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This article is behind a paywall, as it is both vulnerable and deeply personal and so I am only opening it up to my loyal paid subscribers.
With everything coming out in respect to the current Cornell case, I thought I would share with you my personal accounts of my experiences with Sexual Assault (SA) and how I moved through them.
I am not in the grips of the trauma that I experienced with my SA experiences now, and I feel to share with you about how I recovered from the PTSD that I was experiencing for years following the assaults that occurred in my adult life.
And first of all, I feel that it is pertinent to share that part with you. I experienced a very beautiful childhood, I was protected by my parents and I was not exposed to any sexual abuse as a child. And that actually makes me incredibly privilged.
It is strange to think that having a childhood, free of abuse, is a privilge. It should be the baseline. But unfortunately, it is not. Far from it.
In Australia, the first nationally representative study of its kind, the Australian Child Maltreatment Study (2023), found that 28.5% of Australians experienced sexual abuse before the age of eighteen. For women, the figure rose to 37.3%, more than one in three. For men, it was 18.8%, close to one in five.
The global picture echoes it. A 2025 study published in The Lancet by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimated that 18.9% of women and 14.8% of men across 204 countries experienced sexual violence in childhood. UNICEF’s 2024 report counted more than 370 million girls and women alive today who were raped or sexually assaulted before they turned eighteen, roughly one in eight. When non-contact forms of abuse are included, such as online exploitation and forced exposure, that number climbs to around 650 million, one in five.
So when you look at the women in your family, in your friendships, in the room where you work. Count three. Statistically, one of them carried this into adulthood, often silently, often without language for it until years later.
And these statistics are only those that are reported, so in reality, they are likely much higher.
So when I say I arrived at my adult experiences of assault from a protected childhood, I say it knowing what a privilege that protection was, and how many women were never given it.
Here is my journey of the two accounts of Sexual Assault I experienced as an Adult. One from a client and the other which was a public legal case against a Naturopathic Doctor in Perth who assaulted upwards of 30 women who testified against him… and that is only the women that we know of, who stood up against this practitioner.
Content warning: This article contains personal accounts of sexual assault and its aftermath, including descriptions of trauma and post-traumatic stress. Please read with care, and only if and when it feels right for you. You are welcome to step away at any point, return later, or skip to the section on healing tools.
If this brings anything up for you, support is available. In Australia, you can contact 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or Lifeline on 13 11 14, both available 24 hours a day. If you are elsewhere in the world, please reach out to your local sexual assault support service or a trusted person in your life. You deserve to be held through this.
