by Anthony Frajman
Hosted by investigative journalist Jess Hill, Asking for It unpacks the issue of consent in Australia, incorporating discussions with victims of sexual assault, Survivor Advocates and experts.
What made you want to tackle this series?
“See What You Made Me Do did really well for SBS and they said, ‘okay, what’s next?’ I was having a conversation with one of commissioning editors saying, ‘well, obviously you must already be doing something about consent’. And he was like, ‘no, but that’s a great idea’. It organically came from there. I think consent, for the last few years, has been one of those words that feels like it’s relevant to everybody and everyone has something to say to about it. And so, for SBS and for us, it was obviously a natural follow-on from what we’ve already done.
“I think that there’s been such an evolution over the last few years. It has a lot to do with the MeToo movement. And those almost rockstar survivors like Grace Tame, who everybody knows their name, everybody knows their story… She’s an incredibly compelling speaker and she has inspired so many other people to tell their stories. There’s this outpouring of stories all of a sudden. It’s a combination of a lot of people not knowing what to do with those stories, but also not understanding that it was so widespread and there was, I think, this realisation that consent isn’t understood very well. The most surprising thing for me in talking to so many people about it, is the number of people who say, ‘I was sexually assaulted, but I didn’t know’, which before doing the series, I would’ve thought, ‘how can you not know?’ But actually, I get it now, having had so many conversations and looked at so many case studies, that a lot of people don’t know. A lot of people also don’t know when they have violated consent. Our realisation of all of that has then led to this massive push for education, obviously through our schools. But in this series, it’s also a case of looking beyond school and there’s so many sexual assaults, for example, happening in aged care. So, consent is not just an issue when you’re 15, it’s an issue right through your life.”
How confronting was this series to make?
“It was a really hard series to make, and we do a lot of hard stuff! We did a whole series about domestic abuse [See What You Made Me Do], which is terrible, and it’s very hard to work with people who have been traumatised by that experience. But this seemed to be another step. Part of that is because there was no getting around it. What people were talking about was sexual violence, and there was no pretending that it was something else; the word consent allows you to sanitise that a bit, but that is hard to listen to. And those people can be very fragile because of their experiences and holding their stories is a huge responsibility. And not to make it worse for them, but to make it a good experience and to come out the other side feeling empowered by the experience.”
As you looked more into the topic, what things do you think need to change?
“Well, in episode two, we particularly focus on the legal system. That was another shock for me. When you look at what happens when someone takes a case to court, and I had no understanding of this until we started looking into it in detail, and again, following people through these experiences. You’d hear the same story over and over again that eight out of 10 people who go to the police will be told, ‘there’s no point in carrying this case on, you’re not going to get anywhere with this case, or we are not going to prosecute’. And then there’s the tiny proportion of people who actually do travel through the courts and what an incredibly traumatising experience it is for them. We look at the statistic that lawyer Michael Bradley uses, that less than 1% of people who rape will be prosecuted or prosecuted and convicted. There’s something massively wrong with the system.”
Working on the series, what steps did you take to keep participants safe?
“We have a psychologist who works with us on the series, and she would speak to people before they would speak to us to make sure that their eyes were wide open about the process. A lot of people don’t think this is going to end up with their face on television telling an incredibly personal story. They’ve got to decide if that’s something that they want to do… that their workmates will see it, or their schoolmates, all that kind of thing.
“There were obviously issues with younger people and any disclosures that were made around people who were below the age of consent. We had massive legal assistance through the series because, as we all know, this is a pretty volatile area at the moment. We didn’t want to do anything that was potentially defamatory. It takes a huge amount of care from all different specialisations to make sure that with everyone that we put on screen, that it’s safe for them in saying what they’re saying.”
Working with such difficult material, what was the biggest challenge of making the series?
“I think rape is really hard to talk about. If you are going to encourage people to sit and watch an hour and then follow up with another hour, and another hour on the subject, you have to make that digestible. Making the subject of sexual violence digestible is really hard. That was the hardest thing. It was harder to do it on this count than it was even on domestic abuse.”
You’ve re-teamed with host Jess Hill, who you worked with on See What You Made Me Do. Can you talk us through the process of working with her?
“We did it a bit differently this time. When we were making See What You Made Me Do, we started working with Jess halfway through the process. She proved to be great on camera, so she became our presenter, and she had such a fantastic working knowledge of the material. This time, a lot of it crosses over, so she came on as an associate producer quite early on and was there when we were deciding what stories we might follow. It was always great to get her input at that point, but also, she has a huge amount of goodwill within the community, and so people want to talk to her. So that was really helpful too. It’s a joy working with Jess.”
What’s the biggest thing that you got from the series?
“There are no simple solutions to this. But, in the third episode, we did look at ‘not simple solutions’, and the things that people are doing to create cultural change. It always has to start with cultural change. It was a lot more fun to look at the ways people are getting communities to talk in healthy ways about sex and especially, to bring in young boys and men into the conversation and different minorities who have a very different experience often; issues that they have around consent can be quite different. It was really interesting to see how people are tailoring programs through their own lived experience for the sake of others, and they’re making it bespoke to their community.
“There’s great stuff happening out there. There’s really great education going through schools. There’s also some not very impressive stuff. Schools are so important and this needs to be part of a national curriculum, which is the case from this year – there is a national curriculum rolling out. But you always come back to the fact that it is not as simple as that.
“We also look at porn and how that is influencing the way people perceive sex and their ideas about it. It’s a very broad cultural picture that we need to discuss.”
The three-part series Asking For It will premiere 8:30pm Thursday 20 April on SBS and SBS On Demand
