect.
     
I would say that, you know, after, gosh, 18 months of being in the media I'm now working with a couple of fabulous detectives here in New South Wales and those women are doing incredible work and that's fantastic, but those specialist squads are unique and not the experience that people have when they go and report to their police station.  That's your front line and that's certainly just not the culture.  The culture is, "Ah, it's a lot of paperwork", "Ah, you don't really want to report, do you?", you know, and not taking reports down.  So when you then try to, as a lawyer, do a victim services claim for someone, the report was never taken out and filed, so it's quite difficult.  Because of the prevalence of the issue, I think there's a range  I could go on.  There's a range of cultural issues I think in police that are creating this systemically poor response.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  It's good that they're now  like I was thinking about those two women that you're now working with.  They're the insiders, right?  They're trying to shift the institution from within, so good luck to them.  Catharine, do you have anything you want to add about policing?  
     
     
CATHARINE PRUSCINO:  I don't, actually, have anything to add about that one.
     
     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  That's alright.  I am going to come to Lucia Smith now.  I'm skipping over one just because I can come back to it.  But I was interested in what Lucia asked around jail sentences and whether they're enough for stopping reoffending or is there another mandatory program that comes along with prosecution or should there be?  I suppose either  yes, what else should there be on top of sentencing and does sentencing in jail, being sent off to jail work anyway in terms of reoffending?  Again, I'll probably go to Karen first.  Did you have something you wanted to say on that, Catharine?  

     
CATHARINE PRUSCINO:  No, let Karen go first.  

     
KAREN ILES:  Yes, sure.  I think it really goes to a bit of a philosophical question about the law and recidivism and whether jails are indeed appropriate full stop and whether or not that type of a response to a crime is even appropriate.  
     
I think what I would seek to do with the debate around sexual violence is that regardless of where you sit on the spectrum in terms of whether you're an abolitionist or, you know, at the very other end, you know, everyone needs a life in jail, that it should be consistent and the drafters of our legislation consider the crimes of rape and sexual violence, particularly against children, as the most serious on our criminal statute and that same seriousness needs to be given by the whole justice system.  Whether or not that's the right justice system I think is a bigger debate, but I think we need consistency.  
     
There is a lot of discussion around restorative justice and alternative mechanisms and absolutely, if that provides more choice and more avenues for victim survivors to go down, great.  The more options, the better, but what I wouldn't want to see happen is a twospeed economy or a twospeed legal system where you've got these, you know, very serious crimes being dealt with in a way that is not in step with how other very serious crimes are dealt with.  So at this point in the trajectory of social change I'm of the view that we just need consistency with how murder and manslaughter are handled by our judiciary.
     
     
CATHARINE PRUSCINO:  Can I add a little bit to that?  I mean, when we're talking about whether or not there are other programs that we can supplement a custodial sentence with, we've actually already accepted that we are at that destination and I think, you know, one of the things that Karen is working towards, but very specifically the people who do the prevention work in the universities and high schools, a lot of the sex and consent efforts out there at the moment is about interjecting much earlier in this journey so that we actually reduce the number of people.  If we're looking at the continuum of sexual violence, the earlier that we intersect and the more people we recruit to be able to intersect early on in that point as ethical bystander or educator or parent or, you know, those sorts of influences, we actually stem the flow of people who go through that justice system.  
     
Anecdotally, what we see from the mandatory consent training that we have here is that for students in a university setting, and we are talking about people who are legally an adult, the influence and effect of education in terms of raising awareness sits at the 80 to 90% mark.  So in terms of volume, investing early in education and if it was up to me, my new world order would have us building these sort of educational interventions from the very beginning.  When we are talking  in ageappropriate ways, when we are talking to kids in early childhood, I'd start there and have it structured all the way through so that that investment there is incredibly worthwhile in terms of the system change, in terms of, you know, the money  the funding  public money that goes to custodial sentencing to, you know, treat people through our health systems, through education, all that sort of stuff.  Investment there is where we want to be focusing our attention.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Yes.  I'm just going to come back to some of the questions I prepared earlier because I think you've done brilliantly both of you in terms of answering the audience's questions.  One of the things that I was interested in picking your brain about is how you influence key players.  So we're talking about social change  how do you actually influence senior leaders, policymakers, the types of people who will be making the important decisions, how do you influence them to support, advocate and drive change in responding to sexual violence?  And I'll come to you first, Catharine.  In the role that you've done, how do you influence people, how do you assert power?

     
CATHARINE PRUSCINO:  How do I assert power?  So my new world order.  This is such a complex question.  It's super tricky.  I know everybody actually wants a really quick list, like give me the five things that I need to do to make this happen, so let me break your heart slowly, there's no listicle, there is no listicle.  
     
When I was actually thinking about the answer to this question, this is the one that I spent the most time trying to think about how to respond to and I actually bounced ideas off other people because I'm like I don't know how to answer this question.  This is what I've come up with.  It's incredibly nuanced and granular, it's demanding and it's often invisible and at its heart it is actually for me all about the relationships we have with people, the individual relationships.  So while we talk about the importance of influencing key stakeholders, fundamentally I think my approach to working with my boss and her boss and, you know, the other senior leaders around the university is thematically very similar to the approach I take when I'm speaking to a brand new student who has come in off Broadway and it's their first day.  
     
So it is about listening to them and understanding  listening with the intent to really understand what it is that they don't understand, what they want, what they desire, what they fear and sifting through my tools to provide it to them, whether that is building capacity or providing resources or giving assurance or directing to support services or providing content, all of these sorts of things.  So it is part of that much more complex ecosystem that we spoke about earlier where outcomes are negotiated.  
     
So what we need to do is understand that this is part of how I come together to support my people in the myriad of ways that they take action when I'm not around, how do I inform them, how do I fortify them, how do I help them build capacity, build confidence, build currency in the other areas of network and influence that they operate in, that are invisible to me.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  How do you do it, Karen, how do you influence key players?  

     
KAREN ILES:  I think personal accounts and experiences have been seen, you know, over generations to be really effective in creating that groundswell of social change, but also then, you know, where the rubber hits the road a little bit with decision makers.  And I think that the  and why does that work?  I think the sharing of personal experiences can allow people to relate.  It can allow decision makers to relate, but also  you know, how people relate is they go oh, actually, something similar happened to me or someone I know or a work colleague or a parent, you know, and I think by relating, you start to understand the connection between the call for change and the solution that's in your power.  
     
However, what I would say is at the moment this work is taking a tremendous toll on a small number of advocates who are in the main, you know, a lot younger than me and perhaps without the support structures that I'm fortunate enough to have around me.  I think that, you know, talking and sharing your experience  I would have to say that in the last 12 months I've probably gone through the detail of not only the aggravated child sexual assaults times 5, but the 20year history of engaging with police  I've probably been through that in detail in at least, gosh, more than 200 meetings and for the 20odd articles and news pieces that have been published, there would be 2 times more that haven't been published.
     
So the retraumatisation is really immense and I think what's really actually distressing when you're sharing this stuff is, you know, wholeheartedly, you know, although you might have a few outliers that think that this is just a rant against police, ra, ra, ra, ra, wholeheartedly the response  I was prepared to be trolled when I went publicly.  It was not.  It was overwhelmingly, "Oh, my gosh, I cannot believe that that happened and that that has been the response of our authorities."
     
What hurts the most is that you meet with these decision makers, AttorneysGeneral and Police Ministers and Premiers and all this stuff, and they say, "Oh, my gosh, that's so terrible, Karen."  It's like, "And?" I am one of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of victim survivors who have had exactly the same experience.  I just have the privilege to be able to put together, you know, a policy submission, some draft legislation, an opinion poll, get access to media coverage and access to politicians, you know.  
     
So I think that's the harmful thing is when you bear your soul and talk about the worst day of your life, or one of the worst days of your life, you then get defined by that and for people to then turn their back on it, that's the really devastating thing for me.
     
So I worry about, you know, how we balance the need for the sharing of personal experiences to be able to build that groundswell and the momentum for change, but I then do worry about those who do the sharing, and we've seen that in the case of Kate, who spoke out about the former Federal AttorneyGeneral, and her reports and the tremendous toll that it took on her.  She took her own life.  And that story is not unique, but that's just one that's hit the papers.
     
So for me I think, you know, how do we influence?  It definitely is through that lived experience, but I think we can also influence a change in culture by promoting a culture of believing and overcoming that bias towards believing.  I've got to say why on earth would you  the bias that you face as a victim survivor speaking out of people thinking you're a liar, you're on a rant, you're out to get someone, you're trying to, I don't know, get a book deal, whatever, you know, these madeup motivations people think, the only motivation, and research backs this up, that women have in coming forward to police is to stop those rapists perpetrating again and we see that unfortunately reoffending, reraping is a constant and we're seeing a very highprofile one at the moment where someone is accused of a very similar crime in a different state.  
     
So we need that culture of believing.  We need a culture of listening and promoting the voices and experiences of victim survivors so that we start to break the silence because where we have silence over sexual assault and rape  and I keep saying "rape" because I feel like it has been sanitised in some way and the impact of the word "rape" and "rapist" has been tidied up into sexual misconduct somehow.  
     
So I think that, you know, calling out male privilege and entitlement given, you know, who the vast, vast, vast over 95% of perpetrators are is really important and just getting involved and lending a hand to particularly some of these younger men, women and gender diverse victim survivors who are speaking out at the moment.  You can help me too, but giving them a hand because this is a hard slog as a victim survivor and there is no reward, no reward, other than hopefully change in legislation around the corner.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Yes.  Oh, Karen, I just feel for you.  What an enormous  but I think you're right, like if you actually  if we work on the culture of believing, right, people don't have to keep telling their story 1,000 times before they're heard and I think that that  yes, you really nailed it there.  I'm so sorry that that's just been such a trial and tribulation for you.  
     
Let's end on a slightly  let's try to end on an up note, if there is such a thing.  I was going to talk to you about key wins and I thought maybe it might be good to end on a key win that each of you can think of.  It doesn't have to be a huge win, but where you have seen some change in addressing policies, cultural or systemic, I suppose building on this idea that there is a moment in time that we're now facing and some evidence that there is some change afoot.  Catharine, what are some of the key wins you have witnessed or seen or been a part of?  

     
CATHARINE PRUSCINO:  Thanks for that one, a tough question.  We've had  actually, here at UTS we've had some excellent success with the work that we've done with our student community and some of it has been visible outside the university, but a lot of it takes place internally and it's not that it's kept away from the outside eye, it's just that it's focused internally.  So some of the sorts of things that reflect the work that we do with our community and for our community were captured in our best in class good design win in 2020.  So that's one of the sorts of things.
     
But there is a huge amount of invisible work we do that is very, very important, but it's not sexy and it's never going to be on the cover of a paper.  So at the end of last year, after about 15 months' worth of consultation, we released our first sexual harm prevention and response policy, pretty dry stuff, according to some of our internal experts and policy writers, one of the most widely consulted policies in the university and actually an example of where we intentionally went out and sought the contribution and feedback of some of our very  some of our students who were less happy with the work that we'd done and made sure that we embedded their feedback in appropriate ways and showed them what that looked like.  
     
So while I'm quite proud of it, I would say, you know, it's very difficult to have a perfect policy, but some of the feedback that we've received from external subject matter experts, both in Australia and outside of Australia, most recently we had somebody visiting from the NHS who said, unaware in the conversation that I was involved in the development of our internal policy, she said, "Oh, one of the things I do when I travel is I capture and read and send back to my team all of the sexual harm policies that different organisations around the world release and produce"  she's in charge of the NHS in London for both the prevention of sexual harm both with regard to their staff and also their clients, about 200,000 people she said.  And she said, "I read the one that UTS has put out and it is so far one of the best we've ever read and we hope to be stripping some of the content out of it and replicating it in our own."  I take that as a win.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  I think that's a win.  And Karen, what about a win from you?  

     
KAREN ILES:  Well, look, I think sexual violence is absolutely on the agenda and at the table.  The Federal AttorneyGeneral has announced a law reform inquiry into sexual violence laws earlier this year, so thank you to the Federal AttorneyGeneral for that one.  There's ANROWS, the national research agency into violence against women and children.  They are now increasing their research agenda around sexual violence.  The National Women's Safety Alliance has got a stream of work now that's dedicated to sexual violence.  
     
So for me I feel like, you know, this is going somewhere and it's a bit of a watch this space.  I'm quite hopeful that we'll start to see some announcements on the campaign come through early next year.  So please keep in touch, everyone.

     
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Thanks, Karen.  And thanks to both of you.  That was really an amazing webinar.  I really enjoyed listening to you both, your warmth, your courage and your wisdom.  Thank you.  
     
And everybody, it's 3 minutes past the hour, so we almost did it in time  or 3 minutes past our ending time.  Thank you again for joining us.  This has been recorded and we will be sending out the link to the recording to everyone who registered.  So if you want to share it, please do.  If you want to get involved with the campaigns, particularly with Karen's campaign around police reporting  I'm forgetting the exact name of it, makepoliceinvestigate.org - please get involved.  It's clearly an incredibly important cause and something we should all be a part of.  So thanks very much for joining us and I'll see you next time.