Sixteen years ago a First Nations woman, Ms King, was sharing lunch at Canberra’s Waldorf Café, not far from the ACT Government’s Treasury offices. At the table was the former Commissioner for ACT Revenue (aka Pat), his nephew and another friend. All were First Nations. As they sat quietly, an ACT public servant approached the table and abused the café’s patrons. He physically and indecently assaulted the blak woman in the group, breaking her glasses, blackening her eye and tearing her clothing. Pat was also assaulted. The events were witnessed by everyone in the vicinity and statements were provided by three independent witnesses, one first Nations and two non-Indigenous.
Ms King attempted to make a complaint to the ACT Police, a command within the Australian Federal Police, at the Civic Police Station. The officers on duty refused to take the complaint. The issue was raised separately with the Chief Minister Jon Stanhope and the Chief Executive of ACT Treasury Mike Harris. Each advised that they would refer the matter to the Government Solicitor for appropriate action. Nothing happened. There was no media, no investigation, no inquiry and no justice. But that’s ok, because she’s blak.
In January 2021 blak woman Julieanne Frances Williams wrote to the ACT Human Rights Commission regarding a strip-searched forcibly conducted on her in the Alexander Maconachie Centre (AMC), aka Canberra Jail, in front of five male inmates, two male officers, four female officers and two male nurses. That’s 13 people, of whom 9 were male, witnessing or participating in the strip search of a heavily menstruating blak female woman supposedly in the protective custody of the ACT Government. The court refused to air the CCTV of the invasion of privacy and abuse of human rights of this woman. She was refused bail after an unnamed senior ACT barrister advocated on behalf of the ACT Government to keep the woman in the jail, the place of her sexual abuse. The ACT Supreme Court Justice also embargoed the release of the his decision to a maximum of four people, meaning that no-one outside the bail hearing is able to review the reasoning or draw comparison against similar past or future decisions. But all of that is ok, because she’s blak.
In 2010 Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilen found themselves subjected to unprotected sex with the prominent Julian Assange. Both had asked him to use a condom and both had been unable to stop him from forcing unprotected sex on them. Whilst the women continued to socialize with Assange, both wanted him to undergo a pathology test for sexually transmitted diseases. Assange refused. So they went to the local Swedish police to see if he could be compelled to undergo testing, resulting in accusations of sexual molestation and “unpeace” as well as rape. Five years passed, the molestation and unpeace accusations reached their statue of limitations, but the rape remained unresolved. Upon arriving in the UK, Assange soon holed himself up in the Ecuadorian Embassy to avoid any interactions with Swedish police. Extreme efforts to go to avoid a test for HIV indeed. But that’s ok, because he published government files demonstrating human rights abuses, so the accusations of his Swedish victims don’t matter in comparison. We say to Brittany #Ibelieveyou . Why don’t the Australian public believe Anna and Sofia?
Sexual assault is never acceptable against anyone of any gender. We shouldn’t need to even make that statement, but the disparity of treatment between these women by the Australian public versus Brittany Higgins, Kate Thornton, Grace Tame and Jill Meagher is brutally clear. Each of these women was sexually assaulted, one was killed. Similar issues are rising in the UK where Sarah Everard was murdered, allegedly by a serving police officer. Each woman has become a focus of feminist rage for the abuse of human rights. That’s as it should be.
But why don’t First Nations or Swedish women engender a similar degree of empathy? Why are the abusers of these women allowed to skulk in the shadows, avoiding the same scrutiny that Australia’s non-Indigenous women must fight to overcome? Are we racist when it comes to the sexual assault of First Nations women? Of Swedish women?
The hypocrisy of those calling for the alleged or actual assailants of the Australian women who have found a voice versus those non-Australian/First Nations women who have not is striking. For all the feminist talk of solidarity from the Destroy the Joint movement to now, Australians are demonstrating parochial hypocrisy. There is no equality, no justice and no trust unless every single woman and girl who finds herself the subject of unwanted and unprotected advances is afforded the same level of outrage, public support and legal recourse regardless of colour, nationality or personal circumstances. Sure, #March4Justice on March 15, but don’t be selective. March for every woman regardless of her circumstances. These issues are bigger than white Australian women. They are every woman, every nation.
March 4 the murdered Sarah Everard, allegedly by a UK Metropolitan Police Officer.
March for Jill Meagher, raped and murdered by a convicted criminal.
March for Julieanne Frances Williams, violated in the ACT prison system, her horror hushed up by the ACT Supreme Court in 2021.
March for the two female ACT Government employees who lodged workplace grievances against a male colleague, but whose accounts were suppressed in the 2017 Mullins court case, also by the ACT Supreme Court.
March for Ms King, indecently assaulted by an ACT public servant, aided and protected by the ACT Police and ACT Government. #WhiteSupremacists one and all.
March for Grace Tame, that courageous woman reclaiming her safety and individuality whilst she watches her assailant return to an academic role.
March for the young inspiring girls, the exuberant young professionals, the disabled women shunned by Destroy the Joint, the foreigners caught in a political minefield, the hardworking First Nations women, the blak women in jail who don’t have the option of consenting.
March for the twelve-year-old girl who only avoided assault because her brother walked in just in time at the other end of the park wearing his Army Reserve dress uniform.
March for the eight-year-old girl molested in her a neighbour’s backyard whilst the assailant’s wife looked on through the kitchen window.
Only when we march for every woman and girl will there truly be solidarity. Only then will we change the world. Only then will blak and black women start to trust everyone else and perhaps hope that they too can find justice.
