Prima Facie: A Reflection
This blog was contributed by a member of our community who wishes to remain anonymous. We thank them for generously sharing their personal reflection.
“I walk out of LexNova Guild’s screening of Prima Facie starring Jodie Comer. I am moved. I am abhorred. I’m no lawyer, but I am inspired to enact change in any way I can, to fight against women’s subjugation. It’s funny how a film can do that to you, funny how our media plays out in reality.
I parked my car a five minutes walk away. It was two minutes. Two minutes before a wonderful evening of enlightenment was literally overshadowed by a monstrous SUV. I thank everything that “nothing” happened but God forbid if it did, I’d be just like Tessa, just like the two hours of horror I witnessed not even an hour ago on the big screen.
The headlights blind white behind me as I continue walking and I pretend (I pray) it’s a coincidence, that it’s not for me. Maybe he’s pulling over, maybe his house is just behind where I walk, maybe he needs to check something in his car or a message on his phone. He pulls up in front of me, half of my line of sight encompassed by this palpable, loudly present hunk of metal.
I had just watched two hours of a woman broken by the system meant to protect her. I listen to what he has to say. I don’t care what he has to say, I never wanted to talk to him in the first place yet here his ute is, enshrouding me and my path to safety, encompassing my entire attention by design.
He asks me if I have far to travel. I walk away. God knows if he’d have wanted to he could have followed me, continuing to block my path, to corner me, to rape me just like Tessa, or more. Not worse, just more.
It’s a legitimate miracle he drove off. I was half convinced he’d circle back around and follow me with more vigour, intent on defiling the place I called home, the place that from then on I would just live in. Maybe it was his intention and I got to my car in time, maybe he was just trying to help, maybe I frankly don’t care anymore.
Prima Facie isn’t a lesson of history, it’s a lesson of today. A lesson of how women still live in fear walking five minutes to their car, about how that fear is justified, how walking five minutes in the dark without being harassed is a privilege or a mere stroke of luck.
I thank Suzie Miller and I thank Jodie Cromer, their combined artistry and performance struck a nerve in me that was realised only minutes later in how relevant it was. Prima Facie was performed 7 years ago, yet I am still being followed, women I know are still being failed by the law and men still get away with it.
I’m choosing to write this anonymously, to avoid the stigma I and many women already know exists, but the stigma that we also saw play out in the film. Writing this is a first for me, it’s cathartic and empowering, however I refuse to attach an identity to my experience, I don’t think I need to. Every woman has a story, 1 in 3 women are sexually assaulted in their lifetime. I don’t need to attach my name, every woman before me has already done so, and every woman after will continue to unless Australian law is fundamentally, institutionally changed.
I’m no lawyer, I don’t know the logistics of it all, what I do know is that when you attend a screening of a film about a woman assaulted and failed by the outer systems meant to protect her, only to walk two minutes alone at night to your own car and be harrassed, it strikes a nerve.”
