by BETTINA ARNDT – WHILE our country recovers from the lockdown years, across Australia there are thousands of families who look back to 2021 as the start of a very different nightmare – the year their sons were accused of sexual assault. …
by BETTINA ARNDT – TALK about a meltdown. The explosive reaction from Liberal troops seeking votes for NSW Attorney General Mark Speakman at the voting centre in his local electorate was not unexpected. The cause of their wrath was a group of…
by BETTINA ARNDT – THE Brittany Higgins celebrity saga continues with the white dress she wore to a feminist rally being considered an addition to the collection in the Museum of Australian Democracy. But another key player in this circus isn’t doing…
by BETTINA ARNDT – WE WERE once told feminism was about equality, creating a level playing field where women could take their rightful place in the world. I happily called myself a “feminist” after reading Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, ironically whilst…
by BETTINA ARNDT – WHEN it comes to teasing out the murky truth in sexual consent cases, the mobile phone is a key source of evidence offering a lifeline that often serves to exonerate accused men. That’s why phone evidence has become…
by BETTINA ARNDT – IT WAS 2014 when I first heard from Andrew, a young Queensland dad, who was being denied contact with his two young girls. From then on, he wrote regularly updating me on his eight-year Family Court marathon, where…
by BETTINA ARNDT – A FEW months ago, a few dozen women gathered in a room in Sydney to participate in a Wikipedia “edit-a-thon,” aimed at writing profiles of women in STEM, heaping praise on these academics simply because they are female. …
by BETTINA ARNDT – FINALLY, it appeared the Brittany Higgins case was over when the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions, Shane Drumgold, announced last week that the sexual assault charge against Bruce Lehrmann was to be dropped. Drumgold said the reason was…
by BETTINA ARNDT – WE’VE come a long way from the days when female reviewers grumbled that men won all the star parts in movies whilst female characters were one-dimensional props to hero males. Many of the producers and playwrights churning out…
by BETTINA ARNDT – WHAT a circus. This week the Brittany Higgins/Bruce Lehrmann rape trial imploded when the jury was dismissed due to misconduct by a juror. The case seemed to be heading for a hung jury after five days of deliberation,…
