Tracey Spicer vows to name and shame over alleged sexual harassment

A veteran journalist has put the industry on notice, vowing to drag alleged perpetrators of sexual harassment before the courts.

Veteran television journalist Tracey Spicer.

Tracey Spicer has put Australia’s media industry on notice, vowing to “name and shame” alleged perpetrators of sexual harassment and drag them before the courts.

The veteran journalist has received a deluge of messages from women who claim to have been subjected to inappropriate comments and physical contact from male superiors, including serious complaints of criminal indecent assaults.

“These are serial predators who’ve been enabled by their workplaces,” Spicer told The Australian.

“They deserve to be held to account after the way that they have behaved over many decades.”

It comes amid a global surge of attention to the issue of workplace harassment, after disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was felled by a catalogue of accusations that he exploited women working under him.

“It’s something that women need to get of their chest. We’re actually looking at prosecutions, as well as exposing these people,” Spicer said.

The outspoken gender-equality advocate, who detailed her experience of harassment in the book ‘The Good Girl Stripped Bare’, revealed that a handful of men were the central focus of her investigation.

Currently, I am investigating two long-term offenders in our media industry. Please, contact me privately to tell your stories.

— Tracey Spicer (@TraceySpicer) October 17, 2017

She said the “weight of evidence” implicating the accused men, who were still employed in senior media positions, had convinced her that the matters should be brought to police attention.

“We’re talking about pussy-grabbing stuff in the workplace — and in front of witnesses. It’s just ridiculous,” she said.

Details of the allegations came to light after Spicer tweeted an open call for women to contact her with their experiences, following discussion with fellow women about their Weinstein-like encounters.

“I’ve never seen anything like it and I’ve never had conversations like this that I’ve had in the past week, and I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” she said.

“These women have been silenced for so long, but all of a sudden they feel like they have a right to be heard and are finally speaking out.”

In a column published at the weekend, Sunday Telegraph national political editor Annika Smethurst admitted to being complicit in the “protection racket” surrounding sexual harassment in her personal and professional life, while revealing details of unwanted attention she had experienced.

“We are all guilty of turning a blind eye, but sadly silence can offer safety,” she wrote, after referencing the case of a female journalist who endured public comments about the size of her waist by a senior politician.

“Not one of these strong, professional women said a word, but they shouldn’t be blamed for that,” Smethurst wrote.

And fellow journalist Alison Mau revealed that she was pleased to hear that her old boss had died of a heart attack, telling the bearer of the news: “Good job.”

“The guy was a creep. He made all of our lives miserable,” Maud wrote in a column for the Sunday Star Times in her new home of New Zealand.

The unnamed man referred to in the article is understood to be the late John Sorell, the Walkley Award-winning newspaper journalist-turned-television executive who died in 2009.

He is the man quoted by Spicer in her book as having told the television presenter: “I want two inches off your hair and two inches off your arse!”

Despite winning scoops and accolades, Mau said, the late newsroom head had been “a monster to the young women” under his employ.

“I felt nothing but relief at the news of his death, which sounds harsh and uncaring. This man was a legend in the game. But the number of scoops broadcast or careers launched will never outweigh the damage done,” she wrote.

Spicer has invited women to share their stories with her via direct message on Twitter.