Moral superiority or simply forgetfulness?

1993: A Victorian County Court judge in a rape trial asserts it is well known that many women say no when they really mean yes.

1993: A Victorian Supreme Court judge, in sentencing a rapist who slit his victim/survivor’s throat as well as raping her, says that she suffered no trauma because she was comatose.

In the 1970s and 1980s, women’s groups around Australian sought to bring fairness, ethics and principled morality into rape law. The law was not fair, nor ethical, nor morally principled.

At that time, the law corralled raped women with accomplices in crime. Only in rape, offences against children and crimes where an accused was turned on by his accomplice, was the judge required to give a corroboration warning. That is, to tell juries that the word of women raped, children sexually abused and accomplices in crime was not to be trusted. Judges were obliged to tell jurors they should look for other evidence to corroborate that of the raped woman, the sexually abused child and the criminal accomplice. Otherwise, there was a mistrial.

At that time, too, it was only in rape and other sexual offences that the rule existed asserting that if a woman did not promptly complain, she was likely to be making up the whole story. Hers was a fantasy or the tale of a malicious or spurned woman. Or she was trying to excuse her behaviour from her parents, hiding her real character as a promiscuous teenager staying out late for a sexual dalliance with her boyfriend.

Contrarily, only in rape and other sexual offences did the rule exist that if the woman complained promptly, then this had little weight, for it did not mean she was telling the truth. It meant only that she said, shortly after the alleged rape, that she was a victim. And even with the prompt complaint, the corroboration rule still operated - so the jury had to look for evidence beyond the mere word of the woman.

No one should condone the statements made by Sheik Hilali. That he holds a position of authority and responsibility within his community makes it doubly serious. Just as it is doubly serious if people in positions of authority in any part of the Australian community express such views.

It has taken eons of urging, commitment, energy and arguing, to have the Australian legal system drag itself into a semblance of accepting that women are not genetically programmed to be liars. That prostitutes, sex workers, women in any neighbourhood, women who drink in bars or out of them, women who talk to strange men or familiar ones have a right not to be raped or sexually abused is of relatively recent vintage in our legal system.

It has taken ages to have rape and other sexual offences against women taken seriously. It is not so long ago that women won the right not to be treated as pariahs or false accusers because they are women, they complain of rape and those against whom they complain are men. Sheik Hilali’s problem is that he is 20 years out of date.