‘Never spoken about this’: Abbie Chatfield shares harrowing sexual assault

Abbie Chatfield has opened about being sexually assaulted as a teenager in a new interview with Teach Us Consent CEO Chanel Contos.

Abbie Chatfield has shared that she was sexually assaulted as a teenager in a new interview.

The Australian media personality opened up about her experience to Teach Us Consent CEO Chanel Contos, during the latest episode of her LISTNR podcast It’s A Lot with Abbie Chatfield.

“I’ve never spoken about this,” Chatfield told Contos, adding that she felt “sick even bringing this up”.

“When I was in high school … Basically, I had consensual sex with one guy at this party, and then I was so drunk that I was passed out in a bush, and then this other guy had sex with me – who I’d kissed two weekends before, or something. That was rape.”

Teach Us Consent CEO Chanel Contos. Picture: India Hartford Davis

Australian media personality Abbie Chatfield. Picture: Supplied

When Chatfield confided in her girlfriends about the “predatory” assault, they insinuated that she “was just ‘embarrassed that I’d f**ked two guys in one night’”.

“It was kind of shocking … My friends were just kind of like, ‘You’re being ridiculous, you’re just a sl*t, and you just regret it so you don’t want to talk about it’.

“And then I told one guy, actually, who was my best guy friend at the time, he was on the rugby team … and he was like, ‘That’s f**ked, that’s not OK’. And then I only spoke to him about it for the next year. I didn’t speak to anyone else about it.”

Chatfield said she also “didn’t push the subject, because I was like, ‘Maybe [what my friends said] was right’”.

She added, “I’d gotten with this guy before, I’d kissed him the weekend before … And I think I was like, ‘Well he obviously didn’t mean to do that’. So I’m just going to accept that I quote-unquote ‘f**ked two guys in one night’”.

Chatfield said she ‘didn’t push the subject’ with her friends. Picture: Instagram/It's A Lot with Abbie Chatfield

Chatfield then said, “It wasn’t until I got older, like 20, or something, and I had sex with my boyfriend in a park … I had a full blown panic attack, and was like, ‘Why was that?’”

Both Contos and Chatfield agreed the response the latter received was in part due to “a mass gaslighting” of women when it comes to sexual assault and harassment.

The Teach Us Consent movement, Contos explained earlier in the episode, was “defined by a type of sexual assault that is seen as so mundane to us … It’s almost like a mass gaslighting of women to say [what happened to them] is not that big of a deal”.

“I feel like it was that type of sexual assault [that women shared] – because it wasn’t seen as that big of a deal, you feel as though you shouldn’t speak up about it or you shouldn’t call it that, or you’re attention seeking if you do or you’re being dramatic … or you’re going to ruin his life,” she said.

“And I think also lots of self doubt and misunderstanding [from women] of this situation. I think [Teach Us Consent] opened a space for that type of sexual assault to be called out, and be like, ‘Actually, it’s not OK’.”

Chatfield’s own thought process after her assault – and in the years since – has been a reflection of this, she said.

“I think even still to this day I haven’t spoken about it because I’m like, ‘Well, he was young and didn’t have the information to understand that that wasn’t OK’,” Chatfield said.

“So therefore [I feel like] if I speak about it, I’m potentially just ruining his life because he probably has no idea how that affected me.

“Why are we carrying around the guilt and the shame and the anxiety about it?”

Originally published as ‘Never spoken about this’: Abbie Chatfield shares harrowing sexual assault