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Effective access to services: What does it mean for sexual assault?

Elizabeth Broderick
Sex Discrimination Commissioner
Australian Human Rights Commission

Canberra Rape Crisis Centre Gala Fundraising Lunch
10 November 2011

Acknowledgments

Thank you, Suzanne, for that generous introduction and warm welcome.

Let me also acknowledge that we are meeting on the traditional land of Ngunnawal people. I pay my respects to their elders past and present, and all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women who have worked so committedly to eliminating sexual assault.

Let me also acknowledge the members of parliament and their representatives, the CEOs of Canberra Institute of Technology and Lifeline, as well as all the staff and volunteers at the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre.

In my time travelling the length and breadth of Australia as Sex Discrimination Commissioner, I have visited many domestic violence and sexual assault services. I am in awe of the people I meet and constantly inspired by the services I have seen—services just like Canberra Rape Crisis Centre—that work tirelessly to support individual victims and survivors and also to prevent violence and sexual assault before it occurs.

Yet, it strikes me that we do not often stop to acknowledge the essential work performed by these services, or to consider what it might be like for victims and survivors of sexual assault if they could no longer access those services.

That is why I am so pleased to be able to join you for this year’s Canberra Rape Crisis Centre Gala Fundraising Lunch.

This is an occasion to acknowledge and celebrate the important achievements of the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre – and it should be said at the outset that there are many to acknowledge and celebrate, and no doubt there will be many more in the future.

This lunch provides us an opportunity for reflection, something that is often hard to come by with the time and resource constraints many of us face. It is an occasion to consider how we personally and through our organisations can better support the important work of assisting victims and survivors of sexual assault.

Introduction

I want to talk to you today about the concept of effective access to services.

What do we mean when we talk about “effective access to services” in the context of sexual assault? What measures are needed to ensure that victims and survivors can access sexual assault services effectively?

And, relevantly, considering that today’s Gala is a fundraising lunch, what role does adequate funding—or the lack thereof—play in the effective provision of sexual assault services?

The answers to these questions may seem obvious at first glance. But I would like to suggest that how we answer these questions will influence the effectiveness of our responses to sexual assault over the coming decades.

Effective access to sexual assault services

So, what do we mean when we talk about effective access to services for victims and survivors of sexual assault?

When I reflected on this question in preparing for today’s Gala event, I was reminded of a story I heard when visiting a sexual assault centre in Victoria just over a year ago.

It is the story of a 10 year old girl, who I will call Emma.

On the evening before I arrived, Emma had rung the crisis centre while her mother was being sexually assaulted. Because of her call, Emma, her mother and siblings were transported to the safety of the crisis centre in the early hours of the morning. By 10.30 that same morning, all the locks on Emma’s family home had been changed, counselling had been arranged for Emma, her mother and her siblings, an apprehended violence order was underway, and a plan of action had been implemented to address the assault and ensure the ongoing safety of Emma and her family.

As I reflected on Emma’s story, trying to imagine what that experience must have been like for her, especially given her very young age, I wondered what we could learn from Emma about effective access to sexual assault services.

What was it about Emma’s experiences that meant she could access services on behalf of her family and herself so quickly and effectively? Was it that, even at just ten years of age, Emma knew about the crisis centre, the services it offered and how to contact it? Was it that the response relied on the links between different services?

Drawing from the field of human rights—which recongises sexual assault as a human rights violation and has developed a human rights-based approach to service delivery—I’d like to suggest that at least four elements must exist in order for there to be effective access to sexual assault services. Sexual assault services must be (1) available, (2) accessible, (3) acceptable, and (4) of good quality.[1]

Let me explain.

Sexual assault services must be available.

This means that there must be enough sexual assault services throughout all areas of the country to meet the needs of victims and survivors.

In areas where there are no or few sexual assault services or we see sexual assault services turn victims and survivors away, due to a lack of resources or capacity – sexual assault services are not available.

Support services need to be available not only during the times of crisis, but also in the days, weeks, months and years that follow an assault. And there needs to be effective links with other services, including legal and housing services.

A service is not available in the true sense of the word if it is not adequately resourced to provide the ongoing and holistic support that victims and survivors of sexual assault need.

Sexual assault services must be accessible in that they:

When victims of sexual assault in rural areas are unable to access counselling services or when they have to travel long distances to obtain forensic testing after being assaulted or, for example, when women with a disability are unable to access premises, sexual assault services are not accessible.

Sexual assault services must be acceptable.

This means that services must be respectful of medical ethics and their clients’ culture, and also be sensitive to gender and life-cycle requirements.

Sexual assault can affect anyone. It crosses all ages, races and cultures, socioeconomic and geographic barriers. It is important that these differences are taken into account in the provision of services to sexual assault victims and survivors.

The Nguru Program, a dedicated service run by Canberra Rape Crisis Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, is an example of an initiative that seeks to provide culturally appropriate counselling for victims and survivors of sexual assault. It also seeks to improve awareness of sexual violence within those communities.

The use of a feminist lens in the Rape Crisis Centre’s service delivery is a further example of an attempt to provide acceptable services, one that should also be commended. It acknowledges the gendered nature of sexual assault in this country – where, as I am sure you already know, nearly one in five women over the age of 15 has experienced sexual assault.[2] But, through its Service Assisting Male Survivors of Sexual Assault, the Crisis Centre still recognises that men can be victims and survivors and may, therefore, need support and assistance.

Finally, sexual assault services must be quality services. Among other things, this means that staff at sexual assault services must be appropriately trained and developed and the facilities used to house sexual assault services must be appropriate.

Difficulties in recruiting and retaining appropriately skilled workers – due, at least in part, to inadequate funding – are having a real impact on the capacity of sexual assault services to offer a quality service in Australia. In Time for Action, The National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children reiterated community and sectoral concerns that “under-resourcing is already leading to limited service delivery, so that a consistently professional, high quality, and coherent response to sexual assault and domestic and family violence is, at best, uneven across the nation”.[3]

Primary prevention: attitudinal and behavioural change

When we talk about effective responses to sexual assault, we are not just referring to the ability of people like Emma and her family to benefit from individual services that are available, accessible, acceptable, and of good quality.

As emphasised in the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and Their Children, effective access also means that sexual assault services are delivered in conjunction with efforts aimed at primary prevention.

Primary prevention is not just about educating the community about the nature, prevalence and harms of sexual assault, though that is certainly part of it. It is also about creating an environment to facilitate attitudinal and behaviour change.

Primary prevention requires us to tackle the gender stereotypes and prejudicial and sexist attitudes that

I am reminded, here, of a recent international case, Karen Tayag Vertido v. The Philippines.[4]

In many respects, this case is unremarkable. In fact, I am sure that, for many of you here today, the facts of the case will sound eerily familiar and perhaps invoke memories of the experiences of a client or a friend, or maybe even your own experiences.

Although the facts of the Vertido case are not extraordinary, the case is noteworthy for two important reasons.

The first is the way sexual stereotypes influenced the reasoning of the trial judge and enabled the accused to be acquitted in the first instance.

The second is the way the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women—the UN treaty body responsible for monitoring states’ compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women—named the sexual stereotypes relied on by the trial judge and discredited her reasoning and findings.

Very briefly, the facts are that Karen Vertido was allegedly raped by her superior following a work function. Vertido alleged that, rather than giving her a lift home as promised, the accused took her to a nearby motel where he dragged her to a motel room.

Unable to escape, Vertido locked herself in the bathroom. She emerged only after she thought the accused had left. However, unbeknown to her, the accused was still there. He reportedly forcibly pinned Vertido to the bed, where his weight caused her to lose consciousness. Vertido alleged that the accused was already raping her when she “came to.” The accused ignored Vertido’s pleas to stop and she was initially unsuccessful in her attempts to push him off her.

When Vertido eventually succeeded in freeing herself, she reported the rape to police and underwent medical and legal exams.

When the matter finally came to trial more than eight years later, the accused was acquitted of raping Karen Vertido. The trial judge cited insufficient evidence to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the accused was guilty of rape.

The trial judge’s decision to acquit was based, among other things, on her unfavourable assessment of Vertido’s testimony. The trial judge formed this assessment based on Vertido’s failure to behave as Her Honour expected an ideal rape victim to behave. She had not, for example, taken advantage of perceived opportunities to escape from the accused.

Left with no other means of recourse at the domestic level, Karen Vertido took her matter to the UN using the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The CEDAW Committee found that the Philippines had violated its human rights obligations under CEDAW by acquitting the accused on the basis of gender stereotypes, rather than law or fact, and failing to provide Vertido an effective remedy for being raped.

The Committee explained that

the assessment of the credibility of the author’s version of events, was influenced by a number of stereotypes, the author in this situation not having followed what was expected from a rational and “ideal victim” or what the judge considered to be the rational and ideal response of a woman in a rape situation.[5]

The Committee went on to say that the trial judge’s decision contained “several references to stereotypes about male and female sexuality being more supportive for the credibility of the alleged perpetrator than for the credibility of the victim.”[6]

Singling out the trial judges reliance on the prescriptive stereotype that women should physically resist rape and other forms of sexual assault at every opportunity, the Committee reasoned that to expect the author to have physically resisted the accused perpetuates that stereotypical belief.

The CEDAW Committee cautioned that judges

must take caution not to create inflexible standards of what women or girls should be or what they should have done when confronted with a situation of rape based merely on preconceived notions of what defines a rape victim or a victim of gender-based violence, in general.[7]

As part of its recommendations, the Committee called on the Philippines to ensure “that all legal procedures in cases involving crimes of rape and other sexual offenses are impartial and fair, and not affected by prejudices or stereotypical gender notions.”[8]

As we here know too well, victims and survivors of sexual assault are frequently forced to deal with stereotypical beliefs and prejudicial and sexist assumptions, and not just those held by judges.

Australian society is saturated with gender stereotypes and discriminatory assumptions that affect everything from whether or not a person is sexually assaulted to whether or not and how the sexual assault is reported and prosecuted to whether the accused is convicted or acquitted of sexual assault.

The National Survey on Community Attitudes to Violence against Women 2009 shows we have made some important progress on this front but we still have a long way to go.[9]

In regards to sexual assault, just over one in 10 people still think that “women often say no when they mean yes”.[10] One in three people think that rape occurs because of men “not being able to control their need for sex”.[11] And we still have 5% of Australians believing that women cannot be raped by someone with whom they have been sexually intimate.[12]

The survey also showed that rates of false allegations of sexual assault remain low and are comparable with rates found for other person-related offences like mugging. Yet one in four Australians disagree with the statement that “women rarely make false claims of being raped”.[13]

It is not just stereotypes and discriminatory attitudes related to rape and sexual assault that we need to be concerned with, but general stereotypes and assumptions about what it means to be a man or woman in Australian society, and socially and culturally acceptable forms of sexual expression and behaviour.

It seems to me that (male) sexual aggression is celebrated with frightening regularity in Australian society.

Think of the “pro-rape” Facebook page set up a couple of years ago by a group of past and present University of Sydney students.[14]

Think, also, of the example of “The Brocial Network” from earlier this year, which circulated images of scantily clad women without their knowledge through a private “men’s only” Facebook group.[15]

There’s also the example, which emerged only weeks ago, of a Facebook page entitled “[y]ou know shes [sic] playing hard to get when your [sic] chasing her down an alleyway”.[16]

These kinds of pages are proliferating at disturbing rates, with many more people visiting the sites and “liking them”, many of them teenagers and young adults. “The Brocial Network”, for example, attracted more than 8,000 members in just two weeks.[17]

I mention these examples not to single out Facebook. Facebook is the medium being used to express sexual aggression, though it certainly has a social corporate, moral and possibly legal responsibility to address such behaviour.

I mention these examples because they show so clearly why we need to combine efforts to ensure effective access to services with strategies aimed at primary prevention. I think they also show the need and urgency for work targeted at gender stereotypes and behavioural change.

After learning of what I can only describe as these disturbing examples, I was heartened to learn that Canberra Rape Crisis Centre has made primary prevention a focus of its work. Their vision statement notes that the Centre will work within a feminist framework to be an active, visible catalyst for social change, including by challenging societal values and inequitable structures that perpetuate violence against women, and others.

Its leadership role in this area is to be commended.

The role of fundraising

I want to touch briefly on the final question I posed at the very beginning of my speech – what role does adequate funding play in the effective provision of sexual assault services?

Adequate and ongoing funding is vital. I know from my own experiences visiting domestic violence and sexual assault services throughout Australia the real difference such funding can make in the lives of victims and survivors.

Without it, it will simply not be possible for victims and survivors to access sexual assault services that are equipped to effectively address their varied and complex short-, medium- and long-term needs.

Evidence is already emerging that victims and survivors who are not able to recover fully from sexual assault because they cannot access all the services they need, are presenting at sexual assault services re-traumatised and often with significant mental health, drug and alcohol problems.

The difficulties I mentioned earlier in recruiting and retaining appropriately skilled workers will not ease in the absence of a real commitment from government to adequately fund sexual assault services. This includes properly valuing the work of SACS workers and paying them appropriately.

Funding ad hoc programmes or providing funding in crisis mode only, is not the answer. In fact, it will only undermine the provision of effective sexual assault services.

Without adequate and ongoing funding, primary prevention strategies will also struggle.

There is no doubt in mind; it’s time to take action. The announcement from Minister Ellis last week of additional funding for Canberra Rape Crisis Centre is an important step in the right direction. The funding, which has been made available under the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, will support a sexual assault primary prevention program for students in ACT high schools. A great initiative.

However, the fight to address and reduce sexual assault is an ongoing one. Therefore, we need to ensure that there is adequate funding on an ongoing basis. In addition to adequate and ongoing funding, we also need to ensure that the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children is independently monitored and evaluated.

The lives and safety of men, women and children depend on us getting the implementation of the National Plan right.

Conclusion

I’d like to finish by taking a moment to acknowledge the incredible work and dedication of the staff and volunteers at Canberra Rape Crisis Centre, as well all the individuals who work or volunteer at other domestic violence and sexual assault services.

You fill me with admiration: your commitment, your dedication, your compassion, and the personal sacrifices you make. You work day in and day out doing such important work and deliver so much with so little.

You perform some of the most valuable and unrecognised work in this country. On behalf of the Australian Human Rights Commission and women all across Australia can I say thank you.

Thank you for the work you do every day, for the invaluable support you provide to people when they are at their most vulnerable, for continuing to care and through your efforts for creating a more equal and just Australia.

Thank you.

[1] Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 14: The Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health, UN Doc. E/CN.12/2000/4 (2000), para. 12.
[2] ABS, Personal Safety, Australia, 2005 (Reissue), Catalogue No. 4906.0 (2006).
[3] The National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, Time for Action: The National Council's Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, 2009-2021 (2009), p. 75.
[4] Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Karen Tayag Vertido v. The Philippines, Communication No. 18/2008, UN Doc CEDAW/C/46/D/18/2008 (2010). At: http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N10/545/58/PDF/N1054558.pdf?OpenElement (viewed 4 November 2011).
[5] Above, para. 8.5.
[6] Above, para. 8.6.
[7] Above, para. 8.4.
[8] Above, para. 8.9(b).
[9] See VicHealth, National Survey on Community Attitudes to Violence Against Women 2009 (2010). At: http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/~/media/ResourceCentre/PublicationsandResources/NCAS_CommunityAttitudes_report_2010.ashx (viewed 2 November 2011).
[10] See above, p. 8.
[11] See above.
[12] See above.
[13] See above.
[14] Ruth Pollard, “Elite college students proud of ‘pro-rape’ Facebook page,” The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 November 2009. At: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/elite-college-students-proud-of-prorape-facebook-page-20091108-i3js.html (viewed 2 November 2011).
[15] Kara Irving, “Facebook trade in female images”, The Sydney Morning Herald,18 May 2011. At: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-trade-in-female-images-20110517-1erfu.html (viewed 2 November 2011).
[16] Philip Sherwell, “Facebook refuses to shut rape page run by schoolboy” The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 October 2011. At: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-refuses-to-shut-rape-page-run-by-schoolboy-20111017-1lsde.html#ixzz1cWVZqVjM (viewed 2 November 2011).
[17] Kara Irving, “Facebook trade in female images”, The Sydney Morning Herald,18 May 2011. At: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-trade-in-female-images-20110517-1erfu.html (viewed 2 November 2011).