Latest news with #DysonHeydon
The Age
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Age
What happens to men who have caused harm to women?
A number of prominent Australian men – including Supreme Court judges – attended a recent launch of a book by supposedly 'disgraced' former High Court judge Dyson Heydon. In 2020, Heydon was found by an independent High Court inquiry to have sexually harassed six young female associates. Heydon maintains his innocence. None of this is any surprise. Donald Trump has been found guilty in a civil court of sexual misconduct, and was subsequently returned to the White House by voters. The longstanding myth that being accused of (or even found to have committed) sexual harassment ruins your career and life forever is being publicly and repeatedly debunked. This is a reminder that the people who subject others to sexual harassment or perpetrate sexual assault are often normal people embedded in and atop the fabric of our society, not outcast from it. So, what do we actually want from men who have been found to have caused harm? Is it punishment, rehabilitation, or both? How do we measure what level of social ostracism it would take for them to not harm again? Should victim satisfaction or future behaviour be the focal point of these reflections? Power and entitlement are the bedrock of all forms of sexual harassment and assault. Powerful people have access to subordinates and have seen institutions or circles they are part of routinely protect their own kind, while silencing victims. This creates a sense of legal and reputational immunity (one that is often proven correct), and contributes to levels of entitlement that manifest as their prerogative to the bodies of others. One of the criminal justice system's greatest failings in addressing sexual harm is its all-or-nothing approach – unable to reckon with the complexity of human experience and interpersonal harm. The criminal system was designed by men, for men, when sexual harm was an act of 'damaging' another man's 'property'. We still lack a socially acceptable form of accountability outside the criminal system, a system many victims avoid, not just because of its traumatising process or the slim chance of a conviction, but because many do not want their perpetrators jailed, especially when they are friends, mentors or colleagues. The problem here is that each victim will have their own threshold for what constitutes justice. Loading Some perpetrators face social consequences for their actions – terminated or forced resignations from positions, exclusion from parties, or reputational damage – but when you're close to the harm, it feels irrelevant compared with the gravity of consequences for the victim. Both things can be true: accountability can exist in public form (generally, men fear this), and yet this can feel painfully insufficient to those who bore the impact (generally, women resent this). However, it must not be forgotten that the question of accountability is only being explored at all because Heydon was found by a High Court inquiry to have committed the actions he was accused of. I wonder whether, had the standard of proof in this inquiry been 'beyond reasonable doubt', the women who spoke up would be branded as 'attention-seeking liars'. The reality was the same, regardless, but the finding is what has shaped the public narrative.
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
What happens to men who have caused harm to women?
A number of prominent Australian men – including Supreme Court judges – attended a recent launch of a book by supposedly 'disgraced' former High Court judge Dyson Heydon. In 2020, Heydon was found by an independent High Court inquiry to have sexually harassed six young female associates. Heydon maintains his innocence. None of this is any surprise. Donald Trump has been found guilty in a civil court of sexual misconduct, and was subsequently returned to the White House by voters. The longstanding myth that being accused of (or even found to have committed) sexual harassment ruins your career and life forever is being publicly and repeatedly debunked. This is a reminder that the people who subject others to sexual harassment or perpetrate sexual assault are often normal people embedded in and atop the fabric of our society, not outcast from it. So, what do we actually want from men who have been found to have caused harm? Is it punishment, rehabilitation, or both? How do we measure what level of social ostracism it would take for them to not harm again? Should victim satisfaction or future behaviour be the focal point of these reflections? Power and entitlement are the bedrock of all forms of sexual harassment and assault. Powerful people have access to subordinates and have seen institutions or circles they are part of routinely protect their own kind, while silencing victims. This creates a sense of legal and reputational immunity (one that is often proven correct), and contributes to levels of entitlement that manifest as their prerogative to the bodies of others. One of the criminal justice system's greatest failings in addressing sexual harm is its all-or-nothing approach – unable to reckon with the complexity of human experience and interpersonal harm. The criminal system was designed by men, for men, when sexual harm was an act of 'damaging' another man's 'property'. We still lack a socially acceptable form of accountability outside the criminal system, a system many victims avoid, not just because of its traumatising process or the slim chance of a conviction, but because many do not want their perpetrators jailed, especially when they are friends, mentors or colleagues. The problem here is that each victim will have their own threshold for what constitutes justice. Loading Some perpetrators face social consequences for their actions – terminated or forced resignations from positions, exclusion from parties, or reputational damage – but when you're close to the harm, it feels irrelevant compared with the gravity of consequences for the victim. Both things can be true: accountability can exist in public form (generally, men fear this), and yet this can feel painfully insufficient to those who bore the impact (generally, women resent this). However, it must not be forgotten that the question of accountability is only being explored at all because Heydon was found by a High Court inquiry to have committed the actions he was accused of. I wonder whether, had the standard of proof in this inquiry been 'beyond reasonable doubt', the women who spoke up would be branded as 'attention-seeking liars'. The reality was the same, regardless, but the finding is what has shaped the public narrative.
Sydney Morning Herald
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
The Dyson Heydon rehabilitation tour rolls on
Disgraced former High Court judge Dyson Heydon is disgraced no more, at least as far as some senior members of the judiciary are concerned. Nearly five years ago, this masthead revealed Heydon had been found by an independent High Court inquiry to have sexually harassed six female associates. But after a period of relative exile, the former judge self-published a hefty textbook, Heydon on Contract: Particular Contracts earlier this year, and there's nothing like a legal tome to seemingly provide a ticket to redemption. The book has been popping up in barristers' chambers and law firms around the country. As CBD reported earlier this year, it received a glowing foreword from Heydon's High Court colleague Michael Kirby, while guests at a book launch included the Federal Court's number one media darling Michael Lee, of Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial fame. More recently he has been busily savaging Qantas in its illegal outsourcing case. And Heydon himself was recently invited to Friday after work drinks at the Federal Court, something which wouldn't have gone down well a few years ago, when the legal profession was still pretending to take matters of sexual harassment seriously. Loading Now, the latest stop on Heydon's rehabilitation tour is in Perth, where he will be a speaker at conservative legal pressure group The Samuel Griffith Society's annual conference in August. It'll be a chance to hobnob with other eminent figures, with current High Court judge Simon Steward and former Western Australian premier Richard Court also on the speakers' list. An email to members sent this week announcing Heydon's appearance also contained a hefty plug for his book from the society's president, Allan Myers, KC, a top barrister, philanthropist and former University of Melbourne chancellor. 'Those who wished to stifle Dyson's work have failed. They have failed because he has written Particular Contracts. They have failed because you, all of you, and all of those whom you will influence, will purchase Particular Contracts,' he wrote.
