We know that because for at least a year now, we have had accounts from Nauru which detail what a new report calls a pattern of systemic assault and rape.

And we heard the first of these terrible reports from the victims themselves, the women who were medically evacuated to Australia to deal with the horror of the assaults.

These are the women Australia abandoned. No, it's not just our government that abandoned them. It's the rest of us. We are all responsible. These women come from two groups: those granted refugee status; and those who are detainees.

In some cases, there is further violence visited upon the women by the Nauruan government itself. Last year, in a devastating breach of the privacy of women refugees, that government sent out a press release, detailing investigations of the rape of a young Somali woman. It cast doubts on the veracity of the victim's claims. It published explicit details of the woman's state of health, including a description of the woman's genitals. Those terrible revelations came amid claims by respected health workers that the state of healthcare on Nauru is catastrophic. We send women to a country where are no safeguards in place to protect them and then with very little medical help.

Last year a group of activists decided they wanted to go and see what was happening for themselves and Australian Women in Support of Women on Nauru was born in order to investigate exactly what was going on. The money for the investigation was raised in an instant. The hopes of the activists were dashed much more quickly than that – when the Nauruan government responded to the campaign by saying that no Australian journalists would be permitted on to the island, with the exception of The Australian's Chris Kenny.

Now AWSWN has released its report, after nine months of research and investigation. The group is committed to bringing the story of Australia's treatment of women on Nauru to public attention – in direct opposition to the government which, as the report says, "is determined to place the plight of asylum seekers beyond the reach of the international media and civil society, and therefore as invisible as possible".

This report makes the invisible visible. Here is some of what they found. Women and children regularly exposed to sexual humiliation and harassment. They are subject to intrusive body searches. They have been raped, bashed, burnt, as they hasten from their demountable cabins to the local markets for food.

We already know about the shocking case of Abyan, the young woman who was raped and then became pregnant. The utterly careless way in which she was treated when she sought a termination should make all of us feel ashamed. Louise Newman, the professor of women's health at the University of Melbourne, said at the time: "The treatment of a 23-year-old pregnant rape survivor ... highlights the profound lack of understanding of the psychological impact of rape and trauma. Blaming the victim ... does nothing to help us understand her trauma."

And we know of S99. How awful that we assign numbers to tragedies. S99 escaped from Africa because she feared being stoned to death. At 16, she'd been married off to her much older husband who sexually and physically abused her. She witnessed the murder of her sister – and shortly after, started experiencing seizures. She escaped, ended up on Nauru; and then, in the midst of a seizure, she was raped. As a result of the rape, she became pregnant and asked to come to Australia to have a termination but instead was sent to Papua New Guinea. In May, the Federal Court found that the Australian government had failed in its duty of care to this young woman.

We know of Hadon, who set fire to herself in May this year and remains in hospital in a critical condition.

Maybe we don't know of the young Iranian woman who last month locked herself into her cabin on Nauru and set it alight. Her husband said this was not the first time she had tried to commit suicide. And maybe we don't know about the young African woman who has cut herself off from her community on Nauru since she was raped earlier this year.

Maybe we don't know of so many others. And maybe it's just that both our government and the government of Nauru don't want us to know.

And here we are, just four weeks from the election; and the two major parties think this is all perfectly fine. Both the Coalition and the ALP support offshore detention. There are 267 refugees in Australia right now for mental and physical health reasons and yet our country pretends that if we #letthemstay, all hell will break loose.

There is no hell here. The only hell is the one we make – the one we agree to build – when we send our responsibilities offshore.

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