Trafficked, Silenced, and Punished: Greens List Launches the Catch 22 Report

On Monday 29 June 2026, Greens List hosted the online launch of Catch 22: Trafficked persons who commit crime in Victoria are silenced and punished, not protected, a landmark research report by Dr Felicity Gerry KC with Phillipa Stafford. The free CPD webinar, Women, Modern Slavery and The Courts, brought together lawyers, judges, policymakers, and advocates for a session that should change how Victoria thinks about trafficked persons who commit crime. Powerful presentations were given by the co-authors, Dr James Cockayne the NSW Modern Slavery Commissioner and Marietta Martinovic AO who runs the Changing Faces Think Tank (CFTT) at Dame Phyllis Frost Centre and the Beyond the Stone Walls Advisory Collective (BSWAC); both are RMIT-established lived-experience think tanks.

The Report effectively describes a trap. Survivors of modern slavery and human trafficking who are forced, compelled or coerced into committing crime are not being identified and protected by Victoria's criminal justice system . Instead, they are being arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned. The "22" carries a double meaning by directly referencing Recommendation 22 of the Australian Parliament's Hidden in Plain Sight report (2018), which called for protection for victims of modern slavery compelled to commit crime and Finding 22 of the targeted Review into the Modern Slavery Divisions 270 and 271 of the Criminal Code (Cth) (2023) which also urged further consideration of these issues. Despite the recommendations to implement the non-punishment principle and improve on laws and policies in other countries there has been no progress on defences for trafficked persons who commit crime. This is Australia's Catch 22 putting Australia behind many other states across the globe and silencing victims of modern slavery / human trafficking. 

Funded by the Victorian Legal Services Board and conducted through Deakin University's Centre for Protection, the project ran from 2023 to 2025. It is the first evidence-based Victorian research project to produce policy and legislative recommendations aimed at reducing barriers for modern slavery survivors in the criminal justice system.

The methodology was deliberately layered. Stakeholder workshops with prosecutors, defence lawyers, judges, corrections staff, social workers and NGOs came first, mapping what was already understood (which was not much). Then came the most powerful phase: workshops with women with lived experience of incarceration, through the Changing Faces Think Tank at Dame Phyllis Frost Centre and the Beyond the Stone Walls Advisory Collective. Voices the system had largely never heard. Participants estimated that between 40 and 80 per cent of women in prison had offended as a result of force, compulsion or coercion and had never disclosed it. Fear of traffickers, distrust of police, and a legal process offering no safe pathway kept them silent. 

The report's message to practitioners is direct. Modern slavery is understood as a crime in Victoria (and across Australia) but the understanding that its victims can appear before courts as accused persons is almost entirely absent. 

The report calls for training across the profession, published prosecution guidance from the OPP, a Victorian referral mechanism, revised bail laws, specialist courts, a complete defence to state crimes caused by trafficking, and an audit of women's prisons to identify and pardon survivors already wrongly imprisoned.

Australia has had international legal obligations to protect these women since 2002. Catch 22 provides the Victorian evidence that those obligations are not being met. 

Dr Felicity Gerry KC is a Greens List barrister and welcomes contact on this issue as she is keen for cases to be brought and can assist on how the non-punishment principle can already be applied. 

The full report is available here 

Felicity’s slides are available here 

View the webinar here