In response to criticism she has faced as an advocate, former Australian of the Year Grace Tame said that the worst counsel someone can offer a trauma sufferer is to “get over it.”
Since starting her work as an advocate for sexual assault survivors after having been sexually groomed as a youngster, Tame claims that this term is the most “culturally stupid” thing she has ever heard.
She said to The Project’s Carrie Bickmore on Monday that it is in the nature of grooming and child sexual assault for the trauma to increase with age and development.
No matter how large, tough, or intelligent you are at first, once you have experienced trauma, your neurological pathways are forever changed. It is a natural force rather than a force of reason.
“Just get over it” is possibly the most culturally insensitive statement I’ve heard in my time as an advocate, if only because it is scientifically impossible,” the author writes.
In her book, The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner, Tame describes how, when she was just 15 years old, her 58-year-old instructor, Nicolaas Bester, groomed and raped her. Tame also describes how she struggled to deal with the trauma that followed the assault.
When Tame was molested by Bester, she was a student at Hobart’s St Michael’s Collegiate School, an Anglican ladies’ school.
The math instructor pleaded guilty in 2011 to “maintaining a connection with a young person under 17” and possession of child exploitation material, and was given a sentence of two years and ten months in prison.
Bester was sentenced to one year and nine months in prison after which he continued to lament the fact that his conviction had cost him “everything,” including his standing in society.