Keeping men’s secrets. Women are used to that

Mia worried that her dispiriting experience was typical, and that it only deters others from speaking out. Picture: iStock / Getty Images

How hard do you imagine it is to secure a rape conviction? NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller once noted that police were able to proceed with only 10 per cent of the sexual assault complaints they received, and convictions were secured in only 10 per cent of those. So, as little as one per cent. It’s a devastating truth bomb that the police and judicial systems know – it’s devilishly hard to make a rape conviction stick in Australia. And what of the survivors who so bravely speak out, spilling a man’s secrets? The process is so often demoralising, humiliating, retraumatising.

The act of rape is about power and control. The word derives from the Latin, rapere, which means to snatch, grab. It’s about taking from someone. Their dignity, strength, serenity, agency, health; their sense of self. The common idea of rape is a violent attack involving a stranger, but what of rape when the victim knows the perpetrator? Rape within a relationship, a marriage. Research indicates that at least 80 per cent of perpetrators are known to their victim.

Sydney lawyer Michael Bradley has represented many sexual assault survivors and has recently written a book called System Failure: The Silencing of Rape Survivors. He tells the story of a woman he calls “Mia” who was repeatedly, violently raped by her boyfriend during their relationship. She took the matter to the police but the case was eventually dropped by her supervising officer; Mia was told it wouldn’t stack up in court. The police officer said that Mia’s ex-boyfriend was indeed a “sex pest” and he would get a “good talk” from an officer, but that they couldn’t proceed any further.

This, in part, was Mia’s response: “There aren’t sufficient words to explain how vulnerable and exposed I’ve felt throughout this process; how it has taken every ounce of fight I had in me to go down this path, to wake up every day and try to function like a normal human being when all I feel is fear and panic; and how difficult it’s been to maintain grace and dignity whilst sitting with the anger of what happened to me… Just because sexual assault cannot be proved in court, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I’m… living with the trauma of it every single day.”

Bradley’s book is calling for much-needed change in the Australian system. For a shift from an adversarial court system for crimes of sexual violence to an inquisitorial one “in which the focus is not on proof of guilt in a one-sided contest, but on an inquiry whose purpose is to discover the truth”. He also wants specialist rape courts, run by experts in the field, “fully trained, trauma-informed, (and) supported by resources dedicated specifically to survivors”. Bradley asked Mia what she’d hoped to achieve by going to the police: “I didn’t necessarily want him to be punished,” she replied. “I wanted to be heard… believed… I felt I was keeping his secret… I wanted my agency back.”

Keeping men’s secrets. Women are used to that. And to not being believed when we voice them. Mia worried that her dispiriting experience was typical, and that it only deters others from speaking out. “There are women I know who were ready to come forward to report their own experiences of assault and abuse, based on how my case was being handled in the preceding months. I doubt they’d feel safe enough to do so now, having seen the effect this outcome has had on me.” This is the tragedy of the system.

As Bradley writes so compassionately, “what survivors were most interested in exploring and understanding wasn’t punishment, it wasn’t money, and it was never fame or public attention… If there was a word for it, it would live somewhere between ‘agency’, ‘power’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘choice’… Perhaps it’s best described as the restoration of self.” A self, a secret self, that had been taken away, so brutally.