“To be a successful predator, you have to hide in plain sight”.
Such is the warning of sexual assault survivor-advocate Harrison James, as he campaigns for legislative change to end character references for convicted child sexual abuse perpetrators.
It follows the murder of Lilie James at the hands of a man described as a “role model” and an “absolute delight” by the principal of the school he attended, who also said “he appeared to be just like the best of us”.
“He” being a person alleged to have bashed his former girlfriend to death with a hammer to the skull and face, before jumping off a cliff himself to avoid any living consequences.
What a delight.
Predators are beloved too
The reality is, even serial rapists with 31 victims can be called “a kind-hearted hero and a father figure” by their family who “had no idea” and “were beyond shocked”.
In recent months, convicted rapist-by-force, Danny Masterson, also received glowing character references from two of his former That 70s Show co-stars seeking to minimise his sentence.
In legal letters, Ashton Kutcher declared that Masterson “always treated people with decency, equality, and generosity”, while Mila Kunis gushed that the convicted rapist “demonstrates grace and empathy in every situation”.
I have no doubt that every word of these glowing references is true.
I also have no doubt that Masterson is still a rapist.
Because it is entirely possible for a man to be both a great friend and colleague, or a loving family man, and still be a vicious sexual predator. Predators, abusers, and rapists are rarely the dark and shady trope we see on TV or in movies.
The truth is they are our brothers, fathers, colleagues, friends, that lovely guy who serves us coffee each morning. They walk amongst us, smiling politely.
They do not reveal their capacity for violence in every interaction or relationship. This skill is often how they groom their victims in the first place.
My first rapist was lovely
In the moments before my first rapist turned his comments about my clothing into devastating actions, my eight-year-old self had two distinct thoughts.
First was “his eyes are blue like mine”. Second was “he’s never done this before”, even though I didn’t quite know what “this” was going to be.
He was softly nervous. Gentle, even. Until he wasn’t.
Even now, I could picture the man who first presented to me coaching a local soccer team, or being a (publicly) loving dad to young children.
He could probably corral a whole handful of glowing character references too, had I understood what had happened to me, and had the ability to report him!
Change begins at home
The reality is the vast majority of sexual assault – 97 percent in Australia – is perpetrated by men.
So when I found out several years ago that my pregnancy would result in a baby boy, my heart both sighed with relief and seized up in fear.
On the one hand, I know firsthand how dangerous it is to occupy a woman’s body in this world. My body has been taken from me on dozens of occasions, used for stolen pleasure while I experienced excruciating pain.
I was relieved it wasn’t a girl, because my role as her protector would be overwhelming.
But my body wasn’t taken from me on so many occasions by an unnamed, unknown faceless force. It was taken from me by men.
And these men were also at one point a tiny foetus in a mother’s womb, ready to burst into the world helpless, innocent, and cherished beyond words.
So to love my precious baby boy fiercely means to face the reality that he is statistically more likely to commit sexual assault, than to be falsely accused of it.
Despite false reports of abuse being a common trope in fiction – and a staggering one in five Australians believing women routinely invent or exaggerate claims – the data does not support this fear.
“False” reporting of sexual assault actually sits somewhere between 2 and 7 percent of all reports, which is slightly lower than false reporting for other types of crimes. But, unlike other crime types, these numbers are wildly inflated by the inclusion of reports withdrawn out of fear or trauma, or cases that have gone unproven.
So to help all of our boys grow into their most enriched self means rejecting these myths and instead teaching them accountability from the earliest of ages, all the way up through to adulthood.
It means, as a society, loving them by refusing to jump to defend the indefensible, at the expense of victims now and into the future.
As both a rape victim and the mother of a loved-beyond-words beautiful son, this must happen for both of us.