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Sexual assault 'woven through Australia's landscape'

News Online's Amy Simmons
CASA's Carolyn Worth says women have every right to go out and party and flirt with somebody in the clubs withour fear of rape.


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It's all a game, a story, a script - "a highly-gendered dance, which women and men are playing".

That's how the University of Western Sydney's Associate Professor Moira Carmody explains sexual assault in Australia, whether it is committed by an intoxicated high-profile football player or a sober everyday person.

"It's OK for men to pursue women because they're not 'real men' if they don't, but if women are too eager they may be condemned one way, and if they're not eager enough they may be condemned another way," Professor Carmody, who has been studying in the field of sexual violence for 26 years, said.

"Sexual assault is something that's endemic in our communities, it's ingrained in our culture."

Her comments come as National Rugby League club Manly considers banning alcohol at future functions, following allegations its star full-back Brett Stewart assaulted a 17-year-old on his way home after a night of drinking.

Former NSW State of Origin coach Phil Gould has even called for a blanket ban on alcohol in the sport.

But experts who have spent decades working to combat sexual abuse in Australia say these are band-aid solutions and the matter is far more complex.

Carolyn Worth from the Victorian Centres Against Sexual Assault (CASA) Forum, the country's largest network of its sort, admits alcohol is often a contributing factor, but says the core issue is gender-related.

"Alcohol isn't the real cause of the problem, yes it's a disinhibitor and people aren't thinking clearly if they're having too much to drink, but it's just a contributing factor," Ms Worth, a forum member who has managed South Eastern CASA for 17 years, said.

"The cause is largely how men look at women and how they regard women."

She says when men - the most common sexual assault perpetrators - feel like "stars" and receive "special social status", the problem is compounded.

"There's no question that teams try and breed power and dominance in the players," she said.

"They try to make them invincible and unbeatable, which means players don't tend to believe it when people aren't interested in them, or they think that it's not really true when people say 'no, I don't want to do that'.

"But why some of them think this way is a much wider societal problem."

Cultural shift

Professor Carmody agrees alcohol is a side issue, and says a "dramatic cultural shift" is needed to change the way women are perceived.

"The fundamental issue here is about gender, and the ways in which some men believe they have a right to have sexual access to women, whether women want it or not," she said.

"Most people understand it is a crime, but they also have a problem in their own heads where they don't think that what they're doing is sexual assault.

"People make a distinction between what they think sexual assault is and what their behaviour is - their assumptions are embedded in cultural practices in our communities."

Ms Worth says these assumptions formed a long time ago.

"Australia has a strange beginning," she said.

"If you think about the start of this country, they brought women here, basically because there were men here, and the women were brought in to provide sexual services and to breed children.

"Aboriginal women were always seen as sexually available, too.

"So sexual assault is woven through our landscape, today it's still here in part of the setting up of this country."

Education solution

Both Professor Carmody and Ms Worth say the key to addressing sexual abuse lies in multi-faceted education.

They say an underlying belief that sexual assault is committed by either complete strangers, intoxicated sports players or people in positions of power must be eradicated.

"There are a whole lot of footballers who don't drink at all, who come from Christian families with strong cultural roots and who would be absolutely horrified by things like this," Professor Carmody said.

"Most sexual abuse doesn't receive any publicity, and it's people we know who are committing it every day, in the vast majority of cases."

A 2005 Australian Bureau of Statistics personal safety survey estimated one in five women experience sexual violence at some stage in their lives after the age of 15, and only 19 per cent of sexual assault victims report the incident to police.

Ms Worth says while victims do recover it can be a lengthy process, depending on the individual.

"For most people they are really very distressed, they don't sleep well, they don't eat, they can get post-traumatic shock," she said.

"It's an invasion of a particularly intimate sort, people worry about whether they contributed in some way, they think 'what was I doing to make somebody think this was OK'.

"It takes a while to help them see it wasn't anything they were doing, that you have every right to go out and party and have a couple of drinks and flirt with somebody in the clubs, it's normal behaviour.

"What's not normal is for the guy to then think he can in fact rape you, because of that."

Economic costs

Not only do sexual assault victims suffer, but wider society also pays a price.

In 2004 Access Economics estimated the total cost of domestic violence to the Australian economy, including sexual assault, was about $8.1 billion.

Professor Carmody says other studies have estimated the figure to be as high as $15 billion.

"That is a huge economic cost to our community," she said.

"So it is the community's responsibility to say 'we will not accept this', it's not just an issue between two individuals, as the impact of these actions has far-reaching implications."

Both Professor Carmody and Ms Worth say preventative approaches are needed to reduce sexual assault in Australia, and knee-jerk reactions such as banning alcohol will not suffice.

Professor Carmody says the Brett Stewart allegations provide a "great opportunity".

"The current alleged situation allows us to say 'OK, what are we going to do about preventing violence against women and sexual assault, how are we going to fundamentally shift that, and shift the assumptions many men hold about what is acceptable behaviour'," she said.

"We've made some significant changes over the years, but we've still got a long way to go."

Professor Carmody says she is positive with education, men and women will slowly agree to alter the games, stories, scripts - the "highly-gendered dance" they currently play.

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