Grace Tame

Grace Tame (born 28 December 1994) is an Australian activist and advocate for survivors of sexual Assault.

Tame was named 2021 Australian of the Year on 25 January 2021.

Tame was born in Hobart in 1994.

Her father is former Tasmanian cricketer Michael Tame.

Tame was a dual-scholarship holder at St Michael's Collegiate girls' school in Hobart, and had been diagnosed with anorexia in Year 10.

By her exact words, at age 15 she was groomed and then repeatedly sexually abused by her 58-year-old teacher, Nicolaas Bester.

While there were no proven nor alleged precedents of sexual abuse towards prepuscent nor barely pubescent children (psychiatric diagnostic criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13 ), since pedophiles are by definition mainly or exclusively attracted to prepubescent children and not adolescents like in the case of Tame (so this would make him more of an illegal ephebophile ), he was, however, found in possession of child exploitation material and pornography and removed any doubt.

Tasmania's Evidence Act had prohibited the publication of information identifying survivors of sexual Assault since 2001.

In practice, this prevented Tame and other survivors from speaking publicly about their experiences, even as Tame's abuser bragged about his crimes on social media.

Tame's case led to journalist and sexual Assault survivor advocate Nina Funnell working alongside Tame to create a campaign called #LetHerSpeak, in partnership with Marque Lawyers and End Rape on Campus Australia, seeking to overturn this law and a similar law in the Northern Territory.

The campaign attracted global support from celebrities including Alyssa Milano, Tara Moss and John Cleese, and from leaders of the MeToo movement.

Although the school was found to have had multiple opportunities to intervene, the abuse did not stop until 2011, when Tame reported her attacker.

Bester was arrested and convicted of the offence of "maintaining a sexual relationship with someone under the age of 17", a crime, Tame argued, that needed to be renamed as in other jurisdictions, due to its misleading use of the word "relationship" for abuse.

Bester was also sentenced for the aforementioned possession of child pornography.

In sentencing Tame's abuser, Justice Helen Wood said Tame had been "particularly vulnerable given her mental state" and that her abuser "knew her psychological condition was precarious" and had "betrayed the trust of the child's parents and the school's trust in an utterly blatant fashion".

At the time of the abuse, Tame had undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder.

In 2013, Tame dropped out of St Michael's Collegiate and later re-enrolled at a different high school.

She then moved to the United States, where she graduated from Santa Barbara City College with degrees in theatre arts and liberal arts.

In 2017, social commentator Bettina Arndt conducted an interview with Tame's abuser claiming "sexually provocative behaviour from female students".

Tame criticised Arndt for supporting her abuser, accusing her of "trivialising" and "laughing off" his crime, saying, "Not only is the interview disturbing because it gives a platform to a paedophile. It's not a truthful interview".

Arndt did not seek out Tame for her side of the story, and published her name and photo without consent.

Her abuser had spoken publicly about the case many times, but Tame was gagged by Tasmanian law.

He was subsequently jailed again for the production of child exploitation material, after describing online how he sexually abused Tame.

In August 2019, Tame spoke out for the first time after the campaign obtained a court order on her behalf through the Supreme Court of Tasmania winning Tame an exemption from the gag law.

She was the first female sexual Assault survivor in Tasmania to win a court order to speak about her experience.

In October 2019, in response to the #LetHerSpeak campaign led by Funnell and featuring Tame, Attorney-General of Tasmania Elise Archer announced that legislation would be amended to allow sexual Assault survivors to publicly speak out.

Archer also announced planned changes to the wording of the crime noting that "the word relationship has connotations of consent".

In April 2020, the law was changed to allow Tasmanian survivors to speak out.

Tame has become an advocate for others, focusing on helping them understand grooming and psychological manipulation and breaking down the stigma associated with sexual Assault.

She has assisted the Los Angeles Human Trafficking Squad with understanding how child grooming works.

Tame advocates education as a means of primary prevention of child sex abuse, rather than too heavily focusing on responses, which can "fuel the unconscious belief that child sexual abuse is just a fact of life that we have to accept in our society".

Tame wants to eradicate victim blaming and normalise speaking out, and says greater consistency is needed between federal and state laws.

On 15 March 2021, Tame led the Women's March4Justice event in Hobart.

On 9 February 2022, Tame and former Liberal Party parliamentary staffer and alleged rape survivor Brittany Higgins gave an address at the National Press Club of Australia, which sold out quickly and garnered a huge amount of coverage in the press and on social media.

In her talk, Tame revealed that a "senior member" of a government-funded organisation had phoned her and, she felt, in a threatening way, asked her not to criticise the Prime Minister in her outgoing Australian of the Year speech, in the light of the forthcoming election.

Both women advocated strongly for structural change, saying the time for talking was past.

In December 2021, Tame founded the Grace Tame Foundation which aims for cultural and structural change to eradicate sexual abuse of children.

Tame, her fiancé Max Heerey, and her step-father, Ron Plaschke are board directors for the foundation.

In September 2022 her memoir, The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner, was published by Macmillan Australia.

It was shortlisted for the Nonfiction prize at the 2023 Indie Book Awards.