In a Melbourne courtroom in mid-2025, a young woman sat motionless in the public gallery while a steady procession of witnesses—former teachers, neighbours, work colleagues and even a distant cousin—lined up to describe the man who had raped her as “fundamentally a good person”. Each letter and each oral statement repeated variations of the same theme: Tom Silvagni had once been kind, reliable, someone who helped out at barbecues and coached junior football. The words landed like repeated slaps. She later told friends she felt as though she were watching a parallel trial in which she did not exist.

Today that same woman—now 29 and speaking publicly for the first time—has emerged as one of the most powerful voices behind Victoria’s proposed ban on character references in serious criminal cases involving sexual violence, family violence and murder. The legislation, formally introduced to State Parliament in February 2026 and expected to pass with bipartisan support before mid-year, would prohibit courts from receiving or considering written or oral statements that seek to portray an offender as having good character when sentencing for the most serious offences.

Her decision to break years of silence is both intensely personal and deliberately political. “I sat through two full days of people telling the judge what a good man he was,” she said in a carefully worded interview granted on condition of anonymity until the bill receives royal assent. “I listened to them talk about his childhood, his volunteer work, how he ‘made a mistake’. A mistake. That word kept coming up. And every time it did, I felt myself disappear a little more.”

Tom Silvagni was sentenced in late 2024 to 14 years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of nine years after a jury found him guilty of four counts of rape and one count of sexual assault committed against the woman in 2021. The offending occurred over several hours in a shared house in inner-city Melbourne. Silvagni had been a friend of a friend; the woman had considered him safe company until the night he did not take no for an answer.

During the plea hearing the defence tendered 47 character references. Thirty-two were read aloud or summarised by counsel. The sentencing judge described the material as “illuminating” and gave it “considerable weight” when fixing the non-parole period, noting that Silvagni had no prior convictions and enjoyed strong community support. The woman, who sat through every day of the trial and the plea hearing, remembers the moment the judge used the phrase “fundamentally a good character” as the point at which something inside her snapped.

“I realised the system still saw him as the person in those letters,” she said. “Not the man who pinned me down and told me to stop crying because it was ‘just sex’. The letters erased what he did to me. They erased me.”

Her account has become a central plank of the campaign led by victim-survivor advocates, legal-reform groups and several crossbench MPs who have pushed the Character References (Serious Offences) Bill through committee stage with unusual speed. The proposed law would create a presumption against the admission of character evidence in proceedings for murder, manslaughter, sexual offences, aggravated family violence and certain child-sex crimes. Judges would retain discretion to admit such material only when it is directly relevant to the offending itself—for example, evidence that an offender had no prior history of violence in a manslaughter case involving a spontaneous act. In all other circumstances, the evidence would be excluded.

Supporters argue the change is long overdue. A 2023 review commissioned by the Victorian government found that character references frequently prolong victim trauma by forcing survivors to listen to glowing accounts of the offender’s past while their own suffering is reduced to a single aggravating factor. The review heard from more than 200 victim-survivors; almost three-quarters said the references made them feel “invisible” or “unbelieved”. Several women described leaving court feeling they had been re-victimised by the very process meant to deliver justice.

Critics of the bill—principally senior members of the criminal bar and the Law Institute of Victoria—warn that blanket exclusion risks creating a one-size-fits-all approach that could disadvantage offenders whose prior good character genuinely bears on moral culpability or prospects of rehabilitation. They argue that judges are already trained to give limited weight to references that amount to little more than “glowing testimonials” and that a rigid ban could lead to unjust sentences in exceptional cases.

Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes has rejected those concerns. “This is not about punishing good people who make one terrible mistake,” she said when tabling the bill. “This is about protecting victims from having to endure public character references that minimise or erase the harm they suffered. The evidence is clear: these statements re-traumatise survivors and undermine community confidence in sentencing.”

The woman at the centre of the push agrees. She has met privately with Symes, several crossbench MPs and senior bureaucrats to explain why the references felt like a second violation. “Every letter read aloud was another person choosing to speak up for him instead of me,” she said. “I had already been disbelieved when I reported the rape. Sitting there while people who barely knew the worst parts of him vouched for his goodness—it felt like the system was telling me my experience didn’t matter as much as his reputation.”

She has asked to remain anonymous until the legislation passes, fearing retaliation and professional repercussions. She works in the public sector and says colleagues already know fragments of her story; she is not ready for the full glare of publicity. Yet she agreed to speak because she believes the change could spare other survivors the same ordeal.

The bill has attracted unusually broad support. The opposition has signalled it will not oppose the core measure, though it has flagged amendments to preserve judicial discretion in exceptional circumstances. Victim-advocacy groups, including Rape Crisis Victoria and the Victims of Crime Commissioner’s office, have welcomed the reform as long overdue. Even some defence lawyers privately concede that the current practice can feel unbalanced when the offending is particularly grave.

For the woman who once sat listening to strangers call her rapist “a good man”, the proposed law represents something more fundamental than procedural change. It is recognition that her pain—and the pain of countless others—should never again be drowned out by a chorus of voices choosing to remember the offender’s best days instead of the victim’s worst night.

If the bill passes as expected, Victoria will become the first Australian jurisdiction to impose a near-blanket prohibition on character references in the most serious criminal matters. Whether other states follow remains uncertain. What is certain is that one survivor’s decision to speak—after years of silence—has helped turn personal anguish into legislative momentum.

The woman says she will be in the public gallery when the bill receives royal assent. She wants to hear the words spoken aloud, just once, without anyone rising to speak on behalf of the offender.

This time, she wants the room to hear her.