Justice for Sexual Assault victims

My name is Hayley Young and I am passionate about creating cultural change to reduce sexual and domestic violence in our work places and communities. This Give a Little is for raising money for legal fees to hold the NZ and UK Defence Forces to account for their culture.

I served for 4.5 years in the NZ Navy, during which time I was exposed to a culture of constant objectification and degrading women. I was a rather independent young woman and I never thought I could be a victim, but on my first sea posting in the UK it started with joking banter and it just got more and more in my face to the point where I was sexually abused and raped.

In hindsight was the perfect setting for abuse to start - in an unfamiliar environment, isolated from friends and family, and a minority as one of the only women.

From there I never really got away from it, in my experience the objectification and degrading of women made up an underlying culture across both the UK and NZ Navies. In NZ I didn't experience any physical abuse, but the odd comment from time to time always made me feel uneasy and I lived in constant fear that what happened to me in the UK would happen again.

I most definitely did not feel like I could have raised a complaint at the time, my friends and I all agreed it would be career suicide and who would put themselves through all that re-traumatisation??

The Navy should be a fabulous career for women. Aside from the harassment and abuse, I had so much fun, I loved my day to day job, I loved the adventures, I loved the work hard, play hard ethos and I loved the people.

I'm standing up now because in my experience it feels like Naval leadership know they are obliged to fix the culture towards women, but it doesn't feel like they're really owning it and championing change as much as I hoped. They've made some really positive changes with Operation Respect, and I've heard they've taken a large step forward, but I haven't seen them truely own the problem and therefore address it with the vigour it deserves.

The other concern I have is the level of support generally given to people serving in New Zealand and on deployment. The previous New Zealand Attorney General argued that the Defence force has no legal liability to take reasonable steps to provide a safe place of work because we serve at her majesty's pleasure both at home and abroad. They even argued it would have been undiplomatic for them to look into the working environments they were sending me to - ie the Royal Navy where it is reported that 1 in 3 women experience sexual abuse each year and the younger women are most vulnerable.