Chanel Contos changed the curriculum, now she'll change the law

One in three Australian women and one in five men have been victims of stealthing.

One in three Australian women and one in five men have been victims of stealthing.

"I didn’t know then what had happened was rape."

How could that be possible? For someone to have been sexually assaulted, but not know?

It might not make sense until you’re told about stealthing.

And even then, it might still not make sense. Until you know what that is.

“Stealthing is the perfect example of a situation where someone violates consent and someone does something really horrible… often out ignorance and entitlement rather than malice,” Chanel Contos told The Oz.

“It’s a clear example of normalised violence.”

Stealthing is a practice which we’ve only started to seriously talk about in the past few years and refers to a man removing his condom without consent during sex.

Despite a lot of people not knowing what stealthing is, the reports we are seeing on those it has happened to are staggering.

A study by Monash University and a Melbourne Sexual Health Centre in 2019, which was really the first of its kind in the world, revealed one in three women and one in five men had been victims of stealthing.

And given many people might not know they have been stealthed - which is the sick point of the whole thing for the perpetrator - and so not reported it, experts say we can almost definitely assume that number is higher.

Because it’s a newer phenomenon, people it’s happened to often don’t realise it’s assault and even if they do, they don’t know what to do about it.

This is where law reform comes in.

You might have heard of the ACT making stealthing illegal back in October, and Tasmania doing the same thing earlier this year.

But the push for all States and Territories to explicitly outlaw stealthing, and for there to be some level of harmony between laws, is ramping up.

On Thursday, representatives from all States and Territories will meet for a virtual roundtable, which will hear from legal experts and even victims of stealthing.

One of those victims, Abbie, will say she didn’t know what happened to her more than 10 years ago was rape.

And 24-year-old Elena will say she didn’t have any way to act on what had happened to her.

"If stealthing was criminalised at the time of my incident, it would have provided me with the opportunity to take control of a situation where I had none,” she will tell the group that will include some of our most influential lawmakers.

It might be uncomfortable and disturbing, but those sorts of accounts being told to leaders of every State and Territory will put this issue in perspective; so says the person convening the roundtable.   

That person is 24-year-old Chanel Contos, who has just started in her role as the director for the Australia Institute’s Centre for Sex and Gender Equality.

Chanel Contos. Picture: Hollie Adams

Contos exploded onto our newsfeeds last year when she created an Instagram poll asking: Have you or has anyone close to you experienced sexual assault from someone who went to an all-boys school?

The response was huge, viral even.

But rather than pat herself on the back for an incredibly relatable post that shot her to online fame, Contos decided to do something about it.

And that something is for consent to be included in sexual education earlier. She launched a petition that attracted about 45,000 signatures and convinced the Federal government to mandate consent education in the national curriculum from 2023.

Once again, there was no patting on the back. Quickly after the then-23-year-old almost single-handedly changed government policy, Contos turned her mind to other areas of consent that needed work.

Stealthing is that area.

Chanel knows stealthing is done out of ignorance because she’s spoken to men who have done it.

"I've even been contacted by young men who have admitted to doing this, not knowing that it was wrong, and regretting it now,” she said.

But Chanel also knows there are men out there that this whole push to criminalise stealthing won’t sit well with, and to them she says that the point of changing laws isn’t to throw as many men as possible in prison.

“It’s to change perceptions,” she said.

“The point is to use legislation as a tool to set a social standard for our society.”

Of those attending the roundtable on Thursday, one is the leader of the ACT’s Liberal opposition Elizabeth Lee who put the bill to criminalise stealthing to her parliament.

“I am incredibly proud that the ACT has passed nation-leading laws to specifically to criminalise stealthing,” Lee said.

“Stealthing is a traumatic thing for anyone to go through; it is a gross breach of trust during an incredibly vulnerable time and can have massive physical, psychological, and emotionally impacts.”

“I hope my legislation will act as a good model for other jurisdictions to review their current laws and bring forward their own reform to specifically criminalise stealthing.”