While our country recovers from the COVID lockdown years, across Australia there are thousands of families who look back to 2021 as the start of a very different nightmare—the year their sons were accused of sexual assault.
This is the legacy of the media hype around Brittany Higgins.
There’s a flood of copycat cases working their way through our justice system, demanding massive police and judicial resources, often for dubious cases that should never have ended up in court.
A huge wave of women came forward in early 2021 claiming to be victims of sexual assault. The New South Wales (NSW) Bureau of Crime Statistics reported that in March 2021, NSW police recorded the highest-ever spike in sexual assaults, an astonishing 59 percent increase from the monthly average in the previous year.
That was just over a month after Higgins appeared on national television with Lisa Wilkinson who celebrated her bravery in accusing Bruce Lehrmann of rape.
It was a few weeks after Higgins spoke at the Women’s March 4 Justice and Chanel Cantos started her Instagram petition gathering anonymous claims of sexual assault from Australian schoolgirls.
Two years later, all those eager “survivors” are seeing their cases finally hitting courts, joined by a steady stream of other young women keen to have their moment.
No doubt these include many genuine cases where victims deserve justice. Given how badly rape victims were treated in the past, many of the changes to our justice system encouraging these women to come forward are to be applauded.
Yet, what we rarely hear about is how women exploiting the “believe women” mantra are prevailing in our justice system after manufacturing stories to destroy men.
Jumping on the Bandwagon
An absolute classic played out in the ACT Supreme Court last week. Alexander Matters has just been found not guilty in a unanimous decision by a Canberra jury, after only five to six hours of deliberation.The accuser was revealed, in the words of Alex’s barrister as “unreliable and unresponsive,” her evidence full of “lies and inconsistencies” which was exposed in court.
This Higgins Wannabee didn’t further the feminist cause at all—hence the stony silence from most of our media.
When the alleged rape happened, Alexander Matters was a law student at the Australian National University (ANU) who started a “friends with benefits” relationship with a student activist (“Ms. Advocate”), a young woman with an official role advocating for rape victims.
The couple had regular hook-ups for four months before the alleged rape took place in May 2021.
Then, in September, Ms. Advocate discovered Matters had been charged with sexual assault following an accusation by another woman—a case ultimately dropped by prosecutors.
Ms. Advocate faced a dilemma. As Matter’s barrister, Steven Whybrow S.C. suggested in court, it “wasn’t a good look” for a student women’s advocate to be known to be “sleeping with someone alleged to be a rapist.”
Sure enough, within days, Ms. Advocate was reporting a rape to the police. She alleged that, back in May, on one occasion when they had sex, Matters hadn’t stopped exactly when she asked him to and that it was so rough it had left her bloody and bruised for days.
Before reporting to the police, Ms. Advocate discussed via text with friends whether this amounted to sexual assault.
“I think I might have been raped too. I don’t know,” she told her godmother.
As the judge pointed out in his summing up, Ms. Advocate was an “over-sharer” and it was her phone messages which ultimately brought her undone.
It was revealed in court that within 24 hours of the alleged rape, she’d sent Matters an audio message saying, “[Expletive] me, Daddy?” and another saying, “I want you to [expletive] me so hard.”
For months, she continued having sex with him, complaining to her friends that she couldn’t help herself.
People (Women Included) Lie
Despite the prosecutors’ best efforts to play up the rough, forceful sex, the forensic evidence of a bloody blanket proved unconvincing.Her claim to police that after the alleged rape she had cried, had a shower, and gone to sleep was proved in court to be a lie. She’d been busily texting friends for hours about other relationships.
And within hours, despite grumbling to Matters via text that, “It still hurts. You really went for it,” by that evening she was suggesting: “Surely we [expletive] again?”
There’s a lesson here for all the good folks convinced that the new sexual consent training will keep men out of trouble. They believe that by being required to seek affirmative consent, men will protect themselves from claims of imposing their will on a woman.
Oh, yeah?
That assumes women won’t turn around and lie about what happened. Law student Alexander Matters, like all ANU students, was a graduate of the university’s compulsory sexual consent training. He was the very model of woke manhood.
During their very first time, she became upset, he stopped, and he comforted her—and they did not continue. Party line perfect.
Every time he wanted to make a move, he first asked her permission. If she said no, he moved on. If she agreed, he proceeded. Exemplary behaviour.
Then, Ms. Advocate claimed, he slipped up. He allegedly failed to stop as soon as she said so, continuing for just moments longer before stopping. But soon, he was back to model behaviour.
The simple fact is that even if men do the right thing every step of the way, women can lie about what happened. In this culture, simply because they are women they may well be believed.
Our juries are doing their job, looking at the evidence and judging the cases accordingly.
But as the wave of Higgins Wannabees hits our courts, we’ll see whether hung juries become more common as juries become ideological battlegrounds between feminist warriors and ordinary folk.
