Rape law reform: continuity and cultural change in Australian courtrooms (Gender Studies Seminar)

This talk considers the intersections of law, culture and sexual violence, with a particular focus on a period of significant social, cultural and legal change, the 1980s. This paper is framed by the understanding that the answer to sexual violence is not found in the law – that it is a social and cultural problem that needs to be solved in society and culture. And yet, as an historian who works in the law, I am always intrigued by the intersections of law and culture, and in particular, the ways these play out in the trial itself.

In particular, I highlight the voices of victim-survivors, within the generally hostile courtroom. By the 1980s, victim-survivors were themselves beginning to articulate a new understanding of the violence that had been imparted upon them. This is a significant shift from prior decades, where women victims were very much silenced or invisibalised in the courtroom: despite a great deal of focus on their dress, actions and responses to sexual crimes, their own voices were generally lost in the trial. In the 1980s, however, women began to speak back.  In this talk, I aim   to show that, in the midst of social and cultural change, there were small moments of agency of women on the stand, which acted to reframe the trial in new and important ways.