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Entertainment fodder

By Melinda Tankard Reist - posted Monday, 3 August 2009


KYLE: How are you Rachel?

RACHEL: I'm scared. It’s not fair …

She is asked about sex.

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RACHEL: I've already told you about this and don't look at me and smile because it's not funny! Oh, OK! I got raped when I was 12-years-old!

KYLE: Right. And is that the only experience you've had?

MICHELLE: I only found out about that a couple of months ago. Yes, I knew about that.

RACHEL: And yet you still asked me the question.

While it is Rachel who is the one on trial, her answers resonate with truth and an insight lacking in her interrogators. I am scared, it’s not fair, but here is what you are forcing from me. I was raped. You already knew that yet you’re making me tell the world.

Although Sandilands tries to gouge more from her as though the rape of a child is just one item in a buffet of possible sexual experiences, she is silent.

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Suffering the forced violation of her body, her abuser walking free for the past two years, what is she given? An on air mauling on the Kyle and Jackie Oh No show; forced sex followed by a forced confession; her human rights violated a second time.

It didn’t matter that she was scared. Nothing should stand in the way of a young girl’s public shaming.

Jackie O said the team never intended to stage a "sick stunt".

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About the Author

Melinda Tankard Reist is a Canberra author, speaker, commentator and advocate with a special interest in issues affecting women and girls. Melinda is author of Giving Sorrow Words: Women's Stories of Grief after Abortion (Duffy & Snellgrove, 2000), Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics (Spinifex Press, 2006) and editor of Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls (Spinifex Press, 2009). Melinda is a founder of Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation (www.collectiveshout.org). Melinda blogs at www.melindatankardreist.com.

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