♦ What Is Sex Abuse ♦ Defamation ♦ Eldon Hogan Xavier College ♦ Celso Romanin Civil Suit ♦ Jack Rush Defamation ♦ Jesuits Deed of Release ♦ Marilyn Warren Victor Higgs Report ♦ Ridsdale Ballarat Diocese ♦ St Louis School Claremont ♦ Survivor Led Response ♦ Theodore Overberg Celebrates 50 Years ♦ Archives Closed to Survivors ♦ the George Pell saga ♦ Quotes & Statements ♦ Jesuit Charities ♦ Client Opinion - In Good Faith Foundation
Any act by a person having the care of a child that exposes the child to, or involves the child in, sexual processes beyond his or her understanding or contrary to accepted community standards.
♦ Australian Institute of Family Studies Definition

Disclosure of sex offences even by deceased persons is important.
Victoria Police Deputy Comm. ASHTON at the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry 2012 said:
In relation to offenders being deceased, simply saying 'The offender is dead. The police don't need to know' is an absolute nonsense. Despite the fact that an offender is dead, we need to know the fact that the person was an offender through their life so that when other victims come forward to us and they say, 'I'd like to tell you about my abuse at the hands of Mr X, Y or Z,' our records will show that that person actually had a history of offending.

This is why it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that ALL historical information about sexual, physical and emotional abuse held by the Jesuits be publicly available.
Without that there can be no real justice.

Any act by a person having the care of a child that exposes the child to, or involves the child in, sexual processes beyond his or her understanding or contrary to accepted community standards.
( Australian Institute of Family Studies )

Disclosure of sex offences even by deceased persons is important.
Victoria Police Deputy Comm. ASHTON at the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry 2012 said:
In relation to offenders being deceased, simply saying 'The offender is dead. The police don't need to know' is an absolute nonsense. Despite the fact that an offender is dead, we need to know the fact that the person was an offender through their life so that when other victims come forward to us and they say, 'I'd like to tell you about my abuse at the hands of Mr X, Y or Z,' our records will show that that person actually had a history of offending.

This is why it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that ALL historical information about sexual, physical and emotional abuse held by the Jesuits be publicly available.
Without that there can be no real justice.



See also ♦ long-term-effects-of-childhood-sexual-abuse

♦ www.blueknot.org.au

The USA Surgeon General states under the category of mental health:

… severe and repeated trauma during youth may have enduring effects upon both neurobiological and psychological development altering stress responsivity and altering adult behaviour patterns … these individuals experience a greatly increased risk of mood, anxiety and personality disorders throughout adult life.

When humans are young, their world revolves around their parents or primary care-givers. Parents or care-givers are the primary source of safety, security, love, understanding, nurturance and support. Child abuse violates the trust at the core of a child’s relationship with the world (Walker, 1994).

When the primary relationship is one of betrayal, a negative schema or set of beliefs develops. This negative core schema often affects an individual’s capacity to establish and sustain significant attachments throughout life.

Survivors often experience conflictual relationships and chaotic lifestyles, frequently report difficulties forming adult intimate attachments and display behaviours that threaten and disrupt close relationships (Henderson, 2006).

Many survivors’ lives are characterized by frequent crises e.g. job disappointments, relocations, failed relationships, financial setbacks.

Many are the result of unresolved childhood abuse issues. The reasons are complex, but for many survivors ongoing internal chaos prevents the establishment of regularity, predictability and consistency.

Many survivors function in ‘crisis mode’, responding with stopgap measures which don't resolve the underlying issues. This can be exhausting and dispiriting and contribute to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness (The Morris Center, 1995).

Professor Bessel van Der Kolk, Harvard Medical School conducted a five year study of 528 trauma patients from American hospitals. This study identified a range of symptoms that correlated well with prolonged severe childhood sexual abuse:

… the inability to regulate emotions like rage and terror, along with intense suicidal feelings, somatic disorder, negative self-perception, poor relationships, chronic feelings of isolation, despair and hopelessness; and dissociation and amnesia'.

The implications are that real-world childhood… trauma may be responsible for many psychopathologies usually considered to have endogenous origins, including various kinds of phobic, depressive, anxiety and eating disorders, not to mention borderline personality, antisocial personality and multiple personality disorder.

A number of studies have explored the relationship between childhood trauma and later health concerns.
Research has found that childhood abuse contributes to the likelihood of depression, anxiety disorders, addictions, personality disorders (Spila, Makara, Kozak, & Urbanska, 2008) eating disorders, sexual disorders and suicidal behaviour (Draper et al., 2007). A study by Palmer, Brown, Rae-Grant, & Loughin (2001) with 384 survivors of childhood abuse found that survivors of child abuse tended to be depressed, have low-self esteem, and to have problems with family functioning.

A recent study found that almost 76% of adults reporting child physical abuse and neglect have at least one psychiatric disorder in their lifetime and nearly 50% have three or more psychiatric disorders (Harper et al., 2007).

Adults with abuse histories also present with physical problems more frequently than those who have not experienced abuse (Draper et al., 2007). Furthermore, child sexual abuse has been found to be a key factor in youth homelessness with between 50-70% of young people within Supported Accommodation Assistance Programs having experienced childhood sexual assault (van Loon & Kralik, 2005b).

The long-term impact of child abuse is far-reaching; some studies indicate that, without the right support, the effects of childhood abuse can last a lifetime. This study by (Draper et al., 2007) found:

Child abuse survivors demonstrate:
Poor mental health: are almost two and a half times as likely to have poor mental health outcomes,

Unhappiness: are four times more likely to be unhappy even in much later life

Poor physical health: are more likely to have poor physical health.

Childhood physical and sexual abuse

Medical diseases: increases the risk of having three or more medical diseases, including cardiovascular events in women

Relationships: causes a higher prevalence of broken relationships, lower rates of marriage in late life,

Isolation/social disconnection: cause lower levels of social support and an increased risk of living alone

Behavioural health effects: is associated with suicidal behaviour, increased likelihood of smoking, substance abuse, and physical inactivity.

The impact of child abuse does not end when the abuse stops and the long-term effects can interfere with day-to-day functioning.
However, it is possible to live a full and constructive life, and even thrive – to enjoy a feeling of wholeness, satisfaction in your life and work as well as genuine love and trust in your relationships. Understanding the relationship between your prior abuse and current behaviour is the first step towards ‘recovery’.

Over two decades of research have demonstrated potential negative impact of child abuse and neglect on mental health including:

depression
anxiety disorders
poor self-esteem
aggressive behaviour
suicide attempts
eating disorders
use of illicit drugs

alcohol abuse
post-traumatic stress
dissocation
sexual difficulties
self-harming behaviours
personality disorders.

Victims of child abuse and neglect are more likely to commit crimes as juveniles and adults.



By Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, Ph.D.
Speech at the USCCB Meeting in Dallas TX
June 13, 2002

♦ The Experience of the Victim of Sexual Abuse:" A Reflection

Good Morning. I am honored to join the groups of speakers we have heard so far today. It has been a morning filled with great gifts and great grace. My own offering to you today is to contextualize the characteristics of childhood and adolescent sexual abuse; to present the experience of early sexual trauma through the lens of the victim; to make accessible the most common after-effects of childhood sexual abuse; and to suggest a few vital components of the healing process.
I do this based on fifteen years of clinical work with men and women who were sexually violated as young people. To succeed, however, I need your help and a brief story best conveys what I mean by that.

Several years ago, my stepson, Daniel Patrick O'Dea, recommended that I read a fantasy trilogy authored by Terry Brooks. In the first book of the series, the young hero sets out on a quest in search of the magical Sword of Shannara (Brooks, 1978). A weapon of enormous power, the secret of the sword is that, when lifted by the sword bearer, it reveals to him every aspect of his being.

All the good, unpleasant and truly hideous facets of his personality are reflected back to him in the blade of the sword. If the sword carrier can stand what he sees, he then can wield the sworn to do great good and to fend off the worst evil. Most who raise the Sword of Shannara, however, cannot bear to see themselves so fully revealed and are destroyed.

Today, I ask each of you metaphorically lift a Sword of Shannara; to open your hearts and souls to all that the Catholic Church has been, is, and could be under your care. I ask you to stare courageously at the full complement of great good and great harm enacted by you and your, brethren and especially, to reflect on your role in the devastation of childhood and adolescent sexual abuse perpetrated by priests.

Claude Levi-Strauss declared that, "the prohibition of Incest stands at the dawn of culture," and, if fact, represents culture itself. Make no mistake about it. The violation of child or adolescent by a priest IS incest. The sexual and relational transgression perpetrated by the father of the child extended family; a man whom the child is taught from birth to trust above everyone else in his life, to trust second only to God. Priest abuse IS incest.

Despite the cultural universality of the incest taboo, violation of sexual boundaries between adults and children is a universal phenomenon. Data collected over the past two decades inform us that about one third of all females and one fourth of all males are sexually abused in some way prior to the age of 18. These numbers hold up worldwide. From Italy to Ireland to India; from Thailand to Mexico, in Canada and the Middle East, children's physical and psychic boundaries are violated sexually with alarming frequency.

Thus, the sexual victimization of minors is not just an American problem nor is it just a priestly problem. Rather, sexual exploitation of the young is a worldwide scandal in which Catholic priest have participated as fully and as secretly as have other men across the globe.

So far in these remarks. I have used the commonly accepted term, "sexual abuse," to describe an adult's sexual traumatization of a child or adolescent. In fact, however, "sexual abuse," is shorthand terminology for what more accurately is named the relational betrayal of a minor by an adult who is in a position of authority with the child and who exploits his own and victim's sexuality to subjective empower himself by utterly dominating the physical, psychological, and spiritual experiences of the victim.
No wonder we use shorthand. From the victim's perspective, however, sexually executed relational abuse is the most meaningful way of conceptualizing that which we call sexual abuse.

As we have read in the media and heard today, sexual abuse victims often are young people for whom something or someone is missing. They yearn for an adult who sees them, hears them, understands them, makes time for them, and enjoys their company. Unfortunately, the sexual predator is exquisitely attuned to the emotional and relational needs of the potential victims.

Like Fr. Geoghan seeking out fatherless children, sexual abusers ingratiate themselves into the lives of their victims, evoking respect trust and dependency long before the first touch takes place. When the confused child or adolescent is frequently so emotionally entwined with his victimizer so fearful of losing the abuser's affection or simply so terrified that he readily and silently complies with the sexual activities imposed upon him.

There are those who devalue survivors of childhood and, especially adolescent sexual abuse for not disclosing their victimizations when they were occurring. Secrecy, however, is the acknowledged cornerstone of sexual abuse. Some perpetrators overtly extract secrecy by suggesting that the victim will be blamed for the abuse, then taken from her home and placed in an orphanage.

They say that telling would destroy and even kill the perpetrator, or they threaten that if the victim discloses, the perpetrator will harm her or members of her family. Sexual abusers may also blame the victim, accusing her of seducing the predator, thus filling the victim with the sham and self-loathing more appropriately experienced by the victimizer. In a more covert covenant of secrecy, the abuser provides the victim with gifts and special privileges that both silence and instill terrible and long lasting guilt.

Sin addition man abused minors maintain silence because they accurately perceive that there is no one in their environment who will help them if they disclose. It is more hopeful for a child to preserve a fantasy that IF he told, someone would protect him than it is to reveal the abuse to another who ignores, blames, or re-abuses him.

Finally, children and teenagers do not disclose the sexual abuse secret because they care for the perpetrator. A central cruelty of sexual abuse, in fact, is the perpetrator's trampling of the young person's generously and freely bestowed affection or respect.

It is from this epicenter of betrayed trust that the mind splitting impact of sexual abuse ripples outward. The victim, of early sexual violation simply cannot reconcile the respected figure who may help him with his homework, teach him how to throw a curve ball, or take him to the local hockey game with the sexually overstimulated and overstimulating man presenting an erect penis to suck.

It is simply too much and the resulting fracture of the victim's mind and experience often leads to a debilitating post- traumatic stress disorder that affects every domain of the victim's functioning and lasts for years and years after the abuse has stopped.

Let me now guide you on a tour through the corridors of a psyche twisted by sexual transgression. It is a trip through a traumatogenically constructed, psychological House of Horrors in which experiences of self and other are grotesquely distorted and terrifying images unexpectedly pop out from seemingly safe places. The visitor lurches from one emotional shock to another in an interior atmosphere of darkness, one punctuated only by frightening flashing lights and nightmarish unreality. Our first stop is the organization of the victim's images of self and others.

When a young person is being abused, the psychological shock is so great that the normal self cannot absorb or make sense of what is happening to it. In a valiant attempt to cope with the overwhelming overstimulation and sense of betrayal literally embodied in sexual trauma, the self splits using the psychic mechanism of dissociation.

The normal operation of dissociation allows, for example, each of us to drive ten miles and then "come to" with no memory of the time just past. For the victim of child or adolescent sexual violation, however, dissociation is an exponentially more dramatic process, one that serves as both a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, by entering into an entirely different state of consciousness while being abused, the victim preserves a functional and safe self who is removed from the trauma and is therefore able learn, grow, play, and work. Many a patient has reported for instance, that she–the self recognized as "I"–floated above the bed on which that "other kid"–the alienated victim self–was being abused.

On the other hand, the curse of dissociation condemns the state of self who experienced the abuse to a trapped existence in the inner world of the survivor, a place dominated by terror, impotent but seething rage, and grief for which there literally are no words. Because trauma impels the brain to process events quickly and in a state of hyperarousal, verbalizing pathways are bypassed. Instead, the sexual violations are encoded by the child and retrieved by the survivor as non-verbal, often highly disorganizing feelings, somatic states, anxieties, recurring nightmares, flashbacks, and sometimes dangerous behaviors.

Often, the adult survivor's life is wracked by unexpected regressions to his victimized self that are triggered by seemingly neutral stimuli. Much as the Vietnam Vet who hits the floor during a thunderstorm is, in a very real way, back in the Mekong Delta seconds before his buddy's sckull is blown off, so too the sexual abuse survivor may be triggered into a regression by something or someone reminiscent of his earlier traumas.

No longer firmly located in the present, the survivor thinks, feels, experiences his body, and behaves as the victim he once was, badly confusing himself and those around him. For victims of priest abuse, a Roman collar, the scent of incense, light streaming through stained glass at a certain time of day, organ music, or most certainly, interacting with priests and bishops about their abuse may well evoke the appearance of usually dissociated self states.

Coexisting with the violated, terrorized, grief stricken victim self, the adult survivor of sexual abuse has within her a state of being that is identified with the perpetrator. Through this unconscious ongoing bond to the predator, the survivor preserves an attachment to the abuser by becoming like him in some ways. When threatened by experiences of helplessness, vulnerability or anticipated betrayal, the survivor unconsciously accesses this self-state to gain a sense of empowerment.

Subjectively experiencing themselves as righteously indignant, survivors may enact at times breathtaking boundary smashing, cold contempt, and red-hot rage. Not surprisingly, survivors are sickened by the thought that they resemble in any way their perpetrators and therefore avert their gaze from their own Swords of Shannara for long periods of time lest they fragment even further at the sight of their own abusive tendencies.

I want to be clear that, here, I do not mean that survivors become sexually abusive. While that can happen, it is exceedingly rare. Rather, they enact some aspect's of there abuser's lack of respect for others. It is important for therapists and, in this case bishops, to recognize that the clay of the survivor's abuser self was molded quite literally by the hands of a master–their own sexual and relational victimizer.

While those in relationship with survivors can model setting limits on what they will tolerate in relationship with another, an empathic understanding of the source of the survivor's sometimes outrageous behavior is essential to hold in mind.

Finally, the sexual abuse survivor sometimes may enact an aspect of self that is greedy, grandiose, and insatiably entitled, an element of self that remains out of awareness for a long time. There comes a day in every survivor's recovery upon which he fully comprehends what was so cruelly taken from him. Further personal growth and healing requires that the survivor then mourn the childhood or adolescence that never was, the defensively idealized caretakers who never existed, and perhaps most poignantly, the self that could have been had trust, hope, and possibility not been so brutally shattered.

I cannot exaggerate nor can I adequately convey the soul searing pain of this phase of recovery. One patient, at this point in treatment, cried, "This is too much. I can't stand it–I won't–you can't make me. I can deal with the abuse–maybe, perhaps. But the idea that I can't go back, that my childhood is broken forever–I can't live with that. I won't know that I never was and never will be just a kid."

Quite understandably, the sexual abuse survivor may act to avoid the ultimate mourning necessary to move on from the abuse and all that was stolen from him. Launching a lawsuit against the perpetrator or against those who abetted the abuser may be one strategy employed to deny unrecoverable loss, while instead pursuing an illusion of full restitution of that which, tragically, never can be restored.

No matter the amount of the ensuing financial settlement, a residue of emptiness and lost hope persists. At the core of the survivor's being, the worst has happened yet again; he has been paid off to go away while life goes on relatively untouched for the perpetrator and those who shielded him.

Now let me be absolutely clear. Money can be a little better than nothing and is what the Church too often historically offered victims. Many survivors, in fact, resorted to lawsuits only after being stonewalled in their quest for more personal reparative gestures. Legal action, in this situation, represents a last ditch effort by the survivor to become an agent in his own life.

Further, a lawsuit, when all else has failed, puts into action an understandable demand that the truth be told one way or another. In addition, many survivors need financial assistance for therapy, substance abuse rehabilitation, and educational or vocational training previously unattainable because of post-traumatic stress symptoms plaguing the victims.
But money is not nearly enough, no mater how much it is, and lump sum payments that are not individualized to meet the specific needs of each survivor fail to meet recovery needs. Rather, what serves healing well it much more difficult, much more personal, and much more humbling for clergy.

Real healing for survivors requires that priests, bishops, and cardinals conform to the template upon which rests the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the ritual cleansing of the soul in which Catholic priests profoundly believe. Real healing thus demands that Catholic clergy apologize personally to each and every victim of priest abuse; not through eloquent public letters but in face-to-face encounters.

Bless me, my son or daughter, for I have sinned. The Vatican recently cautioned that the administration of group absolution is not an acceptable venue and that confessions should be heard individually and in private. So, too, survivors deserve to meet with those who have harmed them and to hear from clergy genuine confessions of failings and remorse.

Real healing must draw from the Church a deeply meaningful commitment that every priest, bishop, and cardinal will do everything in his power to prevent further priest abuse, and that he will act swiftly, decisively, and above all, publicly to remove abusers from his ranks.
Finally, cardinals, bishops and priest must do penance to restore each survivor's trust in humanity as well as in the Church. Retreats and group processing sessions that include survivors, clergy, and professionals are just some possible approaches to restorative penance.

Whatever penitential road is chosen, it is essential that the clergy of the Catholic Church put their mouths, souls, and physical beings where heretofore mostly only their money has been. It is right and it is needed for survivors of priest abuse to heal.

Leaving the realm of sexual abuse survivor's organization of self, we enter a related corridor on our tour, one in which we explore typical characteristics of the victim's interpersonal relationships.

A survivor's relationships with other people are hued and shaded by expectations and anxieties forged during their traumatic experiences. Approaching others from within the psychological confines of post-traumatic stress disorder, the trauma survivor exhibits rapidly shifting relational stances, painfully lurching from periods of extremely dependent clinging, to those marked by vicious rage aimed at the same person.
Stark terror and tears can switch in an instant to cold aloofness, while warmth and vivacity may turn kaleidoscopically to paranoid suspicion. All this, of course, leads to many chaotically unstable relationships, often alternating with stretches of the loneliest isolation.

Perhaps needless to say, normal sexual functioning is almost impossible for most survivors until well into their recovery. Too often, sex, even with a trusted other, triggers terrifyingly disorganizing flashbacks during which survivors sometimes literally see the face of their abuser superimposed on the visage of their sexual partner and experience dreadful relivings of their sexual traumas.

In addition, survivors frequently are disgusted by and ashamed of their own bodies and sexual strivings. Unreasonably blaming the abuse on their own sexuality, they often desperately insist that it never would have happened were it not for their self-perceived horribly seductive bodies and deplorable sexual desires.

Heterosexual boys abused by men additionally are tormented, wondering what it was about them that attracted the perpetrator. Sexual abuse survivors of all genders and sexual orientations are deprived of the right to grow gradually into a mature sexuality and, instead, are forced or seduced into premature sexual encounters they are emotionally ill equipped to handle.
As adults, therefore, these men and women often spin between periods of promiscuous and self-destructive sexual acting out and times of complete sexual shutdown during which, like burn victims, they experience the gentlest physical contact as excruciatingly painful.

Finally, there is a characteristic relational stance assumed by many sexual abuse survivors that is particularly germane to these proceedings. It involves others who did not abuse them but also did not protect them.

If it takes a community to raise a child, it also takes a community to abuse one so that whenever a minor is sexually violated, someone's eyes are closed. Throughout history and in every segment of society, the most common response to the suspicion or even the disclosure of childhood sexual abuse has been self-defensive denial and dissociation.

No one finds it easy to stand in the overwhelming and destabilizing reality of sexual abuse. Thus, blindness, deafness, and elective mutism are responses endemic to many confronted by a victimized child, an adult survivor, or a perpetrating adult.
To the extent, however, that the sexual victimization of a minor depends upon the silence of adults who knew, suspected, or should have known about the abuse, the burdens of shame and reparation reach beyond the perpetrator.

In the case of the Church, it is not just abusing priests and abetting bishops who must lift a symbolic Sword of Shannara and face what is reflected back to them in its blade. Rather, every rectory housekeeper, every parish maintenance man, every religious woman or lay teacher, every parishioner - any of these individuals who once felt uneasy about a priest's relationship with a young boy or girl and said nothing need ponder their inaction and resolve to behave protectively in the future. Zero tolerance must include the silent as well as the predatory.

What is important to recognize at this conference is that adult survivors of sexual abuse frequently are, at least initially, even angrier with adults who failed to protect them than they are with the perpetrator himself. Because the survivor's internal relationship with his abuser often is organized around competing feelings of attachment and hate, he often feels freer to turn the full blast of his long pent-up rage and bitterness on those who did not protect him and who, in addition, failed to provide for him in ways the perpetrator seemed to, albeit at an unholy cost to the exploited child or adolescent.

How turning down another corridor on our tour of a psyche ravaged by early sexual trauma, we examine the impact of sexual abuse on the cognitive functioning of the victim and survivor. Part of what is overwhelmed during sexual abuse is the young person's ability cognitively to contain, process, and put into words the enormity of the relational betrayal and physical impingement with which he is faced.

It is striking and often bewildering to observe in adult survivors completely contradictory thought processes that ebb and flow with little predictability. One moment, you are speaking with an intelligent adult, capable of complex, flexible, abstract, and self decentered thinking.
Under sufficient internal or external stress, however, or in situations somehow reminiscent of past abuse, the cognitive integrity of the survivor shatters and becomes locked in rigidly inflexible, self-centered thought patterns, simplistic black and white opinions devoid of nuance and an immutable conviction that the future is destined to be both short and unalterably empty.

For example, one survivor patient who worked as an investment banker was so intellectually gifted that she was considered a brilliant whiz kid in the competitive New York world of finance. When beset by psychological or interpersonal stimuli linked to her uncle's sexual abuse, however, she became in her own words, "stupid minded." At those times, she literally could not think at all or could access only immature, disorganizing and panicky ways of thinking.

If a survivor's cognitive functioning is severely ruptured by sexual abuse, his affective life, the next stop on our tour, is even more impaired. When a young person is sexually traumatized, the hyperarousal of the autonomic nervous system and the body's subsequent attempt to restore order disrupt the brain's neurochemical regulation of emotion.

In addition, we are now learning that attachment relationships also impact upon the brain's ability to modulate feelings, with traumatic attachment experiences interfering with effective neuropsychological regulation of affect.
The brain of the sexually abused minor thus suffers a double assault. Both the sexual traumas themselves and the betrayal of an attachment relationship assail the flow of affect modulating neurochemicals.

As an adult, the survivor shifts–sometimes quite rapidly–between states of chaotically intense hyperarousal and deadened states of psychic numbing. This inability to modulate emotional arousal often leads to interpersonally inappropriate verbal or motoric actions when the survivor is hyperstimulated, and to similarly inappropriate emotional and psychomotor constriction as the individual moves into psychic numbing.

Further, autonomic arousal becomes a generalized reaction to stress in the midst of which the sexual abuse survivor is unable to discern realistically the severity of a perceived threat. Instead of reacting at the actual level of psychological danger, the survivor may engage in seemingly irrational behaviors like temper tantrums or terrified withdrawal. These behaviors do no fit the present day situation but are perfectly complimentary to the now affectively revived earlier trauma.

Because of the damage done by sexual abuse to affective brain functioning, adult survivors often need psychotropic medications for periods of time during recovery. For some, their impairments are sufficiently intractable to require lifelong medication. These drugs are expensive and it would be a specific and reparative use of Church funds to provide survivors who are under the care of psychiatric professionals with the medications they need to function more adaptively.

We now are almost finished with our psychological tour and are about to enter what can be the most shocking corridor of all. Also partly due to disrupted brain functioning, sexual abuse survivors often display a truly spectacular array of self-destructive behaviors.

They slice their arms, thighs, and genitalia with knives, razors, or shards of broken glass. They burn themselves with cigarettes, pull hair from their heads and pubic areas, walk through
dark parks alone at night, play chicken with trains at railroad crossings, pick up strangers in bars to have unprotected and anonymous sex, drive recklessly at high speeds, gamble compulsively, and/or further destroy their minds and bodies with alcohol and the whole range of street drugs.

Both male and female prostitutes tend to have backgrounds of early sexual abuse. Survivors also are two to three times more likely than adults without abuse histories to make at least one suicide attempt in their lives (Briere & Runtz, 1986). Sometimes they die.

Survivor self-abuse performs a myriad of functions too complex to address adequately today. A quick inventory of a survivor's motivations to act self-destructively includes: punishment for the abuse he blames himself for; mastering victimization by taking charge of the timing and execution of harm; self-medication of turbulent affective storms; and unconsciously seeking states of hyperarousal that then trigger the release of brain opiods, providing the survivor with a temporary sense of calm.

At an even more deeply unconscious level, frighteningly self-destructive sexual abuse survivors want to turn the table on present day stand-ins for those who violated and neglected them. Unconsciously, they long to see their own terror, helplessness, impotent rage, and shocked recognition of utter betrayal reflected now on the face of someone in their lives. Who can blame them?

As we exit now from our tour of the terrifyingly disorienting psychological House of Horrors, constructed amidst sexual abuse, and maintained by its aftermath, it should be clear that a survivor's recovery is a long, complicated, sometimes treacherous process.
There is a cohort in this country of professional men and women who have labored long and hard in the clinical trenches of trauma since the sexual abuse of children was dragged out of society's skeleton closet in the early 1980's. The bishops and priests of the Catholic Church need the expertise of professionals to effect healing both within the Church and in relationship with survivors. Please call on us to help you.

Psychoanalyst Le.onard Shengold entitled his book on the effects of childhood sexual abuse, Soul Murder (Shengold, 1989). I do not think that early sexual trauma necessarily has to result in soul murder but it most surely batters and deadens the soul of the young victim and the adult survivor. That this ravaging of souls has been administered by priests entrusted with a sacred covenant to protect and enliven souls is despicable; it is evil itself.

The Catholic Church and you, its American shepherds, are at a crossroads. Like the recovering victim of sexual abuse, you can choose to defend, deny, retrench, and rigidify. You can refuse the reflection of a Sword of Shannara and turn away from all your decency, all your love and generosity, all your arrogance and indifference.

When a survivor takes that familiar and well-worn road, further fragmentation and diminished integrity of mind and soul ensues. But, as is the case for so many sexual abuse survivors, another road can be chosen. Collectively wielding a blade shining with truth and courageous determination, you can decide to lead the American Church on a path of recovery, growth, and restored faith.
This conference could become a new epicenter from which ripples the revitalization and restoration of souls. It is a matter of your will which road is taken. May great grace walk with you and guide you in the days to come. It has been a great grace to me to address you today.

class="simple_box" style="width:850px;
The materials on BishopAccountability.org are offered solely for educational purposes.
Should any reader wish to quote or reproduce for sale any documents to which other persons or institutions hold the rights, the original publisher should be contacted and permission requested. If any original publisher objects to our maintaining a cache of their documents for safekeeping, we will gladly take down our cache of those documents and offer links to the original publisher's posted versions instead.



♦ ABC - sexual-assault-legal-system-horror-show-for-survivors
More than 140,000 sexual assaults were reported to Australian police in the 10 years to 2017.

Police rejected nearly 12,000 reports on the basis that they do not believe a sexual assault occurred.
The exact figure could not be calculated because official crime statistics exclude these reports, and NT Police refused to provide any data to ABC News.

However, figures from the rest of Australia suggest one in 12 sexual assault reports are "unfounded", rising to one in four in some regions.

Police "cleared" or resolved more than 34,000 or 25 per cent of sexual assault investigations without making an arrest or taking other legal action.
This can be because police don't have enough evidence to press charges, they don't know who committed the crime,
or other reasons – for example, the suspected offender has died.
More than half of those -- roughly 18,000 -- were withdrawn by the victim/survivor.

The true figure is much higher but could not be calculated. This is because NSW Police
— alone among Australia's states and territories — does not record data on why a sexual assault investigation doesn't lead to legal action.

Across the rest of the country, one in five sexual assault reports is withdrawn by the victim.
If the figure is similar in NSW, the true number of reports withdrawn in the 10 years to 2017 would be close to 28,000 nationally.


Just under 42,600 or 30 per cent of sexual assault reports led to an arrest, summons, formal caution or other legal action.
The other 50,800 investigations – more than 35 per cent of reported sexual assaults – remain unsolved.


The party began like most parties do — with food, music and laughter.

"I was 19 at the time … it was the first party I'd been to," Lauren* says.

It was 2013 and Lauren's work friend was celebrating her 21st birthday with a house party in Sydney's Sutherland Shire.
A man who said he was friends with Lauren's friend struck up a conversation with the teenager.

Tall and handsome, with hair the colour of sand, he was four years older and had that "classic Australian" look, she says.

"He told me he was studying at uni … he was friendly," Lauren says.

After chatting for a few minutes, the man offered her a drink.

"I know I only had [that] one drink. Then all of a sudden I was throwing up on myself.
I couldn't stand up. Everything was a blur.
It was pretty awful," she says.

"I knew it was happening but I had no control over it."

The next thing Lauren remembers is the man leading her to a taxi. No-one intervened,
although the next day some of her friends teased her about being so drunk she went home with a stranger
— something completely out of character for Lauren, who almost never drank alcohol and hadn't even had her first kiss.

In the taxi, the man didn't ask for her home address or where she wanted to go. He simply directed the driver to his place and took Lauren inside.

"He took off my clothes and put me in the shower and then took me to his bedroom and — it happened. That's where I was raped."

It was Lauren's first sexual experience of any kind.
In the six years since, Lauren has battled feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred,
compounded by uncontrollable flashbacks and often crippling symptoms of anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

But punctuating the anguish are moments of resolve and clarity. The decision to report her rape to police was during one of those moments in 2016.
But it did not go as expected.

"I was shut down. I was dismissed … No one gave a shit about it," Lauren says.

Lauren tried three times in as many months to report her sexual assault to police.
Each time she went in, she was asked to repeat her story to a different set of detectives.
Each time, she was given different information about the steps for proceeding.
The last two sets of detectives strongly discouraged her from pursuing her case, she says.

"They made out that it was going to be really hard for them — for the police — and so it's not worth me pursuing it," Lauren says.

"I felt like they cared more about their workload than trying to help me, so I've pretty much given up on it."

Lauren's experience is not unique.
Hers is among an escalating number of reported sexual assaults that never make it past the police, an ABC News data investigation has found.

The data reveal, for the first time, the investigation outcome of nearly every sexual assault reported to police in Australia between 2008 and 2017.

The figures, which include previously unseen data on reports rejected by police or withdrawn by the victim,
represent the most detailed national picture of police handling of reported sexual assaults.

They uncover rising rates of reports withdrawn and reports rejected, and plummeting rates of arrest or other police action in our largest jurisdictions.

They also reveal large differences between local government areas,
with some regions recording more than five times as many rejected or withdrawn reports as neighbouring regions.

In NSW, the investigation has also exposed critical gaps in police records.

NSW Police told ABC News it was unable to supply statistics on reports withdrawn by victims.
This is because it does not keep accurate records for why a sexual assault investigation does not lead to an arrest or other formal action.

This is despite officers being required to record a reason — such as "insufficient evidence", "complaint withdrawn", "deceased", etc
— by NSW Police's own crime recording standards.

It is the only jurisdiction that does not have this data.

"That's obviously a problem because if police don't keep track of why reports of sexual assault don't result in legal action,
there's little anyone can do to improve the number of successful prosecutions," says UNSW's Don Weatherburn.
Professor Weatherburn joined UNSW in 2019 after more than 30 years as director of NSW's Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.

Karen Willis, executive officer at Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia, says NSW Police should change its processes immediately.

"It's a 'tick a box'. It's not hard. That's basic data collection. That's not asking people to do a whole stack more work," she says.
A 'horror show' for victims

The typical sexual assault reported to police has shifted, experts say, and the current legal system is "totally ill-equipped".

Police say an increase in sexual assault reporting — particularly of historical crimes
— combined with a shift in the types of assaults being reported may explain why a larger percentage are not making it past police.

However Willis, Weatherburn and former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery all say the figures warrant closer scrutiny.
They are calling for a national, independent inquiry into where, why and how sexual assault reports are being rejected and withdrawn.

Sexual assault reporting is already "incredibly low", Willis says.

"Finding out that so many [who go to police] don't even get past step one … It's just not good enough.

"On the one hand, we're saying people should come forward and then on the other, we're putting massive barriers in their way … That needs to change."
Unfounded means police do not believe that a sexual assault occurred. Some states require police to have found evidence to support this view;
in others, lack of evidence to show the crime occurred is sufficient.

About New South Wales: Data for NSW is based on outcomes within 90 days of the report date

Unfounded means police do not believe that a sexual assault occurred.
Some states require police to have found evidence to support this view;
in others, lack of evidence to show the crime occurred is sufficient.

About New South Wales: Data for NSW is based on outcomes within 90 days of the report date

In some council areas, police are more than twice as likely to reject a sexual assault report as nationally.
Brisbane's Redland City Council and Queensland's regional councils Bundaberg and Sunshine Coast were among
the areas with the highest unfounded rates, rejecting 25 per cent of sexual assaults reported in the 10 years to 2018.

Unfounded reports either do not count towards the crime rate or are considered "cleared" (that is, resolved), depending on the jurisdiction.

Karen Willis describes the figures as "a shocking indictment".

"Research tells us that between 2 and 5 per cent of reports are of a crime that did not occur.
A national rate of 9 per cent is double what the research tells us is going on," she says.

"And what that means is there's a whole stack of serious crimes being reported to police that police aren't acting on. That's not good enough."

She says an independent inquiry conducted in co-operation with police would help to identify
whether the differences between council areas meant too much was being left to individual officers' discretion.

"There shouldn't be anything like that variation across the state. You just wouldn't get places
or pockets of people who wake up in the morning and decide they're going to make a false complaint," she says.

"That has to be from the police end."

If my [police] report had everything that I said, both sides of the story,
and not just trying to put in the information that's going to give them the least amount of work or whatever,
then it wouldn't feel so demeaning. It would feel as though they gave it their best shot.
And if they gave it their best shot and didn't have enough evidence, then that would be good enough.

But I don't think it was looked at that way. I just don't think it was really investigated that way…
I don't know whether they even documented anything under his name so that if somebody else walks into a police station and says,
"This guy raped me", is my case going to come up? Are they even going to be able to connect it?

I don't know any of that. They don't tell you. I don't even know if I achieved what I wanted to achieve.

I had dealings with [the police] for about nine months, fighting and fighting… They just kept asking me,
"Are you sure you want to go ahead with the case? Are you sure you still want to proceed with the case?"

I strongly got the feeling they were hoping I would drop the case.

I sat waiting for 30 minutes before two detectives came down.
I guess they kind of seemed in a rush, like they've just been thrown this case and they weren't prepared for it.

We went up maybe two or three floors and into a small room.
They closed the door and it was just the two men on one side and me on the other.
And there was no offer of support, no-one asked if I wanted anything.
It was just, "Take a seat. Look, let's do this."

I was just repeating the same thing I had told the other officer over two hours.
I was like, this is just kind of retraumatising, doing this all over again.

UNSW's Don Weatherburn says some reports of sexual assault are baseless, "but in my experience, they are generally infrequent".

"The situation [in some local government areas] of one in four reports being rejected as not genuine would be a matter of concern for the police,
I would have thought — and certainly a matter of concern for the general public."

Sydney University's Cowdery, who joined the university's Institute of Criminology in 2012 after 16 years as NSW Director of Public Prosecutions,
says he "wouldn't be unduly fazed" about one in 12 reports being unfounded.

"But when it gets up to one in four, I think, 'Something's going on here'," he says.
What does 'unfounded' really mean?

Numerous studies from Australia and overseas have found misclassification of sexual assault cases is routine.

Researchers re-evaluating police files found the "unfounded" category included:

Withdrawn or discontinued cases, where the victim decides not to pursue an investigation
Mistaken or inaccurate reports, such as cases of mistaken identity
Unsubstantiated reports, where police could not find evidence the crime occurred
Cases where the victim was unable or unwilling to cooperate
Cases where the victim was heavily intoxicated
Baseless or unwarranted cases, which did not meet the legal criteria for a crime

To reject a report, police in most jurisdictions must have evidence showing the crime did not occur.
In others, such as Victoria, lack of evidence to establish that an offence occurred is sufficient.
Either way, police should conduct some preliminary investigation.

"For a long time it was assumed that the 'no crime' or 'unfounded' category equated to false complaint,"
says Jan Jordan, professor of criminology at New Zealand's Victoria University of Wellington and an international expert on police responses to sexual violence.

However, her own research — backed by studies from Australia, the UK, the US, Canada and New Zealand
— demonstrates that in practice, the unfounded category is far broader than this.

In some cases, it has been misused for genuine reports.

NSW Police told ABC News that a victim withdrawing a report may be taken as evidence that the crime did not occur.

This is deeply problematic, Professor Jordan says.

"There are a whole lot of reasons why complainants would withdraw a genuine complaint," she says.

"Genuine complainants who have been sexually assaulted may decide to withdraw because they feel like they're not being believed or supported,
or they're being pressured by the offender or the offender's peers, or their own family don't want to see them go through a court system."

And in other cases uncovered by ABC News, sexual assault victims say they capitulated to police pressure not to pursue their case.
'They made it sound hopeless'
Natalie says she "relented" to police pressure to drop a sexual assault investigation "after they made it sound like it was hopeless".

The 36-year-old was sexually assaulted in 2008 by a man she met while drinking and playing pool at a pub in Sydney's north-west.
She reported the rape about five weeks later.

"I felt like she [the detective] was strongly telling me not to bother …
That it wasn't in my best interest, that there's really no point and that if I insisted on doing it,
I was just sort of wasting time," Natalie says.

"In the end … I felt like I really didn't have much of a choice but to say that I wouldn't go ahead with [it]."

"I was trying to speak and I couldn't. I was trying to move and I couldn't. It was a terrifying feeling, to not be in control of your body."
I was feeling really sick and nauseous. I started vomiting. I threw up a few times and he just continued to have sex with me while this was happening.
It went from vaginal to anal, back to vaginal… It hurt but I still couldn't really speak. I was just really sick.

Natalie agreed not to make a formal statement but says she was "really adamant" that police at least record the sexual assault
and warn the man that a police report had been filed about his behaviour.
"I couldn't live with myself if I just let it go and he did it again," she says.

More than a year passed. Then, in March 2010, the detective called. She had spoken to Natalie's attacker.
Natalie still becomes emotional when she recalls the phone call.

"She said, 'It was a misunderstanding, he's a good guy, he lives with his mum and little sister, and has a full-time job' …
[It was] like she was saying, 'He's a decent person' and therefore couldn't have raped me," Natalie says.

"I couldn't believe she used the words, 'It was a misunderstanding' … I was stunned."
The final, devastating blow came when Natalie obtained a copy of her police file under freedom of information laws and read
the detective's notes from her initial interview in 2008.


"The parts that were documented were the parts that didn't support my rape case," she says.

"It's almost as though the document is written with any information that doesn't fit with an assault."
Nearly one in three sexual assault reports are withdrawn in Queensland, compared to one in 10 in Tasmania.

Complaint withdrawn means that police believe a crime has been committed but, like Natalie,
the victim has instructed police not to take further action. Withdrawn complaints are considered "cleared" in every state and territory except SA.

Nationally, one in five sexual assaults reported to police were withdrawn by the victim, ABC News can reveal.
Queensland had the highest rate of reports withdrawn, at 33 per cent in 2018; Tasmania had the lowest, at 9 per cent in 2017.

Across other states, reports withdrawn vary dramatically by council area.
As many as 44 per cent of reports were withdrawn in Gold Coast City Council in the 10 years to 2018,
compared to less than 20 per cent in Brisbane's Redland City Council.

This variation in withdrawn rates was highlighted in a scathing 2017 Queensland Audit Office report,
which found Queensland Police had pressured victims into withdrawing complaints.
It also found police were wrongly changing the status of some cases from unsolved to unfounded.

Both these strategies allowed Queensland Police to improve its crime clearance rate.

A QPS spokesperson said Queensland Police had since implemented the audit office's recommendations and corrected its records.
The statistics supplied to ABC News are from the updated database.

I guess I was confident before it happened. I was confident in myself. I liked myself. I liked my body. I respected myself.
And now that respect is gone because he disrespected my body, he disrespected me.

I mean, it was a crime. But … I look at myself and I go, "You know, you're disgusting. You're nothing.
This person did this to you" and like mentally, it's really, really hard. And because that person's done
that to you, you just think you're worthless because he thought you were worthless.


I just generally feel angry that this is something that impacted me but he gets to walk away. Nothing's happened.
He gets to go on living his life and this sort of thing doesn't affect him at all.

I feel like, oh, well maybe if I'd had more injuries he would've been charged.
I get angry at myself for not getting bruises, which doesn't make sense.
I still blame myself sometimes because I was wearing a dress, which I know is logically ridiculous,
but … I feel like he came up to me because I was wearing a dress.

I was scared because I didn't think I could keep myself safe, so it changed the way I behaved.
I didn't want to go out. I used to be very outgoing and that changed to a degree.
I put on a lot of weight because, you know, I just didn't want anybody to want me.
Because if they didn't want me then that was the only way that I was going to be safe.


Bond University criminologist Terry Goldsworthy says differences in the type of sexual assault offences
being reported in different areas could explain why some have higher rates of reports unfounded or withdrawn.
Associate Professor Goldsworthy is a former detective inspector with Queensland Police and has more than 28 years' policing experience.

A nightclub district like the Gold Coast may receive more reports of date rapes, for example,
than a regional area, which may have more reports of historical child sex offences.

In a statement to the ABC, Queensland Police noted the Gold Coast's "diverse" population,
pointing out that its population "varies substantially because of the large influx of tourists at various times of the year".

Sydney University's Cowdery says differences in expertise, training and resources may explain regional variations.

In a small country town, for example, a police officer can have personal knowledge about a person that "might contribute to the decision that's made".

"Perhaps she has a history of being loose or being a frequent complainer," he says, adding that such views do not undermine the merits of her case.

However, former NSW crime statistics boss Don Weatherburn says the figures are "a real worry" and
that a serious effort needs to be made to understand why so many complaints are being withdrawn.
"The working assumption, I think, has always been that it's about fear of the court process itself," he says.

"But what if the real problem has got nothing to do with the intimidating nature of the court process and everything to do what goes on before they get there?"

Imperfect victims, imperfect policing

Sandra* was gang-raped in 2016 by a group of men she met in a nightclub while out with some friends and her adult son in a coastal town in eastern Victoria.
She says Victoria Police detectives treated her with suspicion and disbelief throughout the nine-month investigation.

On the night of the assault, the 48-year-old recalls being given one drink by the men and dancing with two of them
before telling her son that she was going home. Her next memory is of waking up in a motel room, being "violently ill",
vomiting and urinating on herself, and being used "like a rag doll" by a group of up to five men.

She reported the attack six days later. The detective assigned to her case told her she "looked fine"
and "because I'd remembered so much detail of the night, in her opinion [that] means I wasn't drugged, just drunk," Sandra says.

Experts say the persistence of myths about what constitutes "real" rape continue to hinder how seriously police investigate sexual assault.
Seven myths about rape

Rape myths are false beliefs about rape that justify sexual violence and place blame on victims. Common rape myths include:

Most rapes are committed by strangers and involve a weapon
It is only rape if the victim fights back and/or is physically injured
Women invite rape by flirting, dressing provocatively, behaving promiscuously or drinking alcohol
Consenting to sex on one occasion amounts to consenting to sex on future occasions
Women commonly lie about rape out of spite, for attention or to cover up consensual sex they later regret
"Real" victims report rape immediately
Rape is simply unwanted sex, not a violent crime

Kristin Diemer, a University of Melbourne sociologist and expert in violence against women, says police attitudes reflect community attitudes,
but can be made worse by an internal culture that minimises and excuses sexual harassment or sexist attitudes.


For example, a five-year review into sexual harassment and predatory behaviour within Victoria Police ranks
found sexual harassment was "widespread across the organisation" and those who spoke up about it were shamed, bullied or partially blamed for the incident.

Numerous officers reported being sexually harassed while on duty.
One woman described a colleague "masturbating and ejaculating on the wall between our rooms" while calling
out that he was thinking of her. Another woman told the review that she was raped by a male colleague after a work function.

The review was conducted independently but commissioned by Victoria Police and concluded in 2019.

"If those attitudes and behaviours are normalised as part of the game or just a joke,
then it makes it less likely you're going to take reports of sexual assault seriously from a victim," Ms Diemer says.
The reality of sexual violence

Most perpetrators are known to their victims
Most sexual assaults take place in the victim's or perpetrator's home
Weapons are rarely used
Few victims sustain physical injuries and these injuries are often minor
Force is usually psychological rather than physical or isn't necessary because the victim is impaired or unconscious
Many victims freeze, rather than fight or flee from their attacker
Many victims don't report rape immediately.
This can be because of trauma, fear of not being believed, pressure from the offender, feelings of shame and guilt, etc.



Former head of the Victoria Police sex crimes squad Glenn Davies says part of the problem is that many officers
believe false rape reports are much more common than they are, and this clouds their judgement.
Davies worked for Victoria Police for 30 years, mostly as a detective investigating serious and major crime.

"You don't have that same level of alarm [about false reports] from officers when they're investigating other crimes
— and I've worked on homicides, I've worked on armed robberies."

He says disbelief sometimes forms part of a deliberate strategy in which investigators "aggressively challenge [victims],
sometimes even accusing the victim as a liar".

Police justify this by saying survivors will have to withstand tougher interrogation if they get to court, Davies says.
"Really disappointing, seeing as we know the best witnesses, who stay in the system, are the ones who are most supported."
Author and advocate Bri Lee describes her experience reporting childhood sexual assault to Queensland Police in 2015 as "extremely gruelling and painful".

"Reporting my abuse to the police was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life," she says.

"I had to repeat myself over and over again. I was asked really insulting and disrespectful questions.
One officer in particular made me feel like I was being a hassle, that this horrific thing done to me
wasn't even that bad, and that I wasn't doing a good enough job of remembering the abuse."

Bri Lee

When someone who has been assaulted or abused reaches out to the police, the way they are treated has a
colossal effect on whether or not they feel respected and supported, and whether or not they continue with the charges...
"My investigation took two years and culminated in a two-day trial."

Bri is not alone. Associate Professor Goldsworthy says there is still a culture among some police
that wrongly believes victims "should have known better" or could have prevented the attack if they had exercised better judgement.

Officers with this kind of attitude tend to see certain kinds of sexual assault, such as date rape,
as "work I shouldn't be doing". "Almost like a sort of resentment about a creation of work through a situation that,
in their mind, probably shouldn't have occurred or in reality isn't a criminal issue," he says.

Victoria University of Wellington's Professor Jordan says this sort of bias can be compounded by the effects of trauma,
which some police interpret as evidence the victim is not credible.

"It's extremely difficult because the impact of trauma on the victim [means] that she can act in
all sorts of ways that seem counter-intuitive, ways that you wouldn't expect a 'genuine' victim to behave," she says.

More than with other crimes, sexual assault victims may disassociate from the attack,
which can lead to delayed reporting, memory gaps and inconsistent accounts.
Shame and fear of not being believed can also lead victims to withhold details.

Similarly — and paradoxically — factors that increase a person's vulnerability to sexual assault
(such as mental illness, intellectual disability, consuming drugs or alcohol, knowing the offender,
or having previously been sexually assaulted) are generally taken to undermine the victim's credibility, Professor Jordan says.

And further complicating matters is that victims themselves internalise these myths and biases,
and convey this in their behaviour. For example, survivors commonly question their own actions
or express guilt and shame about having "allowed" themselves to be raped.

"[Victims of] sex crimes are much more likely to take an element of personal responsibility
for what has happened to them, even though it is never their fault," says Simone McDonnell, a sexual assault counsellor with more than 20 years' experience.

"So if the victims of these crimes are saying these things, then of course the police are going to be thinking these things themselves."

For so long, I told myself, "Police didn't care, so maybe it was my fault."

It just makes everything a hundred times worse because I allowed myself to think that because of the police,
well, maybe it was OK what happened. If they're not going to say anything, if they're not going to do anything,
then who am I to say something happened or that what had happened was a crime?


The police made me feel like a victim… They made me feel like there's no justice;
that it didn't really matter what I did anymore anyway. I just got very depressed.

When someone says to you, "This isn't a crime… it's a misunderstanding", it says to me that what he did wasn't wrong.
It says that it's OK for me to be treated less than human, like a bunch of orifices, and that it's my problem that I'm hurt by it.


It still just really hurts. I find that it has affected me as much as the rape itself, the whole investigation…
Part of me wishes I never reported it because, well, what was the point?

The thing that really gets to me is that I did everything they say to do when you're raped. To report it straight away.
I rang the crisis line straight away, like at 9:30 in the morning. I did everything I was supposed to do.
But it wasn't enough.

I ended up in a violent relationship immediately after [the sexual assault]… and then didn't report that violent relationship
because I was like, "Well, why would I report that? The police aren't going to do anything.
It's just going to look like I'm lying. There's no way to prove this stuff."


The long road to recovery

When the people and institutions that are meant to protect us instead reject, dismiss or otherwise fail to act,
this can have devastating consequences for survivors' ability to recover.

Natalie says the detective's conclusion that her rape was "a misunderstanding" pushed her over the edge.
She transformed from a confident and outgoing woman to feeling afraid and socially withdrawn.
She gained weight and became increasingly depressed.

"I felt worthless. I felt it really made me feel like a victim. It made me feel like nobody believed me," Natalie says.

"It made me feel like I didn't matter because I could be used as a toy and just disregarded, and nothing would happen."

University of Melbourne's Diemer says that in her experience, some police aren't doing the right thing by sexual assault survivors,
while others "want to do the right thing but the system makes it so difficult that they don't want victims to have false hopes".

The skill lies in communicating this in a way that supports and enables survivors to proceed
through the system "rather than scaring them off", adjunct professor Cowdery says.

If survivors are interpreting the police response as pressure not to proceed, he says, then police "are failing".

"They should never convey the message that it's too much trouble or that [victims are] wasting their time.
That's a very wrong message to be sending to somebody," he says.
Sexual assault support services:

Canberra Rape Crisis Centre (24 hours): 02 6247 2525
1800 Respect national helpline: 1800 737 732
Lifeline (24 hour crisis line): 131 114
Beyond Blue: 1300 224 636

A Victoria Police spokesperson told ABC News that reporting of sexual offences had risen as a result
of the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse and community campaigns, such as the #MeToo movement.

Victoria Police had "made great effort" to encourage reporting, even if complainants were not willing to go to court,
did not believe the complaint could be proven or could not identify the offender, the spokesperson said.

"The increase of this type of reporting goes some way to explaining why fewer complaints are resulting in arrest."

Lauren, who gave up on the justice system after trying three times to report her rape,
says police should think less about their workload and more about what it has taken a survivor just to get into the seat in front of them.

"They need to not be saying it's going to be hard for them. That's their job. That's why they're police," she says.
"If it's too hard, you shouldn't be in that job."

This is the first part of an ABC News investigation into police handling of sexual assaults. Read the second part here.


Notes about this story

Police data showing investigation outcomes was requested via a combination of data requests
to state crime statistics agencies and applications under freedom of information laws.
ABC News then grouped these outcomes into five broad categories (Unfounded, Withdrawn, Unsolved, Legal action taken and No legal action)
in consultation with statisticians and experts in crime reporting standards.
In some instances, very low numbers of cases with an investigation status of "Other" could not be separated.
ABC News collected annual data from each state/territory (excluding the NT) as far back as comparable figures were available,
so data for each jurisdiction spans a different time period. The national percentages and counts are for the period 2008 to 2017,
as this is the longest time frame covered by the seven jurisdictions.
Due to low population numbers, data for Tasmania is for police divisions, not local government areas.
ABC News has taken steps to verify the stories of sexual assault survivors interviewed for this story,
including obtaining police reports and other documentation where possible.

PART 2
Falling through the cracks
Wwo people meet. Sex happens. One person says it was not consensual. The other says it was.

These are the bare bones of the typical sexual assault case and yet it is almost completely at odds with both
public perceptions of "real" rape and traditional notions of how to prove a crime.

The variations are infinite but most cases will have little, if any, "hard" evidence to corroborate either version of events, experts say.

No witnesses. No CCTV footage. No physical injuries. DNA evidence confirms the pair had sex but is silent on whether it was forced.
This data shows the police response to 140,000 sexual assault reports

New figures reveal, for the first time, the investigation outcome of nearly every sexual assault reported to police over a 10-year period.

Increased recognition of sexual assault has led not only to a rise in reporting rates but
also a shift in the kinds of sexual assaults reported to police. And the criminal justice system has failed to keep pace.

"We've got a justice system that is currently totally ill-equipped for being able to respond
to the actual contexts and ways that rapes actually occur," says Jan Jordan,
professor of criminology at New Zealand's Victoria University of Wellington and an international expert on police responses to sexual violence.

Sarah's sexual assault in 2019 shares many of the hallmarks of the typical case:
an assault in a private residence, a perpetrator known to the victim, no witnesses, no hard evidence either way.

"I met a guy through a friend at a party... We had two dates and they were perfect — exactly the way you want a date to go," says Sarah*.

But between the second and third dates "the energy changed", she says, becoming "really sexual".
This prompted Sarah to spell out her boundaries.
Seven myths about rape

Rape myths are false beliefs about rape that justify sexual violence and place blame on victims. Common rape myths include:

Most rapes are committed by strangers and involve a weapon
It is only rape if the victim fights back and/or is physically injured
Women invite rape by flirting, dressing provocatively, behaving promiscuously or drinking alcohol
Consenting to sex on one occasion amounts to consenting to sex on future occasions
Women commonly lie about rape out of spite, for attention or to cover up consensual sex they later regret
"Real" victims report rape immediately
Rape is simply unwanted sex, not a violent crime

"I'm a grown woman and I'm not shy. I was very clear about where I was and that I wasn't ready to have sex," she says.

So when the man invited Sarah to his place for lunch in the middle of a workday, she had no inkling that she was in any danger, she says.

At his place, one thing led to another and Sarah consented to oral sex. But he didn't want to leave it there.
"In a moment when I was not looking at him, he penetrated me. And that was not consensual," she says.

Sarah filed a police report about a month later. Within a week, a detective called.
She discouraged Sarah from taking the case further, saying they didn't have enough to press charges.

That's the last Sarah has heard. But she is adamant her case will not become one of the thousands that never make it past the police.

"I know that what happened to me is a crime. I am determined that he answer to the law for what he did."

Changing police attitudes

Fewer than one in three sexual assault reported to police results in legal action,
according to an ABC News data investigation into police handling of sexual assaults.

The figures — which reveal the investigation outcomes of nearly 140,000 sexual assaults reported to police over a 10-year period
— have reignited debate over how to address what one advocate has described as the "insidious epidemic" of sexual assault.
The reality of sexual violence

Most perpetrators are known to their victims
Most sexual assaults take place in the victim's or perpetrator's home
Weapons are rarely used
Few victims sustain physical injuries and these injuries are often minor
Force is usually psychological rather than physical or isn't necessary because the victim is impaired or unconscious
Many victims freeze, rather than fight or flee from their attacker
Many victims don't report rape immediately.
This can be because of trauma, fear of not being believed, pressure from the offender, feelings of shame and guilt, etc.

Sexual assault generally has the lowest rates of reporting, investigation, prosecution and conviction of any violent crime, Professor Jordan says.

"And when you think about it, that's amazing, given that it's usually also the second-most serious crime on our criminal law statutes."

The statistics are grim. And the reality could be worse, says Karen Willis, executive officer at Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia.

She says an unknown number of sexual assault cases fall through the cracks at the front desk of the police station.

It is "reasonably common" for general duties officers who are not specially trained in sexual assault investigation
— including understanding trauma, assessing credibility, and appropriate methods of questioning — to try to dissuade sexual assault complainants, she explains.

"They'll say, 'You don't have a case. It's not worth it. Don't worry about it.'
"And unfortunately what can also happen is when frontline officers say, 'Don't worry about it', there's very little, if any, record of that complaint."

I was having drinks and I fell asleep in the armchair that I was sitting on.
And that's when a security guard actually came and asked me if I was okay.
I don't remember what I said but a man came up to me and started talking to me …

It felt like he was leading me out but we were walking hand-in-hand …
I just remember my mind being completely blank. Another security person came and asked if I was okay as I was walking out of there.
I didn't say anything.

Then we got into a taxi and went to his house, which I don't really remember either.
And I was told that there was footage of me asleep in the backseat of the taxi.

And then I basically just remember that everything was blurry and fuzzy, and I just remember him doing things to me.
I wasn't even staying awake. My eyes just kept closing.
I was upstairs, folding clothes, keeping out of their way … He came upstairs. He had this look on his face, like,
"I'm not going anywhere". He slapped me and pushed me down, and raped me.

When he pushed me I actually called out, "Sweetheart, Mummy will be down soon" … and then I let it happen.
I just let it happen. I couldn't scream, I couldn't do anything …
I kept my mouth shut the whole time because my son was downstairs. My instinct was to protect my son. What if he had come upstairs?


I was travelling in south east Asia by myself... I met these two Canadian brothers who were my age and we got along really well,
got into hiking and stuff. One night we went out.
I was really Christian, very sheltered. I was 21 and a virgin — you know, super innocent — so I had, like, two drinks
… and then found I couldn't physically walk. I asked one of the brothers, "Can you please help me get to my bungalow?"

By the end he was physically carrying me. He put me down in a chair at the front and I said,
"I'm not going to sleep with you, but can you please open my door and put me to bed?
I can't walk. I don't want to have sex with you."

He put me into bed and then started having sex with me anyway.
But I was so out of it I couldn't really speak and I couldn't really hold myself.
I just didn't know what was going on and I was really disoriented.

I said, "I've never had sex before." He said, "Oh, I must be a pretty special guy then"
… I said, "No" and "I can't move" but I just couldn't do anything...
Then when he left, he flicked on the lights. I was sobbing and there was blood, and he said,
"Oh, just for a peek." And then he shut the lights off and left.


Nationally, just under 60 per cent of sexual assault investigations remain unsolved or "not finalised",
according to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the period 2010-18 (shown in the charts above and below).

They also show investigation outcomes vary significantly by jurisdiction,
with police in NSW and the ACT half as likely as police in Victoria and four times less likely
than police in Tasmania to finalise sexual assault cases by arrest or other legal action.

Kristin Diemer, a University of Melbourne sociologist and expert in violence against women,
says her research with Victoria Police found the biggest predictor of investigation outcomes for family violence matters was senior management.

"[Police] are constantly being retrained and retrained. They're just trying to keep them in the middle zone," Diemer says.

"But where you have good senior-level management who are really monitoring what's going on and have
… the right belief system that would support sexual assault reporting or family violence reporting,
then you get a workforce who actually implement the code of practice the way that they should."

Carolyn Worth, manager of Melbourne's South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault (SECASA)
and a veteran in the field, says police commands are like any other organisation.
"Just like large organisations tend to reflect the CEO, I think some stations reflect the senior sergeant."

This can have a defining effect because, in many cases, the senior sergeant makes the final decision on whether a brief of evidence is authorised for prosecution.

I remember the investigation, how anxious I was for those few weeks,
how much hope I had that he would at least get charged and how happy I was when they arrested him because I thought,
"Well, he's going to be held accountable in some way."

But then I was in Starbucks when the detective rang me and told me [he wasn't going to be charged]
and I started crying. And for weeks I couldn't say, "They didn't charge him" without crying. I couldn't say it.

I sat in court and heard cases about rape within marriage. There was one case that was so bad I actually vomited in the foyer of the courthouse.
I thought, "I can't do this … No way. If I'm not well, who's going to parent my child?
If I have a mental breakdown, if I'm not coping, if the trial drags on, etc. etc."

I was going through all the steps and thinking, "I can't. What if I'm not there for my child?"


You literally have to fight tooth and nail to have [your case] progressed.
And it's not just the police itself, it's the whole system that's very disturbing because it's like the victim is on trial the whole way through.
It's like I'm doing time for a crime I didn't do …

And then if you happen to be lucky enough for it to progress further and then you go through the judicial system,
the victim is the one that's continually being traumatised … It's the victim that gets crucified the whole way through.


I didn't want him to go to jail. I was just hoping that they would question him about it.
I wanted him to have a moment of answering to somebody else, of answering to a man about why you completely disregarded what a woman had specifically told you …

I just wanted him to have — like I also had — that moment of reckoning, of really realising that what he did was an actual crime.

Jessica's case didn't make it past the police because the brief of evidence was not authorised.
It meant that even though police had arrested her attacker, he would not be charged.

"My detective was actually really nice and I don't really want to diss her because
… it wasn't entirely her choice whether to press charges or not, either, really," Jessica* says.

The 35-year-old was sexually assaulted in 2017 by a man who approached her while she was heavily intoxicated at a bar in Melbourne.
She reported the assault immediately afterwards.

On the other hand, communications consultant Ruby Claire says she has seen some positive signs from top-ranking NSW Police.

The 25-year-old says the negative experience of reporting her own sexual assault spurred her to write a letter of complaint
to NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller calling for an overhaul of police communication about sexual violence.

Within weeks, she had met with Sex Crimes Squad Commander John Kerlatec and representatives from
the NSW Police corporate communications team. She says her work with NSW Police has already led to a range of initiatives, including memes for social media about consent.

Beyond the police

Sexual assault counsellor Simone McDonnell says there is "a gigantic disconnect" between the
foundational principles of our legal system and the reality of how sex crimes take place.

"It's appropriate that crimes should have to be proven so you don't just go around prosecuting people who are innocent," she says.

"But the whole nature of how the law works — in tandem with the way the police investigate crimes — is a horror show for victims of sexual assault."

The legal principle of "innocent until proven guilty", for example, takes on a whole different meaning in the "typical" rape case.
When it's one person's word against another's, the presumption that the accused is innocent is also a presumption that the victim is lying.

"When they say 'there's no evidence', actually what they mean is they believe the perpetrator over me," says sexual assault survivor Lara.
The 32-year-old says police told her that her case couldn't be progressed because it was "my word against his".

Ultimately, both the community and the justice system need to change, experts say.
Because even if police and prosecutors bring more sexual assault cases to court, survivors won't necessarily find more sympathy among jurors.

"Juries aren't trained in how to understand victim trauma," Professor Jordan says.
Like the rest of the community, they are steeped in false beliefs about what constitutes "real" rape and how "real" rape victims should behave.
"We're asking them to make sense of really complex dynamics that psychologists and scientists are still trying to unravel and understand themselves."

Mia* says she withdrew her sexual assault complaint after seeing "the disgusting way" rape survivors were treated in court.
Mia

I didn't even tell her [my therapist] about the sexual violence until 15 months later.
I would talk about anything else, anything else — in detail, minute detail. I could not talk about the sexual assault.

To be frank, even all these years later I haven't sorted it out.
"I think it was the sheer humiliation and the total control that he had over me, physically ..."
It was just so barbaric and so inhumane.

"They warned me: 'His defence lawyers will tear you apart on the stand' but that wasn't enough for me,
so I sat in court and heard cases about rape within marriage," the 50-year-old says.

One case was so bad Mia vomited in the foyer.

"When you're in crisis mode, you're just trying to survive. Have a shower. Put food on the table.
Get your child to school," she says.

"I couldn't imagine having a defence lawyer putting me on the stand and tearing me apart at a time when I was barely surviving.
I couldn't fathom it. It would have broken me."

For all these reasons, an increasing number of survivors are seeking alternative pathways to justice,
such as the restorative justice program run by Melbourne's South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault (SECASA).

In this world-first initiative, sexual violence survivors confront alleged perpetrators in mediated sessions,
often with an agreement that whatever is revealed cannot be used to incriminate the alleged perpetrator.

"The purpose of those sessions is for the victim to find some way to make sense of what happened," says SECASA manager Carolyn Worth.
However, advocates insist the availability of alternative pathways should not be seen as negating the need to improve the criminal justice system.
Photo of advocate and sexual assault survivor Bri Lee

Advocate and sexual assault survivor Bri Lee says improving the system "isn't rocket science". Darcy Starr
Sexual assault survivor Bri Lee is among those leading the campaign for legal reform in Queensland.

"We can better support survivors in a multitude of simple, practical ways, most of which come down to resource allocation and priorities," she says.
Sexual assault support services:

Canberra Rape Crisis Centre (24 hours): 02 6247 2525
1800 Respect national helpline: 1800 737 732
Lifeline (24 hour crisis line): 131 114
Beyond Blue: 1300 224 636

As a starting point, she suggests three changes: having officers specifically trained in sexual trauma support and responses;
making a fast-track list for sex crime matters so that these matters don't drag on for years and;
having a support person for each complainant who stays with them throughout the process, from the police investigation through to the trial.

"None of this is rocket science," she says. "The only reason these practices aren't nationwide already
is because sex crime still isn't treated like the insidious epidemic it is."