‘Don’t let him win’: detective’s advice becomes sexual assault survivor’s life motto
After Elysha O’Neill was the victim of a brutal sexual assault she fielded questions like ‘what were you wearing?’ and ‘were you drunk’. She is now sharing her story publicly to dispel rape myths.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
After Elysha O’Neill was attacked by a stranger walking home one night, a female officer gave her a life-changing piece of advice.
Don’t let him win. Those four simple words would shape the course of her recovery.
“She told me: ‘You stop doing the things you want to do and he wins, you stop being the person you want to be, he wins’,” Ms O’Neill said.
“I knew I didn’t want to be that person. I wanted to turn it around.”
A decade ago, Ms O’Neill was sexually assaulted by a stranger, a few metres from her home in Sydney’s south.
The former champion water polo player is speaking publicly about her experience to remind the other one in five Australian women who have experienced sexual violence in their life that they are strong and will be OK.
“I want women to be able to wear what they want to wear,” the 34-year-old said.
“I want to be able to leave a place and walk to the station or walk home and not have to think: ‘OK, which way am I going to go? Do I have my phone on me, do people know where I am?’
“I want to have a life where I don‘t have to think about those things.”
In 2018, Ms O’Neill started a fundraising campaign for the Full Stop Foundation, which raises money for Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia, as way of saying thank you to the social workers, counsellors and psychologists who helped her recover.
The sportswoman carried out 30 challenges, from swimming for 24 hours straight to walking 100 kilometres non-stop and handing out food for the homeless.
When she was exhausted and swimming into her 15th hour in freezing cold water, Ms O’Neill, now a water polo coach and university sports co-ordinator, said she reminded herself she had been through worse.
In 2010, Ms O‘Neill was at the peak of her elite water polo playing career.
She had played in the Australia under-20s team in the world championships in Europe, was a Youth Olympics gold medallist and was on her way to a spot on the Australian senior water polo squad.
Physically strong and confident, Ms O‘Neill was the kind of friend who went out of her way to make sure others got home safely.
She insisted on dropping her friends home after a night out or made follow-up phone calls to ensure they had arrived safely.
But on a Sunday night in 2010, Ms O‘Neill turned down the offer of a lift after a relaxed dinner with friends and walked the short distance home.
Ms O’Neill was on the phone to a friend — another safety measure her friends had devised when any of them were walking at night alone — when a man began following her.
“But the issue was that because when I was on the phone, I didn’t hear him behind me for a long time,” she said.
Sensing he was close but ignoring his attempts to talk to her, Ms O’Neill was reluctant to go into her ground floor apartment with him watching.
Her phone call dropped out and she decided to walk around the block. The man attacked her moments later.
There are some details Ms O’Neill remembers vividly, like seeing a light in a nearby house flicker on when she screamed but having no one come to her aid.
There are other seemingly minuscule details she struggles to recall.
After the attack, Ms O’Neill went through clinical process of reporting a sexual assault — telling a strange man at the front desk of her local police station what had happened and undergoing a medical examination at the hospital.
While a male DNA sample was found on her clothing, it did not match against any records on police databases.
Her perpetrator was never found.
While her experience with the police was overwhelmingly positive, Ms O’Neill said she would have felt more comfortable reporting her assault to a female police officer and having a female doctor examine her.
However, the female detective on her case displayed empathy and support that helped Ms O’Neill move forward.
“She said: ‘None of this is your fault’,” she said.
“You’re a survivor. Don’t ever forget how brave you are, otherwise he wins, don’t let him win.”
In the aftermath of her assault, some questions she fielded from friends fed into the shame and guilt felt by many sexual assault survivors.
“There were those questions of: ‘What were you wearing? How much did you have to drink’?” she said.
“Then you start to think: ‘Well, what was I wearing? Was it inappropriate?
“It was 9pm on a Sunday night, it wasn’t even late. Not that it should matter.”
Surprisingly, Ms O’Neill said, it was mostly women who asked those questions, not men.
This is where greater education about sexual assault and what context it occurs in is so important, she believes.
“So many women have come to me and shared their story,” she said.
“But the reason they generally don’t share is because they get comments like: ‘Oh, but were you drunk’ or: ‘You’re being overly sensitive, it isn’t that serious’.
“There needs to be education on both what constitutes sexual assault and sexual harassment, including the environment and context it occurs in.
“If people know what assault and harassment looks like, then maybe those comments will be less common. And that can make or break a victim’s recovery.”
Email: ava.benny-morrison@news.com.au
Lifeline: 131114
NSW Rape Crisis: 1800 424 017
Join the conversation
‘Dark days’: Mum’s heartbreaking ten-year ordeal before miracle bub
After a decade of IVF attempts, three crushing losses and spending a sizeable house deposit, one woman had a miracle bub through a low-cost model. But she says more needs to be done to help women in regional NSW.
Read more
‘Shocking failure’: Abbott slams PM over terror intelligence breakdown
Ex-PM Tony Abbott and security experts have blasted an “alarming breakdown” in communication between the state and federal government as Sydney narrowly dodged a ‘mass casualty event’ over a foiled anti-Semitic terror plot.
Read more