The Australian’s Australian of the Year: Virginia Tapscott, the one who will not be silent

After her sister took her own life following repeated sexual abuse both as a child and as a teenager, Virginia Tapscott told herself she would not stay quiet.

Virginia Tapscott.

After her sister took her own life following repeated sexual abuse both as a child and as a teenager, Virginia Tapscott made a decision. “We can’t fix what we can’t see,” she tells The Weekend Australian. “I will not be silent. I will not be ­invisible.”

In the months following Alexandra Jane Tapp’s death, Ms Taps­cott, who also was a target of child sexual abuse from the same relative that assaulted her sister, has made it her mission to speak out.

Since her story was published in The Australian last September, Ms Tapscott has become a champion for those too afraid to use their own voice, which is why she is nominated for The Australian newspaper’s Australian of the Year award.

Ms Tapscott has since developed a network of perfect strangers she can talk to in an online support group about their shared experience of childhood assault, often for the first time.

She said launching the private page had been “revolutionary” for her ability to cope with her own experience.

“I initially went into it thinking it would help other people but it has really helped me and how I think about myself and how I cope with things,” she said.

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One day she hopes the page will not have to be so private.

“I want it to help people to practice talking about child sexual assault in real life,” she said.

“The more they are able to talk about it in an online forum, the more comfortable they will be to raise it in a face-to-face conversation. It’s a very intimate group and it helps people know they’re not alone.”

Ms Tapscott said the most important thing to come out of the support page and her reporting on the issue was the knowledge that it had resulted in multiple ­reports to police and at least one arrest.

“It has given hundreds of women the encouragement they needed to come out about childhood sexual abuse which, in many cases, has meant children were removed from social situations and perpetrators at large who posed a risk to them,” she said. “That’s what I think about when I feel like it is too hard and I can’t do it any more. I think about how my work has already made the world a little safer.”

Ms Tapscott said seeking help was critical, and it could be anyone from a family member to a professional psychologist.

“What I hear over and over again is that people haven’t been able to say it to anyone. So it is critical to find someone they can speak to in any capacity,” she said.

For many victims, that person has become Ms Tapscott.

We encourage our readers to put in a nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year, first won in 1971 by economist HC “Nugget” Coombs. Prominent Australians can be nominated by filling out the coupon above, or sending an email to [e-mail]. Nominations close on Thursday, January 21.