Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What traumatic experience did Nina Funnell endure in 2007?
Before you listen today, this episode contains stories of child sexual abuse, sexual assault and suicide. Nina Fennell is lying in the dirt. It's 2007 and she'd been walking home from a university celebration to her parents' house in Sydney's Lower North Shore when she was attacked by a stranger.
At first, her reaction to being punched, threatened, pulled into a nearby park and sexually assaulted was to freeze. But right now, she's ready to fight.
Chapter 2: How did Nina Funnell become an advocate for victim-survivors?
The man's grasp is still on her throat. She can't breathe. She can't move.
Chapter 3: What campaigns has Nina led to support victim-survivors?
I don't want to die. Not like this, she thinks. Then she's fighting him, thrashing, kicking, punching, anything to get his body off hers. It works. He retreats and she runs. I'm Gemma Bath, and you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them.
Chapter 4: How does Nina's personal experience shape her journalism?
Nina Fennell didn't get justice in her own story. They never found the guy who sexually assaulted and attacked her. But her experience lit a fire in her belly, and she has used her career as a journalist to help other victim survivors of assault.
She has changed laws across the country, held systems and people and abusers to account, and helped reshape the way the Australian media tells the stories of survivors.
Her various campaigns, such as the Let Her Speak campaign, which targeted gag laws preventing victims from naming themselves, introduced us to survivors like Grace Tame, who went on to become Australian of the Year for her own advocacy in this space.
The Justice Shouldn't Hurt campaign helped Pippa and Rose Millthorpe share their experience as child victim survivors in the New South Wales court system, ultimately leading to an enormous change for the state in the way young people give evidence.
Chapter 5: What challenges did Nina face while interacting with the police?
We've actually had their mum, Michelle, speak on a recent episode of this podcast. Right now, she's in the midst of another campaign. It's called Keep counselling confidential, which I'll let her explain. Nina is a force to be reckoned with. She is a tireless advocate and has become a safe place for people to share their truth.
Chapter 6: Did the police ever find Nina's attacker?
She has won various awards for her work, including the Australian Human Rights Award and a Kennedy Award. She joins us now to talk about it all. Nina, thank you for joining us on True Crime Conversations. You have built your career on telling the stories of victim survivors. As a victim survivor yourself, how hard is that to do this day in and day out to tell these stories?
Yeah, I mean...
Chapter 7: What impact did the Red Zone Report have on Australian universities?
It's a bit of a double edged sword in the sense that a lot of the details that I'm looking at, particularly in police reports, are very graphic and very harrowing. But the people themselves are extraordinary. And the thing about my work is that I'm not a court reporter. I'm not going. And I did that for one day and I actually didn't survive it. Really?
Chapter 8: What changes have occurred in university culture regarding sexual violence?
Yeah, yeah. I was reporting on a rape case and I went to trial and I was watching a survivor being cross-examined and I actually felt like I was watching someone being tortured. It was very, very clear that they did not want to be there and I felt sick. I couldn't do that kind of reporting, I learnt. Court reporting is not for me. It's very hard. I've done it before too and it's very confronting.
It is, it is. Whereas the sort of reporting that I'm doing is I'm usually ā The way that I work is that victim survivors approach me. I never do call outs and there are a range of reasons why I don't do call outs.
But when victim survivors approach me, if I have capacity to do the story, usually they're at a point in their own recovery and healing where they've actually had some therapy, they've regained some agency, they're at a point where they're reclaiming. And so I'm meeting people not on the worst day of their life.
I'm actually usually meeting them at a point where they're beginning to become vulnerable re-empowered and I view my role as walking alongside them in that process. And so the people themselves are actually quite extraordinary. The details are harrowing, but I actually really enjoy the work with the people.
That's such an amazing way to look at it.
Like you are the vehicle that helps them kind of get back out there and reclaim everything. And that's exactly how I view it as I'm facilitating them taking that next step in their process. towards, you know, healing and recovery or, you know, reclaiming agency over their story.
I want to start with your story. Sure.
Lots of people might not have heard it.
Can you tell us about what happened to you in 2007?
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