Thousands of incidents of sexual violence against older women in Australia are going ignored or unreported because of an “enormous silence” around the topic, based partly on a belief that older women are asexual and unlikely to be the target of assault, researchers say.

Norma’s Project, a groundbreaking study published on Monday by La Trobe University in Melbourne, aims to break the silence by collecting stories of the sexual abuse experienced by Australian women over 65, and trying to understand the factors that enable and disguise their ill treatment.



The project was named after an 84-year-old woman, the mother of a researcher at the university, who reported being sexually assaulted by a male nurse while at a respite centre. “I cried out to the man, ‘You can’t do that!’, but he just laughed and said, ‘I can do whatever I want’,” Norma said.



When Norma and her daughter reported the incident to the manager of the care centre, the manager was “surprised and disbelieving that the incident occurred”.



They sought help from two welfare groups, one for older Australians, another for victims of sexual assault, but found the coverage patchy. “One had expertise and experience in dementia and older women but not sexual assault; the other had expertise and experience in sexual assault but not in dementia,” Norma’s daughter said.



And Norma was hesitant to discuss what had happened: “She struggled to find the right words, because of her dementia, but she also seemed embarrassed or ashamed to be talking about such private things.”



Police became involved, but were not able to charge the alleged perpetrator. “They advised me that, in cases where there is no physical evidence and no witnesses and involving a victim with dementia, a prosecution was unlikely,” Norma’s daughter said.



One of the lead authors on the study, Catherine Barrett, said Norma’s story was typical. “There is this enormous silence. People don't talk about the sexual assault of older women, and when they speak out, they’re not always listened to or believed,” she said.



Nursing homes and service providers are required to pass on to police any reports of “unlawful sexual contact” by a resident or client, with 378 such reports made in 2012. “But we don’t understand anything else about it, other than those numbers,” Barrett said.



To fill in the gaps, researchers conducted surveys and interviews with 66 people, including women who had suffered abuse, their families, and social workers.



They found that frail, older women living in rural areas or dependent on nursing staff were particularly vulnerable. “Women who have dementia and who can’t speak were also being targeted,” Barrett said.



A widespread “ageism” was also at work, researchers found. “We don’t think of older people as sexual, full stop, and so there are a number of stories where a service provider has perpetrated abuse but people have just said, “Well, he’s a young man, he’s married, he’s got three children. She’s an older woman with dementia. Why would he do that?’.”



“But sexual assault is not about sexual attraction, it’s about power, people exercising power over others,” Barrett said.



About half the stories documented abuse in health care or nursing home settings, but the other half showed recorded sexual assault in the home, what Barrett described as, “domestic violence grown old”.



“When we think of domestic violence, we think of younger women, but in fact there are some older women who have experienced domestic violence their whole lives, and it’s continuing,” she said. “With these women, for most of their married lives, rape in marriage was legal.”



The impact of the abuse is worse for the aged and frail: American research shows that a “significant proportion” of women over 65 who had been sexually assaulted died within a year of the attack.



Barrett said the harrowing stories showed the need for cultural change among care providers, sexual assault support services, and the wider community.



“We need to do some work with aged care service providers and anybody who works with older women, providing education around what makes older women vulnerable,” she said.



She also called for care workers to pass a Working with the Vulnerable check before making contact with older women. She hoped the stories in the report would resonate in the public’s mind, so that more women will feel free to speak, and be heard when they do.



“It’s similar to the church 20 years ago. When people reported that they had been sexually assaulted by a priest, there was so much invisibility and silence around that people weren’t believed. And now 20 years down the track we have the royal commission, conversations and visibility, and what I’m hearing from people is that for the first time, they’re being heard.



“That’s what we need to provide for older women,” she said.

