How men can help create a culture where all genders feel safe to report sexual violence without fear

By Reuben Williams

As a man who has survived sexual assault, Reuben William’s found it was not until he had conversations with female survivors that he learnt how different their experience was to his own.

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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

In the week after I was sexually assaulted, I gathered 10 of my work friends at Cricket Australia together at a cafe and told them what happened. In that moment, I was asking them to empathise with me and try to understand what it’s like to go through something that (at least to my knowledge) none of them had gone through.

But to be honest, if had come to myself in that situation, I would have had no idea what to say. For me to have the EQ and the language to know how to respond to a sexual assault survivor, I had to become part of a section of society I never planned to join (plus go to therapy 60+ times and have empathy drilled into my head).

Hopefully, most people will never fully understand what it’s like for victims. But that’s the first challenge that workplace leaders have, not just with victims of assault, but all social issues. To be able to say: I have no idea what you’re going through. But I believe you, and I’m here for you.

I’ll use myself as an example of ignorance here. Because even as someone who has been assaulted, it wasn’t until I had conversations with victims from various demographics that I learnt how wildly different the experience was to mine as a white, educated, heterosexual male.

I will never fully understand what it’s like to be a female victim of sexual assault, nor will I fully understand the experience for women of colour. Listening to their stories made me realise how wildly different we were treated and the considerations (or lack of in my case) they were forced to make.

As men, it’s easy to forget how naive we can be to the perspectives of women dealing with sexual violence and the barriers that prevent them from coming forward.

For example: I reported my assault to the police with a level of binary thinking that I would have used to decide if I was going to report someone for stealing my car. Like, of course I will. Don’t touch my car, don’t touch my dick… or you’re fucked.

When it came to speaking up to tell friends and family, I only did so because I learnt about the story of a woman who held onto her trauma for 15 years, until it crippled her from the inside out and she lost her life to suicide. I didn’t want to find out what holding on to it would do to me, so I told my friends immediately. In other words, I wanted to survive.

When I spoke with women and listened to their stories, I realised that they were just trying to survive this too. But for many of them, surviving didn’t look like speaking up. Surviving looked like bottling it up to prevent the onslaught of barriers society forces women to consider, such as:

Am I going to be believed? Am I going to be told I was ‘asking for it?’ What’s my family going to think? What is my culture or religion going to think?

There’s many more I’m sure I’m unaware of.

All of these considerations build up and make coming forward feel like an insurmountable task. When I compared my list of considerations to those of women side by side, for me to come forward felt like a bit of a fence I had to jump over, but for some women they’ve got to scale the bloody Great Wall of China just to be heard.

This stark difference in experience, due to privilege, made me feel slightly guilty. But as one friend reminded me: nobody chooses the privilege they’re born with, it’s what you do with the privilege that counts. That’s why I’m writing this. Because I want surviving assault to look like speaking up. I’m sick of saying “do what’s best for you”.

If we want to see more people feel safe to speak up, and create a society that’s safe for vulnerable people and our loved ones to walk through, we need to make surviving look like speaking.

One thing men can do to make people feel safe to come forward, is to acknowledge we don’t know what we don’t know. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s essential.

We also need to acknowledge that the barriers are different for different people of different demographics. And when we do this… I believe that human nature will give you the words to respond in the right way.

When I had finished delivering the news to my work mates at the cafe, I’ll never forget my 6’2, footy playing, private school-educated, RM boot 5-days a week wearing, Head of Strategy, friend who sat directly opposite me and said: “What can we do to help?”

Or years later when a Commercial Lawyer from Melbourne turned to me during Day 4 of the Lord’s Test and said: “Mate, I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”

Both of those men made me feel seen and believed, which pushed my snowballing confidence to reach the end of a 6-year journey through the legal system.

When more men, leaders and decision makers can acknowledge “I don’t know, but I’m here”, more victims are given hope of reclaiming themselves.

This article was originally shared on Rueben’s own blog, where he shares the lessons he has learnt in the five years since his sexual assault.

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About the author

Reuben Williams

Reuben is the Founder of SportsGrad and an advocate for survivors of sexual assault. He started his career at Cricket Australia, where his assault occurred, but was made redundant due to COVID. Ironically, he then launched SportsGrad to help others land dream jobs in sport, whilst navigating a 6 year journey to seek justice. Now, Reuben is on a mission to create safer workplaces by sharing his story.

For more from Reuben, you can follow his work on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok.