This post is modified from a speech I gave at the launch of the Childlight East Asia and Pacific Hub at the University of New South Wales on April 9.
I first started working at the University of New South Wales twenty years ago, at what was then the National Centre for HIV Social Research – now the Centre for Social Research on Health. Australia has one of the strongest HIV responses in the world, and the Centre was part of a robust, data-driven approach to HIV prevention. The focus was on rigorous, interdisciplinary research, carried out in close collaboration with government and with affected communities.
At the time, I was living with a close friend I’d known since we were teenagers, who I will call “Sarah”. Sarah is a survivor of child sexual exploitation and abuse. During the day, I was part of an effective and well-resourced research, policy and practice infrastructure – one that was delivering remarkable outcomes for communities impacted by HIV. But at night, I would come home to Sarah. And the contrast could not have been more stark.
There was no effective mental health care for her. No specialist services. No meaningful social supports. Some of the men who had abused her as a child were still threatening her, but we couldn’t get a meaningful law enforcement response. She self-harmed, had an eating disorder, barely slept, and often didn’t want to live. I saw all of this. And then, each morning, I would come into work and think: We need something like this. We need a research centre just like this for child sexual abuse.
In the first few years that I worked at UNSW, Sarah and I turned her life around. It wasn’t easy but, today, she has a family, a career, and a life of her own. There were many moments when she almost didn’t make it. And it should not have been so hard.
I had moved from Melbourne to Sydney to support Sarah, and when she decided to leave Sydney to make a fresh start elsewhere, I was perplexed. I asked her, “What am I supposed to do now?”. Her answer was a little prophetic. She said, “You are good at this work. You should do it for a job”.
So it’s with a certain sense of poetry – and justice – that, twenty years later, we are launching the Childlight East Asia and Pacific Hub at UNSW. Our mission – in collaboration with our colleagues at the University of Edinburgh – is to build the data foundations for a more effective response to child sexual abuse and exploitation, both in Australia and across the region. And to ensure that this data drives real change for children and for survivors.
There are many people who made this moment possible. But, most of all, I want to thank Sarah. Because, without her, I don’t think this would be happening.