Sexual harassment class actions filed against BHP, Rio Tinto – Lawyers Weekly

Earlier this week, individual proceedings were filed in the Federal Court of Australia against Australian mining companies BHP and Rio Tinto by JGA Saddler – whose founders formerly led the class actions practice at national plaintiff firm Shine Lawyers – and global litigation funder Omni Bridgeway.

JGA Saddler has asked the Federal Court to redact all names in the filings, amid concerns for personal safety of the lead applicants. Women who were subject to harassment or discrimination while working at one or more Australian workplaces for BHP or Rio Tinto, anytime from November 2023, are eligible to be claimants, the firm added.

Offensive language and behaviour, pranks, and pregnancy discrimination are all featured in proceedings filed against mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto, with a class action firm and a litigation funder alleging “widespread, systemic” issues on worksites.

Source: Sexual harassment class actions filed against BHP, Rio Tinto – Lawyers Weekly

British Transport Police threatened with legal action over new guidance allowing trans officers to strip-search woman |MSN

The British Transport Police (BTP) is facing legal action over new guidance allowing transgender officers to strip-search women.

Campaigners from gender-critical group Sex Matters have sent a pre-action letter to the BTP challenging their new policy, which is the first step towards taking them to court for a judicial review of the guidelines.

Referring to the BTP’s new rules, Maya Forstater, the chief executive of gender-critical campaign group Sex Matters called the guidance “state-sponsored sex discrimination and sexual abuse.”

Forstater added that too many officers have been found guilty of sexual offences, and that men are responsible for 98 per cent of sex crimes.

“Abuse of position for sexual purposes is the largest area of corruption that the Independent Office of Police Complaints deals with,” she said.

Source: British Transport Police threatened with legal action over new guidance allowing trans officers to strip-search woman

Nurses suing their employer for allowing trans women to use their changing rooms | UK News | Sky News

Eight nurses are suing their employer for sexual harassment and sex discrimination because of a policy which allows trans women to use their women’s changing rooms.

The legal action began after 26 nurses wrote to County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust raising their concerns in March.

The nurses, who work at Darlington Memorial Hospital, must change in and out of their scrubs twice a day with no private cubicles.

Bethany Hutchison, one of the claimants, says they have felt unsafe as a result of a male staff member who identifies as a woman and has not transitioned.

She said: “There’s been occasions where I’ve been in the changing room alone with this colleague who looks very masculine and that was a real shock because you feel you want to challenge them, you think, ‘Oh there’s a man in the changing room’ but you can’t because of the trust’s policy.”

Source: Nurses suing their employer for allowing trans women to use their changing rooms | UK News | Sky News

Parliamentary Workplace Support Service fields 339 complaints in first nine months

Thirty reports of serious wrongdoing – including sexual assault, stalking and intimidation – have been lodged with parliament’s new support service in its first nine months of operation, prompting former staffer Brittany Higgins to ask if perpetrators working in politics are being held to account.

More than three years after Higgins went public with claims she had been raped in then-minister Linda Reynolds’ office, the first annual report published by the support service established in response reveals it handled 339 cases – spanning everything from serious sexual crime allegations to bullying and mental health issues – within nine months.

Nine per cent, or 30, of the allegations were in the category that takes in rape, sexual assault, assault, sexual harassment, stalking or intimidation, while 10 per cent were bullying claims.

Eighteen per cent related to family and domestic violence, alcohol, drug or mental health incidents and more than a quarter, 27 per cent, were workplace conflicts. A further 124 cases were classified as unknown or other.

The annual report further reveals that more than 50 per cent of the complaints were lodged by political staffers, 12 per cent by parliamentary department staff, and 17 per cent by MPs or senators.

Complaints do not necessarily come from alleged victims inside parliament. Allegations or calls of concern can be made by friends or colleagues, and the service is also available to people working in parliament who experience a personal incident unrelated to their workplace or colleagues.

Source: Parliamentary Workplace Support Service fields 339 complaints in first nine months

‘The LinkedIn Lecher’: Billionaire founder, chief executive of WiseTech Global, Richard White’s controversial approaches, board concerns revealed |SMH

The board of Australia’s biggest listed technology company, WiseTech Global, will re-examine serious allegations against the firm’s billionaire founder and chief executive, Richard White, by a sexual partner that resulted in a confidential multimillion-dollar payment by White to settle the matter.

The bombshell development follows an emergency weekend board meeting triggered by a series of questions from The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, and heaps further pressure on the rich-lister, who was already struggling to contain the fallout from other allegations about his personal life spilling into the public arena.

The joint investigation by the three mastheads can reveal a woman who had a sexual relationship with Australia’s 11th richest person made several claims about him in late 2020 including allegations he had engaged in inappropriate behaviour.

Salacious details about White’s private life entered the public domain in the past month. The WiseTech founder lodged a bankruptcy notice against another former lover, Sydney wellness entrepreneur Linda Rogan, who applied to the Federal Court to have it thrown out.

In court documents, Rogan alleged White expected her to have sex with him in exchange for an investment in her business.

In April 2021, Sutherland Local Court heard that NSW police were applying for an apprehended violence order against White. The woman seeking protection from White was his then-partner and now wife, Zena Nasser. Two months later, Nasser withdrew her AVO application via a sworn affidavit.

Neither Nasser nor White responded to questions about the AVO. Instead, a response was received from a source, speaking anonymously because the matter was sensitive, who said: “Zena was at the time in a distorted mental state and suffering a paranoid episode.”

Nasser and White continued their relationship and married in July in Austin, Texas. They recently welcomed their first child through surrogacy.

Source: ‘The LinkedIn Lecher’: Billionaire founder, chief executive of WiseTech Global, Richard White’s controversial approaches, board concerns revealed

Police strip-searched 51 children in a year despite Labor’s promised review | SMH

The latest data, obtained by the Redfern Legal Centre through freedom of information laws, reveals 51 children aged between 10 and 17 were strip-searched in the last financial year. The practice can involve forcing minors to remove their clothing in public places, and, in some instances, teenagers instructed to squat and cough when police believe they are concealing drugs.

Redfern Legal Centre senior solicitor Samantha Lee said she met several Labor MPs in opposition, and had presented them with potential legislative changes to tighten definitions around strip-searches.

“Before they got into government we had a lot of traction around the strip-searching of children. There was a lot of enthusiasm from key figures in Labor, and we were really hopeful something would change. And now there is dead silence,” she said.

Source: 12ft

I was sexually assaulted on a train after Spurs v Brentford while a dad and his sons laughed | Football | The Guardian

Who is going to start taking responsibility for protecting women’s safety after football games? Stop viewing us as secondary people in a male space.

. . .

When an away fan elbowed me in the face getting on the carriage that weekend I put it down to the intense crush as everyone pushed each other to get on in time. It’s never nice, it’s never comfortable, but it happens. It was just as the train was setting off that I realised I was actually being assaulted. The same fan was pushing into me, not in a packed-like-sardines way, but in an I’m-pushing-my-pelvis-directly-into-your-ass-on-purpose kind of way. Meanwhile, the man in front of me was grinning and licking his lips as my front was pushed into him from behind. Like being a slice of cheese in a horrendous assault sandwich.

To exacerbate things, the away fan had two teenage sons with him who started laughing about their dad being able to “penetrate” a girl on a train and when I told him to stop, all hell broke loose. I won’t go into everything they said, but it was cruel and misogynistic. They then started filming me as I was still being assaulted, while someone in the carriage yelled at me to “enjoy it”.

. . .

In 2019, only 14% of men thought sexism was a prevalent issue at football games, yet just last month, a study from Kick It Out has shown that 52% of female fans have experienced sexist behaviour on match-day. Compounding that with a 36% growth in match-day disorder since the pandemic, it feels like harassment and assault is a bomb about to explode in a room of silent witnesses. As long as we view women as secondary in the space of men’s football, this issue will never be addressed.

Source: I was sexually assaulted on a train after Spurs v Brentford while a dad and his sons laughed | Football | The Guardian

‘Survival sex’, ‘mob justice’ and more: the first independent study of abuse in the Australian Defence Force is damning | The Conversation

This harrowing account of institutional military abuse draws on interviews with nearly 70 survivors and analyses every review and inquiry into military culture (35 in total) since the Vietnam War.

In the 1980s, women constituted 6.5% of the ADF. By the 1990s, that percentage had nearly doubled, and today, women make up around 20% of the Australian military. As gender demographics in the ADF shifted, sexual violence was increasingly deployed against women. Wadham and Connor argue the growing presence of women intensified the sexualised culture of the military to reiterate the “white, hypermasculinist” fraternity.

Date rape was a strategy for humiliating women and destroying their reputation. Sexual assault was often done by superiors, in view of other serving members, and always followed by a “code of silence, victim-blaming and discouragement from commanders and military police”. One interviewee sought support after being assaulted, but was warned by the military psychologist: “Defence doesn’t look fondly on people that see a psychologist.”

Constant threats and acts of violence from peers led some women to be coerced into “survival sex” in exchange for protection. In one of the saddest testimonies of the book, a young aviator was coerced into sleeping with her sergeant for years to prevent other abuse. “Then I found out that he was actually one of the people behind the stalking and sexual assault that had happened […] that went on for years.”

Sexual violence against women was underpinned by a deeply misogynist culture. Harassment of women was a “daily occurence” in the 1980s. By the 1990s, women reported practices such as “pornos in the mornos” – watching porn at morning tea in communal spaces. Harassment and intimidation continue to this day: in 2018, one woman reported she was “choosing not to eat, not to go out, not to do any sites” to avoid the executive officer constantly harassing her. When she reported him, she was told “I would have had a better case if I let it progress to rape”.

Wadham and Connor cite a 1993 book of cadet slang that included over 300 abusive terms that reduced women to literal sexual objects. These included: “a body to wank into, cum bucket, fuck bag, life support system for a cunt”. This language was part of daily training, imbued in the culture from the top down.

One veteran reported that her instructor “would talk about where to get the cheapest sex in Asia and how to get the daughter thrown in for a dollar”. The authors analyse the function of banter in the military, explaining that “lingo” works to “create a shared culture”, but can also be used to “target, exclude, belittle”. Sexualised “banter” was frequently used to alienate women and was “the first step in creating cultures of abuse and violence”.

Source: ‘Survival sex’, ‘mob justice’ and more: the first independent study of abuse in the Australian Defence Force is damning

Law Council of Australia recognises positive duty to fight sexual harassment | Australasian Lawyer

The Council’s leaders supported the approach under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth), which made it a positive duty to take reasonable measures to eliminate sexual harassment as much as possible and which introduced obligations for the legal profession to actively address the problem.

The Council’s directors recognised that the profession should move away from traditional power structures and should address underlying contributors if it wishes to eliminate sexual harassment and discrimination.

Those interested can read the statement of the Council.

Source: Law Council of Australia recognises positive duty to fight sexual harassment | Australasian Lawyer

We need to talk about how some men are ruining the gym experience for women

A jaw-dropping 70 per cent of women have experienced a negative interaction in the gym that has left them feeling uncomfortable – at the hands of a man, according to Fitrated. Women have been inclined to accept this as the norm and alter their workout routines accordingly to avoid harassment.

From being watched, unwanted flirtation, mansplaining, being followed, body criticisms, physical contact and sexual harassment, the concerning catalogue of negative experiences has driven women to avoid certain areas of the gym – or quit altogether. What’s worse, this type of behaviour is becoming increasingly normalised with a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude and very few consequences given by the gyms themselves.

Source: We need to talk about how some men are ruining the gym experience for women