ON CAMPUS campusreview. com. au
Talk about it, stop it
M @ heidilapaglia
Getting people speaking and thinking about rape culture and the plight of victims is a big step towards ending the violence.
Heidi La Paglia interviewed by Patrick Avenell.
The internet recently exploded with reactions, ranging from vitriolic to darkly comedic, in the wake of Stanford University’ s Brock Turner being sentenced to just six months in jail – of which he’ ll probably serve only three – for penetrating an unconscious female student behind a dumpster near a party they had both attended.
A large amount of the interest in this US case has been focused on contrasting the victim’ s powerful 7000-word impact statement with the criminal’ s father’ s tone-deaf plea for leniency, which included a passage about his sexually assaulting son’ s waning affection for grilling ribeye steak, and a reference to his sex offender son’ s sexual assault as“ 20 minutes of action”.
In her impact statement, which went viral after she supplied a full-length version of it to the media, Turner’ s victim spoke of her anger and bewilderment at how her assailant had behaved in the aftermath of the attack and the lack of acknowledgement and responsibility Turner had displayed.
Addressing her assailant directly, Turner’ s victim attempted to sum up the situation:
“ If you think I was spared, came out unscathed, that today I ride off into sunset, while you suffer the greatest blow, you are mistaken. Nobody wins. We have all been devastated, we have all been trying to find some meaning in all of this suffering.”
Campus Review spoke with National Union of Students( NUS) national women’ s officer Heidi La Paglia about rape culture, what society can do to improve its treatment and support for victims, and what Australian universities can learn from this case.
CR: Could you start by giving us a bit of an idea of the level of acknowledgement about rape culture in Australia and how widespread a problem it is?
HLP: It’ s not a question of whether it exists. We’ ve known for a while that it is a big issue in Australia and obviously the US as well. The best evidence I have of that at the moment, other than students’ verbal stories, is the National Union of Students’ Talk About It report, which was released earlier this year. That was a national women’ s survey in which more than 70 per cent of the respondents said they’ d experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault. That is a clear indication there is a problem.
Despite growing acceptance that this is a definite and serious problem in Australia, there would still be people out there who think the issue is overstated or is not perhaps as clear cut as you say. Do you think a highly publicised case, such as Brock Turner’ s, was the kind of catalyst that was needed to bring a greater level of
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