To stop sex abuse, we must discuss it

In 2010, I was battling severe anorexia. This illness had nearly taken my life the year prior and seen me hospitalised twice and tube-fed. I’d just stopped living with my father for the first time since I was born, and my mother was eight months pregnant.

I was a 15-year-old student at a private all-girls school in Hobart. One morning after an outpatient check-up, I arrived late to discover the rest of my year 10 classmates were at a driving lesson off campus that I’d completely forgotten about.

One of the senior teachers saw me walking around the courtyard and asked me to chat with him in his office. He asked about my illness. I talked. He listened. He promised to guide me in my recovery.

As a teenager with no frame of reference, and therefore thinking nothing odd, I told my father about our chat when I came home that day. My parents met with the school principal soon after, requesting that he stay away from me.

The teacher was adamant that I still come to see him. To talk. My parents were against me, he insisted. I was not to tell them, because they simply wouldn’t understand. Pregnant women, he said, were full of hormones. That must have been why my mother and I were arguing.

Over a period of months, he built my trust to a point where I felt safe sharing my fears and past trauma that underpinned my illness, like my experience of being sexually abused as a six-year-old by an older child.

He told me he would never hurt me. Until he did. 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.

When I finally reported him to the police, I effectively defended him in my statement. Only 16, I was terrified he would find out and that he would kill me. He was sentenced to 2 years and 10 months in jail for ‘‘maintaining a sexual relationship with a person under the age of 17”.

One of the toughest challenges on my road to recovery was trying to speak about something that we are 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.

After all this, it became quite obvious to me why child sexual abuse remains ubiquitous in our society: because while predators retain the power to get exactly what they want and to feign remorse, the innocent - survivors and bystanders alike - are burdened by shame-induced silence.

It is so important to listen to survivors’ stories. Whilst they are 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 misdirected to their targets.

When we share, we heal, reconnect and grow. History; lived experience; the whole truth, unsanitised and unedited – is our greatest learning resource. It is what informs change.

As a fortunate nation, we have an obligation to protect our innocent children, and especially those who are further disadvantaged through circumstance or by geography.

We need to invite, listen and accept the conversation and lived experience of child sexual abuse survivors, expand our understanding of this heinous crime, in particular the grooming process - and provide a consistent national framework that supports survivors and their loved ones .

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.

This topic is unfortunately too common in occurrence for us to hope that kids know this, so education is our primary means of prevention.

To my fellow survivors I say it is our time. We need to take this opportunity. Share your truth. It is your power.

This is an edited extract of a speech Australian of the Year Grace Tame delivered at the National Press Club. For support, call the National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line 1800 737 732 or Lifeline 13 11 14.