Life Uncut - Fighting a System Designed to Break You - Uncut with Reuben Williams

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Today we’re talking with Reuben Williams, whose journey through the justice system will open up one of the hardest but most necessary conversations we can have. Australia has been watching the case of Tom Silvagni for the past few months; a man from a high-profile sporting family who was found guilty by a jury of raping a woman. He has since filed an appeal. That case has reignited debates about how sexual violence is handled, how suppression orders can protect perpetrators, and what survivors face when they speak out. Reuben is unfortunately familiar with how the ‘system’ works, not just as a commentator, but as someone who went through the legal process himself. We speak about what actually happens when someone reports sexual assault in Australia, why justice rarely feels just, and how power, fame, privilege and suppression orders can distort truth and accountability. We also speak about: How and why Reuben advocated for himself and sought a level of justice Reuben’s court case and the process he went through His advocacy for survivors when people on the internet make comments like “they don’t look like a victim” The impact that coming forward has had on him Facing the perpetrator in person The tactics that defence attorneys use Removing 'good character' references If this conversation does bring anything up for you, support is available at 1800 RESPECT  You can find more from Reuben here  You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Hosted by Britt Hockley & Laura Byrne Hosted by Britt Hockley & Keeshia Pettit  Produced by Keeshia Pettit Video Produced by Vanessa Beckford & Lachy Pugsley Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Just a note from us, this episode contains conversations about sexual assault. If this conversation does bring up anything for you, support is always available at 1-800-RESPECT. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Laura. Today we have a special guest that has just flown in from Melbourne. We're talking with Ruben Williams. Now, you may or may not have heard Ruben's name, but there is a chance you've heard Tom Silvani's name. And I know you're probably thinking, how are these linked? Bear with me. We're going to be talking about Ruben's journey through the justice system. And it's going

to open up one of the hardest conversations, but I think a very necessary conversation. Ruben is a survivor, someone who lived through sexual assault, reported it and fought through a system that often feels stacked against victims. And unfortunately, that is something that we all know far too well. Now I originally connected with Ruben when I saw him, I just saw a reel to be honest on Instagram and I saw him advocating for the rape victim of Tom Silvani. So we're going to talk about what actually happens when you report sexual assault in Australia, why justice rarely feels just and about how power, fame, privilege and suppression orders can distort the truth and accountability. So if you aren't across it, most of Australia has been

following this case for the last couple of months. Tom Silvani is the son of quite a prominent AFL hero. I'm not in the AFL world, so I don't know, but he was very well loved. He's almost like an AFL legend. Yeah. I think if you're a Melbourne based person, the Silvani family is very, very well known. And if you're in the AFL world, then you absolutely, it's like three generations of AFL. Yeah. So Tom Silvani, who is the son of this said legend, was just found guilty of raping a young woman. Twice. He is in prison. He has recently appealed that sentence, but we're going to be speaking just about the impact of that on survivors, how much power plays a part in this and the suppression orders. And should we have complete access to this? Should somebody, just because

they're from a high profile case, get a different level of accountability and justice in this system? But I did stumble across your reels, Ruben, and the one reel that really caught my attention was you speaking about the difference in public opinion from when you spoke about out about your assault compared to when a female speaks out. We will get into that, but welcome officially to Life Uncut. I do want to start by just, if you could just tell us a bit about who you are and where you were at that stage of life when the assault happened, where you were working and what life looked like for you. Yeah, for sure. Brittany, Laura, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. At that point in time, I was 24 years old and was probably a year into

working my dream job at Cricket Australia. Growing up, I just loved sport. And so the dream was always to try and work in my favorite sport. And that was cricket from the age of about six years old. Like the first ever dream job I had was to open the batting for Australia. And so finally got the chance to work in the commercial team at 60 Jolly Monts. And when I stepped into Cricket Australia, I had the time of my life. I got introduced to probably the most like-minded people and friends I still connected with to today that I'd ever come across in my life. And at that point in time, I was just kind of a young adult enjoying full-time work for the first time, which kind of when you work at Cricket Australia was like, you know, you're having lunch

inside the MCG every day, or you're going for a run around the tan, or, you know, you got Steve Smith coming into the office, that kind of thing. And so life at that point in time was incredibly good. Like you felt like you had a dream job. Yeah, literally. Yeah. I mean, like I landed my dream job on the first day after my final exam. When I did that, like everyone started asking me like, Ruben, how did you do this? And that kind of led to the other part of my life, which is my business sports grad where I help people get jobs in the sports industry unfortunately this horrific event happened in the sports industry as well and so over time uh speaking about the assault has kind of added new meaning to helping the sports industry be filled with um quality people yeah I

mean there is so much to unpacking this and obviously we want to have this conversation sensitively to you I firstly want to say you don't have to share anything more than what you feel comfortable sharing and also I do think we have a culture in Australia and it's it's been proven time and time again whereas like if you can throw a ball or hit a ball or you're someone of some sort of notoriety within the sporting culture of australia there's a different set of rules that applies there's a different set of standards that applies and i think a lot of people feel almost untouchable if they're within these communities i watched a reel that you posted where you were speaking it was just pre-christmas and you were like just a reminder don't sexually

assault someone at your christmas party this year you're like spoiler yeah and i mean this obviously leads into your story and what happened to you, but it's very rare that you see men advocating against sexual violence and advocating against sexual assault. And you have become so prominent for it in what you do and speaking on your own social media. But I guess the specificness around don't sexually assault someone at a Christmas party is particularly prevalent to you. Yeah, absolutely. So my assault happened at Cricket Australia or after Cricket Australia's end of season party, you know, cricket's in the thick of it around Christmas time. So we don't get a Christmas party, but effectively the same thing. And yeah, you'd think a message like that

wouldn't have to be said explicitly, but these things happen. And also, I mean, you say explicitly, but like, I would dare say that there were so many people who have seen that video who have been assaulted or have had someone be totally inappropriate to them at a work Christmas party. I mean, I resonated with it. I experienced something when I was in my early twenties to a 60 year old CEO who felt me up at my Christmas party and I didn't know that I could do anything about it. And it was so like, I quit my job afterwards. It was so revolting to me. And I watched that and I was like, fuck the fact that that has to be a message that someone has to say is insane. Can you walk us through as much as you're happy to the assault and what actually

happened to you? Yeah, sure thing. So we're at this end of season party and, uh, and after it wraps up there's about a group of 10 or so that went to my perpetrator's apartment in richmond and when i arrived at this place i kind of sat down on the couch and fell asleep and the next thing i knew whilst i was still kind of waking up with my eyes still shut the next sort of sensation i had was the feeling of someone touching my penis and at first i was like am i dreaming right now like what the hell is going on and when i realized that i wasn't dreaming you are awake right now someone is actually doing this i entered like a state of shock and i was like holy shit and um to try and make this person go away i start to to shuffle a bit to indicate i'm waking up

their hand removes i feel safe to open my eyes look down and um i can see that i'm no longer on the couch i'm on a bed and in front of me i can see like light streaming in through the door from where the living room was and my pants and underpants have been pulled down and i'm just like holy shit what's going on here I get off the bed look back down and there is the former head of communications at Cricket Australia whose apartment it was pretending to be asleep next to me wow yeah so this is like your boss in a way or a position of power when um the ball tampering incident happened in South Africa in 2018 arguably the you know most even I know that and I wasn't cricket yeah exactly yeah he was like the second man on the ground in south africa to deal with

the media hustle that you know was um surrounding the australian cricket team he's the man you call when there's a controversy yes exactly right yeah someone said to me that it's quite ironic that the head of communications who dealt with the ball tampering incident didn't ask for consent i was like yeah kind of when this happened did you know straight away that you wanted to do something about it, that you want a justice for it? Because I mean, we know the statistics around the amount of sexual assaults that happen that go unreported. Was that something that you were like, I'm not, this is not happening, not to me? Yeah. So as soon as I left that room, picked up my boots and got in the elevator down, I remember looking at myself in the mirror of the

elevator and thinking, holy shit, you've just been sexually assaulted. And after that, I very conveniently had coffee booked the next morning with my two friends, Michael and Mark. And at this point i hadn't told anyone didn't really know what to do but this story of a woman popped into my head and in her story she was raped and for 15 years she held on to that until it crippled her from the inside out and she committed suicide and um i didn't want to find out what holding on to this trauma would do to me so my way of surviving this was to to tell someone immediately yeah and so yeah over coffee with michael and marca i told them and and then straight after that I tried to call three friends from the night before and left voice messages on their phones at

about 5 30 a.m at around the time of the assault called the three of them back when I was in the car and then went home and then told my girlfriend at the time and so within 24 hours I had told about six people yeah I found out recently at a an event held by the National Survivors Day that the average time it takes to report abuse is 24 years not 24 hours I absolutely believe that that is i know so many people that have held on to a sexual assault for so long can i ask just if you are happy to just taking you back to that assault you just said something that i found interesting it's an interesting response that i think a lot of people go through when you said you woke up and you realized that somebody was touching you can you remember what

you were thinking and or why you didn't say something because it's you said i i want i knew that I was in the wrong place I knew someone was touching me but I wanted to give them like hey an alert without making them uncomfortable almost it was like hey just letting you know that I'm awake so stop what you're doing it's a very common yet unusual response to have from a victim because it's like why in that moment do we think we need to not make that person feel uncomfortable yeah I'm not too sure why I reacted that way I was still waking up so just becoming conscious as well and I think it's also probably a safety mechanism if you've got your eyes closed you don't know what's going on yeah so it's like your body and brain is assessing danger in ways that

like you're not even potentially in total control over or cognitively thinking through was there any discussion or did he just pretend to be asleep and you just were like I'm out of here like was there any other in the apartment no like he still lay on the bed pretending to be asleep when I got out of there straight away but when I got down to the street level I was just looking for somewhere safe to go and a message appeared from a number that I didn't have saved my phone that said yo where'd you go and I thought it might have been one of my colleagues from the night before whose number I just didn't happen to have saved and I didn't see the time stamp on it so I called the number thinking it was someone safe turned out to be the head of comms it was him it was him

and calling you to say can't let come back why have you gone and um he answered and he's like Ruben where'd you go and I just said like what the fuck was that he's like what are you talking about i'm like what the fuck was that he says what are you talking he was assessing yeah and i was like you touching my fucking dick is what i'm talking about and then hung up on him and left he's trying to trying to uh damage control immediately to me yeah i mean that's his job and then after that like proceeded to text me several times being like yo dude you can't say that shit and then hang up most fucked up part was he then said like come up and have a drink or whatever but like you know you can't say that stuff and i'm just like who are you i mean you say

you spoke to six people and how unique that is and how rare that is I think it's because most people feel a sense even though they have done absolutely nothing wrong there is a sense of shame there is a sense of like I'm embarrassed to tell someone that this happened which is also why a lot of people don't and they hold on to it because there is a feeling of like I don't know how I got from the couch to the bed or I don't know how this happened or this happened and so a lot of people take on that as though they have or they harbor some responsibility and that's what they've got to work through. Totally. Yeah. I absolutely empathize with people who feel that to the point where it's debilitating, which is a horrendous thing to experience. One of the things that I

think I'm grateful for is that I was completely detached from that shame. At no point did I think I've done anything wrong here. This is just something horrific that's happened to me. Yeah. And I think that allowed me to tell someone straight away without thinking like, this is going to somehow be projected back onto me, which I think is wholeheartedly as a result of the like conditioning that i've been brought up with as like a white male living in melbourne like you don't hear too many instances of sexual or at least i didn't hear too many examples of sexual violence and what reporting that looked like or even accusing someone of that looked like and so i had no i guess sort of yeah conditioning it's like what i should expect in in return

so to me it was kind of like a very binary decision like to the point where like i made this decision to report in the same way you might report a stolen car like oh my car's missing I better go to the police today of course you would that's kind of how I treated this so you went and reported that same day I waited until the Monday so that night um the uh the fourth 11 of my cricket club were playing in a grand final so I had to go watch that first and then priority and then uh yeah emailed the head of HR over the weekend so that like the incident happened on Friday night Saturday morning weekend goes by I meet with the head of HR first thing 9am on the monday we go for a walking lap around the mcg to which you know there are strangers

passing me by while i've got tears down my face and raj who is incredible at the time for me um just kind of explained my options from here and i said i want to go to the police and we went to richmond police station they referred us to melbourne west where they've got a specialist team who deal with this sort of crime regularly and once we were there they you know heard my story and and basically explained what would happen from here and the next step was if you come back and make an official statement, that's when we can press charges. And that's when you might have to end up in court, giving your evidence in front of a cross-examiner, in front of your perpetrator, in front of all that in a courtroom. Consider that before you come back and

make a statement. From making this decision, did you have any concept of how long the justice system might take and what the next few years of your life would look like in actually pursuing justice for what happened to you? Absolutely none. So like my concept of the justice system was like basically built off what I'd see on TV where, you know, someone's committed some petty crime and they say, you know, the perpetrator will face a magistrate's court on Monday. I'm like, oh, these things turn around pretty quickly. Yeah. I was like, we watch too much NCIS and stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I had no idea what I was in for and I legitimately thought it would wrap up in about six months. But from the time of like the crime happening to getting the final

verdict after the retrial was five years and 11 months and um yeah I thought it would be done after four and a half and then I thought you know the retrial would happen you know at the start of 2024 then got pushed back to the end of 2024 and then we got a verdict after the Christmas break after that so your verdict came when what month it was like mid-February last year okay do you think that this is such a huge reason why people don't go and report because they simply cannot fathom reliving something or consuming their life for five six seven years yeah well i mean like when you enter the legal system it's like running a marathon actually it's when you run a marathon they at least tell you when the finish line is going to happen when you go through the legal

system they just say run and we'll tell you when to stop and we'll tell you when to stop yeah like imagine going to your pt in the morning they just said like all right we're going to start lifting weights now but you know keep going until i stop you wouldn't go back and so that's what the legal system is like from like a time point of view well one of the things that and I mean you have been speaking about the Tom Silvani case quite a bit on social media and I don't want to conflate the two like I don't want to conflate what happened to you in terms of conflating it with that case but I think you have done so much advocacy work and had so many conversations around it and it is a huge profile case one of the parts of that is the suppression order which

means for anyone who's not familiar is that Tom's name actually wasn't able to be spoken so for a long time, it was like high profile, Melbourne family, Melbourne son, but they weren't actually able to say who he was. And there's this really interesting conversation, I think, around how the justice system is able to protect people who have a lot of privilege or a lot of money who can pursue that protection. How do you, I mean, you posted this yourself, you said, 2071 days after being sexually assaulted. Today, I walked out of court having done all I can to seek justice. Do you think justice was done over that five years? No, no. I mean, like I was proud of myself for getting to the end and you know, that is something I'll carry with me forever. And to be honest,

probably means more to me than the outcome, at least to me. But in terms of justice, absolutely not. What was the outcome? In the magistrate's court, he was found guilty and there was another case that was tried with mine against this guy. He then appealed the decision and it went to the county court which delayed the whole thing another 18 months and in the county court it got dismissed because the new judge deemed that it couldn't be proven beyond reasonable doubt which is an insane reality of sexual assault because it happens in private more often than not i mean it's so difficult because one of those things that there's not people there to bear witness to things that happen and unless there is physical evidence which in your instance there's not

it's an impossibility to prove without reasonable doubt so you're saying that then everyone's experiences mute and void exactly but in this particular case somebody else another man had come forward with you for the same experience totally and there are then two people for and for what reason i mean for what reason would these two people come to make something up like that i think that is the question and i think that's also the reasonable doubt right there so disheartening to victims 100 i mean they don't take these things into consideration um they treat both cases separately they absolutely should take them into consideration though if there are multiple sexual assault cases simultaneously against the same person then absolutely that should be taken

into consideration i agree i mean that there was a history there with this guy which was appalling but yeah none of that gets taken into consideration and then the other thing that really kind of pissed me off was part of why i was overturned was the the judge deemed that it was you know implausible to think that you know I didn't know how I got from the couch to the bed but after waking up I had the awareness to do a couple of different things one get the hell out of there two I made a note on my phone of exactly what happened because I knew immediately that this was a crime they'd been committed against me so I have a note on my phone that got used as evidence in court being like you know literally says like woke up was touching my dick got the hell out of there

even for you to have that forethought yeah exactly right and like you know they asked me um what was the interior of the apartment like and i could describe it pretty well and we're trying to say that you don't remember properly because you were drunk or well pretty much yeah i mean like even the defense wasn't really arguing that different didn't happen they were kind of just arguing that it couldn't be proven beyond reasonable doubt because you know that's all i have to get exactly right you know how can this guy room do all these different things and remember all these different details but not know how we got from the couch to the bed when i'm like like Yes, I might have been drunk that night, but I also have a pretty good memory.

Like, you know, for the people who listen to the Sports Grad podcast, where I talk about people's jobs in sports, I can remember almost every single number of the podcast. So like someone will say a guest to me and I'll be like, hey, this is a number of that person. That's quite Rain Man-ish. Yeah, I know. We can't do that. Do you think you were drugged? Is there a potential that there was something in your drink? Potentially.

I mean, that was one of the things that I did think, because I do recall like this guy handing me a few drinks during the night. What was it that made you decide to go public with all of this and tell Australia your story? Well, not even Australia. I know you've helped people around the world. Within a month, I knew that my situation and the actions I had taken were not typical for what I'd been through. And that was because within 24 hours, I'd told six people.

By the end of the first week, I'd made a statement. A couple of weeks after that, I started therapy, which Cricket Australia was paying for. And so within a month, like it was kind of relatively under control. They give me two weeks off work to just, you know, collect myself. And even like this guy on this particular day of this party, it was his last day at Cricket Australia. He was about to go and start a new job as the head of comms at the International Cricket Council in Dubai, which would have been like the pinnacle of his career if, you know, CA wasn't already. And so I like, I never had to see him again, thankfully.

But one of the reasons why, or just on that note, one of the reasons why I wanted to go and make the report was because I knew that if he made it to the UAE and he did the same thing to someone else where homosexuality is illegal, someone else would have to go down with him. And I did not want to know what it felt like to have had the chance to do something and not do it and find out someone's in the same boat as me. Was he then impacted? Like, was that career opportunity still presented to him or did he lose that?

Okay. No. He never got on the plane, I should say, never hired him. Wow. You know, there's no justice in terms of what happened with the legal system, but in some ways, and I'm not saying that it correlates and I'm not saying it makes up for it, but there is something in reputational damage and there is something in him not being able to continue or live that life. And I think that that's probably what leads us to the really important conversation around suppression orders, because with this Tom Silvani case and the reason why it was so interesting is no one knowing his name and that being suppressed because they were worried about his mental health and what it would do to him and his mental health if the Australian public knew that he was a rapist and that he was being trialed for rape. What would the onslaught of media attention and of public discourse do to his mental health? So his anonymity was prioritized.

Yeah, which is pretty ridiculous. What about the victim? What about the last sentence of trauma? She's been handed because of this. Whether it's a suppression order or the ability to repeal. A lot of people have kind of popped up in my comments being like, oh, well, he's got the right to do that. I'm like, yes, you have the right. But unless you're defending yourself, it's bloody expensive.

And only a certain group of people can do that. Yeah, the right is actually a privilege, is what it is. Actually, I found it really interesting. I was doing a bit of research on this. So the Silvani family had two separate lawyers. One of them was the lawyer that was representing the rape trial, and the second lawyer was one that was representing the suppression order. So they had enough money to be able to arm themselves in the most powerful way. Like most people can't afford one lawyer, let alone two specialized in two very separate areas. So that in and of itself just shows that if you've got the money to delay, to drag it out in court for as long as possible, to keep as much anonymity as possible, the way in which you are treated as a perpetrator is very different if you have a lot of money. But on that, out of curiosity, if you are a victim and you take a sexual assault case to court, do you have to front a lawyer or in that situation are you provided with one? Yeah, it's a great question. one i get asked a lot and the answer is no because it's a criminal case so you're effectively a witness or a pawn in the entire case even though you are the main character in it but when you go to the police they then interview you collect a statement and then try and decide if they think

there is a possibility to get a conviction for what you've presented and that's when they then take to the prosecution and then they will you know go ahead and press charges or not and so it becomes a prosecution versus the defense and then the prosecution tells you like hey you know this is a day that we need you to get up and stand on the witness stand and and give your evidence but unless it was a civil case then like no I wouldn't have to provide anything let's go back to where I stumbled across you which was when you were really openly and like you were so passionately advocating for the victim of Tom Savani and the trolling that she was receiving and you were talking about as a straight white male who has experienced sexual assault,

the difference in the public discourse and the public response from you talking about sexual assault as a male to what a woman receives. What is your experience like of that? I had the most idealistic experience I think you can possibly have, which coming back to your earlier question about why did you speak up about this? It was because I could see the other side so yeah after like things got under control within within a month that's when I started having these new conversations particularly with women and women of color who were telling me you know everything that experience and it really like broke a glass ceiling for my understanding of what goes on in the world that I could no longer ignore and at first my response was like

what do you mean you didn't report but then when I actually listened to what they were going through I was like oh shit like you guys are just trying to do the exact same thing that I'm trying to do and that is survive but surviving for you doesn't look like speaking up for for everyone and as I start to like dig more and more more and more into it like you know began to to hear some of the different cases or pressures that people are up against I mean when I started to kind of like layer on top of each other like the considerations and barriers that particularly women were facing to coming forward like it was chalk and cheese compared to to mine and so that's when I was like I never used to think that my voice was particularly valuable, but then I started to see that actually there are a lot of people who would love to speak up, but they literally can't.

It's not safe for them. There are times when people will say, oh, Rue, what you've done is incredibly brave and heroic. And I find that I feel a little bit embarrassed by that, to be honest, because nobody knows about these people that will never get spoken about who might be, you know, trapped at home in an abusive relationship who cannot do anything about it or, you know, young woman out of work has got their like career like held hostage. Yeah. These people are like the heroes that, you know, we should be talking more and more about. Do you remember some of the comments and the trolling that Tom Zavani's victim was receiving at that time that really set you off?

Yeah, there were particularly comments about like, oh, can't have been that bad or, you know, it's only digital rape or they'd scroll back through Instagram and be like, oh, she doesn't look like someone who has been traumatised. As though like trauma has like a, you know, set of brand guidelines that you now have to follow. Or like want money, want attention. Yeah, exactly right.

And that really pissed me off because these people just don't understand. And when I started to think about how I was treated, I didn't receive any pushback like whatsoever throughout the entire thing. Like anytime I did anything, including going on to like live my life, people would celebrate that and be like, oh, isn't it great that Ruben's living his life again? But when this poor victim goes and does it, they, you know, doubt whether what she went through was actually that bad or not.

Well, no one's asking you what were you wearing? Exactly, yeah. No one's asking you about whether or not you, like how you behaved in a way that maybe was provocative or gave the wrong impression. Like no one's going to question a heterosexual male on that because it's not constructive. Do you know what I mean? It's like, I guess the thing is, is for women, you are not just trying to prove it happened. You're also trying to disprove that you wanted it to happen. And that's the big thing that so many women face, especially when these situations, when these absolutely abhorrent sexual assaults happen off the back of it being a friend or a date rape situation or someone in a situation where the story can be manipulated and you're just trying to prove the facts.

Yeah, it's just a completely different kettle of fish, isn't it? Yeah, no, it was wild. And so that's why I kind of felt the need to be like, hey guys, like this is just blatantly unfair and let me put it side by side for you so you can understand. You have described the legal system as re-traumatizing, different aspects of it were very re-traumatizing. What do you think was the hardest part so that people that might be considering going through this can try and understand and I don't want to say prepare themselves for, but it's a five-year process. So I imagine the whole timeframe in itself is the hard re-traumatizing thing. But like, can you specify any of these aspects that set you back again? Yeah.

I mean, the most, probably the most uncomfortable part is when, you know, you have to get up on the witness stand and they ask you, can you describe what it felt like to, you know, have this man, you know, touch your penis? I'm like, cool. And he's there looking at you. Pretty much. Yeah. Actually, it was quite interesting.

Like I didn't see this guy for, you know, four and a half years until we were in the magistrate's court together. and I got up on the witness stand and he happened to be sitting at the other end of the room opposite the witness box and our eyes met for the first time in four and a half years and as soon as they met, his face just went straight back to looking at the floor and then didn't leave there for the next two hours.

And after that, I thought, this will be all right. How did you feel when you locked eyes with him? Incredibly powerful. Incredibly powerful. Yeah, I don't know, in my mind I was like, you touched the wrong dick on the way out. You touched the wrong dick on the way out. I mean, it's not the time to make jokes, but, like, yeah,

you absolutely did. We only had to laugh because you did. Yeah, I know. You absolutely did. If you don't laugh, you cry. I mean, looking at my biggest fear in this, though, is when we say, like, it's re-traumatising, it's five years. My biggest fear is scaring people away.

Me too, and I don't want to, you know, deter people. From reporting it. Like, I think it's important to have the conversations. I think it's important to make people aware of what it is that they could face but it is so important not to make people frightened of a process or think that there's no point or no hope or it's futile no because there is hope and there is a point and the more people that speak up the more point and hope that there will be for everybody else who follows what do you think are the biggest changes that we need to make in terms of protecting

victims prioritizing victims over prioritizing perpetrators along that journey something just came to mind around your first point around sorry yeah i got really passionate about that because Which of the 25 questions do you want to answer? Yeah, sure. On the topic of like not scaring people off, the night before I went into the county court to give my evidence for the second time and we're now five and a half years down the track, I wrote a letter to my 24-year-old self in the moment

where he wasn't sure what to do or who to report to and just said thank you for making that decision for speaking up because it has profoundly changed the life that I live today and how I carry myself and the opportunities that are at my disposal today because what it's left me with is just this enormous piece of evidence that I can do a hard thing. And that has been so useful in so many different contexts and situations. It was a really therapeutic moment the night before

where I'm basically like crying over my keyboard writing this note to myself which kind of left this like outpouring of everything I'd been through there. I met them the next day when I drove up the highway to go to court. I almost didn't care what happens next because I was like, I've got to the end of this. You've done the hardest thing and there's no more. And so I went in, gave my evidence the second time. Halfway through giving the evidence the second time, I had to say, sorry guys, can we just pause this because I've got a meeting where I have to pitch to my major sponsor, Deakin

University down the road and can we come back tomorrow? And so I walk into this pitch meeting where I'm meeting people for the first time and been like sorry if I'm a bit frazzled like this is where I've come from gave the pitch got the deal done and then the next day like went back and finished off giving the evidence and um it almost just like became a just a part of your life like 100% and like when you run your own business and work for yourself you don't have a choice but to like you know just keep going like Cricket Australia gave me two weeks off I can't give myself two weeks off to collect myself but after walking out of the county court the second time when I made that you know video at

the front, the new head of HR, Alison, who's also been incredible for me, she called me to ask how I went and I explained how I was feeling. And she said, Ruben, you sound invincible. And I was like, yeah, I kind of feel it. And she's like, people like you and your situation aren't meant to feel like that. And I'm like, oh, well, I do. And so I empathize with the people who can't come forward and where it's not safe to come forward. And it pains me to say, do what's best for you, but it's so true. But for the people who do want to go down that path, the impact that it's had, at least for myself on my confidence and my self-worth and the state that's allowed me to carry forward has been life-changing. And I think what, I mean, the incredible thing that came out of the Tom

Silvani case is that most people don't want to report against somebody that has more money, is more powerful is in a position of power and authority is a public profile whatever it is and this case Tom Silvani was all of those things and she took a big risk coming out and fighting a family like that and finding someone like that and the fact that she won I think has just changed the narrative of how we feel in a situation like that and if we think that we're going to be in a position to report it and have that kind of an outcome because until some of these the last few years yours included like a few quite high profile sexual assault cases they definitely have changed the public tone because until then most people i know which unfortunately is a lot what's the

point of reporting it that's what you hear what's the point it's not going to go anywhere they're not going to do anything i can't prove it because it's a feeling in a situation well i think especially when it's an instance like yours you know when you say you have to prove it with more than just evidence like there's no bodily fluids to prove it with and that was the same with the Tom Silvani case as far as I'm aware please correct me if this is incorrect but I had to look into it because I didn't know what digital rape was I didn't know what that reference meant right I was like digital and then I my brain went to computers like I've not had to know that world I did yeah phalanges yeah means your fingers basically not to be too crude but like that

in and of itself there's not there's not evidence of that do you know what I mean like that is such an incredibly hard thing to prove when you go to a police or you stand and testify it's your story against someone else's story 100 yeah yeah exactly right which is why you know i think it's like one to two percent of these cases end up in a conviction yeah and often like the first step you have to get past is like the police station before you even get to court like they have to believe that this is something worth looking into as well i got a message recently from a woman in in south america she'd you know horrifically had just been raped and went straight to the police station and she'd been up all night and she'd been there for 11 hours and was about to go home and for whatever

reason one of my bits of content popped up in her feed and she was like no this is a sign i'm gonna i'm gonna stay and she messaged me afterwards and she said like reuben i was about to leave i didn't think that there was any point in staying i didn't think they'd believe me or anything but thank you for helping me report this case and it's now you know proceeding so yeah there is there is hope out there wow talk me through the appeal process because it must be such an emotional backflip from going from getting a guilty verdict on something to having someone be able to appeal on the case of whatever it is I mean there's various reasons why people appeal but what was that process like for you yeah we got the the guilty verdict in the magistrate's court

and then I basically like went overseas like the next week like celebrating well I was like I just need some time out. And to be honest, I'd wanted to do like a six month work and travel trip for a long time and had to delay it three times for this case. Because one thing that I was absolutely certain on was that I wanted to be there in person to give my evidence. I'd had a conversation with a woman who'd been raped and had been through the trial process. And she said, one thing that made a difference was that her perpetrator gave his evidence in court in person. And so it's not meant to make a difference, but you know, the judge, the jury, everyone can feel what they have feeling when they're there in person and so I was like well I don't want you know a zoom screen

or anything like that to kind of take away what I've got to share so I want the humanness of it exactly right yeah and also knowing that he will be there in person yeah exactly right and that was another big thing for me too like I wanted to be there to face that too and even when the verdict came out too I was like no I want to go to the courtroom and sit there and feel whatever comes out of this which um yeah was not not a great day to be in but in terms of the appeal process i went overseas and started traveling and was just trying to forget about it and then um got to morocco of all places and get this call from the head of hr ca and she's like hey ribbon i've got bad news the case has been appealed we or everyone has to go back to court a second time

and give the evidence again as though it's the first time over so everyone got called back to the county court and everyone got forced to continue to live through this that must have just been so disheartening yeah i mean tied in with like the food poisoning i got in morocco it wasn't a great trip to morocco i had food poisoning morocco too i think it's like right a passage over there yeah i think so yeah might have to go back to morocco and make up for those bad memories but um it got to like you know the i think the next court date was booked for like may 2024 and then a couple weeks beforehand i found out that i just got told that like hey the defense's lawyer isn't available on this date. So we're pushing it back to November. I'm like, cool.

Like, you know, my calendar is busy as well, you know, but I guess that doesn't matter. Yeah. Let's play into the perpetrator's calendar. Yeah. Exactly right. Exactly right. But again, like these are all tactics that defense lawyers use just to kind of delay it, delay it, delay it, and keep victims in the process longer and longer and longer in the hope that eventually the victim just says, I've had enough. It's not worth it. Get me out of this. In this instance though, in an appeal process, just so I better understand it, is there a benefit to delaying an appeal is he in prison at that time is he waiting like what does that look like so if they're delaying an appeal doesn't that extend the guilty verdict

for him in my case he was found guilty but his sentencing was a community corrections order which i felt completely minimized the experience of myself and the other person who yeah i'm like both he was found guilty on both counts so he was still out and about yeah it just delayed and dragged you through that in the case of because I saw you posting about this as well in the case of the appeal which is currently now underway for Tom Silvani how do you feel about that how do you feel I mean I know it's something that they have a right to do but as someone who has been through the process what does that bring up for you oh I think it's disgusting I mean like the fact that you can be convicted of rape and still think that you have a way to get away with it and still

exercise that right despite knowing what you have done is completely arrogant yeah and um is it arrogant because we've set the precedent we let these people off people appeal and we let them off so it might not even be the arrogance i think the issue lays further in our judicial system yeah well that's part of the problem too but there are cases of perpetrators out there who do have an ounce of humility to accept what what they've been handed down because they know they did it Exactly right. So yeah, there are people out there who have done it. So yes, Tom Silvani has the right to do it, but he also has to make the choice to do it as well. And the way I like to explain to some of my male friends is in cricket, if you get given out LBW, you can review it to the third umpire. But if you get hit plum in front of middle, you don't waste a review. You don't waste everyone's time. You know you're out and you just walk off. But there are some people who are still like, I don't care if I'm out or not.

I'm going to use a review. I'm going to waste everyone's time. Because they can. Because they can. And, you know, the consequences of Tom doing it are far more significant than what happens on a cricket field, but that's kind of what happens. And he's also playing the mental health card. What do you know about how much that can help him in an appeal?

Well, I know that New South Wales just abolished the law to taking good character references when it comes to sentencing thanks to the incredible campaigning of Harry James and Jared Grass through the Your Reference Ain't Relevant campaign, which they've been doing for about three years. That was only this past week, wasn't it? Yeah, that happened a couple of days ago. Which is so good because who cares if you're a good person

at the school fate on the weekend? If you still raped someone, I don't care if you sold banana muffins. Well, I mean, it's such a bizarre and archaic thing that's existed for so long, because you are a stand-up person within community, that therefore that should have any weight on any crime, whether it's – and it's also used a lot in domestic violence. It's like, yes, you may have murdered your wife and children,

but you were – he was a really good guy who went to church on Sunday. I mean, we see that that's firstly irrelevant, but also that's a possibility. Those two things exist. Yeah. But they – honestly, they couldn't be further apart, like the scale of good bloke to rapist. Yeah, totally.

Exactly. So now you cannot legally enter a character reference, has no weight in a court of law. Is that correct? In New South Wales. In New South Wales. Yeah. Yeah. So I know the boys are doing more work to get that right around the country, but yeah, it's starting in New South Wales, which is, which is awesome to hear. But like, you know, I remember in my case, like they brought up the fact that, you know, he used to volunteer for his like old boys society or all these other different things. or, you know, I found this part comical, they blamed the assault or, like, you know, my perpetrator's state at that point in time on this stress that he had to go through due to the ball tampering incident in South Africa.

Oh, for God's sakes. And I was like. How ridiculous. The ball tampering incident affected everyone at Cricket Australia. Not everyone else went out and had to sexually assault people. How also ridiculous. It doesn't matter what the stress was, does it? No.

Like, stress is never an indication of, like, I need to go and assault somebody. work is so tough i'm going to rape someone yeah in what world does that work i guess from a defense attorney's perspective they're just like any angle that they can possibly take to try and humanize to try and humanize someone what supports whether they were like social or legal or emotional did you find helped you therapy was incredible and i'm incredibly grateful to cricket australia for supporting me through that and I do wonder like where I would be had I been working at like you know you know a six-person physiotherapy clinic or whatever that doesn't have an HR department or even like the cash to like support has been through that so I do feel very lucky that I was

at Cricket Australia at the time but seeing a therapist was incredible because what it did was make help me make sense of of the trauma because at first I was like I've got no idea what's happened to me or how it's going to affect me or what that even looks like you can't it's hard to kind of compartmentalizing in your mind but what it basically did for me was allow me to kind of clear it and the way i like to describe it uh to people is um you can imagine like you've got a flesh wound on on your leg and like when you first get this flesh wound and there's blood everywhere you can't even see the wound there's so much blood that's covering the actual gash what therapy did for me was effectively like wipe away the blood so i could you know start to see what the gash

looked like and identify it and name it and then over time start to stitch it up so it begins to heal. And then over time, the scar just kind of dissolves. And now like, sure, there's a scar there and I can still see the scar and acknowledge that it's always going to be a part of me, but it doesn't stop me from living my life anymore. And that's what therapy did for me. Ruben, thank you so much for coming and sharing a story. And also, I mean, thank you for what you do every day across social media. I always think this of people who take on something that's such a big task because you are constantly the mouthpiece for so many people who have been through what you've been through, but also you're constantly receiving messages or DMs or

contacts from people. And that takes a huge emotional toll. Like that's a really big responsibility, but it is amazing that there are people out there who continuously do that work for all of those who have been affected by sexual violence. Thank you very much. But before we wrap up, I'd love to get your take on something, because one of the things that kind of held me back for a long time, being a male voice was actually thinking or wondering, do I have a place at the table in this conversation that's largely a female dominated issue. And I had to like literally consult with, you know, 20, 25 different women to be like, am I doing the right thing here? Because I don't want to get cancelled for something. I think it's really interesting

listening to you speak about what happened to you. This is a little, a little tack on, I've not spoken about this at all on the podcast, but, and I, and I was kind of contemplating whether I deleted it from the start when I was commenting on what happened with a CEO when I was probably 24 years old. But the more that I listened to you speak, the more I realized the gendered shame that I took on. And so there was something refreshing about you saying I had absolutely no shame. It was so separate to me that I was able to talk about it. So I was at a work Christmas party. We were like in the city at a nightclub and I worked for a, like a medical device company. We made splints for people with sleep apnea, dental splints. Anyway, I was only

maybe 22 no I think I think I was 24 and it was late we'd all had dinner we were at the club dancing and he was just trying to be all over me and my friends who I worked with were constantly trying to be like a barricade between my like 60 year old CEO who at the previous Christmas party had like come undone crying to me about his wife who had died from a brain aneurysm and how I reminded him of her and he had been quite inappropriate anytime they'd been drink around but this occasion he was like dancing and trying to dance up on me and I should have left that's probably why I had the guilt because I was like I should have gone home but at the same time I was like I don't want to make a scene I don't want it to be turned into a big thing and I can handle

him and his like grossness you know but I turned around and he stuck his hand up into my underwear and into me and I went home and I was too ashamed to tell my boyfriend I was so embarrassed as I was waiting to get a taxi our managing director was there and he was trying to kiss me and the managing director was like what the fuck like stop they all saw it they were all there and I quit six months later and I remember getting a phone call another six months after that from the head of the company and he was like oh I want to talk to you about why you quit and I was like I have no interest in talking about why I quit like they all knew everyone knew and I was so I was so embarrassed and I thought I had a part to play in it because I hadn't gone home when I knew he was

doing what he was doing and so I guess from my take on not to center this around me but I carried that shame for a long time I was so humiliated and I never wanted to speak about it because I did feel like it was my fault and now as a 40 year old almost looking back I'm like oh I wish I could just hug little 24 year old Laura and be like you did nothing to entice that you did nothing to instigate it none of it was your fault and he should have been held accountable and from all accounts he went on to do similar things in other workplaces so yeah i i think the more it doesn't matter what the gender is the more we talk about sexual violence the more it empowers people to realize actually they're not responsible for the things that other people do to them

and that's really important i actually think that was a really brilliant question that you asked And I'd be lying if I didn't say it wasn't something that we did actually ask ourselves. Like when I said that I would love to chat to you, it was definitely a thought and a conversation about, I mean, and we've covered sexual assault on the podcast over the last six years. It's not something we shy away from, but it's definitely a thought where we were like, well, should we be getting another woman on? Because this is something that so heavily affects women.

And we know that the single straight white man is, of course it happens, but we know it's such a small percentage of people and the reason I thought it was so important to talk to someone like you and and you know not shy away from platforming a man is because the way you speak about it I think shines such an important light on it not just the fact that sexual assault can happen to anybody but you also shine a light on the discrepancies between the way you were treated and between the way a woman was treated and I think that that is a really important thing for men to hear as much as women to hear men men need to be at the table or we're in echo chamber talking and yelling at ourselves around what's been happening and we don't need to tell other

women yeah women have been telling each other for a very long time and i think so long as the conversation is centered around allowing women to find a voice to share their stories but also around educating men on what is happening i think that that every single person is entitled at that table absolutely i think if you're a woman listening to this send this to a man in your life um because i think the more we can educate everyone the safer society will be i know that for my friends they're like reuben you have just expounded my worldview uh profoundly since you know i've been talking about this but we've um yeah we've got a long way to go you've supported so many people and you're changing so many people's lives and we thank you so much coming

and sharing your story today i imagine it never gets easier and you're still reliving it but you're doing it to help others and we really appreciate that no thank you so much for having me guys we're gonna link uh ruben's instagram everything yeah everything in the show notes and um i mean i've been following you for a while since i came across you i think it's a really great place again a really great place to show your boyfriends and the men in your life as well absolutely