Acknowledgements

This book has been a decade in the making, and would not have been possible without the support of an army of advocates, authors, supporters and of course survivors who entrusted us with their stories.

During the pandemic, many of our original authors needed to exit the project to care for their communities, and we are grateful for the expertise they contributed in the early years of the book’s development. We are also grateful to the people who helped us connect with experts around the world. Many individuals and organisations who support survivors do so through formal and informal networks that are hidden to the general public, for their own protection and the protection of the people they serve. Thank you to the local experts who introduced us and brokered connections that opened discussions with these networks.

We could not have funded Open Access without financial support. During our two crowd-funding campaigns, hundreds of individuals around the world donated money to the project, and enabled us to make the book available free of charge to anyone, anywhere. We are particularly grateful to the three organisations who made Open Access possible: the Australian National University, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the Medical Women’s Society, ACT and region. Without their support, Open Access would not have been possible.

Louise Stone has led this project over a decade, and would not have been able to do so without the personal support of her collegiate network. In particular, she would like to thank Russell, Yvette, Shirley, and Marjorie, who have been there when the weight of responsibility has been heavy. A heartfelt thank you to Richard and Christine White for their support. We are also grateful to the team who helped us run the Summit on Sexual Harassment in Medicine in 2023, including Barb Corapi, Tiffany King, Helen Milroy, Meredith Waldron, John Buckley, Tim Senior and Cheryl Morse.

Thanks to John Launer, Roxanne Missingham, Deb Colville, John Liddle, the CartoGIS team at ANU and the editorial team at Cambridge University Press who have provided technical expertise, guidance and support during the long gestation of the text. A special thanks must go to Liz, who managed to doggedly ferret out social media networks of survivors around the world, and kept the multiple threads of the project together.

Rosalind Searle would like to thank her oncologist Dawn Storey, who supported her health and wellbeing during the last decade, and without whom this additional time would not have been made possible. She would also like to thank the Professional Standards Authority and the Royal College of Surgeons (England)’s Working Party for Sexual Misconduct in Surgery for their ongoing support for empirical research, and promoting dissemination of results and their discussion.

Finally, we thank the survivors and the vast, and often hidden, network of fierce advocates who made the whole project possible. Medical culture has its own deep wounds, but it also has a network of healers who champion those who are harmed. Judith Lewis Herman, in her book Trauma and Recovery, wrote that ‘In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.’

Thank you to everyone who helped us give the voices of survivors and advocates space to speak.