Suzie Miller on why UK police are required to watch her Broadway show

It turns out to be a very good week to have lunch with Suzie Miller, the internationally acclaimed playwright who has quite literally written the book on the legal system’s failings to secure meaningful justice for victims of sexual assault.

That book, of course, is Prima Facie, the novelisation of the Olivier-winning play of the same name, which began life at Sydney’s Griffin Theatre and has become a worldwide juggernaut. There are 20 current productions in Germany alone, and a film version is in the works starring Emmy, Grammy and Tony-award winning actor Cynthia Erivo (she’s only missing the Oscar, and she’s been nominated for two). It centres on defence barrister Tessa, who has successfully defended accused rapists and is herself raped by a colleague on a drunken night out. Sound like anything that has been in the headlines recently?

Suzie Miller at Cicciolina in St Kilda.Credit: Eddie Jim

Miller was, in fact, asked about the Lehrmann case when she was doing an interview with CBS in New York when Prima Facie opened on Broadway. At the time, Lehrmann’s now-failed defamation case was pending, and Miller wasn’t able to comment other than by pointing out the similarities in the subject matter of the show and the case.

Now, however, Judge Michael Lee has found that on the balance of probabilities, Lehrmann did rape Brittany Higgins in Parliament House. It has been five years since the rape, with the criminal trial abandoned due to juror misconduct, and Lehrmann has never been found guilty in criminal court.

“I think that this judge in particular understood some of the messages around someone that’s a victim of a sexual assault or rape is not going to behave in the ‘perfect victim mentality’,” Miller says. “And he also was prepared to say, there were some issues with the evidence that I don’t believe, but I am convinced of this.”

Higgins herself issued a statement following Lee’s ruling, saying her health, memory and relationships have been affected by the rape. The years-long process of criminal complaint and trial, wall-to-wall media coverage and subsequent defamation proceedings have also taken a toll. “I was devastated that a rapist was given a nationwide platform to maintain his lies about what happened,” she wrote.

We’ll never know if a jury would have found Lehrmann guilty because an eleventh-hour mistake by a juror caused the trial to be abandoned. But statistically, it’s unlikely.

“The stats in the UK are: one in three women is sexually assaulted. Of those, one in 10 go to the police. Out of those, not even 20 per cent go to court.” Less than 2 per cent of police complaints of rape end in conviction. Miller knows these statistics off by heart, as she’s been talking about sexual assault and the justice system for so long.

In Australia, the statistics are similar. Fewer than 20 per cent of sexual assaults that are reported to police ever make it to a criminal trial, and just as in the UK, fewer than one in 10 women who have been sexually assaulted even makes a police complaint in the first place.

The process takes a long time, and during it, victims are made to relive their assaults over and over, which often re-traumatises already traumatised women. That is at the heart of Prima Facie. The play has not only changed lives, it’s changed laws.

Miller is in Melbourne to give a talk to a group of Victorian judges about how sexual assault victims are treated in the judicial system.Credit: Eddie Jim

“In the UK, a judge called me about 9am the morning after seeing the play, a very senior UK judge, a woman actually, which was very interesting to me,” Miller says. “She said: ‘I watched the play. I saw what you were saying. I hadn’t seen it quite like that before. I went away and thought about it, and it really bothered me. I’m the judge that writes the directions to the jury. I rewrote the directions to the jury based on language in the play.’”

All judges in Northern Ireland have to watch the National Theatre Live version of the play, starring Jodie Comer, before they can adjudicate on a rape case. And 3000 police officers in North Yorkshire have also been required to watch the play, in order to more fully understand what victims of sexual assault go through in their interactions with the justice system. Many of them have shared their reactions to the play with Miller.

“All these mainly men saying: ‘I’ve done this for 30 years, I didn’t realise I was making a mistake. And I’m now ashamed about some of the questions I asked. It’ll never be like that again.’”

Miller is in Melbourne to give a talk to a group of Victorian judges about how sexual assault victims are treated in this judicial system, and they, too, will watch the National Theatre Live version of Prima Facie to help inform their thinking.

Spaghetti vongole with pippies, garlic, lemon, chilli, olive oil and parsley at Cicciolina.Credit: Eddie Jim

She divides her time between London and Sydney (and sometimes Canberra, as her husband is a High Court judge), but she’s thrilled to be back in St Kilda, where she grew up. Her extended family of aunts and uncles lived within a few streets of each other in St Kilda, and her first jobs (paper route, milk bar) were within sight of where we’re sitting on Acland Street, enjoying spaghetti with pippies, garlic, lemon and chilli (her) and saffron taglietelle with prawns and white zucchini (me) at St Kilda institution Ciccolina.

“My parents met at the St Moritz Ice Skating Rink,” she says. “My mum was the mayor of St Kilda, too. Her story is great, she left school at year 9, saved up her money and went overseas to London.”

Upon her return to St Kilda, Miller’s mother reconnected with the boy from the skating rink, and they got married. “She was looking after children, home duties, as it was described then. And my dad was quite quiet. He was very, very smart, but not terribly successful.

Saffron tagliatelle with prawns, white zucchini and finger lime butter at Cicciolina St Kilda.Credit: Eddie Jim

“They were very worried about all these beautiful houses being pulled down in St Kilda, and she was serving the tea [at a meeting for those concerned about St Kilda’s heritage buildings]. They said, ‘oh, we just really need someone to stand for council’. And Mum said, ‘I’ll do it! … I’ve been pushing the pram past those houses for years, crying when I see them come down, they were part of my childhood.’ And that was it, she was on her way.”

The bill for lunch at Cicciolina.Credit: Cass Knowlton

Miller inherited that spirit of pushing for justice from her mother, as well as a belief in her ability to be anything she wanted to be. In her own case, that wasn’t initially writing, or even law, it was immunology and microbiology at Monash. She had finished her honours year and was mulling a PhD when the Chernobyl disaster happened.

“The radio was on, there was an announcement about Chernobyl, we all looked up from our microscopes, and everyone said, ‘oh, I know what that chemical is’. I was going: ‘What about the people?!’ And everyone else went back to work. They weren’t inhumane people, but it was a science environment. I wanted to stand up and be outraged.”

The place to stand up and be outraged, she decided, was law. A law degree at the University of NSW followed, during which she discovered one of her legal heroes, US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “She was such an icon of mine,” she says.

Miller, with James Bierman, receives the Olivier Award for Best New Play in April 2023.Credit: Getty

“When I was a law student I really read up about her, I was really impressed with her, and I think because she had a fire in the belly about gender rights, and so did I ... There was this woman who came from Brooklyn, from a family that wasn’t a legal family, she came from not much money. Her parents were Jewish at a time when there was a lot of antisemitism. Her older sister had died. She overcame a lot of hardship, but she still got there.”

The diminutive Ginsburg loomed large during her 27 years on the Supreme Court. She became known as a champion of gender equality and was given the affectionate moniker “the Notorious RBG” for her blistering dissents during the court’s conservative years.

Miller has long idolised her, and after Prima Facie she wrote a one-woman play about the judge and her impact on American politics and society, RBG: Of Many, One.

“She said: ‘I want to be the Thurgood Marshall [civil rights lawyer and Supreme Court’s first black justice] of gender’, and I remember thinking, ‘wow, that’s what I want to be’. So she was a bit of an icon to me,” Miller says.

The play pays homage to the great woman but also acknowledges her failings, including her controversial decision to decline president Barack Obama’s request that she retire while he was in office, so he could appoint her successor. She instead died during the Trump administration and was replaced by ultraconservative Amy Coney Barrett, who voted with the majority to overturn the legality of abortion in the United States.

“I think that [Ginsburg], like all of us, never ever dreamt that Trump would get in,” says Miller. “I think she dreamt of the day that her incredible dissents would be read by a woman who is the president and then taken to Congress. She wrote really long, really clarifying road maps.”

Like Prima Facie, RBG: Of Many, One is also headed to Broadway, with Miller rewriting the show for an American audience who are more familiar with the famous justice. She’s working with Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater in New York and director of the premiere of Angels in America. “He said: ‘Americans know the background, they want to know about that Obama argument and the consequences of her decision.’ So it’s a bit more of a dig in.” The new version will keep its heart, including Ginsburg’s relationship with her beloved, supportive husband, Martin.

“In the play, it’s an invitation to men to watch Marty,” says Miller. “And to see the difference between her and other really smart women is that she married a guy who didn’t just give lip service to feminism. He did half of the domestic work and maintained his legal career. Not only that, he also cooked all the meals, and something else that people don’t know about she was very shy, and he made sure her name was lobbied to be put on all those lists.”

She says a lawyer friend of hers recently saw RBG: Of Many, One.

“He said: ‘In Prima Facie, we all loved that all the men walked out sort of hanging their heads.’ And he said: ‘But you take your partner to RBG and the women walk out laughing and crying and holding each other’s arms. And the men all walk out, look at each other and go, I think I’m a Marty!’ And I thought, oh my God, that just sums up men.”

RBG: Of Many, One is playing at Arts Centre Melbourne until May 12.

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