How dangerous men think: Brent Sanders Pt. 1

Former police officer Brent Sanders has spent over 30 years teaching consent, sexual assault law and predator awareness to students across Australia. In this episode of I Catch Killers, he sits down with Gary Jubelin to explain how sex offenders think, what they look for, and what every parent and young person needs about how to stay safe and act respectfully when navigating the complex issues of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and consent. From why you should run, yell and fight back instead of complying, to the often misunderstood legal definitions around consent, and how too many young men are crossing the line without even realising it. In this episode: Inside the mindset of a predator and the fear of getting caught What serial attackers look for when choosing a victim Why freezing helps an offender — and what to do instead Consent, the law, and the line you can't uncross Brent's journey: arrested at 16 to becoming New Zealand’s youngest police recruit What every parent must tell teenagers about staying safe You can watch I Catch Killers on Youtube here. https://www.youtube.com/@ICatchKillers-Podcast Follow I Catch Killers: Instagram:@icatchkillers https://www.instagram.com/icatchkillers/?hl=enTiktok:@icatchkillerspodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@icatchkillerspodcastFacebook:@icatchkillers https://www.facebook.com/icatchkillers/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The public has had a long-held fascination with detectives. Detectives see a side of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent 34 years as a cop. For 25 of those years, I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  Today's conversation couldn't be more timely. My guest, Brent Sanders, is a former cop turned safety educator. He delivers training to high school and university students on how to stay safe and act respectfully when navigating the complex issues of sexual harassment, sexual assault and consent. For young men, his training focuses on taking responsibility for their actions, resisting peer pressure and understanding the importance of respect and self-discipline. For young women, Brent provides practical tools and strategies, helping them understand how offenders think and how to stay level-headed in potential dangerous situations. Given everything we've seen in the media recently about alleged sexual assault incidents,

• 1:31Speaker 00

  this conversation, I think, is well worth your time. Brent Sanders, welcome to I Catch Killers.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Gary.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  There's been a lot in the media of recent times about, yeah, groups of young men caught up in serious sexual assault allegations. A lot of high-profile stuff. We even had a situation where there was an alleged choking of a 16-year-old girl during the sex act. And sadly, we see it in the media too often. Women are victims of sexual assault. So we want to sort of cover off on that. But you obviously have an in-depth understanding of the type of problems that are associated with those offences. Education plays a big part, would you agree?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Oh, look, 100%. And on both sides of that discussion, I think your mechanism of that, Gary, is, you have a son, I have a daughter. They're older now, but I've gone into both of their schools over the years. I've presented in both their schools for close to 20 years. And, you know, young women are entitled to know all the legal stuff, all the definitions, consent and everything else. Young men equally are entitled to that knowledge. So I think knowledge is such an important thing. And I see, when I go into the schools and even at university level, I see that there's a familiarity with a lot of the terms, like, you know, terms like consent and terms like that. But when you sort of scrape below the surface and say, well, okay,

• 3:00Speaker 01

  what does it actually mean to have consent? What does it mean to give consent? Or if you're advising a friend on something that's happened to them, where does your information sort of come from? And I find that that's where people's knowledge drops off the cliff a little. So that's sort of where I try to fill in those gaps and say, well, let's look at what consent is. Let's look at how it applies. Even definitions carry around and, you know, we're getting a lot of media reporting with terminology around sexual crime. People have a familiarity with all these terms, but they're not quite sure what they mean. So once you can fill those gaps, I think, and you educate, that's a big step in the right direction.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Well, that's something that you've, and I'm amazed, and I had to check my facts, but you've spoken to over a million students.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Mate, I've been doing this a long time.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  I was doing the calculations. That's a lot, but you've been doing this for...

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Over 30 years. Over 30 years. And I speak to 30,000 to 40,000 students a year. I go into 150-odd schools, every state and territory around the country.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  And I was not surprised, but it's interesting that there seemed to be so much hunger from the students when you gave the talks that you do. And we'll delve deeper into the messaging that you're getting across.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  But the amount of hunger from the kids or young adults, teenagers?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Spot on. You know, I came from a policing background like yourself, Gary. And I thought the last thing that students would want to hear about is legal stuff.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  I thought that's black and white, dry and boring gear. Young people, they're not going to want to know about that. 99% of the questions I get pertain to people, students wanting to qualify the legal stuff. Okay, if the law says this, where's that line? What happens if it's crossed? And they really want that black and white clarity.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  And sometimes it's an awkward conversation. So the parents mightn't have the conversation with them, teachers mightn't.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  So where do they get the information from? And if they're getting the information from each other, invariably it goes a bit skewiff.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  100%. And, you know, this generation of young folks that I'm talking to probably have access to more knowledge and information than any other generation ever.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Definitely.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  But so much of it is unreliable. And I see that. I see students sort of parroting what they've heard or what they've read on a blog or something on social media. And it bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the law.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  But because they've read it on a social media platform, it sort of carries a credibility that's not always really there in existence. And even when the intent to put that content up is honorable and it's done for the right reason, sometimes the knowledge is not quite there to match it.

• 5:53Speaker 00

  Well, I think it's important stuff that you're doing. Before we get into the messaging and the educational information that you're providing to the students, let's talk a little bit about yourself. You were a cop, but before you were a cop, you actually fell foul of the law.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  I did, mate.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  As a young fella. Okay, we all make mistakes.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  If you're happy to talk about that.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure, mate. I've told the story quite a few times. In fact, you know, when I speak to young men in my seminars, it's one of the things I talk about. I've always sort of had this feeling, but, you know, talking to young boys or young men about choice, about consequence, about behaviour. I've always sort of felt strongly that I don't want to just go in and say, do this, don't do that. And because they're looking at me going, well, who the hell is this? What would he know? You know? So I just tell my story.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  And I say, guys, I'm not telling you this because I think you're going to do what I did or you're going to end up where I ended up. I'm telling you this because good young blokes can make bad choices. They can make them in a heartbeat and, you know. And, yeah, I grew up in New Zealand, got in a fair bit of trouble going through year 10. I ended up pinching a car New Year's Eve. You know, I got dead by a couple of mates at a party we were at. Took the bloke's mum's car.

• 7:07Speaker 00

  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Hilarious, yeah. And, you know, it was a culmination of the sort of behaviour that I was expressing during that time, all about, you know, being scared to say no to your mates. Creating a version of yourself that wasn't really real, but you were frightened that people would see through it.

• 7:28Speaker 00

  You're tapping in the peer group pressure.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  All that stuff.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  And you can do some stupid shit because of the peer group pressure.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  And it's interesting, you know, one thing I say to young men when I talk to them is, you know, the world that they live in today, in many regards, is unrecognisable to the world that you and I lived in in, say, year 10 or year 11. But the stuff that I talk to them about in this context, it simply hasn't changed. And I get young blokes coming up to me after the talks and saying, it was like you were talking about me. I've been in these situations. And so, yeah, mate, I took that car. I had one of my best mates in the front seat, another mate in the back. And long story short, you know, we drove into a school this one, two o'clock in the morning and ploughed straight through a fence through the side of a house. And, yeah, literally, you know, you and I have, back in the day,

• 8:18Speaker 01

  climbed through car wrecks where some survive, some don't. Yeah, I've crawled through car wrecks where all the occupants have been killed in the car that are less serious than the accident that I created.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  It doesn't leave you, does it?

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, you know, there was an elderly woman in the house. I could have killed her. So, yeah, that was, that was New Year's Eve into year 10. So I'd just turned 16, did a runner, got caught. The police track a dog from the car, you know, all nine yards. Two mates could have been charged, two mates could have been charged. Yeah, they knowingly got into a stolen car. But one was 15, one was 16. They got a bit of a kick up the backside. Yeah, I got charged with three offences, three criminal offences. What was unlawful, taking motor vehicle, dangerous driving, willful damage. And they were all serious offences to be levelled at a 16-year-old kid, you know. And you know the process, Gary, you've been in the job.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  The, what they call juvenile justice or Department of Community Services. They'll go to your school to visit your school and they'll have a chat to the principal and teachers to get a bit of a picture. Mate, I'd been suspended a couple of times that year. I was, I was just...

• 9:26Speaker 00

  So the track record...

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yes, I had spiders all over me, you know. And so I ended up in court, second week of year 11, pleaded guilty to all three offences. And it's just funny, things that happen in your life. There was a judge presiding over my case. I'd never met him. I mean, you know, a young bloke, you walk into court, you're in front of that judge for five minutes.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  And then you walk out and another bloke walks in. I ended up working with him as a copper, funnily enough. Judge Ian Robinson, I'll never forget his name. Because a stroke of a pen, my life's totally different.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's that sliding door moment, isn't it?

• 9:56Speaker 01

  He gave me, it used to be called being admonished and discharged without conviction. I think they now call it a section 10, which sounds much more official.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Admonished and discharged without conviction basically means, old term is that being admonished, you'd been told off by the charge and it gives you a serve. But you walk out of court without having a criminal conviction alongside your name.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  And although that just sounds like a whole lot of words, you and I know a young person that gets a conviction alongside their name, it stays, can stay with you for life depending on the offence.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  Most definitely.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then you start applying. For example, you can't get into the police with a conviction. You can't get the police, army, navy, air force, fireys, AMBOs, all those things. So... I walked out, probably didn't even know at the time, the consequence of avoiding that.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  So I, I actually have a criminal record.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  But my record contains three warnings. So needless to say, three years later, uh, I walked in to the Wellington Police Station, the station that I'd been arrested in.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  And um, knocked on the door of the recruitment sergeant and, and applied to get in the job. You know, things had obviously turned around. I pulled my socks up and given myself a couple of uppercuts and uh, and you know, the first thing they do, I'd imagine it's the same now, uh, Gary is, you know, the old recruitment bloke. He's sitting on the L C, a lovely bloke, about the age of my dad, you know, and he types up your name, date of birth, puts it on the police computer and has a quick look at the screen and here comes my criminal record.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  And he sort of looks at it, looks at me and says, oh, well, we better have a bit of a chat about this. Um, but because there was no conviction on any of the three charges, in essence, they, they couldn't stop me from applying. They could weed me out through the process. So I applied and um, you know, back in the day, you had to do medicals and physicals and exams and everything. You know, chin ups and press ups and sit ups and all the things that, I don't know if they still do all that. Um, I got through it and I got in. So I ended up going to the police college three years after. Um, yeah, the fir- the first time, the first lockup I made um, was for shoplifting fairly, you know, run of the mill sort of thing, couple of days out of the academy.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Uh, locked up a young bloke, same age as I was when I got done, but he got done for shoplifting, you know. And so that was the first time I'd walked back into that same courtroom. The last time I was in that courtroom, I was a sixteen year old kid in the dock.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  You were the accused.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Now I'm a nineteen year old cop and nervous as all hell.

• 12:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Uh, reading out a summary of facts to a judge and, you know, so life takes you down some funny pathways and um, and you know, I, I, I, I'm not saying because of that I was better at doing anything, but I, I think, I think I had a, a, a, an empathy that perhaps not all have in those positions for young fellows that got locked up.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I, I tend to agree with you. I, I think that sort of life experience, you can look at someone, so when you're putting someone, arresting someone, you know, well, that could have been me, it was me.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  That, that type of, uh, type of situation.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's, and this is something I, you know, it's not the only thing I talk to boys about, but I do talk to boys about that. And, and one thing I say to them is, um, when I was sitting across the desk as a copper from a young fella, you know, let's say under eighteen and he's been done for, might be shoplifting, might be pinching a car, getting a punch up or, or whatever it is. You know, you take the, you take the statement, what mum might be their dad, maybe a lawyer and that type of thing. I'd always um, I'd always turn this, back in those days, you know, we had to write the statements out. You know, they were typed up in the typing pool, it was all a bit different, you know.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  Completely.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  It's, it's all, it's, it's all the same now, but it's all a little bit more streamlined. I turned the uh, I turned the statement, I put the pen on top and I'd say to these young blokes. And I, and I tell this in my seminars, I'd say to these young fellows, I said, mate, you don't have to answer this question, it's off the record, but from here, we're gonna go down the cell block, I'm gonna have to fingerprint your photograph, you, the whole nine yards, because this young bloke, he's, he's frightened, he's terrified, you know, but he doesn't even know how bad things can get. You know, that decision that he's made, heartbeat.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Um, has the potential to change his life in a way that no other decision could, you know. And you and I know, sitting on this side of the desk, what's coming for that young bloke, he's got no idea. And I'd always ask this question, I'd say, mate, can I ask you before, you know, I've got your statement, everything else, can I just ask you, mate, what, what, why'd you do it?

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  And, and not, not every young bloke answers, but those that did, every one of them gave the same answer. And, and it would be the same answer I'd have given if the copper that locked me up had asked me. Mate, they look up, yeah, you've been here, Gary, yeah, they look up in tears, mum and dad are there, you know. And every young bloke who answered said, I don't know, I don't know why I did it, I've got no way, I can't even believe I'm here, you know.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  And I could relate to that. Uh, you know, I woke up literally in a, in a cell in the back of the police station on New Year's Day when I was sixteen. A- and I, I couldn't believe what had happened.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  It was like it was sort of, it was unreal, you know.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  If you can, and you can't, and I, I know exactly what you're talking about. If you can get that message across to uh, young boys and, and, and young girls, there, there's consequences from your actions. And that's something that you, you don't at that age actually think about it until you get caught.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  I, I think of the things that I've done that got away with and it could have been the same scenario or, or, or even worse.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're by the grace of God, you know, go all of us.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  So I, I think if, if that sort of education and explaining that to uh, uh, young people, be it uh, young, young boys or, or young girls, I think it's an important message to uh, to, to get across. Going from there into the policing, so nineteen, so you were the youngest graduate.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was mate, when I ninety five, which might have been about the same time.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I, I was like eighty five.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  And you spent how long in the, in the cop?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  I was in the job through the age into the nineties, close to ten years.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  And, and you know, you graduate, again, you don't think of this at the time, but you know, nineteen's, it's pretty young. I've got a young fellow who's twenty five.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  I know.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  And I'd, I'd, I'd been frontline policing for six years at that stage and, and it's like, in many regards, nineteen's too young, you know, I remember we'd, you go through the academy, you might have a couple of guys in your section, um, who are in their late twenties, even their early thirties, and you look at them like they're these oracles, like, you know, they've had relationships and they've, some of them are married and here I was, mate, nineteen, and he just started shaving and I'm diving into domestic disputes and I'm trying to, you know, and, and so, yeah, it's a steep learning curve, but uh, I, I, mate, I wouldn't change it and, and um, you know, you do your uh, your general duty stuff. Um, I was young and a bit silly, I put your hand up for anything, so I

• 16:38Speaker 01

  got a few deployments, did a bit of the old vice squad stuff, a little bit of um, uh, drug squad involvement. Then got plucked to do some sort of um, short term uh, U C or undercover operations and uh, I did a bit of uh, gang liaison, uh, I was police liaison for a mob over the highway sixty one. They were like a Comancheros sort of a setup, just, you know, a bunch of idiots and uh, did a bit of work there. I was in the riot, riot squad for a couple of years. Um, riot policing in New Zealand came about after the eighty one Springbok tour, you know, there was a lot of stuff happened there.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay, when South Africa came over.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that's right, and that, that was really sort of fractured society and they formed a, a, a unit there uh, called the Red Squad. And out of that, each main centre in New Zealand formed a riot squad. And it's, it's like they reformed it here after the criminal riots, you know, the, um, I was on that for a couple of years, I think there was about twenty, thirty coppers, couple of dogs and um, again, you know, that was Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, uh, literally going into punch ups, going into gang confrontations, warrant on gang houses. I mean, any copper who spent five minutes policing in New Zealand back in the day, uh, the gang issue was huge.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  The ga- the gangs were, well, there, there's still a gang problem, but it was wild times in, in New Zealand.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Look, it was, you know, you go into pubs, gang pubs.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Um, in Wellington, and this is a pub, we're in a public bar, the only patrons are members of a certain gang. And there'd be a hundred, a hundred and fifty of them, you know, full face tattoos, whole nine yards. So anyone who's not in that gang doesn't set foot in that pub.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  So you go in there, there'd be thirty coppers and a couple of dogs and it could be as, they could be fine, those blokes can be okay, they can be fine one on one. But when it goes off, it's, it's like a firecracker, just suddenly it's all on. So then I, you know, I dipped my toe after that um, into a bit of sexual crime stuff. That, that, that was all fairly new in the sort of eighties, nineties, Australia, New Zealand. Um, and you know, without boring everyone to tears, I, I got a bit interested in the whole um, profiling area that was a bit newer.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and, and you're saying that, I, I don't think you'll bore people, I think that's one of the things that people find fascinating about the psychology of people who commit offences, so I'm a bit interested in what, what you're saying.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  And it is something that's only come in relatively recent time.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Back in the day, we hadn't even really heard much about it, you know, now, you know, there's TV shows, Criminal Minds and, and um, you know, there, you can look on streaming services at how that all started, you know, it came out of uh, the uh, FBI.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  The, the Mindhunter.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, Mindhunter, it came out of the behavioural analysis. And it was also, and I understand, cause you know, coppers are pretty black and white. It was, it was seen as a little bit of witchcraft, a little bit airy fairy and things. And um, I think it's a lot more widely embraced now than perhaps what it was.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  I, I mention that only because, you know, I, I got quite interested in that and, and, and it, it created a bit of a um, uh, a platform, if you like, or a springboard. Um, I got asked to do a few talks in that space and um, ended up doing a couple of talks over here and uh, one of the talks I did, there was a woman from the New South Wales Education Department and it coincided at a time that they were putting this programme together, they used to call it crossroads, it has different names, it was sort of like this extracurricular stuff for kids, I think in year eleven, year twelve, around drugs, alcohol, mental health. And she, she was representing the education department, wanted to sort of try and team up or do a bit of work with someone that could fill in some content around sexual crime consent and that type of thing.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  So that's, that's sort of how our paths crossed and she sent me a whole lot of stuff on that and.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  So you're still in the, the cops in New Zealand at the time and you did this talk over here?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and um, long story short, I um, I, I did a bit of liaison with the education department, took a bit of leave, that took a little bit more than sort of had to make a decision as to which way I was gonna jump and um, yeah, I, I decided, you know, I'm gonna have a crack, I'm gonna have a crack at this. So that was back in ninety five, so, you know, it's over thirty years ago and uh, But you know, to to walk into a a a school in Sydney on those days, have a meeting with a principal and say, look, how about you let me come and talk to all your students about sex offenders or sex crimes? How does that sound?

• 20:46Speaker 00

  That would be a hard sell.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  So she was a slow start, even even with the uh even with the education department's support and things, nobody had done it.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  You know, and I remember one of the first talks I did, uh there were three primary school principals at the back of the room evaluating my talk and I always and and you know, not nothing against them at all, but they were sitting in there to evaluate my content on sexual crime and things like that.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  That was sort of the test that you had to pass to to get in and, you know, um when I first came to Sydney, I was I was bouncing up in the cross.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know, I was thinking about getting you back on the podcast for another session, my time on the doors at the cross.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  You know, the Colosseum up there, you'd be familiar with that place.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  Very familiar.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, right in the middle of the cross in the good old days, you know, and I used to work up there Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, um and and then I'd be going into schools during the day, I was, you know, uh.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  That's a sort of yin yang lifestyle, going into schools and then.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Exactly, and I was doing a lot of the schools free of charge just to get my foot in the door and um Sydney Morning Herald, funny enough, years ago, they did a story, I don't know how they found out, they did this story about me and they depicted me in this sort of cartoon style of a, it's like this bulldog.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  On a door with a um sort of collar on and then a halo above above my head and it was sort of like, you know, up the cross, sort of bouncing three nights a week and then going into, you know, sort of schools and talking to girls and go, yeah, so uh but it's just, yeah, it's funny, isn't it?

• 22:17Speaker 00

  Well, I think with that sort of background, it it comes like what I know about speaking to uh young men and and women, you've got to have some credibility, otherwise they're going to switch off. They're they're told to sit and listen to people all day, they're at school.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  So, yeah, if you you've got the stories, the fact that you're a cop, you had experience in in different things, you could talk to them and that that gets their attention and I think that's the key to educating people, you've got to be able to get their attention first, otherwise it's going to be lost.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  But um from, and I think it was a school at at North Sydney where you first.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they had a very forward thinking um principal, so I I did that, my first talk there, and I still go there every year.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  Tell us, uh, cause you you, my understanding is the first lot of lectures, it was all to uh female schools?

• 23:05Speaker 01

  It was, yeah.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  And what what, tell us the messaging that you're you're giving to uh female students? Cause I I think this is the stuff that people want to uh want to hear and understand about uh, yeah, what sort of information can we give give to young girls?

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting, back at the time, Gary, the education department, and and I was being governed very much by by them, they only, really, they would only allow me to talk to girls, which you you you think of that today, it's quite bizarre.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I could imagine.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:36Speaker 00

  Like, why are you talking to girls, it's the young boys at the.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Hundred percent, hundred percent, but I I wasn't in a position to push back on that and so I thought, well, I I'll just do what I'm told to do, so I was going into girls' schools and coed schools to talk to girls, so I'd start at nine and eight thirty, nine in the morning and with break for recess and lunch and finish at three, three thirty. And I'd be in there talking to the, say, year eleven girls while the guys are outside playing touch footy and, you know, and and it was quite bizarre and then um there was a realisation, well, we can't just do this and it was a total turnaround, it was like, well, we we can't have someone coming and just talking to the girls and I'm like, well, I'm just doing what I've been told to do, I'm more than happy to talk to the boys, let's

• 24:21Speaker 01

  put something together for them, so the girls' program very much started out um as an extension, I guess, of that profiling stuff that I'd done and and the more I studied the mindsets of these offenders, the more I could see that there was there was some real gold nuggets in amongst all that, that you could impart to those who they targeted and also a lot of the profiling information that comes out and and I've done my own stuff and I've read a whole lot of other stuff, um it it it challenges the conditioning that a lot of girls and women would have had with regards to what works best if ever, God forbid, you're in this

• 25:01Speaker 01

  situation, so I would go into a school, I'd I'd I'd talk about conflict, the the the psychology behind it, we'd go through the law and things and then I'd sort of, you know, I'd do an aspect on on, say, date rape, which is a term that we don't hear as much now, where, you know, it's a more social environment, which is, to be fair, is infinitely more common than the stranger type confrontation, but then I would also comparatively sort of after lunch, do a talk to the girls on on stranger offenders and I'd and I'd run through maybe half a dozen different guys that I'd profiled from Australia, from overseas, and just run through that information with the girls, not not telling them what to do,

• 25:42Speaker 01

  but allowing them to hear that and then go, well, hang on, if this is what these guys do, if this is their selection process, if this is what makes them, why are we being conditioned or told to do this?

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Cause that's the opposite and that conditioning is not, you know, as black and white as people sitting down and telling them, it's what they're seeing on TV, it's what they're seeing on street, you know, it it's sort of, don't yell, don't scream, don't make them angry, don't do anything, you'll make it worse.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Where all the evidence was the polar opposite.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  To the contrary.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and even, I even did at the end of those sessions, I'd do a small component on on physical uh physical stuff with the girls, just going through, you know, half a dozen sort of basic sort of things and so that's that's how I ran that for for many, many years and then we started doing the boys' sessions, um and and now, if I look at my diary now, Gary, it's probably split fifty fifty with young men, young women, primarily year ten, eleven and twelve and then up into university, but I I do now get quite a lot of requests for year nine students.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Even young, I suppose that's a sign of the times, isn't it?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  It really is, you know, the the stuff I talk about is not that diff much different, but the kids are being exposed to stuff so much earlier, but, you know, when I talk to year nines, it is a subtly different presentation to those older students, so, yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Uh uh age appropriate for it.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  And I I I see some of the points in uh that you you talk with the younger women, like developing in the ability to control the way we think in a precious situation.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 27:11Speaker 00

  Uh give us an example of that or or a scenario that you would explain to the students, the female students, what you're talking about there.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  But back in the day when I was doing a lot of stuff around, you know, say, a confrontation with a stranger offender, uh one of the things I'd talk about is um how you react to that situation is not determined at the moment that you're in it, it's it's determined by the conditioning that you take in.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Because as as you know, you've been in a lot of these things, that's why police do training, training, training, so that when you're in a situation, you've already trained your tricked your brain, if you like, oh, we've been here before, we're going to do this.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  We're not out of your comfort.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  So if you if you find yourself in a high level confrontational frightening situation, you'll either, if you're not sure what to do, you'll freeze.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Cause it's like, you know, freezing, or you will just follow what you've been conditioned to do, be that right or wrong.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  So if if an offender jumps out of a car and, say, confronts, say, a young woman, if that young woman has been told, don't yell, don't scream, don't do anything to make it worse, well, that conditioning will in a heartbeat come to the surface and that's how she'll respond, she'll respond passively, now, that that's just a result of conditioning, that that's okay, um that's not that, you know, if you if you if you pick up a a six month old child out of a bassinet and they don't know you.

• 28:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  They don't respond passively.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  They they reach out, they scream, that, you know, it's a natural sort of a response, so I think society has been, over time, a little guilty of giving different messages to, say, men in conflict than what we give to women.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, uh we had a guest on a a month or so ago that was a victim of a sexual assault and she froze when it was happening and it was a freeze response and we broke that down a little bit and it was almost that was she was conditioned to be submissive in that uh if I just don't do anything to antagonise a person, that that won't get any any any worse.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:09Speaker 00

  So the messaging you're telling these young ladies is that, uh, yeah, you don't have to go down that path.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  There's other options, other options, if if if you can run, run. And, and, and you know, my compass always throughout this whole process was what would I tell my, with the knowledge that I've been able to accumulate over time, what would I tell my daughter to do? She's now twenty eight, obviously, but what have, what have I told my fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year old daughter? If she's walking through Surrey Hills, some guy jumps out of a car to grab her. Would I tell her to do nothing? No, I wouldn't. Um, anyone who's worked in this environment has understanding of the, you know, some degree of psychology of these crimes would say, if you can run, run, run, yell, scream, draw attention to the offender. Now, why do we do that?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Because if we can identify the greatest fear that that offender has, the greatest fear a sex offender has is getting caught. That, that above everything else, they are absolutely terrified of getting caught. So they will always, always, always take the course of least resistance. And the evidence on this is, is pretty much indisputable. You could look at any serial sex offender, going back to Albert De Silva, the Boston Strangler in the sixties. And look at those that he took off from, those that he ran away from. It's the same with um, any of these serial offenders. They will always back away, or the, the, the pattern shows that they back away when they start to think, if I stay here, I'm gonna get caught.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  You know, now, what, what then triggers that? If there's an option to run, run, run to a populated location and yell, scream, draw as much attention to the offender as you can. The chance of that offender pursuing someone doing that in a populated location like Sydney is, is so remote. I don't think I've ever heard of it happening. Um, so that's, that was, that's the best option.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  And, and like, I, I hear you say that and I, I understand it, but that's the things I've been exposed to in policing. But you're saying research, it, it's not just our, our instinct or based on our experience, research is supporting.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Look, look, you, you, if you, if you look at any serial sex offender, Ted Bundy, Albert Silva, any of these guys. Look at the pattern specifically of, were they successful one hundred percent of the time with those they selected? No, their success rate is quite high, tragically, it's around eighty percent. So, okay, what is, what, what's the distinction between the eighty percent and the twenty percent? What happened in that twenty percent of times where they approached that target with the same intention? So why did they back away? Why did they take off? You'll see, it is as clear as day.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  It'll be because the target has done something which has broken that mental cycle. So, you know, the offender gets out of a car, he's targeted somebody. So I, I even go further than that, used to say to the girls, um, let's think about why he stopped and targeted you. What, what does he see when he sees you? So let's say offender driving around a suburb in Sydney sees a young sixteen year old girl, school uniform on her own. Okay, so why does he stop and target her? Well, because he thinks, schoolgirl on her own, when I confront her, she'll be so terrified, she won't do anything. She's an easy target, I can abduct her and I can take her somewhere.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  If that same offender is driving down the street and sees you or I, he keeps driving. Now, people say, well, that's a ridiculous analogy. Well, it actually isn't. Um, you, you and I, as males, are statistically far, far more likely to be confronted by physical violence on the street in Sydney than what females are. Um, but we are selected for a different reason. So the guy that selects you or I, yeah, we're big sort of blokes and stuff, he anticipates we'll fight back. That's a scary prospect.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  So, you know, um, when I've done over the years corporate stuff with, with people who are likely to be in physical confrontation, I teach males de-escalation skills because that takes.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  Doing the opposite.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Do the opposite to the expectation. Because, you know, mate, I'm, I'm around a hundred kilos. If I'm walking through Sydney car park at the airport and some guy confronts me, he's been looking at me, watching me, he'll look at me and think, I'm gonna confront this bloke, I reckon he'll have a go, but I reckon I can take him.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  You know, now, that, that's a, that's a frightening offender, you know, so what I would be doing for me in that situation is breaking that cycle by hands up, passive, passive, I cop it. The mindset of a sex offender, serial sex offender, total opposite end of the spectrum. He, he, he picks that schoolgirl with it, he's written a script. You often, I'll often say this in an interview, she followed the script that I'd written for. So he gets out of the car, yeah, he starts running toward that girl, he has in his mind this idea, schoolgirl on her own, when I grab her, she'll be so terrified, I can do it. Now, the problem obviously is that schoolgirl turns around, seeing the guy running towards her, and all her conditioning says, don't run, don't scream, don't yell, don't make him angry. So to use the term of the offender, she follows the script.

• 34:14Speaker 00

  What they're looking for.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  What they're looking for. Um, so what I are saying to these young women is, yeah, you have that option, you have the option of being passive. You can do that. There's no evidence to show that it works. There is no evidence to show that that reduces the likelihood of physical harm. It doesn't.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, that, that's interesting and I, I wanna delve very deeply into, to that, cause I, I find that side of things fascinating. Before we do, and we were having the chat the other day, and what we want to be both conscious of, two, uh, two ex cops talking and, and telling females how to behave so they don't get attacked.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 00

  I'm very cautious that we don't get accused of victim blaming here. And, and so let, let's have the discussion about that. What you're saying here is providing strategies to prevent the attack. It's not, yeah, in the perfect world, women, women should be able to walk, walk along the street without being attacked. But unfortunately, it's not.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  This is a, this is a male issue.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  This is a male issue, but if my daughter's been confronted by a sex offender, she's not gonna get out of it by saying to him, stop, this is a male issue. You know, so the reality of the situation is, yes, of course, I, I speak to as many, if not more, young men than I do young women. Um, but the women that I've worked with over the years, what I've been asked to talk about is, okay, what would my advice be based on all my experience in these certain types of situations, you know, and, and you're right, you were one hundred percent right.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  Well, you've done podcasts, you know, I've done podcasts and I understand two blokes sitting here talk, talking about, uh, about this subject. But yeah, well, I just wanted to, to clarify that. So if, if people are listening or watching, they understand where we're coming from. And I, I think you said that this would be the advice I give, give my daughter.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  And, uh, and it, it's interesting, it is flipping the psychology. You talked about, you know, the type of offender that might target a bloke. I've, uh, I've said to, uh, to my son and I've said to other young fellows, like, the typical situation is, and you would have seen this at the cross, you could be at a bar and someone's looking, uh, looking at you and what are you looking at, mate? And I, I've said, you can de-escalate that. How do you de-escalate that? Say, oh, oh, sorry, I didn't mean to, I'm, I'm just having a bad day. And that's not the response that they expect and it confuses them.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  Cause quite often they're not the sharpest pencil in, in the pack. So diffuse them.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  Another thing that I, I, I tell my children and, and any, anyone like living in the city, walk with confidence.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:48Speaker 00

  What, what, what do you mean? And, and I, they would laugh when I, I said that when my kids were younger. I want you to walk with confidence when you're walking through, through the city. And, uh, because the offenders are trying to target victims that they think they can get over the top of.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  There's a really interesting study done, pretty sure it was done at Long Bay Prison many, many years ago. And amongst a whole lot of other things, they had a, a group of, um, uh, convicted sex offenders. Um, and they were running all these different sort of scenarios with them. And, um, one of the things that they did, and I used to do this, uh, as part of, you know, my presentation is, individually, they brought these offenders into a room and they had, let's say, I don't know, seven or eight, um, black and white photographs of, of, of women depicted, you know, just, just wo- women walking or doing whatever. And each one had a number above it. And the offender was brought in, he was asked to look at the photographs and the question he was asked is, when you were out and were doing what you were doing, which one of these women would you have selected?

• 37:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Every offender picked the same photo.

• 37:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  And every offender gave the same reason, you just highlighted it. When they were asked, why did you pick that? They said, oh, well, she looks scared, she looks frightened, she'd be an easy target. You know, she, she, she wouldn't offer any resistance.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Now, that, that's in no way a criticism of people who are targeted. It's just giving an insight as to what the offender thinks when he targets you. See, I see that as a weakness in the offender. But these, these offenders that are depicted on TV, Netflix stand, big, strong, powerful individuals.

• 38:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  You know, the, the, the average sized sex offender, serial sex offender in the prison system is, is a tiny sort of was sort of terrified of his own shadow type of individual. Um, uh, and, and so the, the Hollywood depiction, which creates the conditioning, plays into the idea that these are big, strong, powerful individuals. And the worst thing you could ever do as a woman targeted by them is to challenge that.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Well, they're not big, strong, powerful individuals, they're weak, insipid, frightened.

• 38:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  They're doing what they're doing to try and make up for a lifelong perception of inadequacy. So they, it's, it's like, it's like make sexual harassment. I've got thirty odd corporate clients, I go and I do a whole lot of talk. Um, we know this, the bloke in the workplace who makes snide sexual comment to say the, the, the new young female staff member, if she stands up to him, gets in his face, he'll never do it again.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  He'll back away. We, we sit in the pub, the idiot who, um, the young woman walks past and some bloke makes some stupid comment towards her. She stops, turns around, what was that you said? You wanna say that again, you know?

• 39:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  It's, and he backs away, he suddenly loses all his credibility. It's that same mindset. And I'm not saying it's right, wrong or indifferent. And, and, and I'm just saying, that's what you're dealing with when we're talking about sex crimes.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  You know, and, and, um, the idea, there, there's some really interesting studies done by the FBI that, you know, cause there's always been this argument that, um, In tragically in these, and these are very, very rare cases.

• 39:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Um, girls and women who were to, who fight back against unarmed serial sex offenders will get hurt more than those who don't. So that was the subject, has been subject to many, many studies.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  That was found to be quite mythical. They, they found, the FBI found that the major contributing factor that determines the amount of violence inflicted upon a victim of that type of crime is the amount of time the offender can keep, can stay with the victim.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  Right, that's interesting.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  The longer they are there, the greater the violence becomes. So what makes them stay longer? A feeling that they're not gonna get caught, they're in control, you know? So again, when we break it all down, it, it sort of makes a lot of sense. But it only makes sense when you go all the way back and understand the mindset of that offender. I often used to say to the girls, you know, using the car, bloke in the car as an analogy.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  If he saw you, if he had a crystal ball on the dashboard of his car.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  And he could see into the future. And he saw that when he stopped his car, jumped out and grabbed you, that you would yell, scream, run, physically fight back.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Every single sex offender I have ever profiled would keep driving.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Every one of them, but he doesn't have that crystal ball. He has in his mind a belief that he's gonna succeed here. And they're usually right because that's the reaction that they usually get because this conditioning is very, very strong.

• 41:21Speaker 00

  It very much is conditioned. And, and when you talk about the, the statistically, uh, in situations, if people are fighting back, the injuries or the violence is not escalated.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  It, uh, escalates if the longer they spend, so.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  It is, and you know, I, I'd often get, and, and, and I, and I really enjoyed getting these questions. And when you talk to students about this, you're taking them into an area they've never been into before. And, and they're really genuinely going, whoa, okay, I've never heard this before. But, and then you'd, you'd get questions hanging on to some of that conditioning. And they'd say, oh, but I've been told if someone's trying to drag you into a car to take you somewhere to literally, you know, do something horrendous to you.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Don't do anything because it could get worse.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  And, and, and I'd say, I can't, worse than more.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  We're, we're, we're at the can't get any worse basket. We've arrived there. Um, but this was, this were questions from young women.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  And, and great questions because they're saying, but, but if you're dragged into a car by someone who's gonna take you somewhere isolated and commit horrendous crimes against you and don't do anything to stop that because it could get worse.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  Well, I, I think the fact that you, you're backing your opinions up with the research is important.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 00

  Cause I, I would imagine, and I'll, I'll, I'll ask you, have you ever had pushback when you, you deliver this type of messaging?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Oh, a hundred percent.

• 42:40Speaker 00

  Why, why are you telling the women that they've got to defend, why should they have to defend themselves?

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  But again, we keep coming back, this is not victim blaming.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  This is just understanding this world that we live in.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Yes, I, I, I understand that and I get what that means. But I've always felt strongly enough that, well, what I'm doing is important. Um, I, I don't get that message from those who have attended my seminars and come out of them. And yeah, I'm a male and yeah, I'm an ex-cop, I can't change that.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  But, and I don't say that I do this better than anyone else. I just probably have done it over the years differently. And, um, and, and, and often, for example, in coed schools, I ask most coed schools that I go into, I ask them to bring the boys and the girls in together for the talk that I do on, on sexual crime. Because it's good for the boys to hear this in the presence of the girls and, and vice versa. Um, so those talks that I'm doing more commonly now are very focused on education around consent, what consent is, we can talk a bit more about that, you know, breaking it down, definitions around what's sexual assault mean, what does sexual intercourse mean and all that type of thing. So I guess one thing that the, the talks that I do have sort of evolved to

• 43:53Speaker 01

  is being more a, a, a, a seminar presentation around legal terminology, understanding where the lines are, what the consequences are, you know, where people can lay charges. And, and the interesting thing that comes out of that is I would say eighty to ninety percent of young women who come forward after my seminars to tell me they've been subjected to a sexual offence.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Tell me that they didn't know that what happened was a sexual offence or what the offence was prior to coming into the seminar.

• 44:25Speaker 00

  And, and that's because of the legal definition is different from what they get taught in the biology class or.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And everyone has a, a, a, a good sort of grasp or familiarity with terminology, like, for example, like consent.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  If two people, uh, wanna have an intimate exchange, one initiates, the other one has to consent. That's pretty basic. But when you, when you peel the onion on that, and even at university lectures, if you peel the onion on that and I say, okay, so an intimate exchange requires consent, tell me what consent is. Tell, tell me the, cause it's a legal construct, it's a, comes out of the Crimes Act. And yes, of course, of course, there is room, um, in schools to have moral and ethical discussions around consent and around relationships, one hundred percent. But that's, that's not the space that I occupy.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  I talk about what it means legally.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  And so the students can understand the law and then run situations through it. And so when you ask students to tell you what consent means, respectfully, most of them don't know. Look, most people our age would struggle to accurately define how consent's defined in the Crimes Act.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it, it becomes, and quite often you see matters running through the court on the, the, the sexual nature and it invariably comes down to consent.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And, and even the term sexual intercourse.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Um, everyone knows the biological definition.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  A lot of people aren't even aware that there is a totally different legal definition, let alone what it is.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  So most young women that I speak to, who have, have been, you know, God forbid, subjected to sexual intercourse without consent, will be told by friends that they seek advice from that they haven't been.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  And, and the fundamental thing I see there is friends, well-meaning friends with good intent. But they're sixteen, seventeen, they listen to this girlfriend, she tells them what happened to her, say, at a party in the weekend.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  And, and, um, it involves, you know, an allegation of sexual intercourse without consent. The friends will then run what happened through their friend through the exceedingly narrow biological definition. Now, I go into a hundred and fifty secondary schools and the, the biological definition of sexual intercourse is the same in all those schools, the same in all those textbooks.

• 46:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  It's very narrow. Biology defines sexual intercourse can only occur through penile penetration for procreation. That's fine, I don't have a problem with that.

• 46:51Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  But lay that alongside the legal definition and it, it, it's, there's absolutely no comparison.

• 46:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  So when young people hear, no, no, under the law, you know, you wanna quote section sixty-one, New South Wales Crimes Act, sexual intercourse legally is penetration to a sexual area with anything at all.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Any part of a person's body used for penetration, anything held or manipulated. And then it goes further, sexual intercourse includes the act of performing oral sex.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Now you drop that into a seminar with two hundred sixteen and seventeen year olds, just, just that. And they're like going, whoa, hang on, this is totally different to what I thought. Um, and when we look again at research for the young people that I present my seminars to, if we look at intercourse without consent, number one most common form of sexual intercourse without consent committed against young women fifteen to twenty-one, that's the high risk age group, um, is a young woman penetrated sexually by a guy using his fingers without consent.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Digital penetration.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Digital penetration.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  And I, I could imagine how that gets confused in the, uh, the talk around the schoolyard that, uh.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  Look, he, he didn't rape me, even the word rape is something that we don't use in New South Wales.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  The word rape was thrown out of the Crimes Act in nineteen eighty-one. So, you know, circling back around, when I go into schools, what I think is really important for the students I'm talking to, males and females, is that they walk away with real clarity about what consent is, what sexual assault is, what unlawful sexual touching means. Goodness me, unlawful sexual touching is a term that most people don't even know exists. It is one of the most common disclosures I get. It's one of the most common forms of sexual crime committed at coed high schools.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that, that, if they're following the terminology that's widely accepted in the community, they're, they're not even aware that they've been sexually assaulted.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:41Speaker 00

  It's, uh.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  No, if you, if you touch a person to a sexual area in New South Wales without their consent, well, that's unlawful sexual touching. In our day, they used to call it indecent assault.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Changed the name and, uh, that carries five years in prison.

• 48:54Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Now, when you, when you see that occurring in environments where there's a lot of young people, almost without exception, the person who comes forward to tell me about that says, I, I had absolutely no idea that that was even a crime.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Um, they talk to each other about it. And I say, and so you'll have a bit of a chat to them like, so just to be clear, someone has done this to you, yes. What have they done? Oh, well, you know, when you're explaining this crime and, and you know, I give an example of what unlawful sexual touching is. It would be me touching another person to a sexual area, just touch it without consent. So if that's a female breasts between the legs, even backside.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Outside clothing, inside clothing, that's unlawful sexual touching. Making someone touch me sexually without consent. So as a male between the legs, over clothing, rubbing against someone sexually is unlawful sexual touching. I have students come up to me and say, I've had all of that happen to me, but I had no idea until 10 minutes ago. You know, um, it's happened sort of repeatedly and, and then you'll say, well, the person who's done it to you, do you know if they do it to you now? Yeah, it does all these, you know, and then the, you, you, you go even further with that. And you and I know the person who does that stuff, it's just, it's just a laugh, it's no big deal.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, well, it's a criminal offence.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  And that's, that's the messaging that, that not just for the victim, we need to get that across to the, to the perpetrators.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And when I, when I talk to the boys, um, you know, I talk to boys about a whole range of things, but these, these are the things that I talk about. And, um, and I say, you know, you, you need to be very, very cautious that what you consider to be behaviour, which is not a big deal, mildly amusing, and I get a few taps on the backs from my mates. In this instance, it's, it's a criminal offence, which is a sexual crime punishable by imprisonment.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  And, and drumming, drumming that into them. So the, the victims know their rights and the perpetrators, uh, know the con, the, the consequences.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  I, I, I think it's so important, the stuff that you're getting across. And it is a misconception and, and we follow the media and just society's norms. But yeah, a rape, I, I guarantee you, speak to most people, they think rape would conjure up one image.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  Other, other than that, they wouldn't think of all the other offences that have been committed.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And, and it's really interesting too, isn't it? Then one of the things I'll do with, with students in my talk is at the start, right at the very start, I'll, I'll talk about, um, you know, I'll break down some gender risk profiling for them, which is interesting for them to hear. Where I'll say, if I'm talking to, say, like, say a co-ed group, 200 students, year 10 or year 11. I'm very, I'm mindful of the fact that my content lands differently for different folks. And that's not always on a gender line.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  But I'm, I'm, I always give a heads up warning in my talk that this content could be very confronting. If at any time you feel like you need a bit of a breather. I'm also mindful that for some of those young men sitting in there, in their mind is like, hang on, why does the school think they need to bring some ex-copper in?

• 51:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  To talk to me about sex crimes?

• 51:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Do they assume I'm running around doing? My take on that is the same as the motivation behind me sharing this information with my son when he was younger.

• 52:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  It's not because I think you're going to do it. It's because I think you're entitled to this knowledge and without it, you could potentially cross the line that you don't, don't even know exists. And the boys are just as entitled to this knowledge as the girls. Um, and one thing I say to the boys is, sitting here in my talk, let's say year 11, you're at a very low risk to be targeted for a sexual crime.

• 52:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Because of your age. Now you're sort of singing to the choir a bit there, but it's, it's part of saying to the boys, that's not always been the case. Your high risk gauge to be targeted for sexual crime was back at primary school. Now, this doesn't mean girls can't be targeted at primary school. Tragically, of course they can be, but I'm just talking to the boys. So I'll say, boys, if I was doing this talk to 200 year three, year four, year five students, the young boys in that audience are in the highest risk gauge group to be targeted for a sexual offence.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Then if we peel the onion on that, the profile of the offender who will usually commit that offence is a, as an adult male in a position of care or control. So this, this covers a, a fair bit of ground for the kids too. And you can say to them, so you know, what we know about sexual crime is it can be male to female. It can be female to male. It can be male to male. It can be female to female. But the law is blind to that. It doesn't treat one ingredient any more heavily than the other. I said, if you roll back, if you look at, if you speak to, um, say, police that work in general sex crime investigation, it's primarily male to female. When you speak to police who work in child protection and child sex crime,

• 53:39Speaker 01

  they pick up a lot of male to male investigations because they're working on behalf of those little fellas. So I say, but when those little guys are in year 11, coming into my talk, you're at low risk. Then I talk about the girls. So, so boys, let's put you on the shelf for a moment.

• 53:53Speaker 00

  The girls are at the higher risk at that.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, for the young women, high risk age 15 to 21. Um, so all the girls I speak to in the high risk age, and, and they're quite confronted to hear how high that risk is. And, um, Australia has amongst the highest sexual crime rate of any surveyed country in the Western world. And most recognised reputable studies in Australia, if, if you, if you ask, what is the high risk gauge for girls and women? 15 to 21. Most, most big studies would say for every 100 young women I present to in that age group, up to 25 of them will experience some form of sexual crime in that six year timeframe. Now, that's not always at the top end of that sexual crime spectrum. It's some of this other stuff as well. But that's 25% of our female population.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  If you peel the onion on that again, and you ask, because they'll ask this, kids ask this. Well, who's most likely to commit a sexual offence against a young woman, young girl in year 11? It's not a stranger.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  It's a young bloke, similar age, around their same year group, who they know socially, who they thought they could trust. So, and that's the fact, that, that's it. Now, that's not me saying all young men are running around committing sex offences. It's me saying someone is. The, the, the, the, these statistics don't create themselves. So just that at the start of a presentation to young people is like, whoo, okay. We, we, we need to have a chat about this.

• 55:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, again, it's, it's education, but giving the education in an area that's quite often not spoken about. And, uh, yeah, statistically, as you're saying, the young, young men in that, uh, the early years in the, when they're pre-pubescent.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  They're the most likely to be, uh, most susceptible.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  At greatest risk.

• 55:35Speaker 00

  Being victim. So, yeah, all, all this information is handy information to have. And that just makes people think about it. Then when I say people, the students start, and I'm sure after you finish your talk, the conversation in the schoolyard, they'd all be talking about it.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you hope too, like, you know, you mentioned this before, um, and not all of them, um, will have a relationship with mums and dads that's open to that. But, um, I get a lot of feedback from teachers in the schools I go into, whose sons or daughters at other schools have done my talk and they come home and they're all, all full of chat about this. I, I, um, my, my neighbour's son is in year 12 and I presented a seminar to him at a boys' school in Sydney two weeks ago. And she sent me a text and said, we sat at the dinner table and he just didn't stop talking about this stuff. You know, and she said, it's really good because.

• 56:20Speaker 00

  They, they, they have a hunger for it, don't they?

• 56:22Speaker 01

  They do.

• 56:23Speaker 00

  It's, uh, I, um, yeah, it's such a big part of their life. And, uh, so I can imagine why they are interested. Let's take a break. Importantly, we've, we've talked about the messaging that you're giving to young women. Let's talk about the messaging that we, uh, need to put on to, uh, to young men to educate them.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. I'm enjoying having a chat.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  Okay. Cheers.