‘Sluts and nuts’ defence still part of the tactics

Criminology professor S. Caroline Taylor says the idea that rape victims either asked for it or are lying is still deeply embedded.

Criminology professor S. Caroline Taylor

Criminology professor S. Caroline Taylor says the idea that rape victims either asked for it or are lying is still deeply embedded in Australian culture.

Rapists, she says, no longer have open season on victims in courtrooms. But the age-old “sluts and nuts” defence is still at the heart of defence tactics used in rape trials. It’s just not as “overt” as it used to be.

“Certainly, the idea of women being sluttish is still there: regardless of how they sneak it in, it is still part of the legal narrative,” Taylor says.

“Also, that they are psychiatrically unstable, or just trying to get back at a man.”

Taylor, founder and chairwoman of the sexual abuse survivors charity organisation Children of Phoenix, chronicled the treatment of sexual assault victims in the Victorian justice system in her 2004 book Court Licensed Abuse.

Her pioneering research helped pave the way for a radical shake-up of the state’s sexual-assault legislation, especially in relation to witness cross-examination.

But her quest for better treatment of rape victims is also deeply personal. Sexually abused by her father from the age of five until her early 20s, Taylor says the horrific experience of pursuing her father in court in the mid-1990s left her “wounded for a very long time”.

She says she had to steel herself for the trial. She relived the excruciating detail of her childhood: how physical injuries from her father’s abuse had left her unable to have children, how he had threatened her at gunpoint, and slaughtered her beloved pets when she finally found the courage to leave home.

“My father was an extremely vicious man, a very, very violent man,” Taylor says.

What she couldn’t prepare for was the viciousness of the defence. “I was asked questions like: ‘So, you expect this court to believe you had some kind of love nest with your father?’ ” recalls Taylor.

“My case became infamous because I was cross-examined for 10 days … in ways which were simply cruel.’’

“I was repeatedly called a liar, it was put to me that I was psychiatrically unwell, that I was an alcoholic — even though I don’t drink.”

Two decades on, Taylor says there are fewer “misogynists” among the new generation of police and judicial officers.

But a deep mistrust, even fear, of victims still remains, especially those who didn’t fit the “good girl” stereotype, such as sex workers or the cognitively impaired.

“I will never forget a police officer telling me: ‘I think one of the reasons you are so believable is because you are so attractive.’

“You can’t legislate people’s thoughts and you can’t legislate their attitudes.”

Deborah Cornwall