Activists Believe A New Law Will Silence The Families Of Deceased Sexual Assault Victims
The names Jill Meagher, Eurydice Dixon, and Aiia Maarsawe could be erased from the news under new proposed "gag laws" in Victoria.
A new bill that’s entered Victorian Parliament could mean the names Jill Meagher, Eurydice Dixon, and Aiia Maasarwe disappear from the news completely.
Under new proposed legislation in Victoria, news outlets would be barred from publishing the names of any deceased sexual assault victims and the families of these victims would be unable to speak about their lost loved ones to the media without a court order.
So, why is this happening?
This story starts back in February, when a law was introduced in Victoria that made it illegal for sexual assault survivors to speak publicly without obtaining court permission first. The basic idea was to protect survivors from being exploited by the press. After experiencing a sexual crime, most survivors will opt not to be named publicly, and this law was the Victorian Government’s way of regulating who gets named in the news and protecting survivors’ rights. Despite the noble intentions of the law, advocacy groups say that it has effectively gagged survivors in Victoria, as it failed to consider the rights of survivors who choose to publicly identify themselves and tell their stories.
Nina Funnell is a survivor, journalist, and activist who co-founded #LetHerSpeak, a campaign that managed to overturn similar ‘gag laws’ in Tasmania and the Northern Territory earlier this year. Funnell told Junkee that the laws as they currently stand in Victoria are “appalling”.
“The problem is that all of the onus is being put back on the individual victim survivor to actually have to fight through the court system, just to be able to say their own name, and it’s an incredibly paternalistic and patronising view of sexual assault survivors,” she said. The process of applying for court permission can be extremely arduous and expensive for survivors. According to Funnell, the legal costs for one young Tasmanian woman who was fighting for her right to speak publicly about repeated sexual assaults amounted to around $10,000.
Seeking court permission can also be incredibly traumatic for survivors. “The much bigger cost is the emotional cost because for a lot of sexual assault survivors who have already gone through criminal justice proceedings they’ve already had to face going to court: being cross examined, feeling belittled, feeling humiliated,” said Funnell.
But why is it so important for sexual assault survivors to be able to share their stories?
Funnell believes that giving sexual assault survivors the right to speak out about their experiences is incredibly important for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it can be empowering for a survivor to assert their own narrative after such a traumatic event. Centring survivor narratives also has implications for how sexual crimes are reported. These ‘gag laws’ skew the narrative of sexual assault in the news and, by deleting survivors’ names, the life stories of perpetrators are given more room. “What that does is dehumanises the reporting. It means that there’s no face, there’s no humanity or dignity in how it gets reported,” said Funnell.
The Victorian Government have actually committed to walking back this legislation after the #LetHerSpeak campaign launched in the state and an amendment bill has now entered Victorian Parliament. However, the new bill contains a clause that would require the families of deceased victims of violent sexual assault crimes to seek permission in court before speaking to the media about their deceased relatives. If they fail to seek that court order, family members could face up to $3,304 in fines or four months in jail.
Jill Meagher’s mother Edith McKeon has blasted the proposed laws , saying she was “fucking fuming” that the Government appeared to be trying to stop her speaking out about her daughter.
Funnell and #LetHerSpeak have steeply criticised this new clause, noting that it will only lead to unnecessary court battles between grieving family members. “The idea that a grieving family should have to go back to court to discuss their own deceased relative, it’s an abomination, it’s appalling, and I don’t think the Government has any idea what this will do to those individual families who will be torn apart by this,” she said.
Victoria’s attorney general, Jill Hennessy, has stated that the proposed laws will not entirely stop the naming of deceased victims by the media. “The advice from experts and advocates has been clear: reforms addressing the ability to speak on behalf of deceased victims are complex and we need to take time to get it right, and that any reforms take account of any wishes victims expressed before they died,” Hennessy said in a statement.
How do the activists want to address this issue?
While Funnell acknowledges that reporting on victims of sexual assault can be ethically fraught, she maintains that it’s unnecessary for this kind of media regulation to enter a criminal code. Instead, she points to the media’s adoption of guidelines around reporting suicides as an example of how ethical reporting can become an industry-wide requirement. Newsrooms became aware that reporting on methods of suicide can lead to ‘copycat’ acts and now those methods are broadly omitted from news reports.
“If instead of that education the government had said we’re just going to criminalise anyone every reporting on the issue of suicide ever again, it would be such a sledgehammer response to what is a complex and nuanced problem…legislating in these draconian ways is not going to help,” she said.