Warning: This article includes a detailed account of a sexual assault.
Google two of Australia’s most prestigious universities today and the results will give you just one message: For too many Australian women, university is not a safe place.
Over the past 24 hours, we have seen male students from Philip Baxter college at the University of New South Wales chanting a pro-rape song that includes the lyrics: “I wish that all the ladies were little red foxes and if I were a hunter I’d shoot up in their boxes.”
We’ve read male students from Melbourne University writing comments on images of female students like “Shoot me with tranquilizer right now before I go out to hunt!”.
You might be able to dismiss these incidents as “boys being boys” or some kind of youthful exuberance.
But there is something you can’t dismiss: The voice of woman who knows where this all ends.
Two years ago, we ran an letter from a student who was raped and then abandoned by her university. A woman whose friends had similar tales of sexual assault, coercion and shame.
We share her post again today. A day on which a rape survivor’s voice has never been so relevant.
To my university,
I’m writing this because you need to know how many women you’ve failed. Women who expected to attend university, go to classes and live at residential colleges on your campus without being raped. Women who tried to report it when they were raped but couldn’t find anyone who would listen. Women who are forced to see their attackers every day because on your campus, there are no consequences for raping a woman.
Top Comments
.Meathead footballers would sing this on the bus on the way into town after the uni bar closed and of course after games. Nobody complained as it was seen as almost a tradition and indeed some female students laughed along. I reckon if people went undercover at uni, they would have their eyes opened as there's a lot of tawdry stuff that happens
Did the police give you a case number when you reported it?
Attitudes like yours are one of the many reasons people don't report.
Do you actually know that reporting is almost as traumatising? You've just had some one violate your body and now you have to have strangers taking pictures of your naked body and genitals. Taking samples. Handing over your goddamn undies. It is AWFUL and we know it. So many people are not up for that after being raped. I wasn't. I sat in a scalding hot shower, crying until the hot water ran out.
Well, if it's not reported, it's harder for police or universities to act.
If it's not reported the rapist is free to rape again and again. I think that's AWFUL too.
I totally get what you are saying about having to go through the reporting process. Not just the immediate situation, but having to go to court and go through it again and be cross examined by an expert trying to do one thing, discredit your story. Even if you win, you don't get your life back, you only get to see the rapist go to jail and even then, you know the day he will be let out again.
So yeah, it is hard, very hard and I wish there was some better way. Personally I'm happy for all rapists to be hung by their testicles until they die of exposure, I think most men feel the same or similar on the topic of rapists.
But if someone chooses not to report it, I don't find the university to be fully at fault. Short of putting CCTV in every room and shower, what do you expect them to do?