Testimonies

I was at a friends dads 50th birthday and her brothers friend kept hitting on me. I was very clear I wasn't interested - he took my rudeness towards him as 'playing hard to get'. I genuinely was not interested in him and being polite to him wasn't working so I decided to be rude so that he would leave me alone. I went to sleep on the couch that night. He followed me in there shortly after and started taking my clothes off without my consent. I told him repeatedly to stop, gave him all the reasons under the sun as to why I didn't want it. He didn't care or listen. I ended up just freezing I was so scared I didn't know what to do. He raped me. I cried the whole time. I did not give consent.

I had been to a party one night and ended up hooking up with a X guy and going back to his. I had consensual sex with him and then he convinced me to stay over at his place instead of going back home. I trusted this guy so I thought it would be fine. I later woke up around 4am to him aggressively pulling me towards him before he had sex with me. I didn't really think much of it at the time but now I realised how messed up this was.

X college boy I was dating, he made me feel bad for saying no, when I told him that, he got upset and made me feel guilty for making him feel like a bad person, then proceeded to nag me that afternoon to have have sex until I gave in.

I ended up going back to the house of a boy from my year after a night out. I was so drunk I don't remember going to his place, but I remember him insisting on taking my virginity and that he kept going, even though I didn't want to. Afterwards he and his friends started making comments about me being a slut to the point I stopped going out altogether.

I met a seemingly sweet guy from X on a night out in Manly. I was quite drunk at the time and we ended up hooking up. I insisted that we use a condom and he grudgingly went and bought some. Despite this, he took it off during sex without my consent and tried to hold me down to keep going after I realised what he'd done.

I was drunk at a party and a guy I trusted took advantage of the situation and ignored me when I said no. I said no so many times. He didn't listen and didn’t stop. The next time I saw him was at a sexual assault protest less than a month after he assaulted me. I still feel his hands on my body and am now in therapy with ptsd.

As a young female who experienced SA throughout school. I think consent would lay the foundation to teach what is right and wrong and set a framework on how to say no and how to get help. This would have saved years of shame and guilt.

I was invited to a semi-formal at another all boys catholic school by a friend of mine. I had comments made about me from other boys at the school about my body and it made me feel super uncomfortable. After the semi when i was leaving my date followed me to my uber and started to demand that i kiss him and give him head saying, I "had to because he paid for my ticket to formal". when I refused, he grabbed my boobs and squeezed them and then left the car. I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable and cried the whole uber back home.

I was so heavily pressured into every sexual encounter I had with a previous boyfriend but I had no idea that it was assault until a friend told me.

I was groped multiple times while in class. I reported it and asked to speak to someone about it on three separate occasions, however I was never once spoken to. He has never had any consequences.

I have been sexually assaulted numerous times as a teen and so I became numb to it. I would take drugs and use alcohol as a way to escape my experiences, to dull my suicidal thoughts. When I spoke out at school I lost friends and was deemed a liar. The burden of my assaults was too much for anyone to handle, let alone my 14 yr old friends. After school I hoped college would be a fresh start. However, the toxicity of the boy colleges became evident immediately. Intoxicated, I was lured to a house by three X college boys. A year later, having left college, I found myself in another situation. This time it was an ex X boy who hid his phone in an attempt to film me. I wanted to testify so that the voice of this petition is one voice louder.

My first boyfriend would give me the silent treatment when I didn't agree to sex. It just became practice that I would just let him have sex with me in the morning cause it was the easier way to get on with the day. He also used to grab my boobs without prompting and when I would tell him it made me uncomfortable he would make me feel unreasonable and say "well I guess I'll just never touch you sexually again"

I had been talking to a guy for a while, and we'd even had discussions about women's safety - he honestly restored my faith in X school boys (I had heard so many assault stories about X boys from friends). But then I met up with him and pretty much straight away he was trying to get on top of me. I froze. I didn't mean to, but I couldn't help it. I felt so helpless. He didn't once ask if I was ok with it, and I was completely paralysed by shock and fear. Absence of a no does not mean yes. It took me 3 months to come to terms with the fact that I had been raped.

I was 20 and it was the first night I went out after getting out of an emotionally abusive 2yr relationship. I got really drunk and was crying about how bad this guy was to me. A friend from school was consoling me. I was too drunk to remember him coming home with me or sleeping with him. I woke up in the morning with him on top of me starting to have sex with me. I was too shocked to say anything. He shouldn't have taken advantage of how upset I was, and he should have known I was too drunk to consent. I've never spoken about what was happening in the morning because it's hard to accept that my body was disrespected like that by a friend.

There was a guy I flirted with, but never wanted it to go further than that. He did. I thought I couldn't say no, because then I was leading him on. That experience still affects my personal relationships, nearly 10 years on.