Silencing-365 days with or without your smile
Dr. Anchita Karmakar
Clinical Director-FACRRM? Senior Medical Officer ? VAD SMO? Law Graduate ? Senior Lecturer
Written by: Dr. Anchita Karmakar MBBS BBioMsc JD
Trigger warning
This week our nation shook with the deplorable crime against three beautiful children and an honorable mother who suffered due to a failure in our justice system as well as our medical system. This hits home very close to me and today, I would like to share my story to you all and to open up a discussion regarding roles legal practitioners play and medical practitioners play in preventing these situations. The laws must be changed and powers for screening and protecting the most vulnerable must be given to medical practitioners like GPs who are at the front of this battlefield.
This is the reason why I do what I do and the source for my drive to fight for justice at all costs.
My daughter was diagnosed with Retinoblastoma(a rare form of eye cancer) at age 6 months. She had her right eye removed because of this and multiple surgeries following this. That was the reason I became a Doctor, so I could understand what she is going through and be there for her during her health issues. Following this, the marriage broke down more and more as the DV(which started one week after our marriage) worsened and was centered around my ex blaming me for cancer and 'disability' it caused. As in many situations, the DV was not just physical. It was subtle passive-aggressive mental tortures, mainly around control and blackmailing.
Finally, after a lot of trauma I broke the marriage off in 2012, but right after, she was kidnapped from her school in Brisbane by her Father and they fled the country to India-a non-Hague signatory country.
From there, I had to work locum jobs, GP daytime and after-hours to pay for legal fees to try and get her back. Never got any patient complaints or adverse outcome. All patients were seen properly and had a huge patient following. The relationships and rapport I built with my patients were what kept me going through these times, sharing our experiences and having the humble opportunity to help people with chronic pain and diseases kept me going.
I never got my daughter back but landed in the hands of Medicare/PSR for alleged inappropriate billing(https://medicalrepublic.com.au/karmakar-see-psr-court/23121). Once I realized the process was completely wrong and tried to explain this to people, nobody listened so I decided to study law to become a lawyer to advocate for doctors' rights during these unconscionable medicare audits which are destroying Doctor-patient relationships.
My next hope is to make the world sign the Hague convention and to create laws that would protect children and abused partners from tragedies and murders. The irony is though, I have not opened up about these truths in my life, as I did not want to be a victim until now and most resort to think I'm just a rorter. Most forget that everybody has a story and perhaps before judging and silencing people we would listen and support each other.
So what now?
I lost my daughter to a violent ex-husband who resorted to parental alienation, conversion of faith to extremist beliefs and ultimately, now we do not know if she is alive. I am just one of the thousands like this suffering and fighting for some shape or form of justice every day, all over the country and the world.
After the car petrol murder-suicide this week it struck few cords in me justifiably and when I shared my thoughts on various social media platforms, I encountered a great amount of unexpected support and kind words. I also have had people banned me from various social media platforms too. Fear? Guilt by association or just not wanting to admit that perhaps we have all failed to advocate for a better system. Or I dare say, am I the wrong colour and gender to be this frank about the complete screw up of our worlds. I do not know the answer to this yet.
Today I would like to open up this forum of discussion as I am working on human rights issues to be globally changed so there could be better protection for our children in family law context, cross border litigation issues as well as empowering medical practitioners to be stronger formal advocates for patients in all aspect of our profession with no fear of prosecution from the government.
One of the issues identified was the lack of aggressive mental health screening and care when it came to parenting rights and perhaps issues around urgent child-focused family law provisions including funding for those who need impartial legal advocacy in a context like this. I am in the process of creating such an organization that can fund, advocate and support these fights where people need to fight for their rights rather than damages.
https://internationalnaturaljusticefoundation.com/
In Australia, GPs are at the front of this battle of recognition and I would love to hear any innovative ideas/thoughts on this matter. I would also like to hear from legal practitioners who may have interesting ideas on what it is that prevents us from changing and developing the system.
Could GPs play a bigger role in advocating for safe parental rights? What are the barriers to changing Family Law provisions?
If any of you are interested in being part of discussions regarding social justice fights come to join me on my FB site.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/RiskyPatientBilling/?ref=share
This was one of the last photos I had, right before she was taken. There is not a single day and a single moment that goes by where I do not think of her.
Business Owner at Australian Variety Store,
4 年You know you have my Unconditional Support always
Senior Advocate and Advisor at JMA Consultancy
4 年Misogeny however dressed up is alive and well. I get so angry when it takes such an awful unspeakable tragedy to draw attention to what organisations like Storm the Joint have been screaming out for years - One woman a week dies from DV. DO SOMETHING.
Senior Advocate and Advisor at JMA Consultancy
4 年Keep fighting Anchita - justice is never easily won and persistence is the difficult but necessary path to vindication and change. Those who simply refuse to go away may finally draw attention of those in power to affect change. It's exhausting and I could not imagine the pain you must feel. But you are a fighter and your intelligence is obvious and you have directed your ability to just causes. All that tenacity, i pray for you, will one day change the wrongs in the system and reunite you with your precious daughter. A mothers love knows no boundaries. Time is up for abuses against women yet we still hear the rubbish spewing out of the mouths of the uniformed and ignorant.
Principal at Susan Moriarty & Associates
4 年Dearest Anchita, my own daughter is the sun, the moon and the stars to me and the pain of the loss of your precious daughter is literally unbearable.? My husband's stepfather shot his mother and then himself. My husband, barely an adult himself, took in and raised his orphaned brother aged 14 who had found the bodies.? It was 10 years before my husband could even speak his mother's name, such was the excruciating pain of her murder.?? Hannah Clarke’s agonistic tragedy is just the latest in a rampant continuum of terrorism against women as Rosie Batty observed.? The prospects of Hanna's death leading to a Damascene moment for lawmakers and enlightenment in the justice system are bleak indeed if nothing before, equally hideous, has prompted change that counts.? Indeed, Pauline Hanson's inquiry, eager to out lying mothers can be expected to closely scrutinise Hannah's conduct for evidence of provocation which taunted a loving husband into incinerating his family.? In the? half century since Germaine Greer wrote ‘women have very little idea of how much men hate them’ each and every one of the countless women raped, beaten, stabbed, strangled, suffocated and burned to death by a man is a mute witness to that reality.?
Clinical Psychologist (Individual & Couple Therapist) at Anna W Psychology
4 年What a story... It is so frightening when you hear about stories like yours. And so sad when you realise they aren't that rare.