#MeToo, page 4
.
Liddle, C., ‘Police still failing Aboriginal women’, Eureka Street, 28(12), 2018, viewed [23 October 2018],.
McGrath, A., ‘“Beneath the skin”: Australian citizenship, rights and Aboriginal women’, Journal of Australian Studies, 17(37), 1993, pp. 99–114.
McQuire, A., ‘The more things change: female black lives don’t matter. If they did, Ms Dhu would still be alive’, New Matilda, 24 November 2015, viewed [23 October 2018],.
McQuire, A., ‘Ms Dhu’s hidden pain: how to hurt an Aboriginal family without even really trying’, New Matilda, 30 March 2016, viewed [24 October 2018],.
Moreton-Robinson, A., Talkin’ up to the white woman: Aboriginal women and feminism, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2000.
NPY Women’s Council Aboriginal Corporation, Tjanpi Desert Weavers, 2012, viewed [25 October 2018],.
Pearson, L., ‘The Curtain Podcast – exploring justice for Aboriginal people’ NITV, 6 March 2017, viewed [25 October 2018],.
Verass, S., (n.d.). ‘The women fighting against a rising tide of Indigenous child removals’, NITV, n.d., viewed [25 October 2018],.
Sylvie Leber is a French-born Jew. Career wise, she’s a ‘multipotentialite’ – when she applied for a job at Trades Hall, she was told, ‘You’ve had more jobs than I’ve had hot dinners’. She’s been a biomedical scientist, tarot-card reader, community development worker, television all-rounder, state-election campaign manager, Fifi Fiasco the clown, ESL teacher, accidental falls prevention expert, rock chick, refugee and women’s rights activist, and a bit of a writer. She performed well in all of these jobs except waitressing and tap dancing.
How Come You’re So Sane?
A former partner once said to me, ‘Sylvie, you never rest on your laurels.’ Although I admire people who are humble like my parents were, I’m going to talk myself up for a change. Despite the horror and trauma you might experience – and, no, it never goes away completely – you can end up living a rich and blessed life.
My Worst Nightmare
It was 1972, and it was the first time I’d travelled solo. After my adventure living in a coastal village in Papua New Guinea I was back in Brisbane, Australia. I met up with an odd assortment of folk at a university get-together who lived in a share house known as The Commune. I stayed a couple of days and all was cool and easy. Then it was time for me to head back to Melbourne, to my share house in Carlton. I was going to hitch a lift. By then I was a pretty experienced hitchhiker. One of The Commune guys waited with me on the side of the road.
An old, dark-red Zephyr appeared, driven by a thirty-something fair-haired bloke. He was initially heading north, but then did a quick U-turn and stopped in front of us. I said goodbye to my friend and jumped in the passenger seat with my backpack. I had long, dark, straight hair and was colourful and attractive, wearing an ankle-length floral skirt and a red, short-sleeved blouse. We headed south down the highway. We drove past a tropical forest and chatted. His name was Nigel, he was married, had a child and worked as a truck driver. At one point he waved to an older woman, who was watering her front garden. Smiling, she waved back at him.
After some time, he said, ‘We’re not going down the highway from here. I know a shortcut so we don’t have to stop at the truck weigh-in station.’
We then turned down a small country road. It was lined with tall eucalypts and when I looked between them, I saw farmland in the distance. Then the car suddenly stopped. Nigel got out of the car, came around to my side, opened the door, grabbed some red nylon flex cord from the floor in front of me and pointed a flick knife at me. ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘You’re coming with me.’
I immediately knew what lay ahead. My mind separated from my body while he raped me. After he finished, we headed back to the car. He said, ‘You’re going to report me to the police, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ He didn’t want to take any risks and I realised what the red nylon cord was for. He came up behind me, put it around my neck and started to tighten it. I fought back, pulling it, scratching and biting his arms to no avail. I was going to die. I felt my consciousness slipping away. I even said goodbye to my mother in my mind and had a vision of the tunnel with the light at the end of it. Then there was nothing.
Dire Consequences
I don’t know how long I lay there, but I slowly came to. I’d soiled myself. I struggled towards the road and found my backpack. Things like my money and camera were missing, but not the grass skirts, the ceramic bowls and the handmade string bags I had collected on my travels. Then, by some miracle, looking like a floating mirage up ahead, an old man with a walking stick and his dog were crossing the road. I called out to him and approached in my dishevelled state. I said I had to get to a hospital as quickly as possible. We walked to the highway and he hailed down a car with a young couple inside. They immediately took me to Southport Hospital. I was rescued. I was physically examined by a male doctor and the police were called. Two male detectives soon arrived and asked me lots of questions and took a variety of photos of my injuries. After a couple of days’ stay in the hospital, the cops took me back to The Commune.
Then they found him. It was because of the unusual model of his car, which I’d described, and because I remembered the exact location of the woman he had waved to, in her front garden. She had told the police who my attacker was.
I stayed in Brisbane to await the committal. A woman I’ll call O became my carer and constant companion. I couldn’t cope with being on my own. I even shared her bed. She told me stories of her life, her struggle with heroin and how she decided to give it up one day when she woke up alone in a back lane after an overdose.
Driving to the magistrate’s court in Southport from Brisbane, I remember saying a few whacky things about a snakebite saving my life. When I looked at the photo evidence before the hearing, I believed I had come back from death because I’d been bitten by a snake, as there were two strange spots on my neck. There were also burn marks from the strangulation, and the whites of my eyes were completely red due to burst blood vessels.
Inside the court, there he was, in front of me. He didn’t look at me, thank goodness. The detective who had interviewed me at the hospital gave evidence; he was in tears as he spoke. This was reassuring. The magistrate announced that the trial would go ahead sometime down the track.
Back at The Commune, I wasn’t well. Admittedly there was LSD in the mix and I was hallucinating, feeling frightened. My doctor friend who lived there suggested I go to a highly reputable psych hospital. I dressed up in a theatrical costume and played the role of a harlequin so that they would agree that I was crazy and had to be admitted. I found myself in a women’s psych ward. I felt relaxed, safe and hopeful there.
I hadn’t told my parents what had happened. They had gone through so much in their lives due to the Holocaust, so I never told them about any bad stuff that happened to me. I merely told them I was robbed and that I had to stay in Queensland for the trial. The hospital staff naturally contacted my folks to tell them about my situation. Looking back, I realised that I didn’t see Mum for months. It must have been horrific for her to learn what had happened to me and I guessed she probably had some sort of nervous breakdown. I also learned that Nigel’s wife attempted suicide when she found out what he’d done. Dad flew up to get me. He’d spoken to the psychiatrist father of a school buddy of mine, who told him where to take me: Parkville Psychiatric Unit.
Not Sane
I thought of Parkville Psychiatric Unit as a bit of a low-key place for the rich. The psychiatrist I saw said she could not deal with me because I was too unconventional. I was moved to nearby Royal Park, which was pretty useless as well. After a short time, I just walked out and went on a fugue. I moved around inner Melbourne aimlessly, with no fixed address, going to events and visiting people. Friends who saw me were worried. I ended up at Labassa mansion in Caulfield, another bohemian community. I met a charming young man there who I became attached to. My folks had no idea where I was but eventually some of the Labassa folk contacted them to tell them about their concerns for me. My parents arranged for the young man to take me to emergency at the Alfred Hospital. He took me on the back of his motorbike. Strangely enough, the shrink I saw there was someone who’d gone to the same high school as me.
He committed me to Larundel Psych Hospital, where I stayed for several months. First I was in the lock-up A Ward, where I was held down and given electric shock treatment against my will and administered the strong sedative Largactil. One time I was stripped to my underwear and locked in a prison-like single cell because I’d thrown a box, emptying all its contents after being given the boring task of putting bottle tops into cellophane packaging.
Some of the other patients in A Ward would say to me, ‘What are you doing here? You’re not crazy.’ I was incorrectly diagnosed three times. In A Ward it was schizophrenia; in Fawkner House it was personality disorder; and after I was discharged from Larundel under advice to see a psychiatrist, I was told I was bipolar. Back then, soldiers were the only ones to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and it was called shell shock.
Although most of my experience at Larundel would be considered the stuff of nightmares, I had a positive experience when I was finally moved to an open ward run by Dr Daniel Kahns. He was eccentric, creative and had developed this new therapy called psychodrama, which I found useful. He had also appeared at the court case against my attacker to explain that I was in no fit state to provide evidence.
The Law
My attacker was convicted of attempted murder and got eight years. For some reason he wasn’t charged with the rape. Later he appealed against the decision and got eighteen years. Yay!
In the late 1990s I went to West Centre Against Sexual Assault (CASA) to seek support while I applied for criminal compensation from the Queensland government. I’d been advised by a Queensland lawyer a couple of years earlier not to apply, as the amount of compensation I’d get was not worth all the effort. Nevertheless, I decided to apply on principle. I had to start the process over and over again because every couple of months the lawyer I was assigned to would change.
There was also an issue with the statute of limitations (which refers to the allowable time to apply for compensation after the crime was committed). It had been over twenty years since I’d been attacked, but back then no one had told me I could apply for criminal compensation. This became a stumbling block and initially it looked like my claim was going to be knocked back.
Luckily, I had a great counsellor. She advised me to get a psychiatrist’s report to show why I had not applied earlier. The report was very detailed and described how difficult it was for me to initiate a claim any earlier as my trauma had been severe and long lasting. As a result, the claim was successful. The amount I got was truly pathetic: $5000. In Victoria I would have received $50,000 or more. The whole process took three years. What gave me great satisfaction was that my success changed the law in Queensland so that people are now able to apply much later than previously allowed if the crime has caused trauma.
The Road Back
This horrific attack happened to me around the beginning of second-wave feminism in the early 1970s. Strangely enough, while in Papua New Guinea, I had bought a copy of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, which articulated what I’d been thinking and feeling since I was a teenager.
It wasn’t long after my recovery in 1973 that I got together with a small group of feminists and set up Victoria’s first rape crisis centre. We called ourselves Women Against Rape (WAR). We were given a room upstairs at the Women’s Health Centre in Johnston Street, Collingwood, and we operated a night-time phone service for women who had been raped or sexually assaulted. We supported them, providing advice about reporting to police and attending court. We also did community education in schools and other settings. Our advocacy work, in collaboration with the Women’s Electoral Lobby, included meetings with the Victorian police to change their attitudes when women reported a rape. We also met with MPs to change the law around the legal defence tactic of bringing up a woman’s sexual past as evidence. Together with the broader Melbourne feminist movement, we organised protest marches which eventually became the Reclaim the Night rallies, marches that were part of a global movement to provide safe spaces for women against sexual violence.
One night when I was alone staffing the phone line, a man rang, saying he’d just raped a woman. I asked him where she was and he wouldn’t give me any further information but I kept him on the phone, trying to find out where she could be located. After this I couldn’t continue doing the phones due to the trauma it triggered.
In the 1970s, rape and sexual assault were considered shameful, and women and children were supposed to keep it secret. To speak out would bring shame on yourself and your family. From my research, I think I may have been the first Australian woman to go public via the media about having been raped. Looking back, I am amazed at how I just took it in my stride, speaking out fearlessly because I knew it had to be done.
In 1975, I was on the organising committee of the Woman and Madness conference at Melbourne University and gave a keynote address on my experiences of sexual violence and the psychiatric system. I spoke of my experiences as a child, and a teenager, as well as the violent attack in Queensland. As a result, I was approached by The Age newspaper and my story was published along with my photograph. The facts had been distorted to make it just that bit more juicy and sensational, which I wasn’t happy with. My parents were holidaying in the Gold Coast at the time and I hoped they wouldn’t see it. Alas, they got a copy and were horrified that I’d gone public.
An early TV program called No Man’s Land approached Women Against Rape to appear on a panel discussion where the subject was rape. The panel consisted of four people. I was the only woman, alongside someone who’d done time in Pentridge for rape, a prison chaplain and a member of the state Labor government who had successfully changed the law so that a woman’s sexual past would not be presented as evidence during rape trials. A couple of years later my friend and I went on a TV current affairs program and talked of our experiences. My friend was married and had a child, and hadn’t gone to the police after her kidnapping and rape by a group of men. She was scared that they might come after her and her family. Luckily my perpetrator lived far away.
Why was I able to talk so easily in public about what happened to me?
One reason was my family background of heroism, zeal for social justice and resilience. My father’s parents were involved in revolutionary Jewish workers’ actions in Poland, which resulted in my grandfather being sent to the salt mines of Siberia, from which he eventually escaped. My father was a hero of the French Resistance, initially in sabotage, but after being shot in the leg he worked in intelligence. My mother, grandmother and uncle escaped the Nazis by seeking the help of people smugglers, taking on false identities and rebuilding a new life in the then Free French Zone.
I also experienced great support and love from many feminist friends as well as other significant people in my life, such as a few old friends from my Jewish lefty youth group.
Feminist Activism, Creativity and Healing
Alongside the need for changes in law and services for women who’d experienced violence, there was another issue that had to be considered, and which I felt very strongly about: the lack of representation of women in Australian culture. I became passionate about women’s culture and expression and got involved in women’s music, theatre, film and the visual arts.
I was one of the founders of the Melbourne Women’s Theatre Group, whose mission was to tell important stories about women. We produced a range of plays, from short cabaret-style pieces with lots of music, high energy and humour to more serious work, such as our ‘documentary theatre’ piece about young women who were incarcerated to keep them from ‘being exposed to moral danger’. What that usually meant was that they were being sexually abused by a member of their family, and instead of the perpetrator being charged with a crime, the young woman was taken into custody and sent to an institution called Winlaton. Members of the audience included young women who had been wards of the state there and police.
My next foray was into women’s music. I’d been a bass player in bands before but I thought it would be good to form an all-women’s group. I started up a seven-piece band called Toxic Shock. We performed at pubs, universities, women’s events and even recorded three of our original songs, one of which I wrote, called ‘Intoxicated’. (You can find it on YouTube.)
I started up the radio program Give-Men-a-Pause on RRR community radio to showcase women-led music. We occasionally did interviews with musicians and I think the program was probably among the first to have people performing live in the studio, which – would you believe – got me into trouble for being ahead of my time, as usual. I also got into big trouble with management (the story of my life) when I played Robyn Archer’s ‘Menstruation Blues’ because it had the line ‘and I can’t even fuck’. The story appeared on the front page of the newspaper Truth and I was disciplined.
The two-hour program ran for a couple of years until we were suddenly pulled off air without warning. When management learned via a survey that we were the most popular program they had, we were invited back to do three hours on Sunday mornings.
Liddle, C., ‘Police still failing Aboriginal women’, Eureka Street, 28(12), 2018, viewed [23 October 2018],
McGrath, A., ‘“Beneath the skin”: Australian citizenship, rights and Aboriginal women’, Journal of Australian Studies, 17(37), 1993, pp. 99–114.
McQuire, A., ‘The more things change: female black lives don’t matter. If they did, Ms Dhu would still be alive’, New Matilda, 24 November 2015, viewed [23 October 2018],
McQuire, A., ‘Ms Dhu’s hidden pain: how to hurt an Aboriginal family without even really trying’, New Matilda, 30 March 2016, viewed [24 October 2018],
Moreton-Robinson, A., Talkin’ up to the white woman: Aboriginal women and feminism, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2000.
NPY Women’s Council Aboriginal Corporation, Tjanpi Desert Weavers, 2012, viewed [25 October 2018],
Pearson, L., ‘The Curtain Podcast – exploring justice for Aboriginal people’ NITV, 6 March 2017, viewed [25 October 2018],
Verass, S., (n.d.). ‘The women fighting against a rising tide of Indigenous child removals’, NITV, n.d., viewed [25 October 2018],
Sylvie Leber is a French-born Jew. Career wise, she’s a ‘multipotentialite’ – when she applied for a job at Trades Hall, she was told, ‘You’ve had more jobs than I’ve had hot dinners’. She’s been a biomedical scientist, tarot-card reader, community development worker, television all-rounder, state-election campaign manager, Fifi Fiasco the clown, ESL teacher, accidental falls prevention expert, rock chick, refugee and women’s rights activist, and a bit of a writer. She performed well in all of these jobs except waitressing and tap dancing.
How Come You’re So Sane?
A former partner once said to me, ‘Sylvie, you never rest on your laurels.’ Although I admire people who are humble like my parents were, I’m going to talk myself up for a change. Despite the horror and trauma you might experience – and, no, it never goes away completely – you can end up living a rich and blessed life.
My Worst Nightmare
It was 1972, and it was the first time I’d travelled solo. After my adventure living in a coastal village in Papua New Guinea I was back in Brisbane, Australia. I met up with an odd assortment of folk at a university get-together who lived in a share house known as The Commune. I stayed a couple of days and all was cool and easy. Then it was time for me to head back to Melbourne, to my share house in Carlton. I was going to hitch a lift. By then I was a pretty experienced hitchhiker. One of The Commune guys waited with me on the side of the road.
An old, dark-red Zephyr appeared, driven by a thirty-something fair-haired bloke. He was initially heading north, but then did a quick U-turn and stopped in front of us. I said goodbye to my friend and jumped in the passenger seat with my backpack. I had long, dark, straight hair and was colourful and attractive, wearing an ankle-length floral skirt and a red, short-sleeved blouse. We headed south down the highway. We drove past a tropical forest and chatted. His name was Nigel, he was married, had a child and worked as a truck driver. At one point he waved to an older woman, who was watering her front garden. Smiling, she waved back at him.
After some time, he said, ‘We’re not going down the highway from here. I know a shortcut so we don’t have to stop at the truck weigh-in station.’
We then turned down a small country road. It was lined with tall eucalypts and when I looked between them, I saw farmland in the distance. Then the car suddenly stopped. Nigel got out of the car, came around to my side, opened the door, grabbed some red nylon flex cord from the floor in front of me and pointed a flick knife at me. ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘You’re coming with me.’
I immediately knew what lay ahead. My mind separated from my body while he raped me. After he finished, we headed back to the car. He said, ‘You’re going to report me to the police, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ He didn’t want to take any risks and I realised what the red nylon cord was for. He came up behind me, put it around my neck and started to tighten it. I fought back, pulling it, scratching and biting his arms to no avail. I was going to die. I felt my consciousness slipping away. I even said goodbye to my mother in my mind and had a vision of the tunnel with the light at the end of it. Then there was nothing.
Dire Consequences
I don’t know how long I lay there, but I slowly came to. I’d soiled myself. I struggled towards the road and found my backpack. Things like my money and camera were missing, but not the grass skirts, the ceramic bowls and the handmade string bags I had collected on my travels. Then, by some miracle, looking like a floating mirage up ahead, an old man with a walking stick and his dog were crossing the road. I called out to him and approached in my dishevelled state. I said I had to get to a hospital as quickly as possible. We walked to the highway and he hailed down a car with a young couple inside. They immediately took me to Southport Hospital. I was rescued. I was physically examined by a male doctor and the police were called. Two male detectives soon arrived and asked me lots of questions and took a variety of photos of my injuries. After a couple of days’ stay in the hospital, the cops took me back to The Commune.
Then they found him. It was because of the unusual model of his car, which I’d described, and because I remembered the exact location of the woman he had waved to, in her front garden. She had told the police who my attacker was.
I stayed in Brisbane to await the committal. A woman I’ll call O became my carer and constant companion. I couldn’t cope with being on my own. I even shared her bed. She told me stories of her life, her struggle with heroin and how she decided to give it up one day when she woke up alone in a back lane after an overdose.
Driving to the magistrate’s court in Southport from Brisbane, I remember saying a few whacky things about a snakebite saving my life. When I looked at the photo evidence before the hearing, I believed I had come back from death because I’d been bitten by a snake, as there were two strange spots on my neck. There were also burn marks from the strangulation, and the whites of my eyes were completely red due to burst blood vessels.
Inside the court, there he was, in front of me. He didn’t look at me, thank goodness. The detective who had interviewed me at the hospital gave evidence; he was in tears as he spoke. This was reassuring. The magistrate announced that the trial would go ahead sometime down the track.
Back at The Commune, I wasn’t well. Admittedly there was LSD in the mix and I was hallucinating, feeling frightened. My doctor friend who lived there suggested I go to a highly reputable psych hospital. I dressed up in a theatrical costume and played the role of a harlequin so that they would agree that I was crazy and had to be admitted. I found myself in a women’s psych ward. I felt relaxed, safe and hopeful there.
I hadn’t told my parents what had happened. They had gone through so much in their lives due to the Holocaust, so I never told them about any bad stuff that happened to me. I merely told them I was robbed and that I had to stay in Queensland for the trial. The hospital staff naturally contacted my folks to tell them about my situation. Looking back, I realised that I didn’t see Mum for months. It must have been horrific for her to learn what had happened to me and I guessed she probably had some sort of nervous breakdown. I also learned that Nigel’s wife attempted suicide when she found out what he’d done. Dad flew up to get me. He’d spoken to the psychiatrist father of a school buddy of mine, who told him where to take me: Parkville Psychiatric Unit.
Not Sane
I thought of Parkville Psychiatric Unit as a bit of a low-key place for the rich. The psychiatrist I saw said she could not deal with me because I was too unconventional. I was moved to nearby Royal Park, which was pretty useless as well. After a short time, I just walked out and went on a fugue. I moved around inner Melbourne aimlessly, with no fixed address, going to events and visiting people. Friends who saw me were worried. I ended up at Labassa mansion in Caulfield, another bohemian community. I met a charming young man there who I became attached to. My folks had no idea where I was but eventually some of the Labassa folk contacted them to tell them about their concerns for me. My parents arranged for the young man to take me to emergency at the Alfred Hospital. He took me on the back of his motorbike. Strangely enough, the shrink I saw there was someone who’d gone to the same high school as me.
He committed me to Larundel Psych Hospital, where I stayed for several months. First I was in the lock-up A Ward, where I was held down and given electric shock treatment against my will and administered the strong sedative Largactil. One time I was stripped to my underwear and locked in a prison-like single cell because I’d thrown a box, emptying all its contents after being given the boring task of putting bottle tops into cellophane packaging.
Some of the other patients in A Ward would say to me, ‘What are you doing here? You’re not crazy.’ I was incorrectly diagnosed three times. In A Ward it was schizophrenia; in Fawkner House it was personality disorder; and after I was discharged from Larundel under advice to see a psychiatrist, I was told I was bipolar. Back then, soldiers were the only ones to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and it was called shell shock.
Although most of my experience at Larundel would be considered the stuff of nightmares, I had a positive experience when I was finally moved to an open ward run by Dr Daniel Kahns. He was eccentric, creative and had developed this new therapy called psychodrama, which I found useful. He had also appeared at the court case against my attacker to explain that I was in no fit state to provide evidence.
The Law
My attacker was convicted of attempted murder and got eight years. For some reason he wasn’t charged with the rape. Later he appealed against the decision and got eighteen years. Yay!
In the late 1990s I went to West Centre Against Sexual Assault (CASA) to seek support while I applied for criminal compensation from the Queensland government. I’d been advised by a Queensland lawyer a couple of years earlier not to apply, as the amount of compensation I’d get was not worth all the effort. Nevertheless, I decided to apply on principle. I had to start the process over and over again because every couple of months the lawyer I was assigned to would change.
There was also an issue with the statute of limitations (which refers to the allowable time to apply for compensation after the crime was committed). It had been over twenty years since I’d been attacked, but back then no one had told me I could apply for criminal compensation. This became a stumbling block and initially it looked like my claim was going to be knocked back.
Luckily, I had a great counsellor. She advised me to get a psychiatrist’s report to show why I had not applied earlier. The report was very detailed and described how difficult it was for me to initiate a claim any earlier as my trauma had been severe and long lasting. As a result, the claim was successful. The amount I got was truly pathetic: $5000. In Victoria I would have received $50,000 or more. The whole process took three years. What gave me great satisfaction was that my success changed the law in Queensland so that people are now able to apply much later than previously allowed if the crime has caused trauma.
The Road Back
This horrific attack happened to me around the beginning of second-wave feminism in the early 1970s. Strangely enough, while in Papua New Guinea, I had bought a copy of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, which articulated what I’d been thinking and feeling since I was a teenager.
It wasn’t long after my recovery in 1973 that I got together with a small group of feminists and set up Victoria’s first rape crisis centre. We called ourselves Women Against Rape (WAR). We were given a room upstairs at the Women’s Health Centre in Johnston Street, Collingwood, and we operated a night-time phone service for women who had been raped or sexually assaulted. We supported them, providing advice about reporting to police and attending court. We also did community education in schools and other settings. Our advocacy work, in collaboration with the Women’s Electoral Lobby, included meetings with the Victorian police to change their attitudes when women reported a rape. We also met with MPs to change the law around the legal defence tactic of bringing up a woman’s sexual past as evidence. Together with the broader Melbourne feminist movement, we organised protest marches which eventually became the Reclaim the Night rallies, marches that were part of a global movement to provide safe spaces for women against sexual violence.
One night when I was alone staffing the phone line, a man rang, saying he’d just raped a woman. I asked him where she was and he wouldn’t give me any further information but I kept him on the phone, trying to find out where she could be located. After this I couldn’t continue doing the phones due to the trauma it triggered.
In the 1970s, rape and sexual assault were considered shameful, and women and children were supposed to keep it secret. To speak out would bring shame on yourself and your family. From my research, I think I may have been the first Australian woman to go public via the media about having been raped. Looking back, I am amazed at how I just took it in my stride, speaking out fearlessly because I knew it had to be done.
In 1975, I was on the organising committee of the Woman and Madness conference at Melbourne University and gave a keynote address on my experiences of sexual violence and the psychiatric system. I spoke of my experiences as a child, and a teenager, as well as the violent attack in Queensland. As a result, I was approached by The Age newspaper and my story was published along with my photograph. The facts had been distorted to make it just that bit more juicy and sensational, which I wasn’t happy with. My parents were holidaying in the Gold Coast at the time and I hoped they wouldn’t see it. Alas, they got a copy and were horrified that I’d gone public.
An early TV program called No Man’s Land approached Women Against Rape to appear on a panel discussion where the subject was rape. The panel consisted of four people. I was the only woman, alongside someone who’d done time in Pentridge for rape, a prison chaplain and a member of the state Labor government who had successfully changed the law so that a woman’s sexual past would not be presented as evidence during rape trials. A couple of years later my friend and I went on a TV current affairs program and talked of our experiences. My friend was married and had a child, and hadn’t gone to the police after her kidnapping and rape by a group of men. She was scared that they might come after her and her family. Luckily my perpetrator lived far away.
Why was I able to talk so easily in public about what happened to me?
One reason was my family background of heroism, zeal for social justice and resilience. My father’s parents were involved in revolutionary Jewish workers’ actions in Poland, which resulted in my grandfather being sent to the salt mines of Siberia, from which he eventually escaped. My father was a hero of the French Resistance, initially in sabotage, but after being shot in the leg he worked in intelligence. My mother, grandmother and uncle escaped the Nazis by seeking the help of people smugglers, taking on false identities and rebuilding a new life in the then Free French Zone.
I also experienced great support and love from many feminist friends as well as other significant people in my life, such as a few old friends from my Jewish lefty youth group.
Feminist Activism, Creativity and Healing
Alongside the need for changes in law and services for women who’d experienced violence, there was another issue that had to be considered, and which I felt very strongly about: the lack of representation of women in Australian culture. I became passionate about women’s culture and expression and got involved in women’s music, theatre, film and the visual arts.
I was one of the founders of the Melbourne Women’s Theatre Group, whose mission was to tell important stories about women. We produced a range of plays, from short cabaret-style pieces with lots of music, high energy and humour to more serious work, such as our ‘documentary theatre’ piece about young women who were incarcerated to keep them from ‘being exposed to moral danger’. What that usually meant was that they were being sexually abused by a member of their family, and instead of the perpetrator being charged with a crime, the young woman was taken into custody and sent to an institution called Winlaton. Members of the audience included young women who had been wards of the state there and police.
My next foray was into women’s music. I’d been a bass player in bands before but I thought it would be good to form an all-women’s group. I started up a seven-piece band called Toxic Shock. We performed at pubs, universities, women’s events and even recorded three of our original songs, one of which I wrote, called ‘Intoxicated’. (You can find it on YouTube.)
I started up the radio program Give-Men-a-Pause on RRR community radio to showcase women-led music. We occasionally did interviews with musicians and I think the program was probably among the first to have people performing live in the studio, which – would you believe – got me into trouble for being ahead of my time, as usual. I also got into big trouble with management (the story of my life) when I played Robyn Archer’s ‘Menstruation Blues’ because it had the line ‘and I can’t even fuck’. The story appeared on the front page of the newspaper Truth and I was disciplined.
The two-hour program ran for a couple of years until we were suddenly pulled off air without warning. When management learned via a survey that we were the most popular program they had, we were invited back to do three hours on Sunday mornings.
