It is full of pictures of what should have been an incredible life’s chapter spent studying overseas.

She smiles in the photographs, like she did throughout much of the trip.

But really the overseas adventure was ruined for her, from the night a supposed friend offered to walk her home, pulled her aside as they waited at a traffic light, and violently sexually assaulted her. 

As sundown approached in Wollongong’s Crown Street Mall on Thursday, Ms Todhunter, 23, told a crowd of mostly women that she had been unable to tell anyone about the assault at the time.

She had continued socialising alongside the man – a fellow Australian exchange student. 

“The next day all I wanted to do was go down to that breakfast bar and punch him in the face and run away,” said Ms Todhunter, a former University of Wollongong law student and university medalist. 

“But even though I knew that I hadn’t consented to what had happened, I was too scared to tell anyone about it for a very long time.

“I was scared that no one would believe me.

“I was scared that they would think that I was making it up for attention, or would tell me to be quiet because I had no evidence, and I would ruin a good boy’s reputation.

“… that they would ask if I’d flirted or invited it in some way.

“So for the rest of the trip I went on smiling every day, acting like nothing had ever happened when we were in class together, or when we were in social interactions together. 

“But then I went and I cried myself to sleep every night, knowing that he was sleeping down doors down from my door and there was no lock on my door.” 

Ms Todhunter detailed her experience at the city’s annual Reclaim the Night march.

The march is part of a worldwide movement of the same name, which protests sexual and other violence against women, and asserts their right to walk the streets after dark without fear. 

There were 939 instances of domestic violence reported to police in the Illawarra in the 12 months to June 2017 – more than 2.5 a day, on average. 

In the same period, police recorded 196 sexual assaults and 243 cases of indecent assault, acts of indecency or other sexual offences. 

Police were somewhat encouraged by the numbers, which represented a 16.5 per cent decline in recorded domestic violence-related assaults in the region, and brought rates lower than the state average across all three crime categories.  

And yet, subtler signs of the reason for the protest remain.

As video of the 200-strong crowd marching through Wollongong appeared on the Mercury’s Facebook page on Thursday night, some viewers offered derogatory comments on the women’s appearance, the fruitlessness of the march and confusion as to what they were marching for. 

“Anyone else embarrassed for them?” wrote one man.

But there was no embarrassment, at the rally. 

The speakers were unwavering, the applause for them was warm. 

Speeches were broken up by circus performances and song from four-part harmony aficionados, the Glamma Rays, whose member Malika donned a purple shirt emblazoned with the word ‘love’ to address the crowd afterwards. 

“Me too,” she began, revealing she had endured years of sexual abuse as a child, at the hands of her stepfather. 

“I felt deeply ashamed and unworthy.

“But I got on with my life … I did a lot of counselling,” she said. 

“And then one day my daughters became the age I was when I was groomed and abused, and I looked at these little girls and I just thought, oh my God, you are so innocent, and so gorgeous, and full of light and love and trust.

“How can anybody abuse that? I was so angry. 

“At the same time I found out he’d been made senior citizen of the year in Armidale.” 

It was the trigger to go to the police, in 2007, more than 20 years later. 

Police agreed to covertly record a conversation which led to the arrest of Richard Peter Maddox, then aged in his 70s.

Maddox ultimately pleaded guilty to charges of assault, committing an act of indecency with a girl aged under 16 and carnal knowledge of a child.

In December 2010 he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. 

Malika took the extraordinary step of waiving her right to anonymity, so that media could name Maddox in their reports on the court action (suppression orders are designed to protect the identity of sexual assault victims, but also shield the perpetrator, since identifying one would lead to the other). 

On Thursday she credited counselors at Wollongong West Street Centre with helping her, and spoke of the value of protest.

“Me too is such an interesting discussion,” she said.

“People say, ‘what’s the point? What is this going to do to change things?’. 

“But I’ve also seen the cathartic energy of release and sharing. We’ve got to set down the shame.

“It was never our fault.”