With the amount of rape cases that have reportedly slipped through the legal system in Australia, the nation seems to have “essentially decriminalised rape” complains Greek Australian sexual abuse campaigner Chanel Contos.
Contos, who is from Sydney and now living in the UK, made her comments to a senate committee analysing sexual consent laws in Australia on Tuesday.
Included in the committee are Greens senator Larissa Waters, Liberal National senator Paul Scarr and Labor’s Nita Green, who are meeting over three days this week.
The committee’s focus is whether Australia’s sexual consent laws can be coordinated better across criminal jurisdictions, and if sexual consent should be affirmative across all of the country’s states.
The 25-year-old told the committee she supported the merging of consent laws across Australia, which would be a landmark decision, but said these reforms would not be effective in most sexual violence cases.
“These reforms would be historical and send a clear message to Australia that holding accountability for sexual violence is a national priority,” she said.
“Current legal systems fall short in acts of sexual violence committed out of opportunity, entitlement, problematic attitudes, and a misunderstanding of or disregard for consent.
“Our inability to handle this has made it (as) though, as a country, we have essentially decriminalised rape.”
She stresses that even with harmonisation of consent laws, the system will still fail to consider common responses to sexual assault such as fawning (responding to trauma by appeasing to the perpetrator, or displaying submissive behaviour).
This is adaptive survival response is said to be used against complainants or victims during trials, most likely mistaken for consent.
The Teach us Consent founder also raised the issue of pornography, that’s she says boys are increasingly consuming and has “violent” and “misogynistic” tendencies.
“We’re not taking into account enough how much pornography is shaping the sexual landscape of young people and distorting their understanding of consent,” she said.
“We can have laws, we can have conversations in classrooms, we can have all these things.
“But the reality is that the amount of hours that young Australians spend watching violent and misogynistic depictions of explicit sex will counteract all of that.”
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, nearly two million Australian adults have experienced some form of sexual assault since the age of 15, and although the high number, convictions have rarely gone above 10 per cent of cases.
Also set to come under discussion during the committee is sexual assault at Australian universities.
In 2021 a report from Universities Australia found that as many as one in six students has experienced sexual assault since beginning uni, with more than 40 per cent happening on campus.
