You Might've Been Strangled *Re-Issue*

Betty Taylor (0:00)

A lot of the women that came through our support group were women who had professional careers in law, social work, nursing, et cetera.

And some of them could never ever go back to work. And when we started to talk to them about some of the ongoing issues, it was that they couldn't remember things, they couldn't retain knowledge. They were getting frustrated with themselves, but other people were getting frustrated.

Meshel Laurie (0:30)

This is Australian True Crime with Meshel Laurie. The Red Rose Foundation is Australia's only national charity dedicated to preventing domestic and family violence deaths through specialist support, advocacy, education, research and systems reform. It's based in Brisbane.

The CEO, Betty Taylor, joins us on this episode to talk about the Red Rose Foundation's work, specifically in the area of strangulation. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. And a warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

Betty Taylor (1:18)

My journey started in working in a women's shelter.

And did that for a long time. And then in 92, I set up the Gold Coast Domestic Violence Service, which was a shopfront counselling cross-intervention service, and evolved from there. So I've been doing this work a long time.

In 2002, 20 years ago, I was fortunate to do a church and fellowship study domestic violence interventions in the US. And a wonderful woman in San Diego, Gayle Strach, who used to become the guru in strangulation. She asked me, what do you do in Australia if women are strangled? I sort of had a blank look on my face. And I said, oh, women might talk about being choked. And she said, no, strangled. And I said, well, what's the difference? And she explained it. And I said, I don't think we do anything. You know, and I came back and, you know, talked to a few colleagues and I said, oh, this just shocked me that, you know, I did a workshop over there on it and came back and thought, there's nothing. And, you know, I did my own inquiries. There was no legislation anywhere in Australia that addressed it. There was no one even talking about it. So it has been a 20 year journey to get to where we are now, but still a way to go.

Meshel Laurie (2:49)

I still don't think people are really talking about it properly. That's what I've learned. I think one fact that has entered the consciousness is this idea that offenders, men who use strangulation as part of domestic violence, are much more likely to go on to commit further attacks and in fact, even to kill people. That's correct, right?

Betty Taylor (3:12)

That's right, yes.

Meshel Laurie (3:14)

So that is good news in terms of the fact that that fact has, I think, infiltrated our culture. I think more people are aware of that fact. However, you're going to tell us some other facts today that are astounding and that I don't think, well, I certainly had no idea about until recently, until I was part of making a video, an educational video about it. But I think something that has started to infiltrate our culture is this idea. I've seen recently two, I'm going to call them influences, two young women who have used their social media to talk positively about using strangulation in sex.

Even one of them had a link to the product that could be used, and another one giving instructions about it. As I say, these are both very cool young influences with lots of social media followers. Are you aware of that and what do you make of that?

Betty Taylor (4:11)

I don't know the particular people you're talking to, but I am aware that a lot of people do this, and even in Queensland back in 2016, when we successfully got a piece of legislation around strangulation, and it's strangulation in a domestic violence setting. One of the things in that legislation that we're not happy about, and we've been advocating for change ever since, is the words strangled without consent, and that came from the lobby groups that are saying, people can consent to strangulation.

So our legislation, and it's probably one of the few in the world that's got the absurd notion that with consent, and the position we take too is, you even if the sexual aspect is consenting, people consenting to sex, consenting to strangulations, that whole other thing. And we take the position you can't consent to something that could potentially kill you. That unless people know all of the risks associated with strangulation, and we have huge concerns, I guess, with the rise of pornography and the advocating of strangulation within that. And people not be really informed of the implications of that.