Pearls and Irritations

International Women’s Day celebrates how far women have come, and how far we have yet to go.

In the early 1990s, we hailed the revolution of Women’s Refuges. I and my children lived in one such shelter for 10 weeks. There, I received protection and the breathing space to consider how we were all going to proceed with our lives. Navigating the crisis was the first step but it took a long time after that before the new way of relating with my former husband and my children’s father settled into a reasonably amicable arrangement.

In 2012, I welcomed Julia Gillard’s announcement of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. After years of counselling about being abused as a child, adolescent, and young adult, graduating from university for the fourth time, and having conducted PhD research into issues of sexuality and gender in the Roman Catholic Church, I was well and truly ready to report my experience. I finally had a sufficient vocabulary for recounting what happened to me, the frameworks of understanding as to why there is gender inequality, and the capacity to reflect on the consequences of sexual/gender violence.

Now, having looked through the lens of 2021, we are called upon to strive for safer, fairer and more just environments in which to work and live. These are the conditions of equality which Australians are yet to achieve. It is an aspiration that stretches across generations, and I hope to see that trajectory being realised in an outcome that will make my grand daughter’s life a lot easier than mine.

The ambition for gender equality, however, will not be achieved if the justice system works for survivors alone. It must also work for perpetrators. How that is to happen has not yet been fully considered.

To date, the conversation on what to do mainly asserts that we, as a society, must punish perpetrators, mainly men. Indeed, retribution is high on the list for dealing with sexual crimes that otherwise empower masculinised genders and subordinate feminised ones. However, punishment merely produces the same outcome that was enacted in the crime. One party – the survivor is elevated; the other party – the perpetrator is rendered inferior.

But before progressing this comment, I want to make some things clear. There is a real need for places and practices to assist victims and perpetrators in the heat of a crisis. These turning points in fraught relationships can be dangerous. Conditions of instability are unsettling and many a human has come unstuck by the turmoil that is being presented. Anger, fear and anxiety are commonly at play and make it hard to make sensible decisions about what is to be done.

I also agree that there is a place for punishment. The scales of justice must be righted.  However, I remain wary of calls for conventional penalties, like sending perpetrators off to prison to serve out lengthy sentences. In these situations, “us” and “them” become entrenched.  So much research bears that out. Once a person is branded a perpetrator of sexual violence, there is little likelihood of turning back. That label often sticks to the perpetrator’s name and reputation, frustrating or preventing economic and social recovery. It also has consequences for their parents, siblings and children. No wonder some victims of sexual assault don’t report.

In 2014, I engaged in an in-prison restorative justice event, not with those that had offended against me directly but with “surrogate” offenders. I learnt that one such offender was seriously victimised as a little boy before he became an adult domestic violence perpetrator. Trauma was wrapped up in his crime. I know that is no excuse but telling him to “stop,” as some believe is sufficient, will not help him. The same goes with prison programs that focus merely on his deficits or “thinking errors”. His future will remain bleak if he does not receive subsequent restorative opportunities. I also learnt that he is also a father of a little boy.

As for me, sharing the hurt and working out the damage of crimes inflicted upon me with a counsellor has its place. Sharing my story in a room filled with four other visiting victims and twelve incarcerated offenders took me to another level. That event challenged me to take my place “at the table” and to share with others from a position of equality. I finally found my “public” voice and discovered my confidence as I spoke of being harmed. In return, the others listened profoundly. Afterwards, they affirmed me in my journey.

In events informed by restorative justice principles, we recognise that crime, first and foremost, is a violation of people and relationships. Those violations create obligations. They involve victims, offenders, and other stakeholders in an effort to repair the harm, to “put things right.”

Today, I advocate for restorative justice in the criminal justice system. This form of justice provides opportunities to people damaged by crime to re-narrate their life stories as “survivors.” It can also assist in the rehabilitation of perpetrators by encouraging a genuine acceptance of accountability, sincere expression of remorse and a personal journey or transformation. Communities, too, have a role to play in addressing and preventing harm that moves beyond punishment towards healing.

I know that healing is an experience of wholeness to be realised by individuals. I have also learnt that healing should be fostered in relationships, for it is only in our fair, just and caring dealings with each other that gender equality can be truly achieved.

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