‘It’s a shock’: Graphic detail brave Australian sexual violence survivor wants you to hear

Sarah Rosenberg’s story is shocking and confronting to hear – but there’s a powerful reason she wants you to understand the details.

EXCLUSIVE

WARNING: GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE, STRANGULATION AND SUFFOCATION, EXTREME CAUTION ADVISED

Good to know you’re disgusted by me.

I knew you never loved me.

I knew you didn’t like sex with me.

These are just some of the disturbing statements Joshua* said to Sarah Rosenberg on the night he attacked her, strangling and suffocating Sarah after she told him she just wanted to go to sleep and “wasn’t feeling well”.

“I started getting tired and I got ready for bed. And he laid next to me. And I remember quite clearly what I said to him,” Sarah says.

“I was explaining that ‘I’m feeling really sick at the moment and it has nothing to do with you’.

“I could see he was taking it personally.

“He hadn’t looked at me the entire time I’d been speaking to him. But he turned to me when I finished talking and he said, ‘good to know you’re disgusted by me’.”

Sarah says she doesn’t want her story sanitised. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/news.com.au

This was not the first time Joshua had exhibited insecure behaviour – particularly when drinking alcohol. He would alternate between “love bombing” Sarah, and accusing her of being disinterested in him.

“I asked him what he meant by his comment. He didn’t answer me. And suddenly I was flipped over onto my back,” she says.

“He was having sex with me, and saying these horrible things right in my ear.”

I knew you never loved me.

I knew you were always thinking about other boys during sex.

I knew you didn’t like sex with me.

“I couldn’t get him away. I kept turning to him going, ‘what are you talking about? What are you doing?’” Sarah says.

“I started grabbing his hair and pulling. And he was beginning to thrust harder. I thought if I could just get him to look at me he would stop. I told him to stop. I started kicking my legs.

“It still hadn’t really registered what was happening. But when I started fighting like that it made it worse. He reached up and put both his hands around my throat. And he was pushing really hard. He lifted up his torso while he was thrusting into me, and was using my neck as leverage to support himself.

“I could feel his fingers digging into the back of my neck and I couldn’t breathe. I was pulling at his wrists as hard as I could. It was violent. And then he let go.”

Sarah says she felt “terrified”.

Sarah (right) wants the public to know how men are using the rough sex defence in court. Picture: Supplied

“We’d never spoken about strangulation or anything, in a sexual context or otherwise. And I remember just having time to breathe in, and then he reached for the pillow next to my head and he put it over the top of me. And he placed both his hands on top of the pillow and he smoothed it, and then pushed down either side of my face, so the pillow was really tight across me, and I couldn’t breathe,” Sarah says.

“He was still thrusting. I just remember seeing stars … there was a lot of pressure on my eyes. And I remember zoning out then.

“That’s where I potentially lost consciousness. He threw the pillow off my face, to the side of the room. And I just remember being almost blinded by the street light across the street …. And I made a conscious decision not to fight anymore, because it had made it worse. And I just lay limp.

“He flipped me over onto my stomach and pulled me onto my knees by my hair. He yanked my head all the way back and started thrusting again.”

When the attack finally ended, Sarah pulled her legs up to kick him if he returned. Instead, Joshua threw a towel at Sarah and went to shower.

Later, at trial, Joshua never denied choking Sarah or putting a pillow over her face.

He claimed he thought she would enjoy it.

Sarah still has nightmares and gets headaches which she had never experienced before that night.

Sarah wants to talk about the non-sanitised version of that night in all its difficult details. Picture: Supplied

She wants to talk about the graphic detail – the non-sanitised version of that night in all its difficult detail – because she thinks it’s important that people understand how dangerous choking is and why it serves as a huge red flag for other forms of intimate partner violence.

“Sexual violence is so often sanitised, watered down so that others feel comfortable … Sit with me, listen to my story in its entirety. It’s a shock but it should be a shock – what happened was not okay,” she says.

News.com.au is publishing the above level of detail with Sarah’s full involvement and consent.

She also wants to discuss how easy it is for those responsible to employ the “rough sex” defence at trial to excuse their behaviour by simply claiming the victim “enjoyed it”.

Not only did Joshua never deny choking and smothering Sarah, in the lead up to the 2022 trial, through his lawyer, he also offered to plead guilty to two counts: “intentional choking without consent” and “intentional suffocation without consent”.

Sarah and her family were eager to explore the deal, which would have averted the need for a trial.

Under the plea put forward by Joshua’s lawyer, he could have faced up to seven and a half years jail.

But the prosecution rejected the plea because they felt confident they could secure a conviction for the two counts of rape. There was an abundance of evidence to draw from: medical reports, counselling reports and text messages from Joshua after the incident including apologies, admissions and promises of change.

‘It’s a shock but it should be a shock – what happened was not okay’. Picture: Supplied

I’m sorry.

I’ve done something terrible

I will get help. And talk to someone about it. It’s not me. But it happened, so it’s something

Yet in court, Joshua’s highly paid QC put forward what is colloquially known as the “rough sex defence”.

He thought you liked rough sex and he thought that was what you wanted.

You said that you liked rough sex … Correct?

Not only was Sarah accused of enjoying the violence which has left her with PTSD, but the jury, apparently, believed the story. He was acquitted on all charges.

An analysis of the full court transcript shows that under cross examination which lasted over three days, Sarah was asked over 2000 questions. Many were about her sexual preferences, sexual history and partners. She was painted unsympathetically and described to the jury as “clingy”, “possessive”, “infatuated”, “jealous”, “damaged”, “too needy” and “toxic”.

The prosecution never objected once to these terms.

In fact, the prosecution only objected a single time – to a technicality – while Sarah was under cross examination. Sarah, at one point, ran out to vomit.

For Sarah’s mum Julie, the trial felt “like watching your daughter being raped, but with your hands tied behind your back and your eyes glued open”.

It was also the first time she understood the complete horror of the night.

The trial was the first time Sarah’s mum Julie understood the complete horror of the night. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/news.com.au

“It was the first time I got to understand the full import of how violent (Joshua) was, how frigging lucky we are to have her alive. Like anyone in that sort of state who did what he did to her so easily could have killed her – like he had no stops,” she says.

“It was just a realisation of how lucky we were that she was alive.”

Sarah says she is speaking out now in part to draw attention to the increasing use of choking in young people’s relationships, and the “rough sex defence” in trials.

Choking is also an internationally recognised risk factor for future homicide.

According to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, strangulation by an intimate partner increases the risk of future homicide by that person by more than seven times.

Dr Rachael Burgin, senior lecturer at Swinburne Law School, says: “Strangulation is recognised as an ultimate act of power and control over another person and is closely associated with homicide. It’s not just drawn from porn, it’s drawn from a total indifference to the impact of your behaviour on another person, and an absolute disregard for their life, health and safety.”

British backpacker Grace Millane’s murder was the subject of Netflix documentary The Lie: The Murder of Grace Millane. Picture: Facebook

A new campaign launched in the UK called We Can’t Consent To This has collected the stories of 60 UK women who have been recently killed through strangulation, whose killers later employed the “rough sex” defence to mitigate responsibility.

“We are extremely concerned by normalised violence against women in sex,” per the campaign website.

Closer to home, in 2018, British woman Grace Millane was murdered in New Zealand by Jesse Shane Kempson, 26.

Kempson strangled her during intercourse and violently assaulted her, before disposing of her body in a suitcase.

He invoked the rough sex defence, with his lawyers claiming that Ms Millane was sexually permissive and asked to be choked. The case has become the subject of a recent Netflix documentary on the rough sex defence called The Lie.

In 2019, Kempson was found guilty in a unanimous verdict and later sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years. He has since been convicted of rape and sexual abuse charges relating to two other women in October and November 2020.

For Sarah, the rough sex defence is a newer “rape myth”. For decades, women have been blamed for inviting sexual violence through their dress, behaviour or alcohol consumption.

Today, we add to that list the notion that women enjoy violence.

“It’s linked to progressively egalitarian attitudes towards sex, which are a double-edged sword for women,” Sarah says.

She hopes that by sharing her story so bravely it will promote nuanced, mature conversation about this sensitive subject.

“Choking is increasingly common and I believe a lot of young people do it performatively, without knowing the dangers. That is one risk,” she says.

The other risk is that we conflate very deliberate acts of violence with consensual risk taking behaviour, confusing the two, in order to afford excuses to those responsible.

“What happened to me was not pleasurable or desirable. It was not consensual. It was not experimental or performative. This type of strangulation was not accidental. It was violent punishment,” Sarah says.

“The perpetration and prosecution of rape does not operate within a cultural vacuum. It’s time the community takes the stand with us.”

*Joshua is a pseudonym

Nina Funnell is Walkley Award winning journalist and the creator of the Take the Stand campaign run in exclusive partnership with news.com.au. Contact: [e-mail]. To support this independent journalism donate here