This was published 5 years ago
Opinion
'Let this be our moment of reckoning'
Clementine Ford
Writer
Saxon Mullins on Four Corners on Monday.Credit: Four Corners
"No one dreams of their first time being in an alleyway with someone whose name they can't even remember. No one wants that."
Five years ago, a man named Luke Lazarus led a young woman named Saxon Mullins away from a dance floor and into an alleyway behind his father's nightclub. He ignored her repeated protestations that she wanted to go back inside, she said, while attempting to pull down her stockings and underwear. Saxon resisted, by way of pulling them back up.
He then commanded her to turn away from him and "Put your f---ing hands on the wall", she said. She complied. He tried to penetrate her, but had difficulty. After Mullins told Lazarus she was a virgin, he directed her to get on all fours and "arch" her back, she said.
"I just did it," she told Four Corners on Monday night. "At that point I was just kind of in autopilot a little bit. I just wanted to go. And this was the quickest way I thought I could leave. I just thought, 'Just do what he says and then you can go.' "
Lazarus then anally penetrated Mullins. It had been less than 10 minutes since they had first met.
The next day, she presented to the Northern Sydney Sexual Assault Service where the examining doctor discovered a number of "painful grazes" around the entrance to her anus. Across town, Lazarus was texting a friend. "I honestly have zero recollection of calling you, was a sick night," he said. "Took a chick's virginity, lol."
Luke Lazarus outside court in April 2017.Credit: Ben Rushton
Two years later, Lazarus was convicted of having sexual intercourse with Mullins without her consent. He served 11 months of a three-year prison sentence, before successfully appealing against his conviction.
The judge in his retrial accepted that Mullins hadn't consented, but didn't agree that it was clear that Lazarus knew this. During both trials, Lazarus was given glowing character references by numerous prominent members of his community, including the then mayor for Waverley. He was described as "a nice guy" who respected women and had "lots of female friends".
I've been writing about the Lazarus trial since it first began, and during that time I've encountered repeated examples of the victim-blaming and perpetrator-excusing rhetoric that abounds in a rape culture.
"She wanted it", "she asked for it", "she should have said no", "why did she get on the ground?", "she just regretted it the next day".
"He didn't force her", "he's suffered enough", "his career has been destroyed", "boys will be boys". "What did she expect?"
What did she expect? Really? When women meet seemingly nice men at nightclubs or pubs or bookstores or on Tinder, is this what we should expect? That they'll engineer a situation in which we're powerless so they can sexually violate and dehumanise us and then brag about it to their friends?
Is this the message young women should be learning about men?
Well, of course not. Never forget that when women talk about the personal risks that come from living in a rape culture, we're ridiculed for thinking one exists in the first place and chastised for "painting all men as rapists".
It's men (and young men of privilege and power in particular, those with "promising futures") who are given the right to decide consent, even if they never asked for it. Even if every action they took leading up to and beyond the moment they penetrated someone indicated they didn't care if consent was present anyway.
This story plays out over and over, whether it's young rugby players in Ireland, a famous soccer player in the UK, or an entire NRL team here in Australia.
Unlike the women (and it is usually women) who are effectively put on trial and forced to prove they didn't consent to being forced on all fours and sodomised, to being subjected to vaginal tears, filmed, shared among friends, to be penetrated while they were unconscious or asleep or any one of the vast numbers of degrading acts that survivors of sexual assault have testified they've been subjected to over the years, it seems the men being accused (and it is usually men) are required only to say "she consented" as a defence.
Not fighting back isn't the same as consenting. Relenting isn't consenting. Giving in out of self-preservation isn't consenting.
As a society, we have to ask ourselves why it is that we refuse to educate boys about this behaviour. Are people so afraid of challenging male entitlement that they would rather risk their sons becoming rapists than speak to them about what enthusiastic consent and healthy sex looks like?
Please, I implore you, have these conversations with your sons. You should want them to make different choices than the ones constantly being modelled to them as "boys being boys".
I believe Saxon Mullins. I commend her bravery in forgoing her right to anonymity so she can prompt this essential nationwide conversation. Her refusal to stay silent acts as a powerful message to other survivors that they are not alone.
Let this be the moment of reckoning that Australia needs when it comes to the matter of consent, sparked by the woman who had that denied to her not just once but twice – first by the man who she says raped her and then by the judge who decided he didn't mean to.
"All you need to say is, 'Do you want to be here?' And very clearly, 'Do you want to have sex with me?'" she told Four Corners. "And if it's not an enthusiastic 'yes', then it's not enough. If it's not an enthusiastic 'yes', it's a 'no'. That's it. And then, you're committing a crime."