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Posted: 2020-01-27 10:43:05

There was dancing, laughing, flirting and drunken hook-ups in the middle of sticky dance floors.

As the clock ticked over into the small hours of the next day, Amy decided to go home with a guy she had shared a kiss with during the night.

"He was really sweet at first, very complimentary," she said.

"We went back to his place and began to have consensual vaginal sex, but after a while he tried to put his penis into my anus without asking me.

"I told him it was hurting me, then he wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and shoved my face down into the pillows.

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"I was scared and it was kind of hard to breathe, then I just froze."

Unlike in Victoria, there's no requirement in Queensland that consent be positively communicated.

The mistake-of-fact defence allows those accused of rape to argue they thought the victim was consenting because they did not clearly resist advances.

The state's law reform commission is currently reviewing consent laws in rape and sexual assault cases.

While cases when a victim has withdrawn consent have been successfully prosecuted in Queensland, the criminal code does not have specific provisions about the withdrawal of consent.

Nor does it "expressly require a defendant to take reasonable steps to ascertain whether the complainant was consenting to the act", as mentioned in the commission's consultation paper.

Amy said she was left confused and embarrassed after her experience.

"I didn't even tell my friends for a few weeks and I never reported it to police because it all seemed to be in a grey area," she said.

"Like I honesty believed it wasn't really rape if I wasn't stalked down in an alley and beaten.

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On one hand, Amy felt like because she had consented to vaginal sex, "maybe he just took that as I was up for anything and it was my fault for not screaming or trying to run away or something".

"But on the other hand I knew, that he knew, I did not want to have anal sex," she said.

"I told him it hurt. My body went limp and he had forced my head down into a pillow."

Amy wants Queensland's consent laws to change to help "unblur" the lines and make it clear that an absence of a "no" does not mean "yes".

"Once I started to open up to friends, I found out just how common my experience was," she said.

"I think the law needs to change to put more of an onus on men to seek active consent.

"I don't think they should be able to say 'oh I thought she was into it' if the woman is silent, limp and in pain."

The deadline for written submissions to the Law Reform Commission is January 31 with a final report to be given to government by April 17.

Submissions can be made here.

*Not her real name

Sexual Assault Helpline: 1800 010 120

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