Louise Milligan defends ‘humiliating’ speech at lawyer event

ABC journalist Louise Milligan has defended the controversial speech she delivered for female lawyers, in which she called for radical changes to Australia’s legal system.

ABC journalist Louise Milligan. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

ABC journalist Louise Milligan has defended the speech she delivered at a gala event for female lawyers in which she called for radical changes to Australia’s legal system.

In a keynote speech at an event hosted by the ACT Women Lawyers Association on October 21, Milligan said “a culture that has developed in criminal justice systems” – in Australia and overseas – exposes complainants of sexual crimes to brutal, insensitive court cross-examinations.

Her address left many female lawyers at the event deeply upset, with some telling The Australian last week they felt under attack for doing their job: that is, providing legal representation to defendants accused of sexual crimes.

Many were especially horrified by Milligan’s suggestion that the manner of courtroom cross-examination by prosecutors and defence lawyers of complainants of alleged sexual crimes had driven some to suicide.

On Thursday, Milligan posted a copy of her speech notes to social media, with an accompanying note about how, in the wake of her address, she had been “misquoted” and “verballed” in the “nation’s parliament” and in The Australian.

On November 1, The Australian published a column by Janet Albrechtsen, who had spoken to many lawyers present at the event, some of whom told of feelings of public humiliation as other female lawyers applauded Milligan’s attacks on their work.

“Milligan, say these lawyers, claimed that women would not lie about sexual violence and that they should be called victim survivors, not complainants. After the address, many lawyers present wondered whether, on the Milligan measure, we needed a justice system at all. Should we simply go from allegation to jail?” Albrechtsen wrote.

According to her speech notes, Milligan said: “Despite all of the shouting at clouds that these men’s protectors have made over my journalism, events that have followed have shown that they are on the wrong side of history.

“It’s just surprising and, to victims, hurtful, that there are still a significant minority of people who continue to, automatically, assume … that there are multitudes of false accusers spending years going through police investigations, being subjected to terrible scrutiny, having to discuss their most intimate lives, having their integrity smashed by defence counsel in law courts.

“One psychologist told me she would spend years getting clients to the point where they were strong enough to report, and then, at the other side, she would spend years helping them recover. Not from crime, at that point, but from the retraumatising legal process. Many, she said, were suicidal.”

On November 3, the president of the ACT Bar Association, Rebecca Curran, wrote to the head of the territory’s Women Lawyers Association to complain about Milligan’s “insensitive and polemical” speech that “promoted misconceptions” about the criminal justice system. “She demonstrated no understanding of the difficult and vital work done by barristers of all genders.”