Nina Funnell

it's what kept me together.

I have no doubt it's what kept me alive at points.

Now for Jess, when her counselling notes were subpoenaed, that meant that her father could then read the very detail, like her deepest, darkest thoughts, fears, nightmares, everything, and the impact of what he had done to her.

And we know that this is actually happening all the time.

Offenders or accused people in sexual offence matters across Australia are subpoenaing the sexual assault counselling notes of victim survivors.

Now, what that does to a person is that it erodes trust in vital mental health counselling services and often, as what happened with Jess, they then disengage from that service.

Yeah, so basically I've recently published Jess's story where she has now gone public for the very first time to tell her entire story of what happened to her growing up, who her father is.

He was convicted of these additional offences in December.

He's actually facing more sentencing right now.

Since breaking that story, multiple other victim survivors of his have come forward and made more police statements.

But Jess also wants to tell her story to highlight the fact that the fact that her offender could read her sexual assault counselling notes without her consent is a violation and a re-traumatisation that should have never, ever happened.

The fact that those counselling notes were then shared with media who used them without consent is a further egregious violation of her dignity and her rights and

And the fact that we know it's not just Jess Denham who has experienced this.

So I've now done a freedom of information investigation to find out how often is 1-800-RESPECT being subpoenaed.

It turns out 1-800-RESPECT is being subpoenaed on average once a week, every week.

Once a week.

Yep.

And not only are they handing over the written client notes, they're handing over the actual audio recordings of counselling phone calls and video recordings of video calls.

And I've spoken to a young woman, Madeline Lane.

So Madeline Lane was raped in 2020 by a man named Boyd Kramer, a man from Mossman who she met on Tinder and he was subsequently convicted of rape.