Ali Mau on childhood sexual abuse: ‘I decided to use the rage’

Ali Mau was a bullied teenager with “no cred” when she first stood up for women’s rights.

Later, the award-winning journalist changed the way sexual harassment is reported by media with the #MeTooNZ project.

The searing and deeply personal new memoir No Words for This is Mau’s bravest writing yet.

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Growing up in Australia with an Australian dad and an English mum, Mau’s family wasn’t wealthy, and at the private girls’ school she and her sister attended, she was bullied as a “poor girl”.

Despite having “no cred”, Mau found herself taking a stand one day against a screening of a notoriously “gruesome’ anti-abortion video.

Spontaneously, Mau stood up in the classroom, “dramatically” flung her arm up and said, ‘Everybody out!’, upon which, to her astonishment, the whole class obeyed.

Another “watershed” moment of personal activism came for Mau as a young journalist at Channel 9 Melbourne. At the time, female employees were expected to wear short skirts, have their hair a certain way and answer questions about their sex lives, she says.

Sent to interview an Olympic swimmer about her charity work, Mau’s boss insisted she ask the athlete about her breast implants. But despite fears for her career, she was not able to cross this “ethical boundary” and refused.

The extent to which Mau’s own personal boundaries had been violated when she was a child only became clear to her in 2018 when an out-of-the-blue call from her sister “unleashed hell”.

Although memories of abuse had appeared in Mau’s mind as “flashes” over the years, she worked very hard not to let these become “fully developed thoughts” until her sister’s sudden revelations made this impossible.

After being tipped off by a relative, Mau’s sister revealed to her that not only had they both suffered sexual abuse as children, Mau’s nephew had, too.

In that moment, as a woman in her 50s, the journalist says she went from not speaking to a soul about the abuse to being able to openly talk about it.

“It was quite a dramatic way for it to happen, but it was also an act of salvation because suddenly - and I can't emphasise how important this is for survivors of sexual harm - I wasn't alone.”

Although she can be “quite a ditzy person”, Mau says she also has her mother’s stoic “don't complain if you're not going to do something to fix it’ attitude.

When the accusations against predatory Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein came out in 2017 - with her customary desire to “ be useful” - Mau initiated the #MeTooNZ journalism project.

“I decided to use the rage.”

Working on #MeTooNZ and cofounding the charity Tika, which delivers free legal help to survivors of sexual harm, Mau has now spoken to countless fellow survivors, which she says was enormously helpful for processing her own experience.

“At some point, everybody would say ‘I blame myself a little bit’ and I would say to each and every one of them, ‘It's not your fault. You know that, don't you?’

“We all carry unwanted and unwarranted shame and self-blame around this because centuries of the patriarchy have created that for us. I was able to let that go because if it was true for them, then it was true for me.”

Although she’s not a “super-spiritual person”, Mau says she felt the presence of the hundreds of survivors she’d spoken to while writing No Words for This. French rape victim Giselle Pelicot was another crucial spiritual guide.

The strength of her nephew - who channelled his own abuse-related trauma into creativity - is something Mau likes to keep front of mind, too.

“He started doing art, almost as therapy, and now, all these years later, he owns a gallery and his artworks sell for thousands of dollars.

“Every time I think of that part of the story, I can't help smiling because that's an absolute joy, that such beauty can come from pain.”