I travel around this beautiful country speaking about issues of law and sexual violence, and I cannot do so without acknowledging that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are three times as likely as non-Indigenous women to have experienced violence; that despite Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders over the age of 18 making up around 2 per cent of our population, they represent 28 per cent of total prisoner population; that we are seeing absolutely no improvements in the rates of Aboriginal deaths in custody and that half of those deaths are of prisoners not even found guilty.

I wrote Eggshell Skull because I knew I was getting the red-carpet treatment from the law, and it still nearly broke me. I’m white, English is my first language, I’m able-bodied, I’ve got steady work and housing, my dad used to be a cop, I’m literally a lawyer, and my matter only took two years, where many take three or four or five, and still there were times I wanted to die, when I came close to dropping the charges. I don’t know how we expect people who didn’t have what I have
to go through that system.