This week, a University of Melbourne study found that almost one in three Australian teenage boys believes gender equality has gone too far. A quarter believe feminism should be resisted with violence if necessary. In the same week, Victoria Police opened an investigation into an alleged sexual assault involving several Swans players. NSW Police opened another involving three teenage boys from Scots.
These are not separate stories.
But the sector’s response to all of it has landed almost entirely in one place: prevention. Better education, earlier intervention, safer platforms, fold misogyny into our counter-extremism frameworks. They are all upstream responses – stop the attitude before it forms, catch the boy before he radicalises.
I agree wholeheartedly with all of it, it is overdue and it is necessary. But it is not what the girls at the centre of this week’s allegations need.
Prevention won’t help those girls through the isolating investigation process they are facing. It won’t prepare them to testify in court in a year’s time. It won’t protect them from having their privacy invaded, distorted and used against them in cross-examination if the cases continue.
Prevention is a bet – a good bet – on the system in ten years time. These survivors need us now.
There are legislative reforms, funding levers and supports that can be enacted right now, that are low-cost and have benefits that ripple well beyond the courtroom. Independent legal representation, legal literacy education, funding the frontline. These reforms are in reach, but I can’t be the only voice making this case. I’m asking the sector to put its voice behind change that benefits the person walking into court next week. We can’t let the long game be the only story the sector tells.
Right now I’m seeing well wishes and statements of concern. Those aren’t nothing, and I don’t say this to diminish any of my colleagues’ sincerity. But wishing the survivors luck on their journey into hell doesn’t get them through it. Keeping them in your thoughts doesn’t tell them what their rights are, what to expect, or who – if anyone – is on their side when they walk through this system.
So when allegations like these break, and the public conversation moves – rightly – to holding the men responsible accountable, and to changing the culture that enabled their behaviour, we mustn’t let it be to the detriment of their victims. Prevention and justice are not opposing priorities, and I’m not asking anyone to choose. Stopping the next generation of misogynists is critical work and I will keep showing up for it. But we cannot let that work crowd out the conversation about the generation of survivors we already have – the ones who are, this week, in incredible pain.
They deserve more than our well wishes. They deserve a system that includes them in the decisions made about them, that gives them a voice when their privacy is at stake, that treats them as valued participants rather than props. If your organisation works anywhere near this system – legal, health, education – I’m asking you to say so publicly: independent legal representation, legal literacy, frontline funding are reforms we can win now, not in a decade. We must care about what happens after violence has occurred, as much as we care about stopping it from happening in the first place.