The first stone

by Helen Garner

In this gripping non-fiction narrative, Helen Garner delves into the causes and effects of police charges pressed against the Master of Ormond College by two female students who claimed he fondled them at a school function. Two overriding questions trouble Ms. Garner throughout her investigations: why did these students choose to go to the police instead of having the matter settled through the school's private arbitration process, and why, when the Master was found innocent of these charges, was he terminated from his position? The boldness of this searing piece of literary journalism and the resulting furor over its publication in her native Australia forced Garner to rethink her stance on the feminism she had fought so hard and so long to support. The obscured distinction between "sexual harassment" and "violence against women" is at the heart of this story, and we are drawn into it as Garner re-examines her own attitudes and experiences in the light of a powerful drama about men an