reporting to the police
Reporting a rape or sexual assault to the police
Remember, even if the Police are called you don’t have to make a formal report if you don’t want to. It’s your choice.However, procedures have been put in place to reduce the trauma as much as possible. If you don’t make a formal report,the Police will only take the case to court in exceptional circumstances. If you decide to make a formal report, do so asearly as possible to facilitate the investigation process.You may find it hard to decide whether or not to report the sexual assault. You may feel it is important to do your best tohave the rapist caught, tried and convicted and therefore stopped from doing it again to you or other people. Talking it overwith a counsellor at a CASA or a person you trust, may help you to make up your mind. The most important thing is thatyou decide what’s best for you.If you do report the rape to the Police, make sure you are given a copy of your statement. You will need it if the case comesto Court. It may be a good idea for the first person you saw after the sexual assault to also make a statement.
Making a formal report
If you make a formal report you will be asked for a detailed statement about what happened. The Police will use theinformation in your statement to investigate the rape. If they catch and charge someone with rape, your statement will beneeded to take the case to court. Remember that the Police may still take the case to court if you don’t wish to make astatement. However, this will only be done where there is sufficient evidence to proceed without your statement. In thiscase you will be called as a witness.A formal report of rape or sexual assault is different from the short statement you would have made to the Police, if theywere called at the time of the sexual assault. The formal statement is more detailed. You have a right to have either afemale or a male Police Officer take your statement. Once you have notified the Police, they will start investigating the rape.If they catch someone who isn’t known to you, you may be requested to identify the person before charges can be made.This will be done using photographs or a line up of people at the Police station.
Police procedures
The Government has adopted a Police Code of Practice for dealing with sexual assault victims/survivors. This requires thePolice to:• Take a victim/survivor to a CASA within 2 hours of reporting the sexual assault, if the victim/survivor wishes.• Allow a victim/survivor to rest and receive medical assistance and/or support before giving their statement.• Provide victim/survivors with written information regarding their rights and the support services available.• Keep a victim/survivor informed of the progress of the Police investigations.• Provide written reasons, on request, to a victim/survivor for any decision not to proceed with legal action againstthe accused.Victim/survivors also have the right to request that any Police decision be reviewed by the Office of Public Prosecutions andthat the written reason for the Director of Public Prosecution’s (DPP) decision be provided on request. The DPP is alsorequired to provide victim/survivor with written information about the committal and trial process and arrange pre and postcourt meetings with the barrister prosecuting the case.
The Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Unit (SOCA)
SOCA Units are located in each Police region. SOCA unit members are trained in dealing with victims of sexual assault.Members of the Unit take statements, arrange medical examinations and accompany the victim to court. They are available24 hours a day, every day of the year, throughout Victoria.This material has been prepared by South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault based upon the “Information for Womenabout Rape”, designed by Healthsharing Women’s Health Resource Service 1994.Adapted by Maxwell Clarke, Counsellor/Advocate. South Eastern CASA, and Loddon Campaspe CASA, August 2001
SA proposes new rape laws- Sydney Morning Herald artical
October 25, 2007 - 4:32PM
Society must change how it defines rape and sexual assault, South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson says.
Announcing proposed changes to the state’s rape laws, Mr Atkinson said less than 20 per cent of rape and assault cases that reached the courts resulted in a conviction.
“So there may be something wrong with how we define what is a rape or a sexual assault,” he said.
“That’s unacceptable so we are changing it.”
The government’s proposed reforms would require a person’s agreement to sexual activity to be free and voluntary.
In a key change, a rape also would be committed in a situation where a person withdrew their consent after initially agreeing to sexual intercourse and the other party continued regardless.
Until now there has been a degree of ambiguity in how the courts viewed such circumstances.
The new laws also would regard sexual activity as non-consensual if obtained by force or threats, while the victim was asleep or unconscious, while the victim was too intoxicated to agree and if the victim was unable to understand the nature of the sexual activity.
They also would take in situations where the victim was mistaken about the identity of the person they were having sex with or if they were being unlawfully detained.
Judges would be required to explain to juries that consent to sexual activity should not be assumed just because the victim did not say anything, did not protest or resist or had previous consensual sexual encounters with the alleged offender.
In addition, the proposed changes would require courts to give priority to cases that involved sexual offences against young children.
SA Minister for the Status of Women Jennifer Rankine said the new laws would ensure the criminal justice system was more sensitive to the needs of victims of rape and sexual assault.
“I hope they’ll assist women who are victims of such callous crimes and will also offer further support and protection when giving evidence before a court, which can be a terrifying and harrowing experience,” she said.
debate
-
John said,
As a keen researcher on Aboriginal activities for some years now, I believe that the Howard Government’s intervention into the Northern Territory is entirely appropriate. For one to claim otherwise simply justifies the child abuse, sexism, and gross misconduct which occurs in these communities.
To blame the legal system or the police for the lack of successful sexual assault abuse convictions is senseless and mere folly. This site seems to advocate some form of mob/ socialist ruling party which will play judge, jury and executioner.
Furthermore, the example of Iraq is completely ridiculous. Firstly, the Coalition of the Willing is attempting to SAVE Iraqi women from the abuse of the past Iraqi fascist regimes, which by the way are under the laws of militant Islam.
The Howard Government, NSW Police and Australian Army are doing their best to stop sexual assault and abuse. It is sites like these which devalue the great work of our community leaders and put obstacles in the way of their noble efforts.
-
anita said,
well, firstly this site is advocating an autonomous, community based response to sexual assault. this is because responding to sexual assault needs to be based on the individual needs of survivors of sexual assault, needs to empower them as part of their healing process, needs to take into account their needs and desires, and what they want. in allowing survivors to determine the way that perpetrators are confronted, and in prioritising their support, responding to sexaul assault can be a way of giving them back some of the power that was taken away during assault.
it might be that survivors of sexual assault want to go to the police, want to use the legal system to deal with perpetrators. but this site acknowledges that the legal system’s way of responding is very often traumatising, invalidating, and in no way supportive or empowering, and also that it is ineffective in challenging the root causes of assault, encouraging behaviour and belief change, and in fact itself displays and perpetuates a lot of myths about sexual assault that are part of a rape culture. it is one thing to assist survivors to use the legal system if they so desire, and quite another to provide a very inadequate system as a person’s only choice. community response, mediation, autonomous restorative justice type approaches, non-government, etc are an alternative that some people might feel is a better option. this kind of response has nothing to do with the legal system. there is no judge, jury, and no execution. it is about belief, support, validation, and then, if the survivor so desires, a response that gives a perpetrator a chance to change, acknowledges that sexual assault is a behaviour that is fostered by the culture in which we live, separates the person from their behaviour, and gives them an opportunity to take responsibility for their actions and to change, rather than locking them in a cell and hoping when they get out something will be different.
secondly, i completely disagree with what you said about the northern territory intervention. the racist legislation that the howard government justifies on the basis of “saving children from sexual abuse” does not even mention the word ‘child’ once. it has nothing to do with support, nothing to do with sexual abuse, and is directed entirely at denying aboriginal communities autonomy.
it is a legislation that applies the same to 73 very unique communities, regardless of the circumstances or context of any community. some things that are included in the legislation are:
sending in “business managers” to communities. these are white, government paid bureacrats (again, where all aboriginal funding goes - to white people that are working to “save” or “help”, never to aboriginal people themselves) who live on communities, can determine who lives in a community, and are very similar to mission managers of the White Australia past. a story i heard recently involves one community that has been requesting housing for thirty years. in this time, one house has been built - the new business manager’s house, which was built when an old home was demolished to make room, and surrounded with barbed wire fence - to protect him from sexual abuse, perhaps? they dont even live there full time.
the permit system for Aboriginal land that was put in place with the NT Land rights act has been removed. permits meant that non-residents had to apply to land councils for permission to enter communities, and helped prevent entry of illegal grog runners, and so on. even the NT police say this is a bad idea, and doesnt even fit with the government’s rhetoric about preventing paedophiles from roaming the streets in aboriginal communities. government says it is to allow government officials to enter communtieis and build houses and the like. this is a lie - government officials have actually never been subject to the act. all the removal of the permit system has done is remove hard won aboriginal rights to land.
publicly funded computers will be monitored. we’ve discovered this includes computers people buy with their welfare money. everything a person looks at on their computer will be recorded and stored, supposedly to monitor pornography consumption. there are no provisions for what will happen with the recorded information.
the legislation provided for military health checks. thats right, not conducted by doctors or sexual health experts, but by military health officials. this began, but no evidence of child abuse was found, and it has been temporarily suspended because noone knows what should be done after health checks have been conducted.
CDEP program has been removed. this is a program which is generally used as a top up for the dole in communities where there are no jobs. it allows aboriginal people to effectively be paid for roles they determine for themselves - funds programs like aboriginal land ranger and conservation, aboriginal art and music initiatives, etc. 8000 people were on CDEP. removing this means that people will no longer be able to participate in these roles, and may have to move to cities like alice springs and darwin for work in order to survive. the goverment has said it will create 2000 new jobs. no mention is made of the 6000 people who wont be able to access those after having their CDEP removed.
welfare reforms mean that all aboriginal people living on communities, regardless of their familiy situations and etc, or even of whether they are parents, will have 50% of their Centrelink payments withheld, and turned into vouchers and coupons to be spent on government determined items at places that the government says they can use the coupons. this is justified with rhetoric about ‘neglected children’. but it applies to all centrelink payments - student payments, unemployment payments, old age nd disability pensions… it also ignores the fact that within centrelink there are already programs for people to quarantine part of their payment voluntarily, and 900 families are already doing this to assist with managing their funds. again, this compulsory racist program reminds us of food rations at the old missions. the only determinant is ‘aborignal’ in a ‘prescribed area’ - the only determinant is race. this legislation also wipes out already existing autonomous aboriginal programs such as free breakfast programs for school age children at schools, which aboriginal women ran by putting aside their own money, pooling it and using it to provide free breakfasts. now, these women ahve been kicked out of schools, and parents’ money is quarantined and they are forced to spend part of it on that food that was previously free. these reforms are costing $88 million to implement. imagine if aboriginal communities had access to this kind of money.
centrelink were training aboriginal people in communities to administer welfare programs before this legislation, providing jobs for people in communities, so money could be retained in the community. this legislation removes this, and instead provides for 300 white people from canberra to be paid to administer welfare.
this is the third time in history that the Racial Discrimination Act has been suspended. every time it has been in relation to Indigenous peoples. first, for the native title act, then to override wishes of traditional owners in Hindmarsh island, and now this.
this legislation effectively clears the way for mining, nuclear waste dumps; and attempts to make communities unsustainable so aboriginal people have to again move off their land into cities. it is yet another act of dispossession.
when you talk about our great community leaders, it seems you mean white people, not the great aboriginal community leaders who are resisting, refusing new mission managers, and defending community autonomy. you must be talking about the 750 white people that have now been given new, very highly paid ($100,000 +) jobs in these communtiies where aboriginal people themselves cant get jobs.
some new housing is being provided on the edge of alice springs. the old transportables from woomera detention centre.
this is apartheid. this is racism. this is paternalism, and this is government controlling the lives of indigenous people. initial white research teams went in with the military.
it has nothing to do with sexual abuse. people on town camps and in communities have not even really been told of the existence of this legislation. there has been no attempt to translate and communicate the requirements of the legislation to aboriginal people. young people have faced ridiculous fines which they cant afford to pay because they dont even know that they cant buy prescribed amounts of alcohol.
For a Community Response to Sexual Assault
Sexual assault happens in all of our communities, all over the world. In Australia, for example, one in three women and one in five men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. It is an issue that all communities need to deal with, and that some are dealing with. We need to recognise that most of the members of our communities are either survivors of sexual assault – meaning they are people who have been assaulted – supporters of survivors, perpetrators of assault, or often any combination of these things. Underlying power dynamics and patriarchy, assumptions and understandings of masculinity and femininity, sex and consent, all contribute to fostering a culture of sexual assault.
Sexual assault is usually perpetrated by men, against women predominantly, but also against other men, trans and intersex people. Most sexual assault is committed by someone the survivor of the assault knows – their relative, their friend, their partner. Myths and assumptions about sexual assault, together with the culture of assault in which we live, contribute to a lack of understanding around assault issues and a general inability or lack of knowledge around how to deal with this stuff.
The government has used sexual assault to justify its “emergency intervention”, or rather, racist invasion and denial of Indigenous autonomy, in the Northern Territory of Australia. Its use of the ‘Little Children Are Sacred’ report, a report documenting the prevalence of child sexual abuse in communities in the Northern Territory, to legitimise and excuse its military and police invasion, removal of land permit systems, alcohol bans, even more extensive surveillance of Indigenous communities, withholding of welfare to members of Indigenous communities and soon to be other Australia communities, and removal of the CDEP program, which sustains many communities, is disgusting. It shows just how little understanding of sexual assault issues, the underlying assumptions and understandings that perpetuate a society of sexual violence, or how to deal with, respond to, and eventually prevent, sexual violence, our government has.
Sending in the military and police to somehow “deal with” sexual violence assumes that sexual assault is something that is perpetrated by strangers in dark alleys, thus able to be stopped or dealt with by military and police patrols and ‘law and order’. Yet this is a myth. Intimidation and fear are not going to combat sexual assault. Occupation and denial of community autonomy are likely to merely contribute to despair, depression, fear, and substance abuse. Agents of the state are perpetrators of sexual assault as well. The military and police forces are known for sexual assault within their forces, and against others, particularly in Indigenous communities in Australia, and in other situations of military occupation such as in Iraq and the Solomon Islands. In fact, one of the members of the Board overseeing and orchestrating the Northern Territory intervention was also a facilitator of the occupation of the Solomon Islands. Some communities have themselves called for police involvement in dealing with sexual abuse, but not all. What is most important is that communities themselves direct the way they want to deal with sexual violence.
Alcohol and drugs may in some situations be related to sexual assault. But banning alcohol and drugs doesn’t do anything to deal with addiction and the reasons for substance abuse. It ignores the fact that many communities are already dry communities, and are already dealing with alcoholism themselves. In fact, the legislation has done things like ban kava in communities that use that substance to combat alcoholism because it doesn’t lead to the same aggressive behaviour.
There is no provision for support for children and adults who are survivors of sexual violence, which should be central. Rather, children will be subjected to frequent invasive medical checks that may re-traumatize survivors of assault. It contains no discussion of education, or ways of changing the understandings and assumptions in our society that contribute to a culture of sexual assault.
In fact, the legislation doesn’t really mention sexual assault or survivors of assault at all. For the government, sexual violence is merely something they can use to justify removal of land permit systems to gain control of Indigenous land, which has nothing to do with assault, and to undermine the autonomy and self-determination of Indigenous communities in an attempt to make them unsustainable. Despite the rhetoric around the ‘Little Children Are Sacred’ report, none of the report’s recommendations have been taken on by the government, and the legislation has been condemned by the authors.
The Northern Territory intervention is a racist intervention. It is ridiculous that our white government thinks that Indigenous communities are unable to respond to sexual assault themselves, with their own processes and understandings, especially when we look at the way sexual assault is dealt with across the rest of Australia, by relying on an alienating, adversary and difficult to access legal system.
Almost no assaults are reported to police, and most reported cases result in no conviction.
This is not because they are “false claims” but because the legal system forces someone who has been assaulted to try to “prove” their claim, doubting them, disbelieving, pressuring them to relive their assault and undergo invasive medical examinations that may remind the person of their assault. This treatment is almost like a second assault. The survivor must be probed by police and lawyers, who are usually uneducated around assault issues and re-traumatise the survivor. The survivor must go through the assault again, not when they are ready but when the legal system tells them too, in the framework the legal system provides.. Being doubted invalidates the survivor’s experience. Most assault happens in private – it makes it the survivor’s word against the perpetrator’s. Requiring sexual assault to be proven ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ makes it almost impossible to convict perpetrators of assault.
Being cross-examined in court, often in the same room as the perpetrator, by defense lawyers who are trying to devalue and de-legitimise what a survivor is saying, to break them down and destroy their credibility, in order to win their case at all costs, is traumatising for a person who has gone through an assault. Judges are usually upper class, mid-50s white males, who have very limited understandings of the experiences of survivors, and often lean towards the descriptions of events given by the perpetrator. Just recently a woman appearing in court to prosecute her assaulters was attacked by the defense lawyer who tried to suggest that the noises she made during her assault were “moans of pleasure”. When questioned afterwards, the lawyer excused his behaviour, suggesting that you have to do things like that to win the case. Lawyers will pull at all stops to destroy the other side, regardless of the impact this has on people’s lives.
In the rare case that a perpetrator is convicted, prison does nothing to confront and challenge the behaviour and underlying assumptions and understandings that foster a culture of sexual assault. There is no educational function of prison, no attempt to meet the survivor’s needs or satisfy what they might want to happen or need from the perpetrator, nothing that allows the perpetrator to take responsibility or change their behaviour.
The government is not doing anything to deal with sexual assault. Both major parties support the Northern Territory intervention. Sexual assault is never really a major issue for any party. We need to think of ways within our communities that we can respond to and deal with sexual violence ourselves. Ways in which to focus on supporting survivors of assault, helping them to heal. To learn how to support, to provide space for a survivor to tell their stories. We can learn from models of justice like restorative justice. We need to deal with perpetrators of assault in ways which prioritise the needs of the survivor, and allows them to have control and autonomy in the process. The process needs to provide a mechanism by which the perpetrator of violence can take responsibility for their behaviour, to confront themselves, and to change. To provide them with an opportunity for redemption. And in doing so, the process can be empowering for the survivor, if they control what happens.
We need to work within our communities to try to prevent assault from occurring in the first place. This means educating ourselves and the people around us, unlearning underlying behaviours and understandings of sex and consent, relearning the ways that we interact with others. We need to empower our communities, to recognise that we can deal with assault, we can come up with collective solutions, and create accountability processes within the spaces we create.
We can teach ourselves and constantly learn ways of engaging in a community response to sexual assault, in all its forms, not merely when a particular situation occurs but to respond to and try to change the culture of sexual assault and violence at its fundamental levels.
