Real Rape, Real Pain: Meet the Authors

LOUISE McORMOND-PLUMMER

I am an expatriate North American academic who has lived in Australia for the past 18 years. Over the past 15 years, I have written a number of books about violence against women published by Australian Government Agencies (Killing the Beloved; The Forgotten Few), Spinifex Press (Voices of the Survivors), Federation (Balancing the Scales: Rape Law Reform and Australian Culture), Butterworths Less Than Equal- Women and the Australian Legal System), BIMPR-Gov (Shattered Dreams) and chapters in books by Allan and Unwin, Lawbook Company, Spinney and Longman.

I have done extensive media (radio, television, and print) and have extensive teaching and public speaking experience. I'm quite well known in Australia and through my books' distribution and papers published in international journals and presenting papers at international conferences, I have some recognition internationally. I have also worked extensively as a volunteer in the women's sector serving on Management Committees for refuges and Rape Crisis Centres.

In 2010, I received the honour of ACT Australian of the year for my contribution to the advancement of human rights and justice in Australia - read more about that here.

I have been an anti-rape campaigner and supporter of survivors for 22 years. After surviving domestic violence which included repeated sexual assault, I gained an Associate Diploma in Welfare Studies (La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia), and chose to put my professional qualifications and survivorship to the use of tackling the insufficiently addressed issue of partner rape/sexual assault.

I write on Intimate Partner Sexual Violence for international publications, appear at training seminars, and speak on this issue in the media. In late 2008 I was offered an honorarium to be part of a new collaborative project between the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse (MINCAVA) and the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) in the USA. I maintain the partner rape survivor support website Aphrodite Wounded (www.aphroditewounded.org) and am a co-director of Pandora’s Project , a thriving online peer-support community for survivors of sexual violence including by partners.