Queensland student recognised for educating teenagers about consent
A trainee doctor from Western Queensland is one of four nominees for the 2024 Young Australian of the Year for Queensland for his work educating high school students about sexual harassment and consent. More than five thousand students across the state have attended his workshops.
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00:00 In a classroom in Winton, in Western Queensland, high school students file in for an extracurricular
00:07 class. They're about to meet Curtis Raymond, a trainee doctor who grew up in the area.
00:13 But the students aren't going to be hearing about how to be a doctor or why they should
00:17 stay in school. Nope, they are learning about sexual assault, harassment and consent.
00:23 I do this all over Queensland doing these talks. The first one is what we're about
00:29 to talk about. The topics that we cover are going to be really full on. They will be confronting
00:36 for a lot of you and it may trigger some things that have happened in the past. If it's not
00:40 to you, it might be someone that you love and someone that you know. So this is not
00:44 a classroom. I am not a teacher. Curtis's story is unremarkable. He grew up
00:53 on a cattle property just west of here. And like a real bush kid, just loved it out
00:59 here, but then went to boarding school, fell in love with doing other things and turns
01:03 out I was half good at doing studies. So then I decided to do another eight years of it.
01:08 So I'm studying medicine now in my final year, just about to graduate.
01:13 With hopes to become a rural generalist specialising in obstetrics, Curtis is currently based in
01:17 Townsville and Longreach hospitals. But in his spare time, he creates and delivers workshops
01:23 called It's a Man's Issue. Winton State School has around 80 students
01:29 spanning from kindergarten to grade 12. Today's workshop is for senior students, the ones
01:35 who can understand the issues discussed and their complexities.
01:39 I think it's something that's there and we haven't spoken about it enough. The work of
01:43 Grace Tame has drawn attention to it. But I think it's great to see young men taking
01:47 this on. And Curtis is spending his own time encouraging others to think about the topic,
01:52 to talk about it. He's got a personal example and he talks from the heart. I think it's
01:57 a wonderful thing. Teacher aid JC Jack is the reason the Winton
02:02 School is holding the workshop. She learned about the program through social media after
02:06 seeing a colleague post Curtis presenting his workshop in Charters Towers. And she thought
02:10 this is what we need for our school. I feel strongly about the content of his talks
02:16 and the movement that he's got going. And I've personally been affected by it as well.
02:21 So it hit me at home and I knew from talking with these kids here, I have a close relationship
02:26 with a lot of the high school kids here. And I know that it affects them as well. So I
02:30 knew that this was something that we needed to bring to the kids and educate.
02:35 One of the motivating factors for developing these workshops are the startling statistics.
02:41 I think the stats are horrifying and really scary. And the reason why I show them and
02:46 I talk to them, to the students about them, is because I didn't know any of that. And
02:53 it's a man's issue, the title of the workshops. The fact that 97% of convicted rapists are
03:00 men is something that I didn't know. And you can see when you do the talks with the students,
03:05 they think it's 50, 60%. And then when you talk about victims, the vast majority being
03:10 women, and you just see the numbers. If you are a young woman growing up in Australia,
03:17 you have a one in three chance of being sexually assaulted before you turn 15. You are more
03:25 likely to be sexually assaulted in Australia if you are a woman than you are to smoke a
03:31 cigarette. When I say it's a man's issue, and when I say to schools, "I really want
03:38 to talk to your young men," predominantly that's my target audience, the reason is,
03:45 is sexual assault, sexual harassment is a gender-based crime.
03:48 [BLANK_AUDIO]