This story was written by an old friend, Jenny Palmer. I worked with her several careers ago and she has produced this powerful piece of writing….

“Text me when you get home xx”

Today, I am compelled to tell this story…

It’s the new #metoomovement in this country. And it is revealing more and more the growing number of women who have been victims of sexual violence, who once felt isolated with their traumatic memories.

I have read deeply personal, painful stories from friends as well as strangers, and they all share the same thread of fear, intimidation, and the constancy of possible threat that most women on the planet live with.

I applaud their bravery in coming out and sharing their horrors. I hate that they went through and still live with the terror of their experiences. Today I’m speaking for one who will remain silent…

Early in 2017, before #metoo became the status on social media for women who had been sexually harassed or assaulted, a friend told me she had been raped by a man we both knew.

This forthright, gutsy, hard-working woman was someone I worked alongside… and she’d been assaulted by a most senior man in an organisation I’d been part of since 2004.

He was someone who travelled constantly and trained thousands of people for a global company.

He was looked up to, he was applauded for his hard work… He was supposedly wealthy. He was a good family man. He knew the power of his position. He singled her out. He paid her compliments and made promises of special training sessions and all-expenses-paid trips, because he could “see her potential as a future leader”.

Of course, she was blown away by his attention. She was young and yes, perhaps naïve in the ways of the world. But at no time did she ever imagine he was anything else but a genuine helper, for her to get more coaching on how to gain her own levels of higher success to help her family.

In that business… in that company, we all expected nothing less than 100% integrity and selflessness when it came to helping others… and that’s what she imagined too. So, after a long training day, when he asked her to join him to get more details – a specific formula – on how to work better and succeed faster, of course, that’s what she expected.

She expected there would be others there too, back at his hotel. But no… there was food and there was alcohol.

And a night that she had never imagined.

…

On her way home, she rang a close friend… she was crying and screaming and incoherent.

She was in shock and ashamed to go to the police or a hospital right away. By the time I knew what had happened, some weeks had gone by. I encouraged her and supported her from that moment to take it further.

Neither of us wanted this to happen to any other woman in this organisation or elsewhere.

So began the process of an official complaint with the police. To cut a long story shorter, suffice to say our experience with the police department and how it all worked back then for complainants of sexual violence left a lot to be desired.

The overtones of disbelief and cynicism were palpable during the hours spent at different police stations – telling and re-telling the facts of not only that night, but also what happened in the following months.

Was it because of my friend’s naivety? Her level of trusting? Her lack of formal education? The fact that some weeks had gone by. Was it her social standing in life? Her background?

She was put under extreme stress and pressure throughout the ordeal. The police kept on and on about her drinking with him, and being alone with him, and what did she think was REALLY going to happen when she was invited to meet him?

She started to believe it was her fault.

She started to believe she asked for it.

And finally, the sentence that broke her...

“If he is found not guilty, and that’s highly likely… then he can sue you for wrongfully accusing him of rape.”

She gave up.

He was wealthy. She was poor.

No one would ever believe her.

That is what they asked her – who would be believed?

Him? (in his expensive suit)

Or her? (dressed like that)

She got down from being an equal human being with equal rights, to being a silly girl who got what she deserved.

That was the end of this family man being made accountable, the end of the possibility of perhaps saving others from the same situation.

Of course, I made known what had happened to the people (all men) at the highest levels of the company both here in Australia and internationally.

They did nothing. 

They never even discussed it with him.

It was only a possible “police matter”.

This man kept traveling, he kept being put in front of thousands of people who hung on his every word. And (I believe) he continued with his successful modus operandi.

The Boys Club prevailed.

Right now, there are thousands of women across the country telling their stories about sexual violence and harassment… but there are even more women who will always continue to live in silence.

Their stories will never be told because of the shame.

The guilt.

Because their word was never believed nor given credibility.

Stories shout, but silence screams.

Believe them all.

I will always believe, for all those women.

#metoomovement

#textmewhenyougethome