Hear a related item in Punjabi:(Transcript of this item in English from World News Radio)
It's one of the worst violations that a person could experience -- rape.
But for some Australian women the crime has become even more sinister -- with police reporting a small but growing number of cases of sexual assault victims being filmed, and later blackmailed.
And among the most vulnerable are migrant and refugee women, with some suffering the additional burden of being shunned by their communities.
Naomi Selvaratnam with this special report.
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(sfx sound of walking onto stage, then tap dancing)
"For me, it's like making music with your feet, there are a lot of streams of tap dancing, so you've got what you immediately think of when you think tap dancing which is the beautiful Fred Astaire like chorus girls on a Broadway stage. And then you've got a thing called hoofing, which is what I do. I tend to kind of switch off but apparently when other people watch me they can tell what sort of mood I'm in. So if I'm angry, it'll be a lot louder and harder. It's nice just to get all of my anger out through my feet."
(sfx music)
"I saw flailing limbs, I saw me telling him to get off and then having my arms pinned down. I played the first thirty seconds and knew exactly what it was and turned it off and went and vomited in the backyard. Two days later I got another message saying that if I want to keep this quiet, I'll come home. Always in the back of your mind you're constantly wondering if this is ever gonna resurface and even if this resurfaced 10 years down the track, it's like reliving that all over again."
"We were together from the end of 2011 to the start of 2013."
Edie met her boyfriend during her first year of university.
They were in a relationship for nearly two years and moved in together three months into their relationship.
"It was always them as a couple, never Edith by herself, never him by himself either. I think of it more as a frog in hot water. It started off seeming relatively normal but it got more and more unhealthy, causing me concern."
That's Edie's mum, Alethia.
"She became quite withdrawn and we had a bit of a breakdown in our relationship in that period. There was a period of time when I wasn't seeing her very much, and that was very upsetting. I was worried that he was isolating her from us and I believe that that was the case."
(Edie): "When we first got together, we were hanging out, we went for drives, we went to the beach, we went on a road trip. And then that all really changed in about February of 2012 and this was about three, four months into the relationship and we got into a pretty big car crash. He was fine, I really wasn't. I ended up fracturing my C4 vertebrae. And it was all pretty horrendous. I cracked my head, I cracked my collarbone. I broke my neck and spent a fair chunk of time in hospital which is sort of where it all started to crumble. And pretty much from that point on it became a situation where I think he thought that I owed him and that he owned me.""I didn't feel like myself, I felt like a doll just being played with. I got to the point where I had to switch off and dissociate and pretend I was someone else because otherwise I would have had a full blown breakdown."
As time progressed, the relationship became violent.
"And every time that happened, he would blame it on his depression or blame it on the fact that he hadn't had his prescription refilled, or I hadn't gone and refilled his meds so his favourite trick I guess would be to hit objects very close to me."
"I was vigilant and was very concerned and he was never overtly controlling with her but I felt that our relationship with her changed considerably. And also she spent a lot of her time looking after him."
"I didn't want to have sex with him, I didn't want to touch him, I didn't want to look at him. He didn't really like that at all. He was not a fan of that mode of action and then decided that it was his right to have that and he took that from me. And it was not freely given. it was not consensual, it was rape. I remember thinking to myself, if I fight this I'm just going to injure my neck further and I'm just going to have my bones broken and I don't know if I'll survive. I had no idea he was filming me, none."
Three months after the rape, Edie and her partner had a fight and he was hospitalised after overdosing on anti-depressants.
Edie left him and two weeks later, he sent her a video recording of the assault.
(sfx music)
"He sent it to me on Facebook like if you don't get back together with me, I'm going to release this video. It was bad. And he was like if you tell anyone else, like if you don't get back together with me I'll send it to other people."
A week later, Edie's friend was sent a copy of the video on Facebook.
"She sat me down, she made a cup of tea and basically just said I'm really sorry to do this to you but I just received this. What I feared happening was happening. Not to the scale that I was scared of because at that point he had only sent it to one person, but I was just terrified."
(sfx heavy breathing and running sounds)
"I enjoy going for a run because it clears my head and just gives me a break from everything. I don't think about much when I run, I just think about the fresh air."
Arpita, not her real name, is 20 years old and studying at university.
She comes from a conservative Sikh family originally from India.
When Arpita was 18, she was added by Sunil, also not his real name, on Facebook.
She had never met him but they had mutual friends.
They messaged for several weeks, before deciding to meet in person.
"The first time I met him was after school. He was nice, he was friendly, and just I thought he was like normal, like everyone else. Just like any other guy. I just felt sorry for him because he was telling me about his family and how they don't like him and stuff. They used to beat him. And he came to Australia… he's been here he said four years I think. I didn't get along with my family much either, so we had something in common."
"He took me to his house. He um… (pauses, starts crying). He gave me a drink and I drank it and I think I felt sleepy and I was like can I go to sleep? And he was like yeah, sure. And then I fell asleep and I woke up on the floor in the bedroom. It was a different place, and my bra was off. I just had my shirt on. I was on the ground, on the floor and I think I said, where's my mum, because I didn't know where I was and he brought me a jug of water and on his face he looked scared. Everything was hurting and I had a couple of scratches and bruises."
"I felt a bit dizzy and I wasn't really focused. I was just like I need to go home. I was about to drive but he was like, I'll drive you home. I still didn't know what was going on. In my head I didn't put the pieces together. I went home and I had vomit on my hair, I had vomit on my clothes, so I just put my clothes in the washing machine and I had a shower."
The next day, Sunil began persistently texting and calling Arpita - hinting that he had made a video recording of some kind.
"He didn't tell me that he recorded something. He said oh you've got something like Kim Kardashian, you can become famous. And I didn't understand what he meant, and he started laughing and I didn't figure it out until later on. But then he started blackmailing me saying if I didn't keep doing it with him, he'd show the tape to my parents and my family and everyone else. "
For five months, Sunil blackmailed Arpita into visiting him, using a video he had filmed on his phone of her rape.
Detective Senior Constable Keryn Milham works for Victoria Police's Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team, and was the officer responsible for Arpita's case.
"He pretty much kept the recording and had threatened that if she didn't continue to see him, he would show the video to her friends and family. He would occasionally send her the images as a reminder whenever she showed any resistance towards him. So her main fear was that her family would find out."
"I just kept talking about the video, can you delete it. He said you just have to keep meeting him, to keep having sex with him, to marry him as well. Those were the conditions. I thought people would hate me and judge me and say it's your fault. I failed a lot of uni classes. "
One day, Sunil got violent after she stopped answering his calls, and attacked her car.
Arpita told a friend, who took her to a police station, where they filed a report.
Detective Senior Constable Keryn Milham remembers meeting Arpita.
"The recording was pretty much the first thing mentioned. That was her primary concern- that there was a recording and it could get out there. I find that the fact that it's been recorded is quite important to the victims because there's still that stigma around sexual assaults that they don't want anyone else to know. and the fact that it's recorded, that's a big worry for them. It clearly showed the young lady, she was clearly identified and it showed her with various parts of her clothing removed, and her being sexually assaulted. What it didn't show was the face of the offender."
"I felt relieved after telling the police. They were like, I'm glad you came to us, most people don't come to the police when something like this happens to them"
After Arpita filed a report, police questioned Sunil at his house and charged him with her rape and assault.
Later that night Sunil went to Arpita's house.
"I think it was around 9pm, no one usually comes to our house at that time. I heard the doorbell and I went to look through the window and I saw him. I told my mum don't open the door, keep it locked, don't talk to him. And then I went to my room and I locked the door. I called the police. And my parents started talking to him through the window. He was saying sorry and to let him go. He said he's leaving the country tomorrow and that he won't come back and just to drop the case. They didn't know what was going on, they were asking what happened. I was just in my room and my mum came in and she said what happened and I told her. And she was like oh it's your fault. She was angry. She started talking about when I was a child, I had a breathing problem when I was born, she was like it would have been better if you'd stopped breathing. Stuff like that. I felt bad. I felt I shouldn't have told her or told anyone (crying)."
"(Selvaratnam:) What did your dad say to you? Arpita: He said all girls are like that. (crying) He just said all girls just want to have sex with people, like guys and stuff.Because they're strict, I'm not allowed to talk to guys or anything like that so they were angry. The police came but he'd left so I went to sleep. And the next morning he was outside the house again and he was talking to my mum through the window."
"I was surprised. I don't think he himself had realised the gravity of just how much trouble he was in and just how much more trouble he was going to be in if he was going to continue to harass this young lady."
Sunil was in Australia on a bridging visa.
He was arrested and jailed after continuing to harass Arpita.
"With the cases I've been involved in, it's had a lot to do with keeping the relationship. The man involved wants to continue contact wit the woman. it might be that they want to marry them in the future or in this particular case he wanted to obtain a visa to live permanently in Australia. By that he wanted to marry her, he was going to do anything he could to make that happen. I've never had blackmailing for money or anything like that, it's been to do with keeping a relationship with a woman against her wishes."
Edie says she struggled to tell the police about what happened to her.
"I was pretty dubious about going at first particularly when you look at the way victims of sexual assault tend to be treated within any sort of criminal justice setting. I ended up showing them the whole video and explaining that I wasn't living in that house anymore and I was effectively being stalked by my ex and it was probably the first time that somebody had said to me, it sounds like you are describing sort of familial abuse."
Police filed a restraining order against Edie's ex, and he never tried to contact her again.
The video of her rape has not resurfaced since.
However the police didn't force him delete it.
Edie never pursued rape charges against him, she says out of fear of the repercussions.
"I didn't want to have to go through the trauma of that again and again and again cos you have to recount it to so many people, you have your story picked apart and the majority of the time for nothing at the end. so I didn't see the point in re-victimising myself and putting myself through that for months for no reason"
Sunil was charged and convicted on two counts of rape and one of common law assault.
He was sentenced to six years in jail, and will be immediately deported to India after he's finished his sentence.
Arpita's relationship with her family has deteriorated following the blackmail.
"In our culture, girls can't make friends with guys and it's pretty much their fault if something bad happens, that's what they believe because I started being friends with him. I think people would just talk about you and maybe exclude you, maybe not talk to your family."
Detective Senior Constable Milham says Arpita's family continued to blame her, even during the six month court case that proved Sunil's guilt.
"She was terrified because her parents had come to court as well. To their credit, they were there in support of her, but at the same time, they were annoyed as well as to how this could happen. Why was she involved in such an offence? I think after we had a bit of a chat to try and make them realise that she wasn't the one at fault."
Police say rape followed by blackmail is still a relatively rare combination, and no official statistics on the issue have been recorded.
But Detective Senior Constable Milham says the sex crimes unit has seen enough cases to know it's becoming a growing problem.
"Occasionally we get people reporting it straight away but it can take weeks, months. I'd hate to think how many cases are out there that we don't know about. unfortunately, we can only deal with the ones that we're told about. It has a major impact I believe and it depends on what cultural background the victims come from as well. certain communities the fault is often placedo n the young lady in an assault. so they're more concerned about everyone finding out what's happened to them athan reporting it to the police"
Edie is now a women's officer at her university, helping other women who have been blackmailed during a rape.
"There have been four this year and I shudder to think about how many of them I don't know as well. Because what I know about is just a tiny little sliver of what happens on campus and also just in the world."
Edie says Arpita's story is not uncommon, with many women from migrant communities targeted for blackmail.
"I've also seen a disturbing number of cases from international students that have been raped and are being blackmailed for it. I guess that a lot of these men that are assaulting them are really preying upon the fact that depending on where the student is from, a difference in culture. We had one student who was dating this guy and she didn't want to have sex for cultural reasons and he raped her and filmed it. and threatened to release it to her family and it was culturally unacceptable for her to be having pre-marital sex. he threatened to release it to her family and her community unless she gave him the money she was earning for her dodgy, illegal cash-in-hand job. So you suddenly have this issue of where is this money going to come from, where is she going to live and also, she's just been assaulted. it's just particularly with the international students there is that extra layer of horrendousness that you've got to try and tackle because it always involve money. I can talk to any w omen's officer at any campus in Australia and they will mimic the exact same stories. It's everywhere."
"There's just no incentive for women to report this sort of thing because there are never, there are very rarely positive outcomes. Always, in the back of your mind, you're constantly wondering if it's ever going to resurface fear that it's going to resurface and even if this resurfaced ten years down the track, it's like reliving that all over again."
But Edie's hoping to change that.
"I was robbed of myself and my ability to engage with the world around me for a good year and a half. That was taken from me and I can never get that back. I've come to the conclusion that I can't go back and change that so I have to use this experience to try and help others."
(Arpita): "He told me that he was going to win, that I was going to get married to him and that he's going to ruin my life. He was wrong."
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