Category Archives: crime
Kidnapping in Nigeria
Man to face court over alleged rape of Brittany Higgins
AAP/Dean Lewins
Michelle Grattan, University of CanberraA man has been summonsed to face court over the alleged rape of former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins.
A statement from ACT police on Friday afternoon said the man, aged 26, had been summonsed to appear in court for an alleged sexual assault in 2019.
“Police will allege the man had sexual intercourse without consent at Parliament House on Saturday, 23 March 2019,” the statement said.
It said detectives from ACT Policing’s Criminal Investigations – Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Team had first received a report about the matter in April 2019.
“The investigation remained open and in February 2021 a formal complaint was made. Detectives have since spoken to a number of witnesses and collected evidence as part of the investigation,” the statement said.
It said that on Friday officers “served the man’s legal representative with a summons to appear before the ACT Magistrates Court on September 16 2021.
“The man will face one charge of sexual intercourse without consent”.
The maximum penalty is 12 years jail.
Higgins, who in 2019 was a staffer in the office of Linda Reynolds, then defence industry minister, alleged a colleague raped her in the minister’s office.
Higgins’ making public her allegation had seismic political consequences.
Reynolds faced extensive criticism over her handling of the matter and was moved from her position of defence minister in a subsequent cabinet reshuffle.
Inquiries were set up into the political culture at Parliament House, including one by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins, who is to present her final report later this year.
After a review by Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet’s deputy secretary Stephanie Foster, there is to be a one-hour, face-to-face training session for parliamentarians and staff on sexual harassment. The government has made it mandatory for ministers and Coalition staffers to attend.
A body is also being set up to deal with complaints about behaviour in the parliamentary workplace.
Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Pakistan and Violence Against Women
Criminal Tribunal for the War in Yugoslavia
What is drink spiking? How can you know if it’s happened to you, and how can it be prevented?
Nicole Lee, Curtin University and Jarryd Bartle, RMIT UniversityRecent media reports suggest drink spiking at pubs and clubs may be on the rise.
“Drink spiking” is when someone puts alcohol or other drugs into another person’s drink without their knowledge.
It can include:
- putting alcohol into a non-alcoholic drink
- adding extra alcohol to an alcoholic drink
- slipping prescription or illegal drugs into an alcoholic or non-alcholic drink.
Alcohol is actually the drug most commonly used in drink spiking.
The use of other drugs, such as benzodiazepines (like Rohypnol), GHB or ketamine is relatively rare.
These drugs are colourless and odourless so they are less easily detected. They cause drowsiness, and can cause “blackouts” and memory loss at high doses.
Perpetrators may spike victims’ drinks to commit sexual assault. But according to the data, the most common type of drink spiking is to “prank” someone or some other non-criminal motive.
So how can you know if your drink has been spiked, and as a society, how can we prevent it?
Read more:
Weekly Dose: GHB, a party drug that’s easy to overdose on but was once used in childbirth
How often does it happen?
We don’t have very good data on how often drink spiking occurs. It’s often not reported to police because victims can’t remember what has happened.
If a perpetrator sexually assaults someone after spiking their drink, there are many complex reasons why victims may not want to report to police.
One study, published in 2004, estimated there were about 3,000 to 4,000 suspected drink spiking incidents a year in Australia. It estimated less than 15% of incidents were reported to police.
It found four out of five victims were women. About half were under 24 years old and around one-third aged 25-34. Two-thirds of the suspected incidents occurred in licensed venues like pubs and clubs.
According to an Australian study from 2006, around 3% of adult sexual assault cases occurred after perpetrators intentionally drugged victims outside of their knowledge.
It’s crucial to note that sexual assault is a moral and legal violation, whether or not the victim was intoxicated and whether or not the victim became intoxicated voluntarily.
How can you know if it’s happened to you?
Some of the warning signs your drink might have been spiked include:
- feeling lightheaded, or like you might faint
- feeling quite sick or very tired
- feeling drunk despite only having a very small amount of alcohol
- passing out
- feeling uncomfortable and confused when you wake up, with blanks in your memory about what happened the previous night.
If you think your drink has been spiked, you should ask someone you trust to get you to a safe place, or talk to venue staff or security if you’re at a licensed venue. If you feel very unwell you should seek medical attention.
If you believe your drink has been spiked or you have been sexually assaulted, seeking prompt medical attention can assist in subsequent criminal prosecution. Medical staff can perform a blood test for traces of drugs in your system.
How can drink spiking be prevented?
Most drink spiking occurs at licensed venues like pubs and clubs. Licensees and people who serve alcohol have a responsibility to provide a safe environment for patrons, and have an important role to play in preventing drink spiking.
This includes having clear procedures in place to ensure staff understand the signs of drink spiking, including with alcohol.
Preventing drink spiking is a collective responsibility, not something to be shouldered by potential victims.
Licensees can take responsible steps including:
- removing unattended glasses
- reporting suspicious behaviour
- declining customer requests to add extra alcohol to a person’s drink
- supplying water taps instead of large water jugs
- promoting responsible consumption of alcohol, including discouraging rapid drinking
- being aware of “red flag” drink requests, such as repeated shots, or double or triple shots, or adding vodka to beer or wine.
Shutterstock
A few simple precautions everyone can take to reduce the risk of drink spiking include:
- have your drink close to you, keep an eye on it and don’t leave it unattended
- avoid sharing beverages with other people
- purchase or pour your drinks yourself
- if you’re offered a drink by someone you don’t know well, go to the bar with them and watch the bartender pour your drink
- if you think your drink tastes weird, pour it out
- keep an eye on your friends and their beverages too.
What are the consequences for drink spiking in Australia?
It’s a criminal offence to spike someone’s drink with alcohol or other drugs without their consent in all states and territories.
In some jurisdictions, there are specific drink and food spiking laws. For example, in Victoria, the punishment is up to two years imprisonment.
In other jurisdictions, such as Tasmania, drink spiking comes under broader offences such as “administering any poison or other noxious thing with intent to injure or annoy”.
Spiking someone’s drink with an intent to commit a serious criminal offence, such as sexual assault, usually comes with very severe penalties. For example, this carries a penalty of up to 14 years imprisonment in Queensland.
There are some ambiguities in the criminal law. For example, some laws aren’t clear about whether drink spiking with alcohol is an offence.
However, in all states and territories, if someone is substantially intoxicated with alcohol or other drugs it’s good evidence they aren’t able to give consent to sex. Sex with a substantially intoxicated person who’s unable to consent may constitute rape or another sexual assault offence.
Getting help
In an emergency, call triple zero (000) or the nearest police station.
For information about sexual assault, or for counselling or referral, call 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
If you’ve been a victim of drink spiking and want to talk to someone, the following confidential services can help:
– Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636
– Kids Helpline (5-25 year olds): 1800 55 1800
– National Alcohol and other Drug Hotline: 1800 250 015.
Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University and Jarryd Bartle, Sessional Lecturer, RMIT University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The Brittany Higgins Story
US massage parlour shootings should ring alarm bells in Australia: the same racist sexism exists here
Damian Dovarganes/AP
Tegan Larin, Monash UniversityThe recent US shootings at massage businesses in Atlanta should ring alarm bells in Australia. Eight people were killed in the attacks, including four Korean women and two Chinese women.
US authorities are still trying to determine the exact motive behind the attack by a 21-year-old white man, who is a suspected sex buyer.
But some feminist groups, such as Asian Women for Equality, immediately identified misogynist racism as a key element behind this sort of violence. As one member of the group, Suzanne Jay, said,
Men are being trained by the prostitution industry. They’re being encouraged and allowed to orgasm to inequality. This has an impact on Asian women who have to deal with these men.
The global sex trade, feminists have argued,
increasingly contributes to the dehumanisation of all Asian women.
Indeed, it has been reported that the Atlanta shooting suspect explained the attacks were a form of vengeance to eliminate the “temptation” for his “sexual addiction”.
How Australia’s massage businesses operate
Like the US, Australia’s “massage parlours” are associated with the prostitution of Asian women. These venues, outwardly presenting as massage businesses but offering illicit sexual services, make up the majority of brothels in the city I study, Melbourne.
Australia’s commercial sex industry is regulated at the state and territory level, resulting in a patchwork of differing models.
In Victoria, massage parlours are estimated to outnumber legal brothels five-fold. My research on Melbourne’s massage parlours supports this estimate.
Read more:
Will Victoria be the first place in the world to fully decriminalise sex work?
Despite the main purpose of Victoria’s Sex Work Act to “control sex work”, the majority of Victoria’s brothels get around the legislative requirements and controls by operating under the guise of legitimate massage businesses.
Massage businesses are usually considered a general retail premises in most council areas, which do not require a planning permit or registration.
Australia’s sex industry is also heavily reliant on a culture of sexualised racism.
An analysis of online massage parlour advertising conducted as part of my research shows ads commonly feature images of Asian women in suggestive poses. The wording highlights race or ethnicity, with such phrases as “young and beautiful trained girls from Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, China and Malaysia”.
Read more:
New report shows compelling reasons to decriminalise sex work
In addition to ads, my research also examined online sex buyer review forums. These typically encourage men to include descriptions of “ethnicity, appearance, breast size”, ratings of the women’s body parts and the “services” received.
These sex buyer reviews not only demean and denigrate women, they also promote the sexualised and racist stereotypes that pervade the industry.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, a recent study of sex buyer reviews of Australia’s legal brothels found
that sex buyers actively construct and normalise narratives of sexual violation and violence against women.
The effects of sexualised racism in prostitution
This blatant racism, misogyny and male sexual entitlement is not confined to massage parlour owners or their customers. It’s also embedded in Victoria’s Sex Work Regulations.
The updated regulations now allow advertising to reference “race, colour or ethnic origin of the person offering sexual services”. This means that Victoria’s sex industry legally promotes women from minorities as an eroticised “other”.
Read more:
US has a long history of violence against Asian women
This normalisation of sexualised racism promoted by the sex trade in Australia may have wider effects.
A Korean-Canadian doctor, Alice Han, for example, recounted to the ABC being asked twice in a span of 12 hours in regional New South Wales whether she was a sex worker.
She said this exemplifies “a pattern of demeaning stereotyping and racial profiling” of Asian women in Australia, and the association of Asian women with prostitution more broadly.
Australia’s sex industry also relies on the migration and trafficking of Asian women for its survival.
Indeed, Australia’s sex industry is rife with modern slavery for the purposes of sexual exploitation. Cases have been found in both legal and illegal brothels, signalling the wholesale failure of prostitution legislation in this country.
This raises questions about the model of total decriminalisation being proposed in Victoria. This model seeks to decriminalise not only those exploited in prostitution but those who profit from them, such as pimps, brothel owners and sex buyers.
The best path forward
Australia is increasingly behind the rest of the world when it comes to approaching prostitution from a gender equality perspective.
Indeed, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has consistently reprimanded Australia for not meeting its requirements to reduce the demand for prostitution.
In order to address the mix of racism, misogyny and men’s sexual entitlement that prostitution is founded on, Australia must adopt a new national framework. The Nordic or “Equality” model offers one path forward — it decriminalises those working in prostitution, but not those who exploit them.
Ben Gray/AP
This model, which has garnered support from survivors of prostitution and anti-trafficking organisations around the world, includes robust social services to support those in the sex trade and assist them into transitioning to other industries.
We know prostitution relies on the abuse of the world’s most marginalised women and girls in order to function. It is predominantly Asian and migrant women who suffer on the front lines of Australia’s sex trade.
While the national conversation confronting society’s acceptance of sexual violence is well overdue, we cannot ignore the sexism, misogyny and racism bound up in Australia’s sex trade.
Tegan Larin, PhD Candidate Monash University XYX Lab, Monash University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Could the Morrison government’s response to sexual assault claims cost it the next election?
Jeremy Piper/AAP
Sarah Cameron, University of Sydney
Today, thousands of Australians are expected to march around the country, angry and fed up at the treatment of women. In Canberra they will form a ring of protest around Parliament House.
This comes after Melbourne academic and entrepreneur Janine Hendry wondered how many “extremely disgruntled” women it would take to link arms around parliament to tell the government “we’ve had enough” (the answer is about 4,000).
It follows Brittany Higgins’ allegation of rape in a minister’s office in 2019 and an allegation Attorney-General Christian Porter raped a 16-year-old in 1988 (which he denies). It also comes amid multiple claims of a toxic work culture at Parliament House.
While Higgins’ case has sparked numerous inquiries, she claims she was not supported in the aftermath of her alleged assault. Regarding Porter, the government is resisting calls for an independent inquiry, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison declaring him an “innocent man under our law”.
As Australia heads into another pre-election season, questions have been raised about the potential impact of recent events.
Women are obviously a significant demographic, and data shows they are already drifting away from the Liberal Party.
So, what’s at stake when it comes to women voters and the Liberals at the next election?
Gender and voting behaviour
The Australian Election Study is a nationally representative survey of voter behaviour that has run after all federal elections since 1987.
In 2019, it showed that although the Liberal-National Coalition won the federal election, the Liberal Party attracted the lowest proportion of women’s votes since 1987.
While 45% of men gave their first preference to the Liberal Party, just 35% of women did so. Parties on the political left also had an advantage among women, with 6% more women than men voting for the Greens, and a smaller margin of 3% more women voting for Labor.
Looking at the gender gap over time, we see it has actually reversed over the past 30 years. Back in the 1990s, women were slightly more likely to vote for the Liberal party, and men were more likely to vote Labor.
This has gradually switched, so men now prefer the Liberal Party and women prefer Labor. The gender gap in voting Liberal is now at its greatest point on record.
This reversal of the gender gap in voting behaviour isn’t unique to Australia, it has also been observed in other democracies including in Europe and North America.
Why are we seeing a gender gap?
There are a number of factors underpinning this transformation of gender and voting in Australia.
This includes tremendous social change, such as women’s increased participation in higher education. Higher education is associated with political ideology that is further to the left.
Women’s increased participation in the labour force is also a factor. The election study shows in 1990, 41% of union members were women, by 2019, that figure had increased to 55%.
Read more:
Labor’s election loss was not a surprise if you take historical trends into account
But womens’ voting behaviour can also be attributed to major changes in Australia’s major political parties. Back in the early 1990s, women were similarly underrepresented in both the major parties — just 13% of parliamentarians in 1990 were women.
Since then, Labor has dramatically increased its proportion of women in parliament, reaching 47% through party quotas as of the last election. The Liberal Party on the other hand, has made slower progress, reaching just 23% at the most recent election.
New research published in the journal Electoral Studies shows left-leaning women are more likely to support female candidates.
The Liberal Party’s ‘women problem’
So, even before the current crisis, the Liberal party was losing the electoral support of women.
The Liberal Party’s “women problem” has become a common criticism, not just by political opponents but also prominent Liberal Party figures including former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The current crisis has the potential to exacerbate the gender gap in voting behaviour.
That said, election results are often influenced by the most important issues at the time of the election. The salience of different issues — shaped to a large degree by media coverage — can change considerably over time.
Approval ratings of Morrison from the Essential Poll show he lost a lot of support during the bushfires in late 2019 and early 2020, which he was perceived as handling poorly.
Since then, Morrison has benefited from Australia’s relative success in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of a phenomenon known as “rallying ‘round the flag,” voters have supported him and the government during this time of crisis.
The next election
The election can be held anytime from August this year, although political observers currently expect it to be next year.
The electoral impact of current events will depend not only on the government’s response to the sexual assault allegations (and voter satisfaction with those responses), but also which issues are salient at election time. A historical sexual assault allegation against former Labor leader Bill Shorten was not a major factor in the lead up to the last election (he denies the claims and in 2014, police said they would not proceed with charges).
Read more:
Polls say Labor and Coalition in a 50-50 tie, Trump set to be acquitted by US Senate
Interestingly, the Australian Election Study shows trust in government reached its lowest point on record in 2019 with just one in four voters believing that people in government could be trusted. In contrast, three quarters thought those in government were more interested in looking after themselves.
On the issue of sexual assault, recent polling data also suggests the government is similarly perceived as putting itself first. Of those polled, 65% agreed “the government has been more interested in protecting itself than the interests of those who have been assaulted”. This includes half of Coalition voters, and a similar proportion of men and women.
Jeremy Piper/AAP
Elections are decided on many issues and factors, including what is making headlines closer to election day, and the performance of leaders and parties.
But the growing gender gap in voting will be on the radar of both major parties. The Liberal Party ignores it at its peril.
Sarah Cameron, Lecturer in Politics, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The Anzac legend has blinded Australia to its war atrocities. It’s time for a reckoning
State Library of Victoria/Wikimedia Commons
Martin Crotty, The University of Queensland and Carolyn Holbrook, Deakin University
For years, Australians have faced a steady stream of investigative media reports about atrocities allegedly committed by the country’s most elite soldiers in Afghanistan.
Yet, nothing could have prepared the nation for the breathtaking contents of the landmark report by Major General Paul Brereton into the actions of special forces, released last month after a four-year investigation. The reaction across Australia was one of horror and disbelief.
The inquiry found credible evidence to support allegations that 39 Afghan civilians were illegally killed by Australian soldiers, some having weapons planted on them to make them appear to have been combatants.
Read more:
Allegations of murder and ‘blooding’ in Brereton report now face many obstacles to prosecution
Prisoners were shot for reasons as obtuse as saving the need for a second helicopter trip. Others were allegedly killed in a practice known as “blooding”, in which new soldiers were encouraged to achieve their first “kill”. In one particularly appalling incident, special forces allegedly slit the throats of two 14-year-old boys and dumped their bodies in a river.
For most Australians, this is more than just rogue soldiers being found out for despicable behaviour. The depth of revulsion felt by many reflects the special place the country reserves for its armed forces, who have come to personify all that is best about Australia.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Where the Anzac legend originated
Military history sits at the heart of the Australian national identity — most visibly through the Anzac legend.
The word “Anzac” is an acronym for “Australian and New Zealand Army Corps”. It was coined during the early phases of the first world war, when Australians and New Zealanders were part of an allied force that landed at Gallipoli in modern-day Turkey in April 1915.
The invasion, devised by Britain’s first lord of the admiralty, Winston Churchill, was unsuccessful in its goal of reaching Constantinople and knocking the Ottoman Empire out of the war.
Archives New Zealand/Wikimedia Commons
But the young Australian nation, federated in 1901, took from the failed campaign a mythology of national birth.
Australia had been created during an age of elevated propaganda about empire, monarchy and the glory of battle. War was held to be the truest test of the character of men and nations.
In this era of “new imperialism”, the peaceful union of Australia’s six British colonies carried a taint of illegitimacy because no blood had been spilled (the frontier wars with Aboriginal peoples did not count). The British journalist Alfred Buchanan wrote in 1907 that he
pitied the little Australian […] looking to nourish the flame of patriotic sentiment, [for …] the altar has not been stained with crimson as every rallying centre of a nation should be.
So, by the first world war, it was believed that a good showing in battle would expunge the convict stain and prove Australians worthy members of the British empire.
This is why the date of the Gallipoli invasion, April 25, quickly became Australia’s most sacred national day. The young nation was drenched by a tide of khaki nationalism that has ebbed and flowed ever since.
War memorials and monuments were raised in towns and cities around the country, where citizens still gather each Anzac Day to engage in the rituals of what the late historian Ken Inglis called Australia’s “civil religion”.
Century of Pictures, Penguin Books/Wikimedia Commons
How the Anzacs continue to be revered
Beginning in the 1990s, Australian politicians have also consciously and cleverly linked this nostalgia-tinted history to the work of the modern and highly professionalised Australian Defence Force.
When the honour of Australia’s revered soldiers is questioned, so too is the national self-image.
For example, a 2011 report into the culture and personal conduct of members of the Defence Force, prompted by accusations of sexual harassment and other indiscretions, noted the Anzac legend provided an exemplar for the current military.
Read more:
Why Australian commanders need to be held responsible for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan
Similarly, in his 2015 dawn service speech on the centenary of the Gallipoli landings, then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott lauded the Anzacs for their qualities of compassion, perseverance and mateship.
In reverential tones, Abbott called them the “founding heroes of modern Australia”, said they set an example for modern day Australians to follow:
Yes, they are us; and when we strive enough for the right things, we can be more like them.
Poignantly, Ben Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most decorated contemporary soldier and among the men accused of war atrocities in Afghanistan, has also drawn inspiration from the Anzac legend.
Roberts-Smith has said that Gallipoli is “a big part of who we are as Aussies”, and reflected on his boyhood fascination with the Anzacs:
While other boys had posters of sporting heroes, I had posters of soldiers.
A history of misconduct in war
But the idealisation of this Anzac history has always required Australians turn a blind eye to uncomfortable truths.
Australian soldiers in the first world war killed prisoners, deserted in record numbers, caught venereal disease at phenomenal rates and outperformed all other Western Front forces in causing trouble.
In the second world war, Australians were often reluctant to take Japanese prisoners, choosing to illegally bayonet or shoot them instead. And Australian soldiers are known to have committed atrocities alongside their American counterparts in Vietnam, including “bloodings” and “throwdowns” (planting weapons on civilians after they were killed).
Read more:
How Anzac Day came to occupy a sacred place in Australians’ hearts
In recent years, we have become increasingly reluctant to see our Anzacs as killers, even when such killing is legitimate on military grounds.
As represented most famously in Peter Weir’s 1981 film, Gallipoli, the Anzac legend has become less about the combat ability of Australian soldiers and more about their suffering. It is war commemoration stripped down and refitted for the age of post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Anzacs that our nation so often lauds are fictional creations, shorn of the malevolence and downright murderous behaviour they frequently exhibited.
The alleged SAS atrocities do not fit this kinder, gentler version of the legend. They upend the way Australians like to imagine their armed forces, and by implication, themselves.
Tethering war to national self-image
We see two possibilities for how the current crisis will play out. The first is the alleged war crimes will slowly be forgotten, just as previous atrocities have been.
There are already signs this is happening. Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week said he remained “incredibly proud” of the ADF and emphasised that the alleged crimes were committed by “a small number in a very big defence force”. He maintained the reputation of the broader defence force would be unaffected.
Glenn Hunt/AAP
The other possibility is Australia will adopt a more realistic attitude towards its soldiers and the conflicts they fight in.
These conflicts are complex, and rarely conducted without some descent into the moral abyss. Some of our soldiers are not good people, and those that are good are capable of lapses. War is an ugly business, and we pay a price for tethering it so tightly to our national self-image.
As historians of Australia’s war experiences, we hope and wish for a national reckoning about our record of war atrocities. But as historians of Anzac, we anticipate that the great mythological behemoth will barely sway from its course in the face of these allegations.
Martin Crotty, Associate Professor in Australian History, The University of Queensland and Carolyn Holbrook, ARC DECRA Fellow at Deakin University, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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