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doing it right by jess hill how do you smash a ghost how do you smash a ghost subscribe sign in doing it right the federal government has mandated schools nationwide to deliver consent and respectful relationships education but are schools prepared for the student disclosures that will inevitably follow jess hill nov 11 2025 45 8 7 share yesterday i was privileged to join a group of advocates survivor advocates and agitators at a federal parliament roundtable on sexual violence hosted by assistant minister ged kearney and the working with women alliance a few advocates and commissioners who were around the table with the assistant minister for social services and the prevention of family violence ged kearney it s not unusual to have advocates sitting around a table imploring a minister to work on solutions and nation changing policy reform what is unusual particularly in the area of gender based violence is to have representatives from right across government in attendance minister for social services tanya plibersek attorney general michelle rowland assistant minister for defence peter khalil minister for early childhood education and youth jess walsh assistant minister for mental health and suicide prevention emma mcbride and senior advisors from several departments including health and education this is the first step in an effort to make gender based violence and sexual violence specifically a whole of government issue as of course it should be it was a candid and forthright conversation that went for over two hours too much to neatly summarise here but i went to canberra on the murray s bus no less love me a 7 hour round trip determined to raise something that s been on my mind for the past couple of years heading back to sydney on the murray s bus after a few hours in canberra the view from the window stunning i wrote about it for my quarterly essay losing it but sadly had to leave it on the cutting room floor i wrote the longest quarterly essay ever and had to kill some darlings the unpublished extract is published below my point was this the federal government has mandated consent and respectful relationships education in schools supported by 77 6 million and will release its national framework next year as i explored in detail in losing it this education is vital but we actually don t have reliable evidence to say whether it will reduce the rate of perpetration what we do know for sure however is that when students are taught about abuse and sexual violence they will more readily identify it in their own lives and given the encouragement to seek help will likely follow that advice and disclose at school some of those disclosures will relate to sexual violence and or coercive control perpetrated by another student so where is the guidance for schools on how to respond to peer on peer assault such guidance must accompany any framework so there is at least the expectation of a consistent response from schools instead of each school making up their response on the run because right now across australia students who disclose peer on peer assault are rolling the dice will the school respond with a commitment to their safety and wellbeing or will they put it in the too hard basket will they be forced to share a classroom with the person who s offended against them will they be bullied and harassed for speaking up will they be forced to manage their own safety and potentially leave the school entirely when disclosures are missed and mishandled the results are calamitous for the victim survivor it is an early experience with institutional betrayal which some survivors say is worse than the initial assault and a lesson that despite what they ve been told speaking up doesn t make things better for teachers who care deeply about their students and this work there is a moral injury in being part of a system that failed to protect a student who placed their trust in them for the perpetrator the lesson is equally clear and likely to echo throughout their life if you commit sexual violence and even if people find out you will probably get away with it since the federal government announced the mandating of consent and respectful relationships education there s been rising alarm among a few advocates about this one survivor advocate dani villafaña who was betrayed by her school after disclosing has recently embarked on a churchhill fellowship exploring best practice responses across the us uk and northern ireland i would implore the federal education minister jason clare to engage with advocates like dani minister clare has already done such great work advancing the university code which sets a national standard for higher education providers to both prevent and properly respond to gender based violence they are now accountable to an ombudsman how can we make sure students subjected to gender based violence by other peers in primary and high school are similarly protected i believe as other advocates do that this is an urgent issue for governments at the federal and state level to grapple with and address that s it from me here s the unpublished extract from changing hearts and minds in losing it aside from increasing knowledge and student empowerment there s another outcome we can expect from national consent and respectful relationships education it s something daniel principe flags with schools when they book him i say that you know realistically you may get more disclosures now and you may have to triage more i see that as a good outcome but not everybody shares that view in the river of prevention schools are not dry land says deanne carson ceo of body safety australia every single classroom i go into i have children who have been raped i have children who have sexually abused other children i have children who are living with family violence i m doing primary prevention in those spaces but i m also doing early intervention and response work every time my team go into a classroom and say to a teacher i ve had no disclosures here but these are the behaviours i ve observed in these three children that concern me are you able to connect those children with your school counsellor or wellbeing team that s early intervention she says adding that body safety australia educators hear an average of three disclosures from children every week this work doesn t happen in neat categories of primary prevention or early intervention or crisis response it s all interlinked and interwoven she says when we educate young people about gender based violence they are better able to recognise it in their own lives and that of their friends i m with carson and principe eliciting more disclosures is a good outcome as a board member for the grassroots organisation stepping out which helps adult female victim survivors of child sexual abuse i see what undisclosed abuse can do to a life for some the shame of the abuse is so great it takes decades for them to tell anyone in the meantime their secret can end up crashing through their like a wrecking ball earlier disclosure can mean earlier access to help if that help is available but are schools prepared for these disclosures will teachers know what to do when students start opening up answering this should be an urgent priority because if schools empower young people to speak up about abuse and then fail to help them when they do speak up the harm to that young person can be even worse it s known as institutional betrayal professor michael salter sits on the federal government s expert advisory group for respectful relationships education he say right now there s very limited capacity for schools to properly respond when one student accuses another student of sexual assault you can have a school rolling out respectful relationships and consent education but where a girl is raped by a male classmate the school actually cannot take action against him in the absence of a criminal conviction even if there is an ongoing police investigation if she doesn t want to encounter that classmate at school it s up to her to leave the school even when they transfer to another school sometimes the rumour about what happened follows them then we see some of these girls drop out of school altogether because of the structural impediments to a baseline of respect and justice schools are about to see an explosion of disclosures and they re not prepared for it says sharna bremner who heads up end rape on campus a volunteer organisation that has been supporting victim survivors and demanding safe university campuses since 2016 bremner together with many other determined advocates have finally won a years long campaign to overhaul the way universities respond to student disclosures announced by the federal education minister jason clare universities will now be legally obliged to follow a set protocol what will change for university students who accuse another student of sexual assault it means the university will have to put in safety measures immediately for that victim survivor whether that means removing an offender or preventing them from being in the same class as the person they allegedly harmed these interim safety measures will be in place while an investigation is carried out which has to be conducted by somebody with specific expertise universities will also finally be obligated to actually tell victim survivors what has happened to their complaint until now they didn t have to we re now going to hold universities accountable in the same way that we want perpetrators held accountable says bremner which is huge bremner says primary and secondary schools should consider adapting the university model which has been robustly developed we need to a similar model to this in primary and secondary schools she says because we re are about to see an explosion of disclosures and we re not prepared for it we can t unleash this education on young people on teachers and on whole school communities without having those systems ready to catch those kids when they fall if you want to read losing it you can buy the print version here or listen to me narrate it here also if you ve got this far i just finished working on a new website developed by the gorgeous and talented ana jesus at heads under you can see it here www jesshill com au 45 8 7 share discussion about this post comments restacks angharad candlin nov 17 2025 sorry one more thought i think it s essential that teachers are mandated to complete some of the safe and together short courses so they can understand the nuances of dv reply share 1 reply angharad candlin nov 17 2025 as always jess we re on the same page this is something i ve been banging on about as well teachers are not prepared whatsoever in their training to manage the emotional needs of children in the classroom they are taught about classroom management from a behavioural perspective not from a trauma response frame this will quite frankly never change until all of the universities and teacher training institutions commit to moving from behavioural interventions to attachment based and trauma responsive interventions the most frustrating thing of all is that teachers continually say they re too busy they re not too busy to manage classroom behaviour they just don t have the tools to intervene and they re not supported by education s leadership from deputy principals up what they don t realise they are doing is increasing harm to a child when anyone experiences a traumatic event the correct responses and follow up is key events do not in and of themselves cause ongoing trauma the wrong response causes ongoing trauma responding in the best way possible is not rocket science and can easily be taught it just isn t note that i don t use the term trauma informed trauma informed at best means i know something about trauma trauma responsive means i know about trauma and more importantly what to do when trauma walks in the room we need to be trained in being trauma responsive not trauma informed reply share 6 more comments top latest discussions no posts ready for more subscribe 2026 jess hill privacy terms collection notice start your substack get the app substack is the home for great culture this site requires javascript to run correctly please turn on javascript or unblock scripts