Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame has apologised and sought to clarify controversial remarks in which she appeared to dismiss reports of sexual violence during the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on Israel as “propaganda” that had been “debunked”.

The child sexual abuse survivor and prominent advocate posted a video to Instagram almost six months after her comments during an ABC Radio Sydney interview triggered fierce criticism and complaints to the national broadcaster.

In her latest statement, Tame said her position had been misinterpreted and made clear that she believes individual accounts from Israeli women who reported rape, including accounts of gang rape.

She said she supports survivors of sexual violence regardless of nationality, ethnicity or background and apologised for harm caused by the way her earlier comments were understood. She also expressed regret that she had not clarified her position sooner.

The clarification follows months of controversy surrounding a March 16 interview with ABC Sydney Mornings presenter Hamish Macdonald, during which Tame was challenged about whether she had condemned sexual violence against Israeli women during the October 7, 2023 attacks.

Tame responded that she would not engage with what she called “propaganda” and added: “Those things have been debunked.”

Macdonald immediately pressed her on what part of the question she considered propaganda and raised findings from the United Nations about conflict-related sexual violence during the attacks.

Tame subsequently said terrible acts had been committed on both sides and maintained that she opposed violence generally.

What the evidence actually says

The evidence surrounding sexual violence on October 7 is complex, and not every allegation circulated after the attacks has been independently verified. Some specific reports were later found to be unsupported or unfounded.

That, however, is substantially different from saying sexual violence during the attacks had been debunked.

A United Nations mission led by Pramila Patten, the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, visited Israel and the occupied West Bank between January 29 and February 14, 2024 to examine allegations connected to the October 7 attacks and their aftermath.

The mission reviewed thousands of photographs, dozens of hours of video and testimony from survivors, witnesses, released hostages, first responders and other relevant people.

It concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe conflict-related sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred in at least three locations: the Nova music festival site and its surroundings, Road 232 and Kibbutz Re’im.

The UN team also found clear and convincing information that some hostages had been subjected to sexual violence, including rape, sexualised torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

At the same time, the UN report explicitly acknowledged limitations in the evidence.

The mission said some reported incidents of rape at other locations could not be verified and determined that at least two widely reported allegations of sexual violence at Kibbutz Be’eri were unfounded.

Its findings were therefore not a blanket validation of every claim made after October 7. But neither were they a rejection of the broader evidence that sexual violence occurred.

Human Rights Watch reached a similarly nuanced position in its extensive investigation of the Hamas-led assault.

The organisation found evidence of sexual and gender-based violence, including forced nudity and the non-consensual circulation of sexualised images. It said it was unable to obtain verifiable testimony directly from survivors or witnesses of rape during its own investigation and could not establish the full scale or nature of sexual violence during the attack.

Human Rights Watch nevertheless cited the UN findings on rape and gang rape and concluded Palestinian armed groups committed a range of serious violations amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity during the wider assault.

It also cautioned that the true extent of sexual violence may never be fully known, in part because some victims were killed, trauma and stigma can prevent survivors from speaking publicly, and relevant forensic evidence was not systematically collected in the immediate aftermath.

That distinction is important in understanding both the original controversy and Tame’s latest clarification.

The ABC interview drew almost 150 complaints

Tame’s comments generated an immediate backlash after the March interview.

The Israeli Embassy in Canberra criticised her remarks, while Jewish organisations accused her of dismissing the experiences of Israeli victims.

The ABC Ombudsman later investigated complaints about the broadcast.

The Ombudsman’s office received a campaign of 145 identical complaints, along with four additional complaints raising separate but similar concerns.

One of the central allegations was that Tame had incorrectly described reports of rape as propaganda and debunked and that Macdonald had failed to correct her strongly enough during the live interview.

The Ombudsman ultimately found no breach of the ABC’s accuracy or harm and offence standards.

That finding was not an endorsement of Tame’s factual claim.

Instead, the Ombudsman concluded that Macdonald had immediately challenged the statement, asked Tame to explain what she considered propaganda and put the UN evidence to her during the interview.

The program also sought comment from Jewish organisations shortly after the interview and broadcast further perspectives the following day.

The Ombudsman therefore found the interview had been handled professionally and that listeners were made aware there was a serious factual dispute about Tame’s characterisation.

Tame says her meaning was misunderstood

In her new clarification, Tame has attempted to draw a distinction between disputed claims about the scale of sexual violence and the accounts of individual victims.

She referred to limitations identified in investigations by organisations including Human Rights Watch, while stressing that she does not reject verified accounts of rape or gang rape by Israeli women.

She also reiterated a principle closely associated with her own advocacy work: survivors of sexual violence should be heard and supported regardless of their identity.

Tame became Australian of the Year in 2021 after campaigning for survivors of child sexual abuse and for legal reforms allowing survivors to speak publicly about their experiences.

That background was one reason her March remarks attracted particularly intense scrutiny. Critics argued that comments appearing to dismiss allegations involving Israeli women were difficult to reconcile with her long-standing advocacy for sexual assault survivors.

Tame has now said that interpretation did not reflect what she intended.

She has, however, continued to defend her criticism of the Israeli government and has not retreated from her broader pro-Palestinian advocacy.

Her apology therefore relates specifically to the way her remarks about sexual violence were communicated and interpreted, rather than representing a reversal of her political position on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Controversy followed Sydney protest

The ABC interview came after Tame had already become a prominent figure in a heated Australian debate over the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

On February 9, she addressed protesters at Sydney Town Hall during demonstrations against Herzog’s visit and led a chant of “globalise the intifada”.

The phrase is highly contested.

For some Palestinians and supporters, “intifada” is associated with resistance and the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. Many Jewish Australians and political leaders, however, associate the term with periods of deadly violence and terrorism and regard calls to globalise it as threatening.

Tame’s use of the slogan was condemned by figures including NSW Premier Chris Minns and several federal politicians.

The controversy also led to calls from some political figures for her Australian of the Year honour to be reconsidered.

Tame later told the ABC she understood the phrase as a call for widespread resistance to Israeli government actions rather than a call for violence.

It was during that subsequent discussion with Macdonald that the conversation shifted to October 7 and whether she had spoken publicly about sexual violence against Israeli women.

The resulting exchange became one of the most contentious moments of an already polarised debate.

Separating verified findings from political claims

The latest apology highlights a persistent problem in public discussion of the Israel-Gaza conflict: verified findings, unverified allegations and political narratives are frequently collapsed into the same argument.

There have been genuine disputes over individual accounts connected with October 7, and credible investigators have acknowledged gaps in the available evidence.

The UN itself found some allegations could not be verified and specifically determined that two widely circulated claims concerning Kibbutz Be’eri were unfounded.

But the same UN mission concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe rape and gang rape occurred at multiple locations during the attacks and found stronger evidence concerning sexual violence suffered by hostages.

Human Rights Watch likewise said major evidence gaps made it impossible to establish the overall scale of sexual and gender-based violence, while still documenting such violence and referring to credible UN findings.

Those conclusions make broad claims that sexual violence allegations were simply “debunked” difficult to sustain.

They also demonstrate why careful language matters.

Evidence that one allegation is false does not establish that all allegations are false. Likewise, evidence that sexual violence occurred does not automatically prove every account circulated in the chaotic aftermath of an attack.

For public figures entering debates about sexual violence, that distinction is particularly significant because survivors can be harmed both when unsupported claims are presented as established fact and when credible accounts are dismissed without adequate evidence.

Tame’s new statement appears intended to resolve that ambiguity in her own position.

Nearly six months after the ABC exchange, she is now explicitly saying she believes individual Israeli accounts of rape and gang rape, supports survivors regardless of identity and regrets not making that position clearer at the time.

Whether the clarification ends the controversy is another question.

Her critics are likely to focus on why it took months to arrive, while supporters may point to her distinction between individual verified accounts and broader claims about the scale of sexual violence.

What is clearer from the available independent evidence is that sexual violence did occur during the October 7 attacks, while the precise extent, circumstances and responsibility for every alleged incident remain matters requiring careful investigation.

That evidence-based distinction is now central to understanding both Tame’s original comments and the apology that followed them.