Amanda Kaladelfos

Sexual and gender-based violence: definitions, contexts, meanings

Current global estimates of sexual and gender-based violence show its widespread and enduring prevalence. In 2013, the World Health Organization reported that one-third of women globally have experienced sexual and/or physical intimate partner violence (World Health Organization 2013). A systematic review of global estimates of sexual violence found that one in 13 women has been sexually assaulted by someone other than an intimate partner, with rates far higher in some regions (Abrahams et al. 2014). A recent global analysis of the prevalence of child sexual abuse showed that approximately one in 12 men and one in 5 women experience sexual abuse before the age of 15 (Pereda et al. 2009). A 2010 Australian study revealed the endemic nature of violence experienced by transgender people (Berman and Robinson 2010). Feminist perspectives are critical to understanding and responding to sexual and gender-based violence. Feminism has long been at the cutting edge of nuanced investigations of violence. In the nineteenth century, feminists pioneered examinations of the structural relationship between sex, gender and violence (Bland 2001). Women’s Liberation intensified analysis with second-wave feminism focusing on multiple forms of violence by men against women. Sexual violence became an important issue for feminist analysis and scholarship. Susan Brownmiller’s controversial text Against Our Will: Women, Men, and Rape (1975) is widely credited with sparking Western feminist scholars’ critical interrogations of the power relations inherent in sexual violence, examining the problem in fields as diverse as law, socio-legal studies, cultural studies, history and literature. At the same time, feminist activists staged campaigns highlighting the various forms of violence against women and the frequency of its perpetration. In the 1970s and 1980s, activists campaigned against sexual assault and domestic violence, and worked towards establishing safe spaces including women’s refuges and rape crisis centres. In Australia, many of these ideas were taken up by the state, and feminist agendas were enshrined in both legislation and public discourse (Eisenstein 1996). In law, feminist scholars worked towards reforming approaches to crimes against women, restructuring statutory definitions of sexual violence, including protections for female victims within the court, the recognition of rape within marriage and, most recently, putting forward alternatives to the adversarial criminal trial for prosecutions of sexual violence (McDonald and Tinsley 2011). In many Western nations, activism, pressure for law reform and scholarly analysis were intertwined, and a growing body of scholarship focused attention on women’s experiences of violence in the home and in public space, and the state’s responses to this violence. Feminism, feminist studies, feminist legal studies and gender studies remained at the forefront of scholarly responses to sexual and gender-based violence (Estrich 1988; Genovese 1992; Easteal 1998). Though disparate, these approaches tend to emphasise the systemic nature of gendered power in structuring legal, political and social responses to violence. Such power structures influence the perpetration of violence and determine

The Politics of Punishment: Rape and the death penalty in colonial Australia, 1841-1901

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Australian law permitted colonial governments to order capital punishment for crimes that were no longer punishable by death in England, including attempted murder, robbery under arms and, most controversially, rape. Australian lawmakers knew their obsolete criminal codes reflected badly on their reputation as merciful and enlightened. Yet when politicians proposed the abolition of the death penalty, they faced strong opposition. All agreed that an effective criminal justice system held an important role in securing colonial authority and power, but they differed in their conception of the best way to achieve this end. This article examines public debates about capital punishment from the 1840s onwards, with a focus on the highly politicised issue of the punishment for rape. Despite a long-standing reformist campaign, successive New South Wales governments did not back down. Instead, they retained capital punishment for rape until 1955. Most political leaders thought it necessary to maintain this penalty to control two groups — Aboriginal men and white men from poor moral backgrounds — arguing they equally threatened white colonial women’s virtue. Capital punishment for rape thus became an overtly violent symbol by which the colonial state asserted itself as the true guardian of female purity. This article has been peer-reviewed.

Murder in Gun Alley: girls, grime and gumshoe history

Abstract The 1921 rape and murder of a twelve-year-old girl, known as the ‘Gun Alley Murder’, has come back to public consciousness after an unprecedented decision. In 2008, the Victorian government issued a posthumous pardon to the man executed for this crime based upon new evidence gathered by former librarian and researcher Kevin Morgan. The concerns of his investigation – the hanging of an innocent man and the moral panic that led to the execution – have left another story untold. In interpreting the ‘Gun Alley Murder’, observers in the 1920s drew upon popular narratives of sexual danger, blending modern medicalised conceptions of sexual crime with older ideas of seduction. Following the murder, womens groups and progressive societies employed these narratives in order to speak out against the lenient sentences that Victorian courts frequently handed down for crimes against children – especially against girls. This paper contextualises the ‘stranger danger’ panic caused by ‘Gun Alley’ within 1920s discourses of sexuality, girlhood and modernity, and offers an alternative analysis of the crime to those told in recent accounts.

Hierarchies of Harm and Violence

Abstract This article interrogates the prosecution of familial sexual crimes in 1950s Australia, a decade where the family was considered the bedrock of society. Using criminal trial transcripts from the period, we analyse how offenders, victims, families, lawyers and judges understood familial sexual abuse. We examine the contours of cases heard by New South Wales (NSW) higher courts in the 1950s, analysing three important themes: conceptualisations of the harm and violence in familial abuse; the relationship between offenders’ explanations of familial abuse and the gender dynamics of the family and how financial constraints on women in the family impeded reporting of sexual abuse.This article interrogates the prosecution of familial sexual crimes in 1950s Australia, a decade where the family was considered the bedrock of society. Using criminal trial transcripts from the period, we analyse how offenders, victims, families, lawyers and judges understood familial sexual abuse. We examine the contours of cases heard by New South Wales (NSW) higher courts in the 1950s, analysing three important themes: conceptualisations of the harm and violence in familial abuse; the relationship between offenders’ explanations of familial abuse and the gender dynamics of the family and how financial constraints on women in the family impeded reporting of sexual abuse.

Hierarchies of Harm and Violence: Historicising Familial Sexual Violence in Australia

Abstract This article interrogates the prosecution of familial sexual crimes in 1950s Australia, a decade where the family was considered the bedrock of society. Using criminal trial transcripts from the period, we analyse how offenders, victims, families, lawyers and judges understood familial sexual abuse. We examine the contours of cases heard by New South Wales (NSW) higher courts in the 1950s, analysing three important themes: conceptualisations of the harm and violence in familial abuse; the relationship between offenders’ explanations of familial abuse and the gender dynamics of the family and how financial constraints on women in the family impeded reporting of sexual abuse.This article interrogates the prosecution of familial sexual crimes in 1950s Australia, a decade where the family was considered the bedrock of society. Using criminal trial transcripts from the period, we analyse how offenders, victims, families, lawyers and judges understood familial sexual abuse. We examine the contours of cases heard by New South Wales (NSW) higher courts in the 1950s, analysing three important themes: conceptualisations of the harm and violence in familial abuse; the relationship between offenders’ explanations of familial abuse and the gender dynamics of the family and how financial constraints on women in the family impeded reporting of sexual abuse.

Hierarchies of harm: historicising familial violence in Australia

Abstract This article interrogates the prosecution of familial sexual crimes in 1950s Australia, a decade where the family was considered the bedrock of society. Using criminal trial transcripts from the period, we analyse how offenders, victims, families, lawyers and judges understood familial sexual abuse. We examine the contours of cases heard by New South Wales (NSW) higher courts in the 1950s, analysing three important themes: conceptualisations of the harm and violence in familial abuse; the relationship between offenders’ explanations of familial abuse and the gender dynamics of the family and how financial constraints on women in the family impeded reporting of sexual abuse.This article interrogates the prosecution of familial sexual crimes in 1950s Australia, a decade where the family was considered the bedrock of society. Using criminal trial transcripts from the period, we analyse how offenders, victims, families, lawyers and judges understood familial sexual abuse. We examine the contours of cases heard by New South Wales (NSW) higher courts in the 1950s, analysing three important themes: conceptualisations of the harm and violence in familial abuse; the relationship between offenders’ explanations of familial abuse and the gender dynamics of the family and how financial constraints on women in the family impeded reporting of sexual abuse.

CORRESPONDENCE: Murder in Gun Alley

Abstract Correspondence between Kevin Morgan and Amanda Kaladelfos on ‘Murder in Gun Alley: girls, grime and gumshoe history,’ Journal of Australian Studies , 34 (2010), pp. 471–484