‘Do you know that is wrong?’ The question the attorney-general had to ask her son

As a state attorney-general and a mother, Sonya Kilkenny took a risk when she made the crisis in women’s safety feel personal this week.

Speaking in the stately Federation Room at Victoria’s Parliament House – a view of the nearby Pullman East Melbourne hotel framed by a side window – she revealed how harmful behaviours by young men had come alarmingly close to home.

“I have a 16-year-old son, and he came home the other day and told me what some of his male friends are doing and saying to their girlfriends,” Kilkenny said, departing from her launch notes for a campaign , See the Signs, on coercive control .

“[The boys are] tracking them, wanting to know who they’d spoken to, ensuring they’re surveilling them, keeping tabs on them. I said to him, ‘Do you know that is wrong? Do you know that is a red flag? And what do the girls think about this?’”

The comments were admirably frank, the question on point. “How can they not know this is wrong?” is a question being asked by sports clubs and schools , policymakers and parents worried for both their daughters and their sons.

As Kilkenny spoke, five Sydney Swans players embroiled in an alleged sexual assault investigation after a post-match bender at the Pullman hotel remained suspended.

Three 17-year-old boys , two from the private boys’ school St Gregory’s in Sydney, were on remand for allegedly gang raping a 17-year-old girl in her home after a football game. The boys were charged on August 19.

Two hours before Kilkenny spoke on Tuesday, two boys aged 14 and one boy, 13, from exclusive school Scot’s College stood in a NSW children’s court charged with the alleged gang sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl.

Shortly afterwards, in a separate incident, a 16-year-old girl died in hospital after what police suspect was strangulation, known as “choking”, during consensual sex.

Experts and educators are dismayed that despite elements of the Respectful Relationships education program existing for decades, and consent education being mandated since 2022, so many girls and young women are suffering harm and trauma, and so many boys and young men are blowing up their lives.

As sexual assault charges continue to rise in every jurisdiction after hitting a three-decade high in 2024, Ben Vasiliou, the chief executive of the Man Cave preventive mental health charity, is not unhappy the alleged actions of the “Pullman Five” sparked furious examination of young men’s behaviour.

“I am bloody glad they got caught because I know this is happening at all clubs across the nation, and what’s happened in the last week is now external [community] pressure is shifting expectations,” he said.

Vasiliou, whose book Better Man comes out next month, says the outcry and distress about harm and alleged harm shows a shift in what is being tolerated, including among increasing numbers of men expressing disgust about sexual violence in the past two weeks.

Vasiliou had warned the national No to Violence conference this year that adolescent boys were being successfully tutored on social media in how they had been “othered” in society and must reclaim their entitlements.