In 1981 I was hitch-hiking in Avalon on the northern beaches when I was picked up by a man who would soon hold a knife to my throat.
I was 18 years old and it was three years since Trudie Adams had disappeared hitch-hiking outside the Newport surf club.
As I escaped from the car, his knife cut the length of my back. I then spent a terrified night hiding in a swamp, submerging between breaths and rubbing my arms and legs to stave off hypothermia. I remember shaking as I waved down the first car to appear. But when the driver offered to take me to the police station, I said no.
I knew it was stupid to hitch-hike. I had been drinking too much, I couldn't even remember the type of car he was driving, and I felt responsible for getting myself into that situation. I didn't have faith in authorities and I was acutely aware of the judgments about women who were raped or assaulted that were often expressed within Australian culture. I was also very frightened.
My childhood story is a common one; parents who were drunk on most nights, a home where aggression and violence behind closed doors was often ''normal''. When I was 15 - only months after Trudie Adams had disappeared - I started hitch-hiking into the city as an escape. I was by no means naive to the dangers of getting into cars with strangers, but the inner forces driving me to take risks at that age - especially under the influence of alcohol - were stronger than my instincts for self-preservation.
The city of Sydney after dark has eaten up many young and vulnerable women, who in fleeing from one life of despair may have found themselves then locked inside the jaws of something even worse.
In 1978 the media attention surrounding Trudie Adams's disappearance prompted a number of women on the northern beaches, aged between 14 and 20, to come forward to report being ''abducted and violently sexually assaulted'' while hitch-hiking between 1971 and 1978. But why hadn't these women reported the crimes earlier and how many other women are out there who have never spoken of their experiences to police?
Going to authorities to report a sexual assault can be a daunting prospect for a young woman and a particularly lonely experience for those who are without supportive families. If a woman has experienced violence at home it may just be too difficult for her to imagine a scenario that could provide her with any justice, and if a woman has been threatened with reprisals from perpetrators, she may simply be too scared to speak.
In spite of numerous legal reforms over the past 30 years, many cases of sexual assault do not proceed to trial and those that do have low conviction rates. A recent study published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies notes that many women interviewed had not reported their experiences to the police and of those who had, only a small proportion of cases had resulted in convictions.
The Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault points to a number of factors influencing the low rates of conviction, including the low rate of sexual offences reported, the withdrawal of cases at various stages of the process, the treatment of complainants, distrust of survivors by the criminal justice system, difficulty in providing sufficient evidence, and sexual assault myths and stereotypes.
The Minister for the Status of Women, Kate Ellis, recently reminded us that violence against women is not a small problem within our culture, with one in three Australian women having experienced it since the age of 15 and almost one in five experiencing sexual violence. These figures are even more disturbing given they only capture crimes that have been reported or revealed.
Clearly we need to do more to help young women, and men, to protect themselves in their teenage years and special attention needs to be given to teenagers who may be experiencing trauma within their homes. But our unambiguous attention must remain on the perpetrators of violent crimes and on actively weeding out the aspects of our culture that ask women to bear responsibility for the crimes committed against them. It is the offenders who should always be afraid to reveal themselves, never the women they assault.
Susan Metcalfe is writing a book about cultural undercurrents in the lives of Australian women.
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