It’s not much use toughening up sexual harassment laws if some of the biggest offenders are actually within the legal system.
That’s the depressing conclusion you could draw from two damning reports this week which revealed widespread sexual misconduct at the highest levels in the South Australian and Victorian legal establishments.
On Monday former human rights commissioner Helen Szoke released a report finding sexual harassment in Victoria’s legal profession is an “open secret”.
It found there had been a “stunning lack” of process to protect workers in Victorian courts against sex harassment from judicial officers, including judges and senior lawyers.
A day later comes an equally disturbing report into sexual misconduct within the South Australian legal profession which found harassment goes right to the top. Just over half of women working in the law there have been harassed.
The individual cases cited in the SA report were shocking. A female lawyer appearing in court was sent texts during the trial from an Adelaide magistrate saying he was imagining “kneeling between her legs” while he was sitting on the bench.
But wait there’s more.
When one female legal professional complained to a judge about serious harassment by a barrister, the judge responded by saying he wanted to throw her to the floor and “fuck her” because he loved “strong women”.
The reports are another example of the hypocrisy of the sexual harassment debate where those who make the laws — politicians — and those meant to uphold the laws — judges — and those meant to at least comprehend the laws if not respect them — lawyers — are some of the worst offenders.
The starkest example, before the recent Parliament House revelations, was last year’s exposé by Nine newspapers of serious sexual harassment by former High Court judge Dyson Heydon. The reports sparked widespread stories of misconduct throughout the legal fraternity in what was called a Me Too moment for Australian law.
Indeed it was that story which sparked the Victorian review initiated by former state attorney-general Jill Hennessy with state Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne Ferguson.
Ferguson said in response to the release of the review this week “sexual harassment is harmful, unlawful and wrong. It goes against everything our justice system is built on.” She said there would be zero tolerance.
Her comments echo those of High Court Chief Justice Susan Kiefel after Kiefel’s report into the Dyson Heydon allegations made the scandal public.
Although it is obviously welcome that women head up the highest courts and are investigating and condemning this conduct, you cannot help wonder how they managed to miss the problems their own reports claim are so prevalent.
Remember it was only this month that the Morrison government announced it would implement that section of the Kate Jenkins report into sexual harassment which extended the law to include judges.
Good luck with that.
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault or violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au.
Ferguson said in response to the release of the review this week “sexual harassment is harmful, unlawful and wrong. It goes against everything our justice system is built on.” She said there would be zero tolerance.
Unfortunately ‘our’ justice system is built on colonial/settler injustice, imported uncritically from England. That it is hierarchical, patriarchal and racist would surprise no-one on the receiving end.
We had a RC into child sexual abuse and a notorious case in which a lawyer told the court that the (strongly denied) offence was a “plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not actively participating”. No-one has been charged with moving offending clergy from parish to parish.
When women and children allege sex offences their treatment in courts is in accordance with man-made and man-delivered laws – with the late Susan Ryan being a most singular exception..
That law-makers and court officials do not apply the law to their own behaviour should come as no surprise to any close observer.
I was not, and still am not, able to work out any semantic sense of the association between my favourite flavouring additive with a sexual assault. But it still has not detracted from my appreciation of that flavouring, -the natural one of course. I suppose I must just be case-hardened.
The power of patriarchy is so virulent that it necessarily requires women to be complicit to succeed. That does not make those women collaborators, but it has kept many of them silent. A void that is now being filled with stories about how patriarchy works how much damage it does to women and all humanity. It also exposes the female collaborators.
Nothing ‘necessarily requires’ any human being to be or do anything. Women have autonomous agency and individual human strengths and weaknesses just like men, in equal measure. That’s been the powerful and successful driving ethos of feminism for over a century. This relentless determination of the current dominant feminist voices to surrender to women’s supposed helplessness in the face of Teh Patriarchy is the worse kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever gender you happen to be, your weird Gilead anti-fantasy – ‘oh woe, Teh Sisterhood, there is nothing to be done but be bullied into complicit subjugation’ – is embarrassing to women. Knock it off.
On an unrelated note, let’s all spare some more soft pap prog sympathy for that saintly suffragette victim of said-same Teh Patriarchy, multimillionaire senior executive Christine Holgate, eh Crikey? Poor hapless browbeaten little petal, in her abject agency-stripped helplessness, has as her last (erm, first) desperate option hired the same $20k a day legal/reputations services as did Christian Porter (so beloved in these parts), and shut down Crikey and Stephen Mayne with the rich person’s defo stick, alongside her class chum Lachlan ‘sensitive new age feminist’ Murdoch.
That’s entirely her right, of course. Just another rich, powerful, aggressive narcissist deploying their agency to get their way. But it makes her cynical, passive-aggressive hijacking and exploitation of the sexual violence/harassment moment all the more despicable, and progressive feminism’s haplessly biddable acquiescence to it…ridiculous.
I wonder if like Brittany Higgins with her book royalties, Holgate will be donating some token chunk of her inevitable OzPost taxpayer settlement to some usefully Potemkin women’s crisis centre somewhere.
I’m unsure as to when Feminism-as-victim mode became “popular” but from Alice Paul to Germaine Greer such was NOT the case.
The six inch brush painters have single large scale theories that dissolve when the detail is examined. Marxism is an example where over a two decade period from the 50s markets were equated with exploitation. Deng recognized that markets contain a considerable amount of information and can work (re: Keynes) with judicious supervision.
The question for the big paradigm merchants is : assuming the existence of patriarchy what, precisely, is to serve in its place?
I have provided references to illustrate little material differences in male and female CEOs; politics for that matter too. Aggression is part of being a primate.
I just find it humiliating, demeaning, patronising and embarrassing to and for women…and so do most of the women I know. The core tenor of Identity Politics is a cynical veneer of passive-aggressive faux helplessness, wrapped around a hair-trigger core of opportunistic, bullying nastiness.
Very different worldview to authentic problem-solving sectional representation, btw. There’s plenty of real injustice still imposed by the powerful on various powerless cohorts. ID political activists generally don’t tackle it, nor do they really intend to. Without that injustice there is no ID politics. You don’t bite the hand that largely feeds/creates your identity. Without their donned, often purloined (see Holgate) cloak of victimhood, most of the loudest ID politics warriors would just be people.
Real victims of injustice rarely have the time or resources to fight it.
Such is not representive of my working experience particularly in management. I wonder if you are over-generalising from particular instances.
Yet, as with alcoholism, (etc) I have no doubt that the issue pervades the electorate but as difficult as a consistent across-country or culture study would be the question of interest is : where does Australia fit?
Anyone would think that you hadn’t read Helen Szoke’s report. I haven’t either, but I’m not making any judgment of Perrett’s account of it.
It also sounds as if you’re trying to make a comparison of misconduct in Australia with that in foreign jurisdictions. Why would you? Unless it’s to suggest “it’s not so bad here” and dilute any claims of those affected.
Last I looked, the is a topic in psychology referred to as Aberrant Behaviour. Beyond that there is Dostoevsky or Somerset Maugham.
I’m aware of the 20 recommendations but the “report” does not read as an academic treatise might and should. As an aside the quoteed reactions read as combination of “poor me” and the NSW Premier’s nativity. Any female who has frequented a night club or bar knows which way is up.
Time will tell as to the effectiveness of the review.