The social need for a 'perfect victim’ in sexual violence cases needs to stop

There is no such thing as a perfect victim. Just ask sexual violence survivors who have worked consciously and unconsciously to achieve that status, myself included. Whether it be letting friends know where they are, changing the way they dress, being conscious of drink spiking, or drinking enough that is socially encouraged, but not too much that ‘you’re asking for it’.

What is happening now in Australia with the trial of Bruce Lehrmann, the person who allegedly raped Brittany Higgins in the office of the Defence Minister of Australia, is exactly the reason many survivors choose not to report. This is not Brittany Higgins trial. She is not on trial for rape, instead her character is. Because once you’ve suffered the trauma, the degradation of rape, then your character needs to be on trial; your sexual history introduced, because heaven forbid, a man’s reputation is on the line.

I was 23 sitting in an evidence class at university, learning how to ask questions to introduce sexual history evidence in a rape trial. Months after my own rape. I broke. I left the lecture in tears, and when I felt okay, I decided to contact the lecturer and asked whether a trigger warning or acknowledgement could be in place for students that may be impacted by some of these subjects.

‘We can’t have a trigger warning for everything here. Perhaps this career isn’t for you…’

Now it turns out it wasn’t, not because of my lecturer’s opinion, that just fuelled my activism more. But mostly because the law felt too reactive. It wasn’t centred on justice for victim-survivors, but of procedural fairness. Which is why I chose to focus on prevention. Now I have great respect for colleagues who practice law, or who work in legal policy, but I hope colleagues can agree that our justice system is fundamentally flawed, if not broken.

Lawyers often talk about witness credibility, well in sexual violence cases, that credibility often falls on whether they’re a ‘good victim’.

As a survivor, but as a gendered violence prevention practitioner in this space, it’s saddening me that one of the most asked questions when reviewing a workplace policy, improving support processes, or introducing chat-bots or reporting mechanisms is ‘what about malicious and vexatious reports?’ Keeping the perception alive that most survivors aren’t telling the truth, their truth, ignoring the fact that in Australia, 1 in 5 women has experience sexual violence since the age of 15, that 1 in 2 women has experienced some form of sexual harassment.  Often for sexual violence including assault and rape, only 20-25% of survivors report having experienced this. The number of those who have experienced such violence and abuse far outweighs the 1-4% of malicious reports for this behaviour.

But as I highlighted in ‘what about malicious reports?’, when the first question you ask is about what is in place to prevent malicious reporting, you are focusing on a minor risk of abuse of power, compared to structural abuses of power that enable acts of harassment and violence to be perpetrated.

So, don’t want to contribute to this? There is something each of us can do to help survivors and it’s not complicated.

1.    Give up on the perfect victim narrative. Just as perpetrators can be acknowledged as human, survivors are too. This fuels victim blaming and minimises experiences of sexual violence. It shifts focus away from the perpetration, and places undue onus of preventing to victims.

2.    Ask yourself if you understand consent. Truly. Do you understand how consent operates on a daily basis? Then consider how the notion of it doesn’t change for consent in sexual or intimate contexts.

3.    Lastly, when you hear someone, victim blaming, point it out. Interrupt the conversation and shift the focus to the perpetration.

If these things were done consistently, I believe we could see a shift in social accountability and a greater focus on the behaviour that needs to change. These small actions showcase our attitudes, and can help influence those around us, whether it’s our families, friends, children, colleagues. We can begin to see sexual violence as a socially unacceptable behaviour, that has no place in our society. Not as we currently do, where sexual violence is something that happens to people who don’t meet the perfect victim standard.