Complaints increasing on social media.

On Tuesday Laws took a call from a woman, Carol, who talked about her experience of rape as a child, and at one stage broke down in tears.

Laws asked a range of questions, including:

“Was it in any way your fault?”

“You weren’t provocative?”

The caller answered: “I was a little girl. I don’t think so John. No, I was just a little girl.”

He also asked, “Are you unattractive?”

Out of context the questions are highly insensitive, but the full audio (below) indicates that Laws was seeking more information and responding to the victim’s comments when asking these and other questions. He was also supportive of the woman as she revealed her story.

After complaints about Laws’ line of questioning, the woman came back to say she was not offended.

A spokesperson for the ACMA has told radioinfo the regulator is aware of the segment, but has had no complaints at this time.

The Laws facebook page is receiving criticism of the call, including:

The exchange is bound to generate justifiable controversy, but it is worth listening to the full call before making a judgement.

Those who compare the comments to Kyle Sandiland’s questions to a 16 year old girl strapped to a lie detector may miss some key points.

The woman in question is now an adult, she was speaking about experiences that happened when she was a child.

The fallout on the Sandilands case was about exploiting vulnerable children. The girl was brought in by her mother and was compelled to answer. Codes of practice are now in place to deal with similar circumstances. In this case as the caller was an adult who voluntarily rang the station to discuss her experiences, so the same codes would probably not apply.