{"id":77365,"date":"2025-10-24T11:57:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=77365"},"modified":"2025-10-24T11:57:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:57:25","slug":"women-in-australias-defence-forces-sue-govt-over-sexual-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/10\/24\/women-in-australias-defence-forces-sue-govt-over-sexual-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Women in Australia\u2019s Defence Forces Sue Govt Over Sexual Abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Huldah Shado<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Hundreds of women in Australia\u2019s Defence Forces have filed a class action lawsuit against the government, alleging decades of sexual violence, harassment, and discrimination.<\/p>\n<p>The suit, lodged at the Federal Court in Sydney by JGA Saddler law firm, covers alleged abuses between November 2003 and May 2025.<\/p>\n<p>It automatically includes all women who served during that period unless they opt out.<\/p>\n<p>Lead lawyer Josh Aylward said the case exposes a \u201cdeep-rooted culture of abuse\u201d within the military that has persisted despite years of promised reforms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor many women, the threat of sexual violence in their workplace is greater than that of war,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>One complainant alleged she was assaulted by four servicemen after an on-base party, later facing retaliation for reporting the attack.<\/p>\n<p>The Defence Department said it was aware of the case and reaffirmed its \u201czero tolerance for sexual violence,\u201d while acknowledging more work is needed to reform military culture.<\/p>\n<p>The class action follows multiple government inquiries that, according to JGA Saddler, \u201chave failed to bring meaningful change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Huldah Shado &nbsp; Hundreds of women in Australia\u2019s Defence Forces have filed a class action lawsuit against the government, alleging decades of sexual violence, harassment, and discrimination. The suit, lodged at the Federal Court in Sydney by JGA Saddler law firm, covers alleged abuses between November 2003 and May 2025. It automatically includes all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":77366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1754],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foreign-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77367,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77365\/revisions\/77367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}