Litigation

A Trusted Institution Under Fire

Few institutions are as highly regarded by the Australian public as the Australian Defence Force.  Its members safeguard borders, provide humanitarian relief, and represent the nation with fervent discipline and dedication. For many, military service is steeped in ideas of honour, camaraderie and resilience – the very values that help define our national identity as Australians.

Yet beneath all this lies a more nefarious narrative – one defined by systemic abuse and perpetuated by a culture of apathy and institutional neglect. Now, that shadowed history has escalated into what could become one of the largest class actions ever faced by the Commonwealth.

Thousands of current and former ADF personnel are expected to join a lawsuit alleging the Defence Force and the Australian Government failed to provide a safe working environment and turned a blind eye to a culture of bullying, harassment, sexual assault, and reprisals for complaints. The case is a transformative moment for victims of institutional abuse nationwide — one that has been bubbling under the surface for more than a decade – and is poised to bring about a seismic shift in Australia’s military landscape.

The Landmark Legal Action

Led by law firm JGA Saddler, the class action automatically includes all women who served in the ADF between November 12, 2003, and May 25, 2025, unless they opt out. Lawyers said they expect thousands of women to join the case, which was filed in the federal court last Friday.

It alleges that the ADF breached its duty of care and is “vicariously liable” for its failure to protect its female members from sexual harassment during service.

Claims by the four women leading the lawsuit include being forcibly pinned to a wall before being groped and waking up naked and bruised after a party with male officers.

One of the applicants – a member of the air force who was one of two women in a building of about 200 people – alleges she was subject to hostile and sexist comments, inappropriate conversations, as well as being shown unsolicited pornographic photos.

Another said she was subject to lewd comments throughout her training and unwanted touching, alleging also that while on duty abroad, she was grabbed and kissed by her colleague, who resisted her attempts to get away.

A History of Abuse

Importantly, these allegations do not exist in a vacuum. The lawsuit alleges a broad pattern of institutional harm across the Army, Navy, and Air Force. It isn’t limited to a single unit, base, or era — but stretches across decades of Defence history.

With each new case that has come to light, public scrutiny has only grown. The first significant case was the 2011 ADFA “Skype scandal,” which exposed a pattern of misogyny and sexual misconduct at the academy where many recruits are still teenagers. That scandal sparked a national conversation about the Defence’s internal culture, only for the ADF to minimise it as an isolated incident.

Investigations and Inquiries: What Changed

Then came the Broderick Reviews. Independent investigators uncovered a deeply embedded pattern of sexual harassment, bullying and ostracism, particularly targeting women and LGBTQ+ recruits.

Meanwhile, the DLA Piper Review quietly compiled hundreds of allegations of abuse dating back decades. Many survivors were children at the time. But the review lacked teeth. Its findings were essentially ministerial and administrative, lacking any substantive value or means for recourse.

The establishment of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide has since pulled everything back into the public’s focus.  Released late last year, the Commission’s final report identified sexual violence as a key contributor to the toxic culture within the ADF.

It found that about 800 reports of sexual assault were made within the ADF between 2019 and 2024, in the context of an estimated under-reporting rate of 60 per cent.

The same report also noted that, as recently as 2022, one-third of male and over half of female permanent serving members who responded to a survey reported having experienced unacceptable behaviour in the previous 12 months.

Gemma, a respondent, alleged that she experienced harassment, misogyny and sexism regularly.

She said that “it was so frequent that it was normalised, it was a part of the culture, and I did not question it. It made me uncomfortable when it did happen, but no one around me was reacting, so, in turn, I felt ashamed to speak about it at the time”.

The report also showed that female ADF members were around four times more likely to have experienced sexual misconduct than male participants each year between 2018 and March 2023.

Reform or Reputation Management?

Despite making 750 recommendations for reform, only a handful have been implemented since the report’s release. For the most part, the ADF’s response has been slow and inadequate. Many complaints are ignored or mishandled, with victims often facing retaliation, isolation and career setbacks. All while perpetrators remain unpunished.

Meanwhile, it was revealed today that the ADF had quietly changed the definition of sexually related offences to be classified as sexual violence rather than ‘misconduct’. It was also revealed that all serving defence personnel will be involved in discussions about what constitutes sexual violence and how to handle it. But whether all this represents a genuine cultural shift or merely an attempt to get ahead of impending litigation remains to be seen.

Building a Case for Institutional Accountability

The legal claim is grounded in negligence and breach of duty of care. The lawsuit argues that the ADF knew, or ought to have known, about the risk of misconduct but failed to prevent it appropriately.

Unlike claims involving injury on the battlefield, these allegations do not engage concepts such as “combat immunity”. The conduct complained of occurred within training colleges, barracks, ships, and other domestic settings—ordinary workplaces where workplace safety laws clearly apply.

One of the biggest obstacles to justice for survivors has been the passage of time. Abuse is often disclosed many years after it initially occurs, particularly in military environments where loyalty, stigma and fear silence victims.

In recent years, however, limitation period reforms have removed or relaxed time limits for civil child abuse claims across Australia. Courts have also adopted a more trauma-informed approach when evaluating historical evidence.

These changes mean many survivors who believed they were out of time may now have strong legal rights.

It is also important to note that this class action doesn’t stand alone. Australia has already seen two major compensation schemes, including the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce (DART), which paid over $84M to thousands of complainants, and the National Redress Scheme, which captured some Defence cases. In addition, numerous individual claims have resulted in confidential settlements.

Yet survivors and advocates argue these processes were piecemeal — limited in eligibility, capped in damages, and ultimately designed to avoid more profound cultural change.

This class action aims to address the issue at the systemic level, ensuring accountability is attributed not only to individual perpetrators but also to the Australian Defence Force as an institution.

Moving Towards Justice and Reform

The ADF has publicly acknowledged the need for cultural reform and improved complaint handling. But reforms cannot erase history, nor do they guarantee future protection without genuine accountability. Consequently, this class action marks a pivotal moment.

It is a clear statement that survivors of abuse deserve at a minimum the justice and dignity that the ADF failed to provide them in services.

Moreover, given the sheer scale of the litigation, it has the potential to reshape jurisprudence around vicarious liability in an institutional context and to usher in a broader cultural shift around institutional accountability and structural abuse.

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