Bradford Sue: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Bradford Sue: Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:625;Page:20011] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is pleased to see the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) back in the House today and we will be supporting it through all its stages. It is the sort of legislation that deserves and I hope will get cross-party support right across the House dealing as it does with some really sensitive but unavoidable issues around rape incest and other forms of sexual offending. 
The genesis of the bill lay partly with Dianne Yates’ member’s bill on drug rape. I would like to acknowledge her as others have done for her role in helping to push her own Government further not only to improve on her original bill and to extend it as needed but also to take the extra steps necessary to update the original 1961 Crimes Act for our 21st century mores and realities. 
The Green Party also notes Minister Phil Goff’s very recently introduced Supplementary Order Paper which creates the offence of sexual grooming as part of this bill. We will support that as well given that it has become such an inescapable and recognisable part of the pattern of behaviour of paedophile offenders. 
Sadly sexual violence and offending of all sorts continue to be a problem of significant proportions in our society. In its submission to the select committee the Auckland Sexual Abuse Help Foundation suggested that research shows that up to one in four girls may have had an unwanted sexual experience before the age of 12 that one in seven boys may have had such an experience before the age of 16 and that around one in 16 women may be sexually assaulted each year. Just from my own experience of life I am also aware that far more women and for that matter men have been raped in some way than ever becomes known in either the public or private arena. Even though support services and police awareness are much better now than when I was young—thank goodness—I believe that the vast majority of victims still go unrecognised and unsupported thus sustaining lifelong trauma. 
The Auckland Sexual Abuse Help Foundation and other submitters noted the way in which reporting rates remain low. One international research project found that maybe one in 10 survivors makes a formal report while a local project found only one in seven victims had ever reported sexual violence against him or her to an official body of any sort. It is clear that even now the cases that make it to the courts are still the very small tip of a very large iceberg. 
At least in improving this legislation as we are doing here today I sincerely hope that we will be widening and strengthening the ability of the police to prosecute and the courts to convict on a broader range of sexual offending than currently applies. We still live in a society where all too many people particularly men think that date rape or taking advantage of people when they are drunk or under the influence of drugs or because they have asked for it so to speak is still OK. 
Unfortunately we have even a number of adults who still think it is acceptable to have sexual relations with children—related to them or not. That is despite the societal and religious norms shared by all of us that abhor such behaviour. I am glad that this bill strengthens the laws against incest the last great taboo. It remains a taboo partly because of the code of silence around it but unfortunately it remains a living reality for all too many children and young people. 
The existing Act is too narrowly focused. We support the widening of the crime of incest to become gender-neutral and to recognise that all children and young people need protection from exploitation from older family members who have power over them. The Greens certainly do not share National’s concerns over definitions of family in that respect. It is an extremely complex area and I think the new bill does a good job of trying to modernise and to define more clearly the range of possible relationships involved. 
Another area of the bill in which I have taken a particular interest is that which deals with sexual offending in relation to disabled people. I have totally supported Government moves to recognise the right and ability of people with impairments to make their own informed sexual choices while at the same time recognising that they can be particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. 
 I am glad that the majority of the select committee saw fit to agree with the CCS submission that the use of the word “severe” in that part of the bill as originally drafted was inappropriate. That kind of negative value judgment comes from an era in which service providers and the families of people with intellectual disabilities in particular felt that they had a right to control and determine every aspect of people’s sex lives. It is good that we are finally moving beyond that and I congratulate organisations like People First IHC and CCS on the courageous steps they have taken in this area including their influencing and informing the amendments we are making today. 
However despite the Green Party’s overall support for this legislation there is one area where I like other members in this House think it has not gone far enough—that is in relation to the definition of rape. In putting the bill forward the Government stated that its purpose in making reforms in that area was to ensure that the law relating to sexual offences reflected changes in social attitudes that the law should be streamlined as much as possible and that offences provided for all victims of sexual abuse regardless of their sex and the sex of the offender. Despite that and despite a number of submissions on the matter the old definition of rape has been retained in the bill. It is not gender-neutral in that it states only women can be raped not men and that women cannot rape. It does not accept that rape can happen through penetration with an object and it does not accept that oral rape is rape. Those offences continue to be called unlawful sexual connection. 
The Green Party believes that the old definition retained in this bill is outdated in terms of society’s perceptions of what constitutes rape. It does not respect how victims feel about the reality of what has happened to them and it is also out of step with the latest definition used by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. That definition itself was the result of a broad review of rape laws across many jurisdictions. 
I will therefore move an amendment which is available on the table now in the Committee stage of the bill today. It is aimed at defining rape as acts on men as well as women acts by women as well as men and acts that include anal and oral penetration and penetration with objects. Currently rape is vaginal only. 
I know that this is a viscerally difficult topic for us to talk about. Most of us do not find it easy to discuss these matters around the dinner table at home much less in our caucus rooms or in a public arena like this House. However given that the Government has given us the opportunity to update the rape laws we should have the courage to deal with this issue and not to run away from it because it is too hard to talk about. 
Some submitters found the strength inside themselves to talk to us at the select committee about these things. We should honour that and have the strength to deal with them properly ourselves too. Male on male rape does happen as does female on female and female on male. Many people who have been raped with an object will say that in fact the experience of that is even worse than rape with a penis. The idea that oral rape is not rape is equally incomprehensible to me. People to whom that has not happened may not understand how it can happen but I can assure them that it is a reality and that the impact is physically and psychologically profound. 
From my own experience and from talking with others who have had such experiences I do not understand how rape can be graded and coded so that it applies only in the limited way defined in this legislation. I do not think it honours women or our experience of rape to keep rape as a man-on-woman offence only. It flies in the face of reality to say that only women can be raped that only men rape or that anal and oral penetration are not rape. It is time that people in society even those who are lucky enough not to have gone through any of those experiences matured to the point where it can be more broadly understood and accepted that rape is rape. That offence should not be divided or lessened by a legal definition that makes some forms of rape seem less serious than others. 
I know there is some sympathy for our view from other MPs and parties in this House including Mr Ron Mark in New Zealand First and I hope they will support the amendment the Green Party is putting up today. I would love to see the Government supporting our amendment. I believe that many members of the Labour Party support it. Let us name rape for what it is—an act of power by one person over another committed through an act of violence in all the various ways by which that act occurs—and turn our legal definition into one that accepts that reality rather than takes the easy route out by leaving things as they are.