With You We Can: A Collaborative Victim-Led Resource Using Lived and Sector Expertise to Enhance Access to and Understanding of the Legal System
Tracks
Room 2: In-Person Only
| Tuesday, November 26, 2024 |
| 11:55 AM - 12:15 PM |
| Room 2 |
Overview
Sarah Rosenberg, With You We Can
Speaker
Ms Sarah Rosenberg
Executive Director
With You We Can
With You We Can: A Collaborative Victim-Led Resource Using Lived and Sector Expertise to Enhance Access to and Understanding of the Legal System
Abstract
With You We Can is a victim-led network demystifying the police and legal processes for victims of sexual violence while working to improve them. Uniquely informed by both sector and lived expertise, we want victims for whom it is safe to report to be empowered to do so, and for all victims to be informed of their options.
Victims feel in the dark, out of control and alone as a witness in the state’s case against the perpetrator. Support is limited, impersonal and conflicting. Those tasked with providing answers often don’t have them. Beyond systemic flaws are cultural deficits, where men’s violence against women has been normalised and archaic misconceptions worsen an already isolating process. These problems are amplified for First Nations peoples, people of culturally diverse backgrounds, people reliant on their partner for visa status, people with disabilities and the LGBTQIA+ communities, who have even more reason to distrust the legal process.
That victims, upon whom the community relies to report crime so that the state can prosecute to keep the community safe, know how to engage with the legal system and are informed of what to expect from it, is the bare minimum. Advocates are pushing from both ends, ground up sex education and top down law reform, all of which will prevent a proportion of sexual assaults in the future. While we join the push, With You We Can is bridging gaps between the police and legal processes to help victims now, by uniting experts, advocates and services to democratise access to information. The flow-on effects of doing so help more than the individual victim.
If we create understanding around our legal system, not just for victims going through it but for the general public who might otherwise not engage, we are better placed to reform it.
Key Learnings:
1. Misconceptions about the police and legal processes are an unaddressed driver of rape culture.
2. There is significance in a resource being victim-led - victims need honest, nuanced and fact-checked information about what to expect from engagement with the legal system.
3. Collaboration is essential, and we must avoid duplication at all costs.
Victims feel in the dark, out of control and alone as a witness in the state’s case against the perpetrator. Support is limited, impersonal and conflicting. Those tasked with providing answers often don’t have them. Beyond systemic flaws are cultural deficits, where men’s violence against women has been normalised and archaic misconceptions worsen an already isolating process. These problems are amplified for First Nations peoples, people of culturally diverse backgrounds, people reliant on their partner for visa status, people with disabilities and the LGBTQIA+ communities, who have even more reason to distrust the legal process.
That victims, upon whom the community relies to report crime so that the state can prosecute to keep the community safe, know how to engage with the legal system and are informed of what to expect from it, is the bare minimum. Advocates are pushing from both ends, ground up sex education and top down law reform, all of which will prevent a proportion of sexual assaults in the future. While we join the push, With You We Can is bridging gaps between the police and legal processes to help victims now, by uniting experts, advocates and services to democratise access to information. The flow-on effects of doing so help more than the individual victim.
If we create understanding around our legal system, not just for victims going through it but for the general public who might otherwise not engage, we are better placed to reform it.
Key Learnings:
1. Misconceptions about the police and legal processes are an unaddressed driver of rape culture.
2. There is significance in a resource being victim-led - victims need honest, nuanced and fact-checked information about what to expect from engagement with the legal system.
3. Collaboration is essential, and we must avoid duplication at all costs.
Biography
Sarah Rosenberg is Executive Director of With You We Can, a national online resource demystifying the legal system for victims of sexual violence while working to improve them. She pulls together advocates, experts and services to amplify the evidence-based research of others.
Sarah is currently partnering on a Queensland Department of Justice project, led by the Deakin Network Against Gendered Violence, on an integrated victim advocacy model response to sexual assault, and is consulting on an Australian-first study into independent legal representation.
Sarah is a member of the NWSA, the ICOS and the Expert Advisory Group informing the ALRC.
