Page 2939 - Week 10 - Thursday, 7 October 2021
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from victims right here in Canberra. Several Canberra women have told me that in recollecting and reassessing experiences from their past that they had previously dismissed as bad sex because of coercion or the effects of alcohol, they realised that they were in fact assault. Others have told me about being “stealthed” and feeling “ick”, knowing something was not right but they could not quite put their finger on it. This is the heartbreaking reality for victims of stealthing when the law is not as clear as it should be.
HerCanberra’s Emma Macdonald published a story last month in which an ANU law student who had been the victim of stealthing spoke about the impact of her experience: “You feel your free will has been taken away.” She went on to say it had “absolutely shaken her trust in men and undermined her sense of sexual autonomy”. Another ANU student spoke about the barriers to victims coming forward. She said that victims do not often know where they stand or whether there is even a term for what happened to them. She said she believed that by making our laws clearer it would “set a higher standard of behaviour and shed light on the seriousness of stealthing as a crime”.
It is pertinent that our laws reflect community expectation and put beyond doubt that stealthing is a crime. The Attorney-General has stated that the advice he has received is that stealthing may already be captured in our current law. The ACT does not have case law precedent that has tested the negation of consent provisions, which stealthing may perhaps be captured under. In fact, the only case that I am aware of in Australia is of a man in Melbourne who was charged with rape in 2018 after allegedly removing a condom during sex. However, the trial has been delayed numerous times due to the pandemic.
Only a few months ago in New Zealand a man was convicted of rape after he removed a condom during sex without the woman’s consent, and this conviction sets a new precedent of recognising stealthing in criminal law in New Zealand.
However, instead of waiting until a victim comes forward and the case is taken through the courts to determine without doubt that stealthing is a crime, I was drawn as a legislator to make sure that our laws put this beyond doubt, and my bill is designed to do exactly that.
In drafting my bill I spoke to a wide and diverse range of stakeholders and peak bodies, and I thank each and every one of them for their feedback and for working constructively with my team and me over the last six months to bring this bill to its final stages. A huge thankyou to the YWCA; the ACT Bar Association; the ACT Law Society; the Domestic Violence Crisis Service; the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre; the Victims of Crime Commissioner, Heidi Yates; the Women’s Legal Centre; the Women’s Centre for Health Matters; and Legal Aid for their feedback.
I also acknowledge and thank the members of the Law Reform Working Group of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Steering Committee; DVCS again; representatives from JACS and the Coordinator-General for Family Safety; Meridian; ACT Policing; the DPP; Advocacy for Inclusion; Victims of Crime Commissioner
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