“I ... pretended to be dead really, and I wished I was."

Warning: The following article contains information about sexual assault and could be triggering for some readers.  

During her time in the Australian Defence Force Academy, one woman, known now as ‘Susan,’ was called a “divisional toy” during her time as a cadet.

Being a “divisional toy” meant Susan “belonged” to her division, and they could do whatever they wanted to her.

Including rape.

One night, ‘Susan’ claims, she was assaulted by a third year cadet in her own bedroom, when he came into her room uninvited and started touching her body.

“I … pretended to be dead really, and I wished I was,” she said in an interview with ABC’s Four Corner’s program last night.

The story of ‘Susan’ is just one of a number of shocking incidences of rape and sexual assault that allegedly occurred in the Australian Defence Force in the 1990s – but were never properly investigated by authorities.

The four women interviewed during the program are known as part of the ‘ADFA 24’, a group of 24 cadets who wereallegedly sexually assaulted or otherwise abused during their training in the ’90s. The women say that these cases were never properly looked into and, shockingly, that many of the alleged perpetrators are now senior members of the force.

In 2012, the defence force released the DLA Piper Report, which was a review into “allegations into sexual and other forms of abuse in defence”. The report found it was “possible that male cadets who raped female cadets at ADFA in the late 1990s … may now be in middle to senior management positions in the ADF” and had since led to an internal investigation.

The fact that these alleged perpetrators are still serving within the Defence Force, means that the women they attacked are still subjected to their presence in the workplace.

One survivor of assault, referred to as ‘Jane’, spoke to Four Corners, and says that when she was a second-year cadet she was raped by a third-year cadet.

“I was scared,” she said. “So I reported it the next day.” Her case went all the way to a committal hearing, but was dropped by the DPP.

She is still a serving officer, and was deeply affected when the man who raped her arrived at her base this year. Jane said that his presence caused “it all just came flooding back, like it had happened the day before yesterday.”

Troublingly, some of the survivors of abuse did not know that the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce even existed before they were approached by Four Corners.

One of the ADFA 24 told the ABC, “When [DART] was mentioned to me for the very first time, I was in complete and utter shock… How can they have this whole taskforce, have this whole system set up for people who had been through what I’d been through, and we weren’t made aware of it?”

This woman’s story, Kellie Gunnis, is particularly brutal. She says she was sexually harassed and bullied during her first year at ADFA in 1996. This lead to an attempt to take her own life. She was then moved to a different barracks to be closer to her family, where an officer who was supposed to be keeping an eye on her recovery sexually assaulted her.

“He was my superior. After it happened I felt wrong. Nothing felt right,” she told Four Corners.

She reported the incident to the police, but was “talked out of [pursuing it further]”. ADFA then terminated her contract. The man who allegedly assaulted her, is now in a senior rank in the Defence Force.

The chairman of the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce, Len Roberts-Smith, says that they “made a deliberate decision very early on that we would not chase down [victims] who did not come to the taskforce voluntarily.”

He also asked for any other people who had experienced sexual assault, and not yet made a complaint, to come forward. Roberts-Smith was joined in his call by Chief of Defence, David Hurley, who asked that anyone with further information about the ADFA 24 cases should come directly to him.

The taskforce has already looked over more than 2,400 complaints of abuse, and referred 63 matters to the police. And that is just from the cases that have come forward.

Len Roberts-Smith suspects that the taskforce will identify hundreds of perpetrators throughout the course of their investigation.

Hundreds of perpetrators, yes. But also hundreds of women who claim they have never had the compassion nor compensation they deserve.

Let’s hope this changes that.

Some are calling for a Royal Commission into the sexual abuse in the Defence Force – do you agree?