July 28, 2022 – London
I feel like the content of this book has been carefully avoided in its publicity in some ways — I was not really expecting it to go where it went.
In the paperback it's a delightful light pink. The title refers to a legal concept about the nature of a victim, but without that context appears poetic; the illustration and the text on the cover gives it a kind of girl power energy that led me to think this was a kind of self help book. It's not.
This book covers Lee's time in her first career as a judge's associate in the courts in Brisbane where she saw case after case of men accused of hurting women and girls. Rape, abuse; trauma after trauma. The endless parade of awful misogyny and victim after victim being written off by juries for not being the perfect victim. Too upset, not upset enough. Too hot, too ugly. Not believable. Wouldn't want to ruin his life.
After some time something starts to unfurl inside of Lee and she confronts the reality of her own repressed abuse as a child at the hands of her older brother's friend. Armed with her deep knowledge of the legal system and the support of her family and partner, her account of the pursuit of her own justice is an agonising tale of swimming against the tide. Years pass as she battles a system that is so obviously rigged against her and all other victims who fight their own shame and fear to attempt the excruciating task of getting their abuser convicted. Not all come out unscathed.
I read this while Roe went down and while Johnny Depp won. We live on the surface where people seem mainly good, but underneath, a little deeper down, there's a nasty world where bad people do bad things and get away with it all much more frequently than we want to believe. I'm glad for brave warriors like Lee who fight the demons inside them, tame them, and use them to fight the demons that walk among us.