Karen Iles has launched a campaign for law reform, after speaking out about her experiences with police and the justice system as a survivor of child sexual assault.
An investigation from Guardian Australia last week revealed that police in Queensland and New South Wales failed to investigate a series of alleged sexual assaults against Iles as a 14-year-old girl.
The alleged sexual assaults – which include a gang rape attack by up to 15 teenagers and men in 1993 – have not been investigated by police since Iles first reported in 2004 when she was in her 20s.
This is despite Iles taking action with repeated follow ups and more recently, complaints to police integrity bodies.
Iles, who is the Director and Principal Solicitor at Violet Co Legal & Consulting, told Women’s Agenda that law reform needs to happen in Queensland and NSW, as well as nationally, to ensure a minimum duty for police to investigate reports of serious crimes like aggravated child sexual assault.
“When you come forward and report to police the most horrific experience of multiple aggravated child sexual assaults and to then have them do absolutely nothing is soul destroying. It makes you feel disbelieved,” Iles shares with Women’s Agenda.
“Which is silly. In my instance I had a co-victim, witnesses, names and photos of perpetrators, contemporary evidence and I reported it relatively promptly – in my early 20’s. I thought there was plenty for the police to go off.
“If police can’t do the bare minimum, and there are no effective mechanisms to hold police to account, then I have fears about our justice system, our society and the safety of women and children.”
Since coming forward publicly about her experiences, Iles has decided to dedicate much of her time to lobbying state and federal governments for law reform, to ensure police have a minimum duty to investigate reports of child sexual assault. She says “the system is broken” and existing mechanisms to hold police to account in NSW and Queensland are ineffective.
“I hope that the state and federal governments create a statutory duty for police to investigate the most serious crimes – such as aggravated child sexual assault. Many would be shocked to hear that such a duty, an absolute minimum duty to investigate, to do something, doesn’t exist,” she says.
“I’m not expecting, and I don’t think our community expects, that police investigate every crime that comes across their desk. Nor am I, or the community, expecting that an unreasonable standard be applied to the way that investigations are carried out. But for very serious crimes, such as aggravated child sexual assault, there must be a duty to ‘do something’ and that duty needs to be legally enforceable to provide victims with certainty that police will take them seriously.”
Iles has launched a petition, which at the time of publishing has reached about 19,000 signatures in a matter of days. She has also started a Go Fund Me fundraiser to help fund her advocacy as she takes time away from her business to pursue law reform.
The petition highlights the three areas of reform Iles is focused on, which include:
- Law reform to impose a duty of care and minimum duty on police to investigate child sex crimes
- Independent, transparent and effective mechanisms to ensure police are held to their duty of care and duty of investigation
- A national framework to ensure consistency in police responses to child sexual crimes and violence against women, as part of the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Children
Iles says it’s time we set an expectation across Australia of how reports of child sex crimes and gender-based violence are responded to by police.
“Evidence tells us that victim-survivors are retraumatised by dealing with police and our justice system,” she says. “In my experience the process of dealing with police in two states has been the most retraumatising aspect of it all.”
“Dealing with police is what has caused me the ‘unspeakable trauma’ that I referred to in the Guardian article.
“The community is shocked there is no legal standard to investigate reports of such serious crimes like aggravated child sexual assault.”
You can support Karen Iles campaign for law reform by signing the petition, or contributing to her Go Fund Me.
If you or anyone you know needs help, please call the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732).