Reflections
When public debate fixates on the number, evidence helps keep the focus on harm
Estimated read time: 8 minutes
When CNN published an investigation into an online network where men allegedly shared tactics and material relating to drugging, sexually assaulting and filming women, much of the public response did not stay focused on the women at the centre of the story.
Instead, attention quickly shifted to a disputed number.
As reported by Pedestrian.TV, social media users had incorrectly claimed that CNN had found “62 million men” in an online course about how to drug and sexually assault women. The figure was wrong: it referred to monthly visits to a user-generated porn site, not to the number of men in a chat group.
Accuracy is important and misinformation should be corrected. However, when the correction becomes the whole conversation, something important is lost.
CNN’s investigation was not only about website statistics. It reported allegations of online spaces where men shared advice, footage and tactics relating to sexual violence against women they described as wives or partners.
The more urgent question is not only how many men were involved, but what this reporting reveals about sexual violence, technology-facilitated abuse and the conditions that allow harm to be normalised.
This story is not only about a disputed number
ANROWS CEO Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine told Pedestrian.TV that “this story is not about a disputed number”.
She described the behaviour reported by CNN as “deeply distressing” and “highly criminal” and said the debate about numbers reflected a broader tendency to minimise serious violence against women.
Evidence matters here not because it reduces violence to a single statistic, but because it helps keep public attention on the behaviour, the harm, the patterns of perpetration and the women affected.
When debate becomes fixated on whether a statistic was wrong, there is a risk that the violence itself becomes secondary.
The correction to social media posts misinterpreting a statistic should not overshadow what the reporting described: allegations of sexual violence, perpetrator tactics, online reinforcement and the use of technology to facilitate and record abuse.
Sexual violence is widespread and often perpetrated by someone known to the victim-survivor
Australian evidence shows that sexual violence is widespread.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that 14% of people aged 18 years and over — 2.8 million people — have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15. For women, the figure is more than one in five.
The relational context is also important. CNN’s investigation reported allegations of sexual violence against women by husbands and partners. In Australia, AIHW reports that one in nine women has experienced sexual violence by a male intimate partner since the age of 15.
AIHW also reports that women are more likely to have experienced sexual violence by a known male perpetrator than by a stranger.
This matters because sexual violence is still too often imagined as something perpetrated by strangers, outside the home, outside relationships and outside ordinary life.
The evidence challenges that assumption. Sexual violence can occur within intimate partner relationships. It can also be part of coercive control, where patterns of abusive behaviour are used to create fear, deny autonomy and exert power and dominance.
Technology can extend patterns of coercion and abuse
ANROWS research has found that technology-facilitated abuse is common in Australia, with one in two Australian adults reporting lifetime victimisation and one in four reporting perpetration.
The research also shows that technology-facilitated abuse has gendered patterns, including in the gender of perpetrators, the relationship context in which abuse occurs, co-occurring abuse and the impacts reported by victim-survivors.
In interviews with victim-survivors and perpetrators, researchers found that gaining or maintaining control over the victim-survivor was the primary motivation that emerged from both groups.
The report also describes surveillance as a common theme, with victim-survivors describing feeling watched and unable to escape the gaze and control of the perpetrator.
This is why technology-facilitated abuse should not be dismissed as something that happens “online” and therefore separately from “real” violence.
Technology can be used to monitor, threaten, humiliate, coerce, isolate and abuse. It can make harm feel constant and inescapable. It can also be used to record, distribute or threaten sexual material without consent.
Public responses can either challenge harm or minimise it
The way the public responds to stories like CNN’s tells us something about how gender-based violence is understood.
The 2021 National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey found that while community understanding and attitudes are improving slowly in some areas, problematic attitudes that minimise violence, mistrust women’s reports and disregard consent persist among a sizeable minority of Australians.
For example, the NCAS found that:
- 34% of respondents agreed that it is common for sexual assault accusations to be used as a way of “getting back at men”
- 24% agreed that “a lot of times, women who say they were raped had led the man on and then had regrets”
- 25% agreed that when a man is very sexually aroused, he may not realise that a woman does not want to have sex.
These attitudes do not cause violence on their own. However, they are part of the social conditions that can allow violence to be excused, minimised or shifted away from perpetrator accountability.
When public debate becomes more focused on whether people used the wrong number than on the violence being described, it risks repeating the patterns the evidence tells us we need to challenge.
Prevention and accountability require a focus on people who use violence
Evidence-informed public conversations require accuracy, context and care. Accuracy should sharpen the conversation and not shrink it until the harm disappears.
Instead, evidence should help us ask better questions. What behaviour is being described? Who is being harmed? What conditions allow this harm to be normalised? What do victim-survivors need from systems, services, platforms and communities? And what does prevention require?
Prevention requires more than responding after violence has occurred. It also requires attention to the people using violence, the patterns of behaviour involved, and the points where systems can intervene before harm escalates.
ANROWS’ current research program on people who use domestic, family and sexual violence is focused on building evidence about who uses violence, what drives it, and what responses can prevent harm and support behaviour change.
This work is not about excusing violence or shifting attention away from victim-survivors. It is about strengthening prevention and accountability, so systems are better equipped to act earlier and improve safety for women and children.
Staying focused on what counts
Evidence helps resist the pull of minimisation.
It helps keep public attention on the behaviour, the harm, the people using violence, and the systems that have a responsibility to respond.
It also helps us understand that sexual violence is widespread, that intimate partner sexual violence is a significant form of harm, that technology can be used as a tool of coercion and abuse, and that community attitudes shape whether victim-survivors are believed, supported and centred.
The evidence should bring us back to the urgent need for prevention, accountability and victim-survivor-centred responses — including a clearer focus on how violence is used, reinforced and enabled, and what can be done to stop it.
Read more
Read the Pedestrian.TV article
Explore ANROWS research on technology-facilitated abuse
Explore ANROWS research on sexual violence
Media contact:
Emmagness Ruzvidzo,
Media and Communications Manager, ANROWS
E: Emmagness.Ruzvidzo@anrows.org.au
M: 0468 322 800
About ANROWS
Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) was established by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments under Australia’s first National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children (2010–2022). As an ongoing partner to the National Plan, ANROWS continues to build, strengthen and translate the evidence base that informs the current National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children (2022–2032).
With more than 150 research projects led, commissioned or contributed to, ANROWS delivers targeted evidence to inform practice, policy, and systems reform. We engage closely with victim-survivors, communities, service providers, governments and researchers to ensure our work reflects lived experience and supports collective action.
ANROWS is a not-for-profit company jointly funded by the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments. We are a registered harm prevention charity and deductible gift recipient, governed by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC).