Julian Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson asks 'what happens when the law that is meant to protect us, silences us?'

As a society, we are at a crossroads. Women are breaking through the cultural reticence to speak out about gender-based violence. But as they have grown empowered to speak, a new form of silencing has become more evident: the spike in survivors speaking out has been followed by a spike in legal actions against them and the journalists seeking to report their stories.

This is the new frontier of gendered censorship. What happens when the law that is meant to protect us, silences us?

In her book released this week, How Many More Women? Exposing How the Law Silences Women, Robinson and co-author Dr Keina Yoshida examine the laws around the world that silence women and explore the changes we need to make to ensure that the law is no longer complicit in silencing complaints of abuse and violence.

Robinson and Dr Yoshida are coming to Newcastle on Saturday for a special evening discussion hosted by Newcastle Writers Festival and journalist and former editor of The Saturday Paper, Maddison Connaughton.

The topic of discussion? We cannot act if we do not know. If women cannot report or speak about their experiences, and journalists are fearful of telling their stories, how can we understand the problem of gender-based violence, sexual harassment and other inappropriate and sexist behaviour in our society?

And how can we even begin to end it?

Robinson is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London who has acted in key human rights and media freedom cases. She has been Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's legal adviser since 2010, and successfully represented Amber Heard in her libel case against her former husband Johnny Depp in 2020.

Dr Yoshida is an international lawyer and barrister and an associate tenant at Doughty Street Chambers.

From defamation proceedings brought against women who make accusations against their former husbands and partners, to non-disclosure agreements by powerful and wealthy men, How Many More Women? explains why we need to advocate for free speech protections from an equality and human rights perspective.

"We wanted women to be better informed about the legal risks they face," Robinson told the Newcastle Herald.

"If you're raped and abused, the law then regulates what you can say to whom, and when, about your experience, and there are legal risks at every turn.

"We wanted people to be empowered with knowledge about the legal risks that they will come up against, and hopefully that will spark a public conversation and a policy conversation about whether we're getting the balance right.

"Are we properly protecting women's ability to speak about this so policymakers know what is happening, and the public understands the extent of the problem?"

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I suggest, as an example, the oft-repeated claim that women who make accusations against a man, especially a wealthy and famous man, are doing it "for the money".

"Yes, we need to seek cultural change," Robinson replied.

"We need to better educate the public, the police, lawyers and judges about the awful male-centric stereotypes surrounding gender-based violence which do not reflect women's lived experiences.

"But in terms of the law, we want to see more women in parliament, in the courts, on the bench, in the police, and we also want to see the law that we have better utilised.

"We now have a public interest defence in Australian defamation law in most states and we say that women's abilities to tell their own stories, and their right to speak about their own stories of abuse, is a matter of public interest.

"One in three women experience violence from men and if we can't talk about it, how can we possibly address the problem?

"It's also a matter of cost. We need to find more cost-efficient ways of resolving defamation disputes because most women, and indeed media organisations, cannot afford the millions of dollars in legal costs and damages that are involved in cases like this.

"What's your right to free speech worth if you can't afford to defend it?"