Harrison James knows first-hand the power of speaking out. In 2022, aged 22, he publicly shared his story of childhood sexual abuse for the first time, turning his experience into a national campaign to abolish the use of good character references in the sentencing of convicted child sex offenders. This year, that campaign helped secure historic law reform in NSW, the ACT, VIC, TAS and WA. Here, he reflects on his own experience of violence and why men need to start speaking up, challenging misogyny and holding each other accountable.
“Many of my earliest childhood memories are of violence. My father was physically violent towards my mother, and they divorced when I was 10 years old. When I was 13, after 3 years of not seeing him, I decided to move in with my dad. I was the eldest of four kids, and I yearned for a male figure in my life. That’s when I first met my stepmother. Just a few weeks after moving in with my dad, my stepmother took me to the cinema, where she sexually abused me. The abuse continued from the ages of 13 to 16, and when I was 15, she fell pregnant with my daughter, who I was forced to pretend was my sister.
When I was 19, my stepmother fled with my child to her home country of the Philippines. I’m 26 now, and I haven’t seen my daughter since 2019. Even though the sexual abuse occurred and there was family violence at the hands of my father, the most devastating consequence of my abuse is not being able to see my daughter.
After losing my little girl, I did not want to be here anymore and created a plan to end my life. Thankfully, I decided to check myself into a mental health institution because the hospital was really helpful and gave me a sense of purpose. I knew I had to do something with my trauma; I just didn’t know where to start.
Shortly after my parents’ divorce, my father perpetrated quite severe domestic violence against my mother. That case went to court, and my father used character references against my mother, and I saw the hope drain from her face reference by reference as they were read aloud. That early experience was what drove me to launch the Your Reference Ain’t Relevant campaign, aimed at abolishing the use of good character references in sentencing convicted offenders. Originally, I set out to abolish them for child sex offenders because that was my lived experience and something I could speak to with a level of expertise. But I always envisioned it extending to domestic violence and adult cases of rape. In April, New South Wales went even broader and abolished good character references for all offences. Since then, the ACT, Victoria, WA, and Tasmania have all committed to reform. It’s been such a privilege to see that advocacy turn into real change.
Being a male survivor has also shaped the way I think about masculinity. Men speaking honestly about the violence we’ve experienced matters enormously because silence around male victimhood doesn’t protect men at all; it isolates us. We live in a world built around incredibly entrenched gender stereotypes and very established ideas about what a man is supposed to be. You’re told masculinity means strength and control, sexual confidence and emotional stoicism. Then you experience something that makes you feel as though all of those things have been taken from you. Before I understood myself as someone who had experienced violence, I often tried to deal with what happened to me through ideas of masculinity that weren’t helping me at all. You chase that feeling of control and validation, that sense of achievement. You chase sex, drugs, alcohol and whatever makes you feel powerful enough to no longer feel vulnerable. Eventually, I had to understand that healing wasn’t about proving how much of a man I was. It was about accepting what had happened to me and deciding what kind of man I wanted to become because of it.
Men need permission to say, “Someone hurt me.” Not because we’re trying to compete with women’s experiences of violence. We know violence disproportionately affects women and girls and is perpetrated by men. But shame and silence aren’t keeping anyone safe. For me, that also means recognising my responsibility as a man. I’m not interested in speaking for women or taking over from women who have been doing this work for generations. I want to stand alongside them, uplift their voices and be as useful an ally as I can be. Women shouldn’t have to spend their lives convincing men that violence against women is a problem. At some point, men have to turn to each other and say, “This is ours to fix too.”
I don’t need a medal for caring about women. I want caring about women, challenging misogyny and calling out your mates to be completely ordinary expectations of being a man. I also completely understand why some women are cynical about male allies. Men have given women plenty of reasons to be. My response is never to get defensive about that. It’s to keep showing up, listening, doing the work, and hopefully earning trust through my actions rather than asking for it because I call myself an ally.
Accountability means being explicit about the problem. People are scared to say misogyny. Say misogyny. Say sexism. Say male entitlement. Say male violence. Be really clear. We’re so concerned about making boys and men comfortable that we become afraid to describe the problem, which I don’t think is preparing them to be part of the solution at all. There is rightly an enormous emphasis on prevention. We absolutely need to be asking what attitudes we can change in young boys so women and girls are safer in 10 or 20 years. But prevention can’t be an excuse to postpone action today. Women are experiencing violence, misogyny, sexism and sexual harassment today. One in five women experiencing sexual violence in Australia should horrify us. Every woman killed by male violence should horrify us.
I hope eventually the term ‘male advocate against violence towards women’ sounds like a ridiculous distinction. I hope we reach a point where men caring about women’s safety is so normal that nobody thinks it’s noteworthy enough to give us a special label. We’re obviously nowhere near that yet, but that’s the culture I want boys growing up in and men contributing to.”
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