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Grace Tame was named Australian of the Year in 2021 for her advocacy work for survivors of sexual assault.
When Grace was 15 years old, she was groomed and sexually abused by her 58-year-old maths teacher. Nicolaas Bester was jailed twice, once for the abuse, and again when he boasted about his actions on Facebook.
Through the Grace Tame Foundation, she has successfully campaigned for an end to the victim gag laws which silenced her and prevented her from telling her story, launching the #LetHerSpeak campaign and the March4Justice.
So far Queensland, Tasmania and Northern Territory have reformed these laws and she now has her sights set on Victoria. And she's now told her story -- in her own words -- in a memoir called The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner.
Grace Tame writes of her close knit family, her parent's divorce, her fight with anorexia, her neurodiversity and her time spent living in the United States.
She also zeroes in on her experience with the media.. offering a scathing rebuke for the treatment she received from the media when she began to speak out.
Earlier this year, she was at the centre of another media firestorm when she was photographed giving Prime Minister Scott Morrison the `side-eye' at an event for this year's Australian of the Year recipients.
She reflects on that and much more in her book, which recently hit number one for memoirs....
