“The ABS Personal Safety Survey estimates that one in six women and one in 25 men have experienced sexual assault since the age of 15, and one in 10 women and one in 20 men have experienced childhood sexual abuse,” reports a group of leading advocates calling for critical sexual assault prevention funding.
After the ACT Government called for community input to “reinvigorate prevention and responses to sexual violence” in 2021, a group of stakeholders came together to design the Take Action to Prevent, Heal and Believe report. Survivors themselves, and the Canberra community also rallied to respond.
ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner, Heidi Yates, is part of the group who designed the report and said the justice system can often be re-traumatising for sexual assault survivors.
“Only a small proportion of sexual offence complaints progress to pressing charges – 16 per cent of matters result in a charge being laid. The majority of survivors made the difficult and personal choice to make a report to police and then they don’t see the matter progressed,” Ms Yates said.
“I welcome the ACT Government’s recent announcement to fund a review of matters that haven’t progressed through ACT Policing in the last 18 months to better understand why the majority of matters are falling out of the system before charges are pressed.
“I’m looking forward to working with the Police, the DPP, and the Coordinator-General for Family Safety on this matter. Another retraumatising issue is when reports to police are made, and investigations stretch for months and years, and many survivors do not receive regular updates.”
The collective group of stakeholders includes: ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner; the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Consultative Committee for the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response steering committee; Canberra Rape Crisis Centre; social justice advocate Dianne Lucas AM; Domestic Violence Crisis Service; Sexual Health and Family Planning ACT; Women’s Legal Centre ACT; ADACAS; Advocacy for Inclusion (incorporating People with Disabilities ACT Inc); and YWCA Canberra. They are calling on the ACT Government to “commit to action by funding the recommendations and actions in the report”.
“As this report highlighted, sexual violence is a pervasive and unacceptable problem in the ACT and around Australia,” the group stated.
“This violence has a profound, negative impact on a victim-survivor, their loved ones and community. Worse still, victim-survivors tell us that interacting with support services and the justice system is often re-traumatising. We must immediately invest in the ACT’s response system to reduce the re-traumatisation of victim-survivors.
“Tackling sexual violence is complex and multi-faceted, but the recommendations from this report are comprehensive, providing a clear way forward, including towards culturally safe services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander victim-survivors. The ACT Government will soon be considering its forthcoming budget.
“Today we urge government to seize this opportunity for change, to draw on the report’s recommendations, survivor testimonies, and our decades of frontline experience to resource evidence-based prevention and survivor-centred responses to sexual violence.
“Victim-survivors have again placed their trust in us, by telling their stories in this report. To government, we say: Don’t let them down. Let’s meet their bravery and resilience with a public commitment to adequately fund reform, support services and the prevention of future harm.”
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