Alert – Sexual consent campaigner’s astonishing claim after the death of Sydney woman: ‘We can’t forget that Lilie James was a white woman’

A sexual consent campaigner has claimed the murder of private school water polo  coach Lilie James was given blanket media coverage because she was white.

Ms James, 21, was brutally bludgeoned to death by Dutch-born hockey coach Paul Thijssen, 24, in the gym bathroom at exclusive St Andrew’s Cathedral School in Sydney’s CBD last Wednesday.

The savage murder has dominated newspaper headlines in the week afterwards as details emerged of the pair’s whirlwind romance and Thijssen’s suicide hours after the murder.

But Chanel Contos told the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday that all domestic murders of women should get the same level of media attention – but the murder of Ms James was given special treatment.

‘We can’t forget that Lilie James was a white woman and this sort of media attention – the media very much elevate certain voices and certain experiences,’ she said.

‘How many women would have been killed this year – 56 or something so far? And where’s the coverage for that?’

She said n media should apply the same level of resources to all domestic murders as they did to the death of Friends star Matthew Perry at the weekend. 

‘Matthew Perry from Friends died last week and every single media outlet in covered it,’ said the former student at private Kambala School in Sydney’s east.

‘Why has not all 56 of those women’s deaths been covered – or those men who murdered those women?

‘Why has that not been covered by the same amount of media outlets and not been given that same attention?’

Ms Contos, 25, set up the Teach Us Consent campaign to tackle sexual assault, after she was flooded with horrifying accounts of attacks among Sydney school students.

She said the murder of Ms James had particularly resonated with her because it was so close to her own experiences.

‘I think really hit home for a lot of people,’ she said. ‘I think this was, one, because she was very young. Two, because I live in Sydney and it happened in Sydney.

‘Three, it was a private school [and] there’s multiple testimonies about that school, on my website showing this culture is epidemic there.

‘She was someone who was around my age, grew up in my area, was working in my area. 

‘Why had we not done enough to make it so that that man never got to that position in his life?’ 

She said reporting the murders of women like Ms James could be used to transform society in same way her campaign had triggered a change in classrooms where teachers now educate students about consent.

‘I think the media is one of our largest tools for shaping culture,’ she said.

 ‘Just as teachers should have training to be transformative actors in this change, so should media.

‘I think we also need to stop with the clickbaity headlines that is basically trauma bait from someone’s [tragedy].’

And she said focusing on Thijssen being a school leader was misleading.

‘There was things saying he was a sports captain, elevating his status as if it’s this kind of shock horror, but I think that’s the exact thing,’ she said.

‘We don’t understand how someone who can also be a sports captain, who can also be a school leader, can do these sorts of things. 

‘But the point is that anyone can, and our society very much celebrates and embeds this culture.’

She added: ‘A statistic I want to point out is that if a man earns more than his female partner, she is 35 per cent more likely to be subjected to domestic violence from him. 

‘This idea of male ego is often a driver of violence, and our media is consistently reinforcing that message and allowing that statistic to be true. 

‘So yes, I think there should be training and regulations are encouraged.’

Five women have been killed in in the past 10 days alone, with victims in Perth, Bendigo, Canberra, Sydney, the Hunter region and Aldinga beach in South .

On Wednesday, acting Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said things needed to change.

‘This is a national crisis and we are not talking about it enough,’ she. ‘We must move past despair and anger and take greater action, because the violence has not slowed and the killings have not stopped.’

Exact figures on the number of women killed by violence can be hard to pinpoint due to the nature of ongoing investigations and the pace at which these statistics can grow.

But research shows family, domestic and sexual violence remains persistent.

The n Bureau of Statistics found one-in-six women, since the age of 15, had experienced physical or sexual violence by a current or previous co-habiting partner.

A survey on national community attitudes found there was an improvement in understanding of violence against women.

However, 25 per cent of respondents believed women who do not leave their abusive partners are partly responsible for the violence continuing and 34 per cent agreed it was common for sexual assault accusations to be used as a way of getting back at men.

In a joint statement Liberal MP Bridget Archer, Labor MP Alicia Payne and Greens spokeswomen on women Larissa Waters urged governments to tackle the root causes of violence, and transform harmful social norms that can lead to femicide.

They also called for more funding for frontline services that provide help to women escaping violence.

‘Governments at all levels must continue to prioritise this issue with funding and leadership, and each of us must drive the cultural change we need to end the epidemic of violence against women in our communities,’ they wrote on Wednesday.

More than one in five women have been sexually assaulted since the age of 15, according to the n Bureau of Statistics, but Ms Contos said she didn’t believe the figure was accurate.

‘The statistic feels wrong. It feels hollow and underwhelming compared to the reality,’ she said.

‘It doesn’t account for all those teens whose first sexual experience when they were 13 or 14 was void of consent.’

She said many people ‘resist to clarify’ what happened to them for various reasons.

Contos shot to prominence after posting an Instagram story, asking followers if they, or someone they knew, had been sexually assaulted during their school years.

A day later, she received 200 responses. She would later go on to create the Teach Us Consent website.

‘It’s now been signed by nearly 50,000 ns, and almost 7000 people have posted their testimony of being sexually assaulted while of school age in ,’ she said.

‘A year later, I presented at a meeting with all ministers of education from around the country, and they unanimously agreed to mandate consent education from kindergarten, every year until year 10.’

In her address, Contos referred to a 2021 survey of 14 to 18 year olds that found 41 per cent of sexually active students have experienced unwanted sex.

It found the average age a person first had sex when they didn’t want to was at the age of 14.9, and 60 per cent of young people who experienced unwanted sex said it occurred in the context of an intimate relationship.

‘I heavily question how these definitions differ from sexual assault and echo the point many girls and women don’t want to identify their experiences with the word rape or sexual assault, especially when the perpetrator is someone close to them,’ she said.

‘This gives me every confidence to say rather than the national statistic of one in five n women since the age of 15 have been sexually assaulted, we can actually say that 45 per cent of young women sexually active before the age of 16 have been subjected to sexual assault or coercion.

‘When we consider just shy of 70 per cent of n year 12 students have had sex, this is a national health crisis.’

Contos identified four types of rapists, three of which are ‘sadistic, angry or compensating,’ and said focus must be placed on the fourth type.

‘Entitled opportunists are rapists who have high social competence, and they commit on impulse. Their offences are predatory acts that are unplanned and exhibit poor self-control,’ she said.

‘Their motivating factor doesn’t come from a place of malice or sadism, but their belief in entitlement to immediate sexual gratification, they’re confident, powerful, and opportunistic in other aspects of their lives, all values our society highly regards in men.’

She said this type of perpetrator most often offends for the first time as a teenager, and are unaware of the fact they’ve sexually assaulted someone until they’re older.

‘The good news about this type of rapists, unlike the other three types, where psychological problems need to be addressed to prevent them from offending or reoffending, an entitled opportunist can be prevented by education on consent, and raising boys to be empathetic, particularly towards women.’