What Brock Turner did was horrific, abominable, almost unthinkable. But we must not allow our natural and appropriate disgust at his act blind us to the evidence about what works and what doesn’t work, if we want to prevent him and others from doing it again, and if we want to afford victims the best opportunity to heal.

Arguing that asking someone if they want to have sex with you lacks dignity is akin to arguing that we are all entitled to each other’s bodies at all times as long as the other person looks at us in a particular way. Bodies are personal, and women’s bodies in particular need to be reconceptualised as something other than public property.

The most interesting and far-reaching of these new laws is the failure to disclose offence. This law came into effect on the 27 October 2014 and states that all adults in Victoria must report any ‘reasonable belief’ that a sex offence has been committed by an adult towards a child under the age of sixteen years. Failure to disclose is a criminal offence, punishable by up to three years imprisonment.

In the wake of reporting about the alleged involvement of Catholic Church officials in the sexual abuse of kids, we now appear to have before us a proposed royal commission into sexual assault of children in relation to institutions in Australia. This seems an immensely broad inquiry.

I’m late to the Stieg Larsson party. Having now arrived, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to call it a party, because that poses the question of what kind of party it is, at which point I think it might be prudent to change metaphors.

I know women of the Left who have been raped. And who were they raped by? By men of the Left – their partners, lovers, friends. Did these cases ever reach court? No, to my knowledge they were never even reported to the police. Why not? Well, political objections to police and their function in […]