‘I was groped by a judge’: D’Ath makes shocking new revelation

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has revealed she was groped by an international judge in the Queensland Parliament just two years ago, as other female MPs also detail their sexual harassment horror stories.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has revealed she was groped by an international judge in the Queensland Parliament two years ago when she was Attorney-General.

Speaking in parliament today, a defiant Ms D’Ath also revealed a raft of vile comments made online last week after she shared her experiences with sexual harassment.

“If they want something current, well how about two years ago as the Attorney-General that I was groped by an international judge at a conference in this parliament,” she said.

“This is still happening today.

“It has to stop.”

Ms D’Ath was speaking in support of a motion moved by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk which expressed support for all women and their right to be safe in their home, workplace and community and condemning harassment and assault of women.

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath speaks during Question Time at Parliament House in Brisbane on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

She last week revealed two experiences with sexual harassment including one where a family friend who was father of two asked her to kiss him when she was in her early teens.

The Minister said some of the online comments from last week included;

- No way, she’s way too ugly for this to be true.

- Must have been a blind man.

- Oh for God’s sake get over yourself.

- Oh boo hoo, she was harassed.

- D’Ath is a waste of space.

- They only harassed her because she is a super ugly bottle blonde

#EnoughIsEnoughhttps://t.co/hUkOvLZCnb

— Yvette D'Ath MP (@YvetteDAth) March 24, 2021

Ms Palaszczuk said change needed to come now.

“It is a time where we must stand united,” she said.

A string of MPs from both sides of politics have paid tribute to survivors of sexual violence, spoke of their personal anger, shared their own stories and men have spoken of how “being a man” does not include disrespect for women.

The LNP’s Laura Gerber. Picture: News Corp/Attila Csaszar

An emotional Laura Gerber said the experiences of Australian of the Year Grace Tame and former LNP staffer Brittany Higgins were not isolated.

“Almost every woman has this story,” the LNP’s Currumbin MP said.

“I have this story and I have felt shame for not sharing it.

“But I can’t and that is part of the problem.

“I want to give a voice to woman that have not felt like they can share their story.

“Their story matters too and you are no less important and this is no less about you because you can’t say what happened.

“You are survivors of sexual violence and you always will be.”

Queensland Member for Macalister Melissa MacMahon. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

An emotional Melissa MacMahon shared a harrowing story from when she was in the police where senior male training officers asked if she was a “dyke or a bike”.

“I could stand here for an entire sitting week, not just three minutes,” the Macalister MP said.

“I put on a uniform at the age of 18 and I thought I was prepared.

“After all I’d already learnt at far too young an age that no good comes from being a female or appearing feminine.

“I adjusted my outlook on the world accordingly, I thought I was prepared.”

But she said there were a number of occasions where her senior male training officers asked “whether I was a dyke or a bike”.

“In that first year I knew my place, how I was regarded by some of my colleagues,” she said.

“I was an object of disdain or otherwise.”

Ms MacMahon said at 21, when she was a trainee in a police car, she could count on one hand the amount of times she worked with another female for an eight-hour shift.

“And it would take 16 years in the army before I had a female commanding officer and it opened my eyes,” she said.

The MP said she had internalised the harassment and “outright expected it”.

But she said her time in politics for the Labor Government had been the most female-dominated, safe and welcoming environment she had ever worked in.

Lytton MP Joan Pease.

ALP MP Joan Pease said she has been sexually harassed by a senior partner at a law firm she worked at when she was 16 who would smack female workers on the bottom.

She said he stopped only after she told him she was only three years older than his own daughter.

The Lytton MP became emotional when she revealed her daughter had been sexually harassed at her NT workplace decades later.

Despite being discouraged from reporting it, she said her daughter eventually did and the man resigned.

“Forty years on, nothing has changed,” she said.

“Harassment in the workplace still continues.

“So to my daughter, and to the woman that have experienced this harassment, I believe you and I support you and, my darling, I am so sorry, sorry that change has been so slow, sorry that this behaviour still happens and sorry that I couldn’t stop this happening to you.

“I am frustrated and I am angry and I am disappointed but now it is time for each and every one of us to stand up for what we know is the right thing to do.

“It is time to call out behaviour when we see it ... it is time to listen.”

Deputy Opposition Leader David Janetzki said the past few weeks had provoked important conversations.

“My wife with a career in the performing arts has shared instances of harassment with me that she has never shared before, experiences that she felt ashamed to share with me, her best friend since we were 18 years old,” he said.

Education and Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace said the point was women would not be silent anymore.

“The point is you can continue on the way you are, you can ignore the cultural change that is required, you can ignore the attitudinal changes but the women are uniting and saying we will call this out now when it happens, we will no longer sweep this under the carpet because brave women are coming out all over the place and I end with perpetrators beware,” she said.

Transport Minister Mark Bailey said when men made sexist jokes and ridiculed women, other men must stand up.

LNP frontbencher Steven Minnikin said misogyny and sexism were not on a spectrum or a sliding scale.

“They are in fact part of the system where minor acts committed and tolerated by many people prop up and sustain a culture that enables egregious abuse of privilege and physical power,” he said.

“We need to recognise that all women, wife, partners, mothers and daughters, they are no longer society’s handmaids.”

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