there's our catastrophe

Support a Sex Worker and Rape Survivor’s Legal Battle

rubyrevolting:

Support a Sex Worker and Rape Survivor’s Legal Battle - please reblog and spread far and wide!

I’m Ruby - a sex worker of 7 years from Melbourne. I’ve been involved with Vixen as well as organising the inaugural Festival of Sex Work.

About 3 years ago I was raped by a serial ugly mug. Due to his history I decided to report it to the police. The committal hearing happened in 2012 and the trial commences in July and will go for a week and a half. I will be cross examined for 1 - 2 days.

Knowing how difficult it was for me to make it through the committal hearing and to recover afterwards, I have scheduled a month off work. This will allow me time to get through the trial itself and to take care of myself afterwards.

Emergency money that I had set aside was recently eaten up by having to move house in circumstances that were out of my hands. I decided to work very hard after moving house to get the money together. Unfortunately I have been struggling emotionally as the trial approaches (particularly since my rapist’s legal team applied to subpoena my therapist’s notes about me), making it too hard to work as much as I need to.

I do not want to get a loan if I can help it, as this whole process as well as the rape itself has already had a big impact on my life financially - not to mention the cost to my physical and emotional health. I also applied for interim financial assistance from the Victim’s of Crime Tribunal. They denied my application for very whorephobic reasons. By their logic, because I continue to do sex work they do not believe that the assault must have had much of an impact on my life, if at all. If I was sexually assaulted at an office job, no one would question it’s impact on my life if I decided to keep that job afterwards!

I’m usually not very good at asking for help and take great pride in being as self-sufficient, resourceful and independent as possible. But given the trying circumstances, I am calling on all the help that I need right now.

It will take a massive weight off my mind in the lead up to the trial if I know that my expenses will be covered during that period. At this stage I have enough money to cover my rent during that month off. But not for groceries, bills, petrol, medication and those basic day-to-day expenses. My weekly medical bills are high due to complex mental and physical health issues (I suffer from depression and fibromyalgia) - so it’s really important that I can continue to see my psychologist and physiotherapist regularly during this time, as well as my psychiatrist.

To take a month off I will need $3300 to cover these expenses. Any contribution you can make will mean the world to me, and help me in my fight to force someone with a history of violence against sex workers to be accountable for his actions.

If I happen to be lucky enough to exceed my target for this fundraising campaign, all additional donations will go to Melbourne’s Centre Against Sexual Assault - who have been an incredibly supportive organisation to me since the day I decided to report the assault.

Please click here to donate via GoFundMe

content note: rape, child sexual abuse

bill roache, march 2013, on jimmy savile:

Roache: “If you accept that you are pure love, and if you know that you are pure love and therefore live that pure love, these things won’t happen to you.”

Interviewer Garth Bray: “To some people that sounds perhaps like you’re saying victims bring things on themselves – is that what you’re saying?”

Roache: “No, not quite, but and yet I am, because everything that happens to us has been a result of what we have been in previous lives or whatever.”

…Roache: “Paedophilia is absolutely horrendous. Paedophiles should be sought out, rooted out and dealt with. But there’s a fringe of people who, particularly pop singers, they have these groupies, these girls, who come, they’re sexually active, sexually mature, they don’t ask for their birth certificate, they don’t know what age they may be. But they’re certainly not grooming them and exploiting them, but they can be caught in this trap. These people are instantly stigmatised, some will be innocent, some will not, but until such time as it’s proven there should be anonymity for both”…

Roache: “If someone has done something wrong the law will take its course. But even so, all of them, whether they are proven guilty or not, we should not be judgmental about anybody, ever. We shouldn’t go around condemning, unforgiving. We should all be totally forgiving about everything.”

(src)

bill roache, may 2013:

arrested on two counts of rape of a 15-year-old girl in 1967

like

if somebody is really really concerned about the effect of accusations of sexual assault on the person accused

do not be at all surprised if it turns out they have a vested interest here

re: ben mccullagh-dennis

[picture redacted because it’s awful, click through to see]

januarydaze:

trigger warning: rape, sexual violence, misogyny++

Hey Melbourians, here’s the poster for an event that was going to be held at Richmond’s Station 59 next Wednesday night: “There’s nothing funny about rape - a comedy debate”. 8 male ‘comedians’ battle it out between themselves to determine if rape is, after all, funny, as adjudicated by another man.

I almost threw up when I saw the (vile) poster.

Read about it on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Station-59/6429215677?fref=ts

Looks like the event has just been cancelled - although word is that the event is just looking for a new venue. On the facebook event the manager of Station 59 claims it was done “without his knowledge”, although he knew that the night was booked out and all 9 comedians were coming.

Keep your eyes out.

Station 59 is: 59 Church st, Richmond, Melbourne. 94278797

this shit is why I can’t with comedy.  here’s a report in the melbourne times online.

Anonymous asked: The details you speak of about Ben not revealing his infection with HPV are completely spirious. HPV is a virus that is pervasive in human populations. Each person is bathed in HPV. You could scrape your skin and find hundreds present. The fact is everyone is infected with these virus and over 80% of sexually active women (and men) will be infected with a high risk strain. There is no way a man could (or would) be tested or know of the particular strains he is infected with.

context (is a poster campaign publicly naming Sydney-based rapist Benjamin McCullagh-Dennis). 

I know this.  A number of other people have addressed this directly; my understanding is that the people involved in Rape Is Real have since chosen to de-emphasise Ben’s HPV. 

I am always concerned by misinformation around STIs.  I just didn’t think that in this context, and given the way it was framed, going HAM on that issue was worth distracting from outing a repeat sexual predator who has gotten away with this shit for years.  I can’t fucking believe that this is your biggest concern here.  You’re making out like this is some schoolyard gossip about boy germs.  Check your priorities. 

Anonymous asked: I can't get over point b, I feel like a monster

part of the violence of this society is that only those who are uncritical of it get to engage wholeheartedly in public displays of grief and joy

part of the violence of this society is that there are those who do not have to be aware of the vast disparities between whose deaths are grievable and whose are not, and these people don’t have to be constantly second-guessing their responses — don’t have to be grieving deaths that others think are deserved, or alienated by public grief for conspicously acceptable victims

it makes you feel like a terrible person just for perceiving certain structural violence; like you are the one at fault

having said that, there is a time and a place for everything — I will be pretty unimpressed if someone minimises this horrific tragedy and uses it to build a soapbox to talk about, say, the lack of attention given to Indigenous deaths in custody, just as I was revolted by this guy on facebook talking about “one woman in brunswick is raped and murdered and everybody is all over it, but what about the murder of millions of foetuses every year??”.  it’s a matter of basic respect. 

but you’re absolutely not a monster for feeling alienated from this public display of grief

really really sad/mad/confused/sad again about jill meagher because a) it’s so so awful and I cried about it this morning b) would I even know about it if she hadn’t been a pretty young white married ABC employee who went missing on Sydney Road, where People Like Us hang out c) sick at heart about having to even think about b), disgusted with my own reflexive cynicism even as I think it’s necessary