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The 41-year-old Canadian-born personality explains that the male who committed the crime was a companion from an acting class who gave her a lift home one night.
“The one time I was raped was as typical as every stat you hear: someone you know and trust,” she has said in a previous interview last year.
It turned out that her attacker was a repeat offender who was eventually jailed for two years.
“As time went on it became clear there were other charges that were put forward in the past and another several women came forward, there was about a dozen in total,” she said.
But while numerous different women pressed charges, he was put away for just one account of sexual assault after a male friend testified against him.
“He was convicted because he had told one of his friends what he had done and his friend actually had the courage to actually stand up in a courtroom and explain that,” she said.
Tara announced this week that she had become a patron of Full Stop, a fundraising initiative of Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia.
“Intimate partner violence is the leading non-disease related cause of death and disability for women in this country between the ages of 15 to 44,” she said.
“This is killing a lot of people and I’m going to use my time on this earth to change those statistics. Yes, that’s an ambitious thing to say, there have been people working in this area for decades but, damn it, I’m not going to give up.”
As she relived her rape trauma, Tara expressed her deep concern for women who bravely report instances of sexual assault and are often not heard.
“We need to listen and take it seriously all the way through the process, from that first interaction when we hear about it through to the institutional response from the courts to the sentencing. We need to take it seriously and sadly that’s not always the case and the message that this sends is that violence is ok,” she declares.
The UNICEF ambassador said that as a result of the traumatic ordeal, it took her years to start trusting people again.
“It shattered my trust. It can shatter your trust in your own sense of judgment and sometimes that can be the most debilitating thing,” she said.
In July last year, Tara was physically assualted by an unidentified man in the centre of Sydney’s bustling CBD, strengthening her plea even more so.
“Was just hit by a man in the street. He’s on Market St in dark clothing headed toward Hyde Park. Slim/white. Beware. Suspect drug affected,” Tara took to Twitter to warn others.
For more information about the Full Stop Foundation visit Full Stop.
If you, or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, call 1800 RESPECT.
