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| Grace Tame Australian of the Year 2021 Image: australianoftheyear.org.au |
On Wednesday 3 March 2021, Australian of the Year, 26 year-old Grace Tame gave a televised National Press Club of Australia Address.
This is the news.com.au published transcript of that address. It does not include the question and answer period at the end of the address:
“In April of 2010, I was battling severe anorexia. Truth be told, I still am.
“This illness had nearly taken my life the year prior, and seen me hospitalised twice. Bone thin and downed in fine down hairs from malnourishment, I was picked on for the way I looked. My mum was eight months pregnant at 45. I was a 15-year-old student at a private girls’ school in Hobart.
“I arrived later to discover the rest of my Year 10 classmates were attending a driving lesson off campus I had completely forgotten about. Lapses like this weren’t uncommon – I was barely there. One of the senior teachers saw me walking around aimlessly in the courtyard. He was very well respected, the head of maths and science at the school for nearly 20 years. He taught me in Year 9. I thought he was funny. He told me he had a free period and asked me to chat with him in his office. He asked me about my illness, I talked, he listened. He promised to help me, to guide me in my recovery.
“As a teenager with no frame of reference, and thinking nothing odd of this, I told my mother about the conversation. My parents had a meeting with the school principal, requesting the teacher stay away from me. In (a) meeting I then had, I think to apologise to him for putting him in this position in front of the principal. I was told I had done something wrong.
“Thus, the first seeds of terror, confusion, and self-doubt were sewn in my mind. Indeed, it didn’t make sense. In secret, he was adamant I still come to see him. To talk. My parents were against me, he insisted. I was not to tell them because they wouldn’t understand. Pregnant women, he said, were full of hormones. That must be why my mother and I were arguing.
“He gave me a key in his office, where it was always music playing, and the same music always, Simon and Garfunkel. Over a period of months he made me feel safe. I was sexually abused as a six-year-old by an older child who told me to undress in a closet before molesting me. He told me he would never hurt me. Until he did. By way of a masterful re-enactment I didn’t see coming. With a closet. And an instruction to undress.
“Most of you know the story from there. That is, how I lost my virginity to a 58-year-old paedophile and spent the next six months being raped by him at school nearly every day on the floor of his office. When I reported him to police, he found 28 multimedia files of child pornography on his computer. As per the lasting impact of and manipulative grooming and a four months after the abuse, I effectively defended him in my statement. I was terrified he would find out I betrayed him and he would kill me. He was two years in jail for maintaining a sexual relationship with a person under the age of 17.
“Repairing myself in the aftermath of all this was not a simple, linear undertaking. For every step forward, there were steps back and to the side, and some almost off the edge. I saw counsellor after counsellor. But I also abused drugs, drank, moved overseas, cut myself, threw myself into study, dyed my hair, made amazing friendships, got ugly tattoos, worked for my childhood hero, found myself in violent relationships, practised yoga, even became a yoga teacher.
“I starved, I binged, and I starved again. One of the toughest challenges on my road to recovery was trying to speak about something we were taught is unspeakable. I felt completely disconnected from myself and everyone around me. Many people didn’t know how to respond. That said, the ones who listened, the ones who were eager to understand, even when they couldn’t, made all the difference.
“Still, the doubt lingered. How could I have been so stupid, as to not see what this man was doing from the outset? Was it my fault? Should I have known it was a lie when he said he learned more from me than any of his other students? Maybe I should have been more alarmed when he asked me if I knew where my clitoris was. It was when the perpetrator was released after serving 19 months for abusing me, correction, maintaining a sexual relationship with me as a 15-year-old, and then spoke freely to the media about how awesome it was, I realised we had this all around the wrong way.
“Add the fact this man was awarded a federally funded PhD scholarship to the only university in my state. My mother was studying there. She soon dropped out because of his presence. In fact, he was put in student accommodation. Despite multiple reports to police by fellow students of his predatory behaviour, and once again convicted and jailed for his vulgar public comments during his PhD tenure, he was eventually awarded a doctorate.
“After all this, it became quite obvious to me why child sex abuse remains ubiquitous in our society, while predators retain the power to get what they want, to objectify their targets through free speech, the innocent, survivors and bystanders alike, are burdened by a shame-induced silence.
“I connected with groundbreaking fellow survivor and journalist, Nina Funnell. I needed to raise awareness and educate others about sexual abuse and the prolonged psychological manipulation that belies it. After months of recounting, retraumatising details, tearfully transposed by Nina, we discovered we were barred by section 194k of Tasmania’s evidence act, that made it illegal for survivors of child sexual abuse to be identified by the media, even after turning 18, even with their consent. Nina created the Let Her Speak campaign to reform this law. We were then joined by 16 other brave survivors who lent their stories to the cause. The law was officially changed in April last year, almost 10 years to the day from the beginning of my story.
“It is so important for our nation, the whole world, in fact, to listen to survivors’ stories. “Whilst they’re disturbing to hear, the reality of what goes on behind closed doors is more so. And the more details we omit for fear of disturbance, the more we soften these crimes. The more we shield perpetrators from the shame that is resultedly misdirected to their targets. “When we share, we heal, reconnect, and grow. Both as individuals and as a united strengthened collective. History, lived experience, the whole truth, unsanitised, and unedited, is our greatest learning resource. It is what informs social and structural change. The upshot of allowing predators a voice but not survivors encourages the criminal behaviour.
“Through working with Nina, finally winning the right to speak, and talking with fellow campaign survivors and countless other women and men who have since come forward, it has become clear that there is the potential to do so much more to support survivors of child sexual abuse to thrive in life, beyond their trauma. And more so, to end child sexual abuse. It is my mission to do so. And it begins right now. As a fortunate nation, we have a particular obligation to protect our most vulnerable. Our innocent children, and especially those further disadvantaged through circumstance, being part of a minority group, or geographical location. And there are three key areas that we can focus on to achieve this.
“Number one, how we invite, listen, and accept the conversation, and lived experience of child sexual abuse survivors. You have heard me say it before, it all starts with conversation. Number two, what we do to expand our understanding of this heinous crime, in particular, the grooming process, through both formal and informal education. Number three, how we provide a consistent national framework that supports survivors and their loved ones, not just in their recovery, but also to disempower and deter predators from action.
“So, what is it that we must do? First and foremost, let’s keep talking about it. It’s that simple. Let’s start by opening up. It is up it us as a community, as a country, to create a space, a national movement where survivors feel supported and free to share their truths. Let’s drive a paradigm shift of shame away from those who have been abused and onto abusive behaviour. Let’s share the platform to remind all survivors that their individual voice matters amongst the collective. Every story is imbued with unique catalytic educative potential that can only be told by the subject. Let us genuinely listen, actively, without judgment, and without advice to demonstrate empathy and reinsure it never was our fault. Further to this point, while I must express my unflinching gratitude for this new-found platform, I would like to take this particular opportunity to directly address the media with a constructive reminder – the need for which has become starkly apparent to me this past month.
“Hosts, reporters, journalists, I say to you – listening to survivors is one thing – repeatedly expecting people to relive their trauma on your terms, without our consent, without prior warning, is another. It’s sensation. It’s commodification of our pain. It’s exploitation. It’s the same abuse. Of all the many forms of trauma, rape has the highest rate of PTSD. Healing from trauma does not mean it’s forgotten, nor the symptoms never felt again. Trauma lives on in ourselves. Our unconscious bodies are steps ahead of our conscious minds. When we’re triggered, we’re at the mercy of our emotional brain. In this state, it’s impossible to discern between past and present. Such is retraumatisation.
“I cried more than once while writing this. Just because I’m been recognised for my story doesn’t mean it’s fair game anywhere, any time. It doesn’t get any easier to tell. I may be strong, but I’m human, just like everyone else. By definition, truths cannot be forced. So grant us the respect and patience to share them on our own terms, rather than barking instructions like take us back to your darkest moment, and ‘tell us about being raped’. The cycle of abuse cannot be broken simply by replaying case histories, we cannot afford to back track. Else, we’ll go around in circles, trapped in a painful narrative, and we’ll all get tired, both as speakers and listeners. We’ll want to switch off and give up. And retreat once more into silence.
“On average, it takes 23.9 years for survivors of child sexual abuse to be able to speak about their experiences. Such is the success of predators at instilling fear and self-doubt in the minds of their targets. More so than they are masters of destroying our trust in others, perpetrators are masters of destroying our trust in our own judgment. In ourselves. Such is the power of shame. A power, though, that is no match for love. When I disclosed my abuse to another of my teachers, Dr William Simon, his absolute belief in me was the only assurance I needed to tell the police. It helped me recover a little of my lost faith in humanity. There certainly isn’t a single rigid solution. Solutions will naturally come in due course by allowing and enabling voices to be heard.
“Certainly, talking about child sexual abuse won’t eradicate it, but we can’t fix a problem we don’t discuss, so it begins with conversation. Which brings me to my second point: from there, we need to expand the conversation to create more awareness and education. Particularly around the process of grooming.
“Grooming – it’s a concept that makes us wince and shudder and as such, we rarely hear about it. To the benefit of perpetrators. While it haunts us, and we avoid properly breaking it down, the complexity and secrecy of this criminal behaviour is what predators thrive on. In turn, we enable them to charm and manipulate not just their targets, but all of us at once, family, friends, colleagues and community members, and this must stop. Our discomfort, our fear, and resulting ignorance needs to stop giving perpetrators the power and confidence that allows them to operate.
“As a start, we should all be aware of what has been identified as the six phases of grooming, that certainly ring true in my experience. Number one, targeting. That is, identifying a vulnerable individual. In my case, I was an innocent child, but I was anorexic, with significant change happening at home. Number two, gaining trust. That is, establishing a friendship and falsely lulling the target into a sense of security, by empathising and assuring safety. For me, that is what I thought was listening to my challenges. Empathising with my situation, and providing me a safe space to retreat to when I needed it. Number three, filling a need. That is, playing the person that fills the gap in a target’s mental and emotional support. In my case, although I was surrounded by an incredibly attentive family and team of medical professionals, most of their support came in the form of tough love. The teacher thus assumed the role of sympathiser, telling me what I wanted to hear. Number four, isolating, driving wedges between the target and their genuine supporters. This involves pushing certain people away, but exploiting others. I remember studying the film Iron Jawed Angels in history. The main character is force fed, much like I had been. Aware of my distress upon seeing this, my history teacher quietly led me out of the classroom. I said nothing. But she took me straight to his office. Where she left me with him. Panicked, in tears. It wasn’t until many years later I questioned why she and other staff would take me to him when I was upset. Staff he privately mocked and referred to as ‘the menopausal virgins club’. He must have told them. Number five, sexualising. That is, gradually introducing sexual content as to normalise it. In my case, in conjunction with subtly explicit conversation, I was carefully exposed to material that glorified relationships between characters with significant age differences. There was one film in particular he made me watch, called The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the last line of which, ‘Give me a girl at an impressible age, and she is mine for life’.
“And remember how I said Simon and Garfunkel was always playing? Their music was the soundtrack to The Graduate. He made me watch that too. It was, both literally and figuratively, The Sound of Silence. You know the lyrics. The vision that was planted in my brain, still remains, within The Sound of Silence. Number six, maintaining control. That is, striking a perfect balance between causing pain and providing relief from that pain. To condition the target to feel guilt at the thought of exposing a person that also appears to care for them. Abusers scare you into silent submission. At over six foot, he towered above me. He once told me a story about a friend of his who sought revenge on a woman by digging her eyes out with a spoon. He told me he killed people as a soldier. He’d also sit outside on my street at night in his car, to watch me undress through the window. I was already embarrassed by my shape as a young teenager in eating disorder recovery. I remember standing naked behind his desk after he had just raped me, and asking him if he thought I was fat. He looked me up and down and said, ‘You could do with some more exercise’. Like I was a dog. But he also told me I was beautiful. See, how it is all stiflingly, painfully complex?
“But as we talk more about child sexual abuse, our lived experiences and what we know, our understanding of this premeditated evil will continue to develop. We need to warn our children, age appropriately, of the signs and characteristic behaviours, while educating how to report it, should it happen to them, or to those around them. This is a serious enough topic, unfortunately too common in occurrence for us to hope that kids know this. So I challenge our education system to look for ways to more formally educate our children. Because we know that education is our primary means of prevention.
“And finally, to my third point, we need structural change. A national system that supports and protects survivors and deals with crimes in proportion to their severity. Let’s start by considering the implications of linguistics related to offences. Through Let Her Speak campaign efforts, we saw the wording of my abuser’s charge officially changed from maintaining a sexual relationship to a person under 17, to the persistent sexual abuse of a child. Think about the difference in the crime according to the language of both of these. Think about the message it sends to the community. Think about the message it sends survivors. Where empathy is placed, where blame is placed, and how punishment is then given. We need to protect our children not just from the physical, mental, and emotional pain of these hideous crimes, but from the long lasting sometimes lifelong trauma that accompanies it. Whilst national structural change is no small feat, nor is educating our children on the dangers and the complexities of grooming, it is work that needs to be done and we need to start somewhere.
“Let’s start by reviewing our linguistics and agreeing between ourselves. We have eight different state and territory jurisdictions and eight different definitions of consent. We need to agree on something as absolute as what consent is. We need a uniform, state and federal, national standard definition of consent. Only then can we effectively teach this fundamentally important principle consistently around Australia.
“Since I was announced as Australian of the Year just over a month ago, hundreds of fellow child sexual abuse survivors have reached out to me to tell their stories. To cry with me. Stories they thought they would take with them to the grave, out of shame for being subjected to something that was not their fault. Stories of a kind of suffering they had previously never been able to explain. Stories of grooming. I am one of the luckiest ones. Who survived, who was believed, who was surrounded by love.
“And what this shows me is that despite this problem still existing, and despite a personal history of trauma that is still ongoing, it is possible to heal, to thrive, and live a wonderful life. It is my mission and my duty as a survivor and as a survivor with a voice to continue working towards eradicating child sexual abuse. I won’t stop until it does.
“And so, I leave you with these three messages – number one, to our government – our decision-makers, and our policymakers – we need reform on a national scale. Both in policy and education. To address these heinous crimes so they are no longer enabled to be perpetrated. Number two, to my nation, the wonderful people of Australia – we need to be open, to embrace the conversation, new information, and take guidance from our experiences so we can inform change. So we can heal and prevent this happening to future generations.
“Number three, and finally, to my fellow survivors – it is our time. We need to take this opportunity. We need to be bold and courageous. Recognise that we have a platform on which I stand with you in solidarity and support. Share your truth. It is your power. One voice, your voice, and our collective voices can make a difference. We are on the precipice of a revolution whose call to action needs to be heard loud and clear. That’s right. You got it. Let’s keep making noise, Australia.”
