Love, s*x, pride and morality

Preventive measures need to start way before.

Those rugby players learnt somewhere to fantasise about degrading group sex. There would hardly be an Australian of their age who hadn’t grown up seeing pornography normalising men doing degrading things to women throughout their formative adolescent years.

And then we’re all outraged by the reality of girls and boys, men and women, who’ve never been taught any different, feeling they’ve done what was sexually expected of them as young adults.

I’d bet the rugby players bragged about what they’d done afterwards to their peers too, and, like “Clare”, felt as bad about it later as she did. Why else would Matt Johns have confessed to his wife at the time to what he’d done?

I applaud Tanya Plibersek’s recent package calling for education about domestic violence and teaching basic principles of respect in schools.

We need to ban pornography which portrays anyone in degrading roles.

We should take Finland’s lead and teach sex relationship education in the last years of primary school. Research there showed that high school is too late. Lowering the age of sex education - not just about reproduction and STDs - raised the age of first sexual experiences in Finland from 13 to 17.

And take all sexual assault out of the criminal courts: the treatment of victims is appalling; proof is so high conviction rates are miniscule; and jail entrenches rather than treats the behaviour.

Tribunals, where the proof is less rigid, could order treatment, or re-education of offenders. And, importantly, victims could tell their stories unhindered by a judicial system that further abuses them.

As I said in the book about my own history, “if we can’t tell how our souls have been muddied, how can we ever clean them?”

To prevent a future generation of muddied souls, we must teach school children before pornography gets to them first. A good place to start is to teach them how to respect themselves and each other.