Scope creep and the sexual assault industry

- Blurring boundaries of sexual misconduct gets men sent to prison

What brilliant timing. Senator Lidia Thorpe’s bizarre sexual accusations in parliament delighted the feminist media by putting sexual misconduct firmly back on the public agenda, detracting attention from Labor ministers under attack for misleading parliament and weaponizing a rape allegation to bring down the Morrison government.

No one dares discuss how it is possible for this clearly unstable woman to remain a member of parliament. In the past year we’ve seen her screaming sexist insults to men outside a strip club, calling various senators “racist” in parliament, fighting with police at an anti-trans rally and now claiming the parliament’s long, empty corridors “made her feel so unsafe” that she needed constant support for fear of being attacked.

It does appear she might have been propositioned by a fellow Senator, David Van, who was expelled from the Liberal Party last week after another Senator, the sensible Amanda Stoker, admitted he had squeezed her bottom at a function three years ago. But look at how Stoker, a sane, adult woman, handled that approach. She told Van off, told him not to do it again – and he didn’t. That’s how sensible females handle dopey men who are stupid enough not to keep their hands to themselves.

Yet our press uniformly took Thorpe’s rant seriously, repeating her claim that she was “sexually assaulted” when her own explanation suggested at worst he might have “inappropriately touched her,” whatever that means.  

Scope creep is rife in today’s discussion of sexual misconduct, with even the most minor sexual misconduct blown up out of all proportion. Naturally the media trotted out last year’s absurd Jenkins report on harassment in parliament using the Thorpe kerfuffle as further proof of a toxic culture in this august body. As I pointed out at the time, the Jenkins survey was an absolute joke – less than 25% of staff chose to answer the thing, almost as many men as women reported being harassed (42% of women surveyed were “victims,” 32% of men),  60% of the bullying was by women, and the definition of harassment was ridiculously broad, including staring, leering and loitering, sexual jokes and repeat invitations to go out on a date.

Is it any wonder this nonsense is having a ripple effect out in the real world? Recently we witnessed a welcome end to a ludicrous Sydney court case after Simone Hotznagel - a reality TV star - accused former CEO Simon Reeves of stalking, claiming he walked slowly past her in a fashionable Bondi hotel “holding eye contact with her for 40 seconds”. It turned out there was CCTV footage of the incident which was played in court and showed him walking directly into the hotel and up a flight of stairs, right past the ground floor area where Holtznagel said she was seated. Charges against Reeves were dropped but as soon as he left the Court he was hit by an alleged breach of an apprehended violence order taken out by the same woman, because she apparently saw him at the VIVID light show! Yes, along with the 3 million plus other people who trooped downtown for this wildly popular event.

Great, isn’t it? A man’s reputation dragged through the mud by a nutcase clearly convinced by all the nonsense being promoted about the evils of unwanted staring. And our captured court system is forced to take this rubbish seriously – with all the huge costs in police and prosecutors’ time, court costs, etc.  

There are real consequences of this blurring the boundaries of genuine sexual misconduct, with our feminist-led media deliberately failing to maintain the important distinction between the very serious crime of sexual assault (already expanded to include “sexual touching”) with less serious behaviour like staring, joking, asking people on dates.  

We see this play out in the wild statistics promoted in the media about the incidence of sexual assault. Recently there was a sensible article in The Australian by the founder of Quillette, Claire Lehmann, aimed at countering the feminist narrative about our broken justice system, and urging rape victims to trust that the process is there to protect them. But even that article included the absurd claim that 639,000 women had experienced sexual assault.

That huge number has its origin in the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Personal Safety Survey (PSS), but actually covers a 10-year period, and is concocted by extrapolating from the PSS survey of about 15,000 women, to estimate rape in the general population. In 2021, police recorded 26,669 female victims of sexual assault in Australia.

I’ve written before about how the PSS survey goes well beyond what most people think of as rape, to include any sexual act involving coercion, including attempts to force someone into sexual activity. It’s hardly surprising then that almost half the women who claimed to have been raped in answers to the survey didn’t see what happened to them as a crime, a third said they could deal with it themselves and another third didn’t regard it as a serious offence.

But the feminist push is to educate them to see all of this as sexual assault… and that’s exactly what’s now happening with more and more women reporting as rape behaviour which then fails to stand up in court.

The Australian recently published an important article quoting from two recent NSW District Court judgments which highlighted a trend of “unmeritorious” cases being brought before courts, risking miscarriages of justice. Justice Penelope Wass slammed prosecutors for putting “incredible and dishonest allegations of sexual assault through the criminal justice system,” after a jury took only 25 minutes to throw out a case involving a Queensland woman who claimed she was raped by a bloke she met at a NSW pub. Almost everything about the allegation that could be objectively collaborated was challenged by CCTV footage, text messages, the complainant’s account to her friends and to the doctor.

In another case involving a complainant with borderline personality disorder and bi-polar disorder who had made previous false rape allegations, Judge Gordon Lerve complained that the “glaringly improbable allegation being made by a gravely ill complainant being shepherded through the criminal justice system by police and prosecutors who are seemingly determined to ignore obvious issues of credibility and reliability.”

An acting District Court Judge, Paul Conlon told the newspaper that he’d seen many cases being pursued where the initial critical assessment process was not undertaken with no reasonable prospect of conviction. “It’s easier for prosecuting authorities to send the matter to court and let the jury decide,” he said, explaining this course means prosecutors avoid public scrutiny for knocking back the case.

Easier for prosecutors but disastrous for the poor men named in these unmeritorious cases. I’m planning a live event soon, bringing together some men who have recently had their cases thrown out in court. I’ll be telling you more about that when we have finalised details. But believe me, we are seeing case after case which should never have ended up in court. These are a direct result of the dangerous indoctrination currently taking place in our culture, convincing women they are victims of sexual assault whenever they have a sexual misadventure which doesn’t work out as planned.  

All men are at risk in a society where women are taught to see men as potential predators, and the worst possible spin is put on even the most trivial sexual behaviour.

I was recently contacted by a teacher who presented a textbook case of the vulnerability of men in this increasingly hostile climate. The man teaches in a private Christian school and described asking a female staff member if she would accompany him to the staff social club Christmas party. “She was initially quite enthusiastic, but later declined. I let the matter rest and moved on,” he wrote.

Or so he thought. But then came a most unwelcome surprise: “On the day of the party I was summoned into the office of a supervisor who informed me in no uncertain terms that I was not to ever ask any fellow member of staff out on a date. If I did so I would be investigated, and if I was found to have breached sexual harassment guidelines then disciplinary action would ensue!”

The teacher described how shocked and perplexed he was by this “heavy-handed response.” The supervisor presented him with a copy of the school’s sexual harassment policies which he examined and found nothing which remotely applied in his case.

He then met with the HR manager who took the school's side. “She did not seem at all interested in my side of the story. I pointed out the fact that the school currently had two teaching couples who had met and married while at the school. The HR manager seemed unmoved.”

The teacher explained that dealings with the lady in question were always cordial and respectful. “The woman did not lodge any complaint against me and is probably oblivious to the ensuing issues. My guess is that she innocently told a work colleague who then passed the information on to the principal.”

“So there is no complaint or breach lodged against me, however I'm apparently not allowed to risk offending a lady by asking her out! I pointed out to the HR manager that I could therefore never find out if a woman would in fact act in a receptive manner because I couldn't risk offending her.”

This rare man wasn’t prepared to put up with this nonsense. He took the matter to the school’s governing body telling them he was seeking legal advice. This promptly led to a discussion with the Principal - “a very constructive conversation where an apology was given and the matter was resolved to my satisfaction. The Principal had been unaware of the event taking place and I believe the HR team were reprimanded appropriately.”

Yes! That’s exactly what we need. What the teacher described as “a win for common sense” would never have happened if he had not pressed his case. “I believe we all have to show a little 'grit' when life's events require,” he wrote.

I think we are going to need a lot more than grit to tackle the flood of unmeritorious rape cases now heading for our courts. But that courage and fortitude is exactly what’s needed to tackle the scope creep which lies at the heart of the problem, from the sexual consent courses teaching drunk girls they’ve been raped, to workplaces where a man can find himself in trouble for looking the wrong way at a woman. Calling out this dangerous rubbish is the starting point for derailing the feminist goal of sending more men to gaol.