Southern Melbourne Family Violence Forum Speech

Imagine it’s your birthday and you’re being held hostage at gunpoint. You’re using your body to try and prevent the person attacking you being able to get into your bedroom. You’ve got your back up against the door and your legs jammed up against the wall. The person with the gun is screaming at you to let them in and is kicking at the door, trying to force it open by pushing against it with all their body weight.

You’re already in a lot of pain from being kicked, punched and thrown on the floor earlier in the day, but you know your back is going to be absolutely black with bruises from the assault you’re receiving through the door.

Then you hear the person cock the trigger of the gun and say “If you don’t come out, I’m going to shoot the door.” It’s in this moment you see the cordless telephone lying within reach of your hand and you decide the time has finally come to call the police because you don’t want your friends or family to find your dead body in this place.

Then imagine that the person with the gun is your partner and only hours before had been telling you how much they love you.

This was my 23rd birthday and it was less than 12 months from when I had started seeing my first perpetrator of abuse….Yeah, happy birthday to me.

So what set him off that day? The fact that I wanted to go out to see a movie and he didn’t want me to.

I would now like to share with you what happened after I called the police, as it demonstrates how far we have come in responding to incidents of family violence since 2002.

It took the police over half an hour to arrive, and when they did, my perpetrator met them at the door. I was still barricaded in the bedroom upstairs, but I could clearly hear the conversation he was having with the police officers. He laid the charm on thickly and pretended that there was nothing serious happening and that we were just having a silly argument. The police officers didn’t even ask about the gun and they certainly didn’t make any attempt to search the house for it.

When they came upstairs, they asked what I wanted to do and I responded by saying that I just wanted to get out of the house. I was then asked where I wanted to go. I mentioned that I had family in the country, so as I didn’t have a car back then, they dropped me off at Southern Cross Station. I walked into the station and caught a train back to Brunswick and went back to the house. My level of fear of my perpetrator was so immense, that I was really scared of what he would do to my family, friends and I if I didn’t return. My birthday present for calling the police for the first time in my life, was to be bashed up on my return and strangled to the point where I lost consciousness. He then used the fact that I had called the police as a form of psychological abuse for the remaining 2 and ? years we were together. He would taunt me when he was assaulting me, saying things like, “Call the police. Oh that’s right, what happened last time you called them? Nothing! Go on, call them.” So no matter how bad things got, I never called the police during the relationship again.

I recently heard the statistic that a victim of family violence experiences about 50 assaults before calling the police. I know that statement is definitely reflective of my experience. However, I also know that if I was to make that same phone call now, that I would experience a completely different response and the resulting outcomes for my ongoing safety and wellbeing would be worlds apart from what I experienced on that horrific day.?What would an integrated service delivery response look like in regards to that situation?

·???????Firstly the police would have done a proper investigation and searched for and taken possession of the gun.

·???????They would have arrested my perpetrator and issued a family violence safety notice for my ongoing protection.

·???????They would have taken statements from both of us and also questioned my neighbours who would have definitely heard me screaming.

·???????These statements would have provided crucial evidence for any future legal proceedings and would also provide documentation of a pattern of behaviour emerging from my abusive partner.

·???????The police would have shown concern for both my physical and emotional wellbeing and taken me to my nearest hospital to have my injuries treated and documented by medical professionals in the emergency department. They would have also provided me a referral to a family violence specialist service such as Safe Steps.

·???????They would have explained the processes of applying for an intervention order and Victims of Crime assistance.

·???????The family violence specialist service would discuss safety planning with me and explore the options of whether I needed refuge accommodation or to be assessed for eligibility for a flexible support package.

·???????The hospital would ensure that my current injuries are treated, but also look at getting me referred for other scans/X-Rays to assess prior injuries I had incurred from the abuse up until that point.

·???????The hospital would include a social worker in my treatment team and I would be made aware of other supports and referral pathways which I could access.

·???????I would attend my local GP clinic and be assessed for a mental health plan and referred to a trauma specialist psychologist for treatment of the anxiety, depression and PTSD I was suffering from as a result of the abuse.

·???????The perpetrator would have faced repercussions for his behaviour and would have also been required to attend court-ordered drug and alcohol withdrawal and men’s behavioural change programs.

If any one of these things had happened for me in 2002, it would have been life changing, however unfortunately none of these things happened. It’s a testament to every single worker in this room, that if I made that same phone call today, I know that I would get the response that I just outlined. We have certainly come a long way in the last 18 years in how we respond to this issue and I think this progress should be celebrated. I would like to take this moment to thank all the hard working front line workers, survivor advocates, movers, shakers and social change makers for your dedication and commitment to improving service delivery, support options and referral pathways for those experiencing or perpetrating family violence.

The focus of today’s forum is collaborative practice, but before I talk to you about the role consumer participation can play in breaking down the traditional siloed cross-sector response, I want to tell you a bit about the journey which has led me to be standing here in front of you today.

In 2001 I had recently returned from backpacking around Europe. I was studying at Melbourne University and had just moved in with my 2 best female friends. I was happy and excited about life, so when I met the guy who was to become the perpetrator of abuse against me, it just seemed like the next step in the adventure.?Like many abusive men, he gave me no reason initially to think he was capable of extreme violence towards me. He turned on the charm, was very popular with his friends and local community members and I felt a connection with him very quickly as he had grown up in a country town near to the farm I had grown up on. Our fathers had even spent some time working together. I had no reason not to trust the fa?ade this person presented to the world.

A common misconception about domestic abuse is that the victim actually knows that they’re in an abusive relationship, whereas a lot of the time they just know they’re in a very confusing mess. The abusive behaviour towards me commenced within about a month of our relationship beginning. It started with him making jokes at my expense to his friends and calling me derogatory names. This escalated fairly quickly into threats and violence, with the first incident being him chasing me down the road with a knife. Like many family violence perpetrators, he was extremely controlling of who I spent time with. It suited him to isolate me from my friends and family.

Within 6 months of being together, he had managed to turn my best friends who I had known my entire life against me, and they moved out. My abuser then moved himself and his two younger brothers into my house and that’s when the real hell began. It became a completely male dominated environment, and none of his friends or family would intervene when he was being violent or verbally abusive towards me. He would openly punch, strangle, burn, kick me and threaten me with weapons. I will always remember the time I was on the ground and he was kicking me, and his brothers just watched.

Each day became about survival and I felt like I was living in a war-zone. Home became a prison for me, trying to concentrate at uni became impossible so I dropped out, work was a form of temporary escape and relief, however it was humiliating having to make up fake excuses as to why I was yet again covered in horrible bruises or had broken bones.

I stayed with my abuser for 3 and ? years, however during this time I attempted to leave him several times as many family violence survivors do before they can safely leave. The thing which kept me with him for so long was fear. Every time I would start packing to leave he would hold a knife to my throat and say if I left him he would kill me and bury me in the backyard and then he would go after my friends and family members. The level of abuse and violence I experienced from this man caused me to develop depression and become suicidal, which are health issues I’d never experienced prior to that relationship.

At this point, what was going on in the broader context of my life was, my Dad had just had a marriage breakup. He was quite focused on dealing with the fallout of his marriage and custody issues. My Mum and Dad had split when I was around 11, so this was actually his split from my first stepmother. Dad was calling on me for support. At the same time, my Mum had just received a diagnosis of bipolar. She'd been retrenched from her job as a result of the illness and she was starting to have the first of what's been now over 18 years’ worth of regular involuntary admissions into psychiatric wards. I became, and have been, the main support person for her. So she was also really drawing on me for support during that period. To top off the family stuff, my older brother who suffers from several serious, chronic health conditions, had just had surgery relating to an earlier accident and ended up needing six months in hospital to recover.

So, I've got my Dad who's focused on his marriage breakdown and child custody issues, I've got my Mum and brother who are both really unwell. These people were my support network that I normally would have called on to talk to about what I was going through, but at the time, I didn't feel like I could add to their burdens.

In fact, I was getting calls from my Mum during that period saying, “I'm just feeling so devastated about what’s happened, losing my job, everything, that I just feel I need to end my life.” And I literally would be sitting there and getting these phone calls thinking - because I couldn't say it to her at the time, “Mum, you can't do this because I need you as my Mum and I'm feeling this way myself and I'm in this situation that I need to tell you about, but I can’t add to your burden.” It took me years before I could open up about stuff to my family because they were coming to me for support.

When I finally found the courage to move away from my perpetrator permanently, he started stalking me. The stalking and harassment continued for 10 years, and on one night 2 years after our relationship ended the harassment was so bad, I did not feel safe to come home and that placed me in a vulnerable situation where I was raped by a stranger. My relationship with my first perpetrator of abuse and the subsequent stalking became a recurring nightmare of horror that I found it almost impossible to escape.

Over the years I reached out to the police, medical practitioners, and legal processes to get support and justice. In my twenties, I didn’t have the language to articulate what was happening to me and that is why it is so important that workers responding to family violence name the types of abuse when a victim survivor discloses the behaviours they are being subjected to.

I have continually been re-traumatised by being consistently failed by the systems and organisations which are meant to assist and protect people who have experienced what I have. This led on to me developing PTSD and getting really angry and frustrated about the barriers I was continually facing. I kept thinking, if it’s so hard for an educated, literate, person who speaks English as their first language, how much harder would it be if I was from a CALD or indigenous background, had a disability or was illiterate to access services? I nearly gave up on getting help so many times, but the biggest change in my life came in the form of an article in the free Moreland Leader newspaper.

In 2007 Safe Steps was advertising their pilot program to provide media training to a group of family violence survivors, with the aim of empowering us to tell our stories in a way that we were happy with, and that could allow us to bust some of the popular myths and victim-blaming which occurs around the topic of family violence. By becoming an advocate for Safe Steps, I am a core part of their primary-prevention strategies, which is equally as important as the work they do in crisis response. When I attended my first training session, the workers made it very clear it wasn’t a therapy group, however I believe that any woman who has become a Safe Steps advocate would unanimously agree that doing this volunteer work has been extremely therapeutic.

Safe Steps has helped me to reclaim my voice and allowed me to channel all the hurt, anger and frustration I was feeling regarding structural and systemic failures into being part of informing positive change processes within organisations and government. My advocacy journey commenced with me speaking on the steps of the State Library at the Reclaim The Night march in front of hundreds of people, and has led on to many amazing opportunities including being here today and also putting a submission into the Royal Commission into Family Violence. As a result of my submission and the evidence I was called to give, 2 of the 227 recommendations which came from the Royal Commission were because of me, one of which led to the complete Review of the Victims of Crime Assistance Act which was tabled to State Parliament with its own 100 recommendations last year.

However subsequently to becoming a survivor advocate, I unfortunately found myself in a second abusive relationship. ?He was six years younger than me and I was absolutely head over heels in love with him for the entire six and a half years of our relationship. I put a lot of my second perpetrator’s behaviours down to his maturity level and the complex relationship he had with alcohol and drugs. I thought when he gets a little bit older, he'll grow out of these behaviours. During the time I was with perpetrator 2, I endured every type of abuse imaginable.

When he was drinking or taking drugs, there'd be a point where he'd be on a three-day bender, the switch would get flicked and the funny, nice guy would turn into this absolute monster. There’d be a whole different demeanour: The way he spoke, his accent would change, he’d get a look in his eye. We even had a name for the character that he was when he had switched, because he is Irish, and his accent turned to Scottish. It was just a whole other persona.

When he’d go off, I’d be really stressed out about what state he’d be in because there had been times with his drinking where he’d got himself to a point where he'd collapsed by the side of the road or passed out and convulsing in the corner. So I often had a real concern for his welfare and wellbeing. Over the years I’d call the alcohol and other drugs helpline- DirectLine, to talk about how I as the partner can respond to how that's impacting on me without being controlling towards him. This was because his drinking behaviours in particular were having a horrific impact on me. The abusive persona started to become present a lot more when he was sober too. Any argument about whatever thing we might disagree about, it always then came back to my appearance. It could be about what we wanted to do on the weekend, and I'd be the fat c***. I’d be all these horrible derogatory names that had nothing to do with what we were discussing. He'd be continually demeaning me and talking about how no one likes me. He’d often say that I've got no friends or that I'm a shit person, which were completely false statements designed to deliberately upset me.

I had been quite open about my previous experiences of domestic violence and the fact that I struggled with depression and anxiety and PTSD and supported my Mum with her bipolar. He took the stuff that I talked about and used that as a playbook for how he then treated me. He knew how sensitive I was about the fact that I'd put on a bit of weight because of the injuries that I had from the physical violence previously, that caused me to not be as active as I wanted to be. He’d really play into how I felt about my body image and be saying, “well, I can never marry you until you lose weight,” and get down to what would be his goal weight for me, which was losing 20 kilos. It made me feel really insecure and inadequate. The psychological abuse of when he would just prod me, prod me, prod me for a reaction on something. When I felt like I was like the animal in the corner being poked and poked and having an actual stress reaction to how he was provoking me, where I would cry or snap back at him, he’d then turn that around to say “See, you’re just like your mother. You've got bipolar just like her.” Which I know I don't, but he’d do it like a joke, but it was very malicious; “You’re my bipolar bear,” he’d say, as if it was a term of endearment. He knew how much I found that disrespectful, not just to myself, but to my Mum.

One night he went out and drank a whole bottle of vodka and came back in the morning, completely out of it and picked a fight with me. He held a knife to my throat, threatened to kill me and I called the police. He was arrested, taken away in the police van, a statement was taken. An intervention order was put in place where he could live in the house, but he couldn't come into the house if he'd been drinking or taking drugs. He stayed abstinent for nine months of that second year of our relationship. One of the things that gave me confidence at the beginning to stay is that I'd say to him, “I can't go through this shit again. You know what I've gone through. You need to get some support yourself.” So he enrolled in drug and alcohol withdrawal and a men's behaviour change program, things that the first perpetrator would have never done because he never saw that he had an issue. But perpetrator 2 engaged with those programs. In fact, he’d be coming back talking to me about concepts around anger management, and I’d be like, “he’s getting it. I can stay in this because he's trying to change.”

Although my two perpetrators had completely different personalities, they shared a number of common factors in their lives. Both came from rural families who were openly religious, and both had grown up in the midst of intergenerational family violence, family members with mental health issues and drug and alcohol dependency. These were the social norms for them, however it was certainly not the norm for me. All those factors were things I had never been exposed to until I reached my adult years.

Another complicating factor for me was I was feeling a lot of guilt about potentially being a fraud in my life. I was presenting this image as an advocate and doing these speaking engagements speaking out against family violence, but in my home life, I was going through it again. I didn’t feel like I could speak about it to my supports. Unlike during my first abusive relationship I now knew what supports existed around family violence. However this is a message I really want to get out, that anyone can be affected by family violence, even people who are working in this field of practice, because that's how insidious family violence is. There's emotion involved and hope. Hope that change will occur is such a powerful thing. So, there were all these factors that were involved, where he was able to manipulate all that insecurity and stuff that I was feeling. For me it was about pleasing him and doing what he wanted to keep him rather than him running out, like he was continually threatening to do. Like so many people in abusive relationships, I was completely in love with my partner, but I just wanted the harmful behaviours to stop. The lyrics of Haddaway’s 90’s pop anthem come to mind- “What is love? What is love? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more!

As it turns out, he ended up taking the decision out of my hands when he walked out on me 3 years ago when I was pregnant, leaving me $70,000 in debt due to the financial abuse he had been subjecting me to. The stress of finding out he had been having an affair and him refusing to pay a cent towards the debt he had by and large created, led to me having a miscarriage of the first child I had ever tried to conceive. To say that overcoming the grief, loss and trauma resulting from that time and living with the ongoing financial hardship due to the debt I am still paying off has been difficult, would be a complete understatement. I am thankful that my family no longer feels the need to send police to my home to do welfare checks that I am alive. Honestly there are days even now when I wonder how I am still a functioning human being.

So you have now heard the reasons why I am so passionate about ensuring victim survivors get supported in every possible way they can, and why I believe that perpetrators need to face consequences for their actions, but also have the opportunity to engage in behavioural change programs. However for service providers to develop the most effective programs, systems and referral pathways to support victim survivors and perpetrators, the individuals who have lived experience of these issues need to be involved in the continuum of consultation right through to co-production on any factors which will directly impact them. It’s like the old community development sector saying goes- “Nothing about us, without us!”

The safe and effective use of lived experience expertise is a game-changer for service delivery in the health and community sectors. Workers with first-hand lived experience of marginalisation and navigating the service system can learn to share knowledge, insights and personal reflections to build connection and inclusion for participants and communities. Evidence has shown that lived experience workers can bridge the gaps between services and communities, influencing the culture and practices of their organisations.

Forward thinking organisations understand the value and untapped potential of consumer expertise by embedding lived experience throughout its workforce.

Monash Health has shown incredible leadership by employing me as their first ever Family Violence Lived Experience Consultant within the Mental Health Family Violence Project Team. I would personally like to thank Wayne Wright for fighting for this role to be created and funded. This role has given me the opportunity to co-facilitate family violence training to our Mental Health and AOD clinical staff. It has also meant that I could contribute to the Monash Health’s family violence policies, procedures, clinical guidelines and submission to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. Throughout this year, I have also been involved in some lengthy discussion and debate about the inadvertent risks that the FVISS/CIS and IVO policy could pose to victim survivors of family violence, and how these risks might be mitigated. It has meant so much to me in my own progression through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to achieve self-actualisation and post-traumatic growth to be in a role such as this where my lived experience of this issue and the perspective I can contribute is valued and respected.

The Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence identified that the improvement of family violence outcomes in Victoria requires a robust approach to engaging with victim survivors and enabling their voices to be included at all levels of decision making. As a result Domestic Violence Victoria has recently auspiced researchers from the University of Melbourne to develop a framework to support the family violence sector further embed victim survivor expertise and decision making in the development and delivery of their services. I feel very honoured to have been invited to be part of the Advisory Group for this project and look forward to seeing the draft of the “Experts by Experience” Framework which is due to be completed by March 2020.

I encourage all organisations represented in this room to consider how you can engage a person with lived experience of family violence to be part of further developing and improving your policies and service delivery responses. There are many trained survivor advocates who currently exist who are just waiting for the opportunity to have their unique skills and abilities utilised to be part of creating real and lasting structural and systemic changes. I also encourage you to apply an intersectional approach to engaging with survivor advocates as it is so necessary that we hear a diversity of voices and experiences.

An indigenous survivor advocate who has survived more in her lifetime than even most of the professionals in this room could possibly imagine recently read a poem she had written to me where she stated “How can I become the butterfly, if my cocoon keeps getting knocked off the branch?” in regards to not feeling like her voice was being heard. To conclude my talk to you today, and in honour of that courageous young indigenous woman, and all the women and children who have had their lives taken as a result of violence I would like to read out the poem “Eurydice”* which I wrote earlier this year.

*See my other LinkedIn articles for a copy of "Eurydice"

Image credited to: Suicide Prevention Australia Lived Experience Symposium illustration