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Dorothy Hewett's daughters say grown men preyed on them as children
By Broede Carmody June 11, 2018.

The daughters of late poet Dorothy Hewett want to lift the lid on the "bohemian middle class" of 1970s Australia. It was a time, they say, when male artists – including famous playwrights and photographers – preyed on young girls. It took years for Hewett's daughter Kate Lilley, a poet, to fully comprehend what happened when she was still legally a child - and many more to speak out about it.

The English professor says she was raped at the age of 15 by a well-known Australian poet who is still alive. She says a film producer sexually assaulted her during a drug- and alcohol-fuelled party several months earlier. Her sister, writer and autism researcher Rozanna Lilley, also experienced sexual assault. She names the late playwright and former Labor speechwriter Bob Ellis – who died of liver cancer in 2016 – as one of the perpetrators. But the sisters say these are not new revelations, despite having sent shockwaves through the Australian literary community. The women say the behaviour was anything but a secret.

For example, in Hewett's poem In this romantic house each storey's peeled, the literary icon writes:

"Each storey's peeled /
for rapists randy poets & their lovers /
young men in jeans play out seductive ballets /
partner my naked girls."

"This is not some out-of-the-blue attack on our mother," Kate said. "People have acted like this is big news but [mum] wrote about this constantly. It was all openly discussed with her."

Photograph: Rozanna and Kate Lilley's mother, poet Dorothy Hewett, pictured in 1982. - FAIRFAX

Her younger sister Rozanna agrees.

"I have been telling parts of this story for some time," she said. "The #MeToo movement didn't exist. I [also] told my story at the Royal Commission into child abuse for a session on the entertainment industry. We were brought up in a very bohemian environment and some of those experiences were worse than others. Mum really didn't believe in not exposing us to anything. We grew up very fast, very hard in that environment. But there was no paedophile ring. It was just part of that time."

Photograph: Kate Lilley speaking at her mother's wake at Varuna, the Writer's House in 2002. - RICK STEVENS

Both women have recently published new books that explore their childhood traumas. Kate has released a collection of poetry through Vagabond Press called Tilt, while Rozanna has published a book of poems and essays through UWA Press called Do Oysters Get Bored? The hybrid work also explores parenting her son, who lives with autism.

Kate said she wanted to stress that the incidents that occurred in her childhood weren't just restricted to the Sydney arts scene. Instead, she said it was part of a larger cultural problem at the time.

"In many ways, it was a very ordinary story," she said. "It was very prevalent. A lot of women have reached out saying they grew up in a celebrity milieu and 'we too'."

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Dorothy Hewett's daughters Rozanna and Kate Lilley talk about re-casting their mum's image in the age of #MeToo

(ABC Arts / By Claire Nichols for The Hub on Books)

Posted ThuThursday 21 JunE 2018
The two woman, Rozanna standing and Kate sitting, pose in front of a grey backdrop, both wearing grey.
Australian writers Rozanna and Kate Lilley do not consider it their responsibility to protect their mother's reputation.(ABC: Patrick Carey)

Dorothy Hewett is remembered as a leading poet, playwright and novelist. Admired for her passionate and politically charged writing, she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her services to literature in 1986.

But what will happen to her legacy in the light of revelations of the sexual abuse of her teenage daughters?

Sisters Kate and Rozanna Lilley say they were sexually assaulted by the men who visited the family home in the 1970s. The abuse, they say, was encouraged by their mother.

A black and white photo of a woman with a baby at a typewriter.
According to her daughter Rozanna Lilley, Hewett had a "blind spot" when it came to their needs.(Supplied: Rozanna Lilley)

The women have named late Labor speechwriter Bob Ellis and pop artist Martin Sharp amongst those who assaulted them. The sisters have written of their experiences in two separate books, and have received criticism from some artistic circles for coming forward with their stories.

Family and domestic violence support services:

InTouch Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence: 1800 755 98

1800 Respect national helpline: 1800 737 732

Women's Crisis Line: 1800 811 811

Men's Referral Service: 1300 766 491

Lifeline (24 hour crisis line): 131 114

Relationships Australia: 1300 364 277

"This has all been very well known for a very long time," says Kate Lilley, who is a poet and academic.

"I think that a lot of the blowback saying that we're harming Mum's reputation is really just in disguise a critique of men from that generation, the kind of men who abused us and their supporters, who don't want their behaviour to be examined."

Lilley says that her mother's work has always been polarising, with many finding her confronting descriptions of sex distasteful.

"Mum wrote plenty about competing sexually with us," she says.

What is the #MeToo campaign?
Alyssa Milano on the red carpet. Thousands of women are taking to social media to share their stories of sexual harassment using the #MeToo hashtag.

In one poem, Hewett wrote about young men partnering "her naked girls".

Kate Lilley, who has written about her experiences in the book Tilt, says people are looking at her mother's poetry with fresh eyes, in the wake of the #MeToo movement. "People are looking at it again in a different context, because they're focussing on what we have to say."

Rozanna Lilley is a writer and autism researcher. Like her sister, she has come forward with her own stories of abuse, in her book Do Oysters Get Bored. "I don't actually think it's my job at this point to worry about my mother's reputation," she says.

( Dorothy Hewett on Rewind
A wrinkled hand holds a black and white photo of a young woman seemingly from the 1950s.
Watch archival interviews with Hewett on ABC iView. )

"This is not about impugning my mother's reputation as a writer, in fact it's not even about impugning my mother...."It's about writing a story about what happened to me in a particular point in time, in my adolescence."


Teenagers in an adult world

Kate and Rozanna Lilley were 13 and 11 when they moved to Sydney with their mother and father, the writer Merv Lilley. The family's Woollahra home was a gathering place for the 1970s arts scene, with artists, writers and musicians coming for long dinners and often staying the night.

Kate Lilley says her mother encouraged the teenagers to have sex with some of those visitors. “She really believed that she was doing something great for us by involving us in this adult, rather louche world," she says.

In her poem Party Favour, Kate Lilley describes being assaulted by a film producer, and a visiting poet. The teenage Lilley went to her mother for help, but Hewett didn't believe her.

“I'll tell my mother and she'll say

she asked him he said I was into it

from then on I know it's pointless

she's not on my side

- From Party Favour.”

Rozanna Lilley remembers her mother encouraging her to go on the pill when she was 14 years old.
"She just seemed to have … a blind spot in relation to my sister and I and our needs when we were teenagers," she says.

"It is very difficult for me to understand her position at that time. When I think of her I have a whole range of feelings." ... In her book, Rozanna Lilley says her mother did not intentionally hurt her. But she didn't protect her either.

"She had a pretty good idea of what was going on in her own house, and she imaginatively recast those predations as adventures, confirming our familial superiority to restrictive moral norms," she writes...."Forty years later, I am still coming to terms with that carelessly broken childhood."