Student Forum

Sexual assault laws forum

Students are very interested and keen to flex their democratic rights and power and we saw this in full force last week. A news article suggested that recent changes to legislation meant that victims of sexual assault would need a court order to be able to talk publicly about their assault and could be potentially fined a hefty sum of money if they were in breach.  As you can imagine, this prompted outrage and a desire to take action amongst a few of our students.

We initiated a forum with Mr Geoff Shaw, our Senior Legal Studies teacher and Ms Katz, so students could ask questions and be fully informed about the impact of the changes.  With only a day to research Mr Shaw undertook the necessary research, reading the legislation and cutting through the legal jargon to get to the heart of the issue.

His research indicated that the legislation had been changed in February this year with the intention of protecting victims from being identified in the media because their attackers had been named.  Mr Shaw explained that many laws have unintended consequences and that an unintended consequence was that victim’s might be unable to name their attackers even after all legal proceedings were complete.

We learned that the Victorian State government has always worked to protect the rights and privacy of victims and there is a charter of victim rights that is used in the development of laws in this area.  Since our forum the State Attorney General Jill Hennesy has stated in the media that there will be an urgent review of the changes that were made in February to ensure victims rights were not being impinged on.

The student forum covered a range of related issues included the use of social media as a news source, that changing face of journalism, click bait, democratic rights and campaigning for change.  It was great to see so much interest amongst our future leaders.  The staff would be interested in running future forums for students to discuss if they were interested.

Special Thanks to Mr Shaw, Ms Katz and Grace Flannagan for making this happen.

Catherine Ford

Assistant Principal