Why I Stayed

In 2001 I was twenty two and had recently returned from backpacking around Europe. I was studying at Melbourne University and had just moved in with my two best female friends. It was a time in my life where I enjoyed juggling working at a local café, continuing the degree which I had taken a leave of absence from, with an active social life and sporting activities with the university ski and hockey clubs. 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 to not trust the fa?ade this person presented to the world.

 One day I was walking home from the shops with my groceries, when the young man in front of me dropped a tin of tomatoes onto the train tracks by accident out of his shopping bag. I noticed him turning into the dilapidated two-storey terrace house which was situated adjacent to the train lines. My friends and I had been wondering who lived in this house, as every rubbish day the recycling bin was overflowing with empty alcohol bottles. The people living there clearly knew how to party and have a good time. So when I picked up the tin of tomatoes and called out to the young man to return them to him, we got chatting. I learned that the residents of the railway house were a group of mates who had moved from Ararat to Melbourne to study at various universities. When he heard that I lived in a house of females of a similar age to his group of mates, he asked if we would like to attend a house party at their place the following Saturday. Only having recently moved to the neighbourhood, and excited about making new friends, I quickly accepted the invitation.

The first time I met John (*) was at this house party. I saw him sitting in the lounge-room pontificating loudly on some topic, whilst alternating between smoking a bong as it was being passed around the room, and playing an acoustic guitar. My initial impression of John was that he was a pompous, arrogant stoner. I was underwhelmed to say the very least. In hindsight, I wish I had just stuck with my gut instinct about what a loser this guy was, I would have saved myself years of pain and trauma.

So how did I end up in a relationship with a guy I took such an immediate dislike to? Well, somewhere between the random madness of all the people at the house party deciding to go to the local shopping centre car park and push each other around in trolleys at 3 am for a bit of fun, and meeting John a few weeks later at a pub near our house, I changed my opinion on how I felt about him. On the night I bumped into him at Bridie O’Reilly’s, I was in a really crappy mood. My friend Seona and I had been invited to the birthday party for one of my mates from the university ski club. Seona knew that I had a massive crush on ski club guy, however she decided to break girl-code and hook up with him. As I stood in a dark corner near the DJ booth at Bridie O’Reilly’s, nursing my Barcardi Breezer and shooting my best friend dirty looks as she pashed my crush on the dance floor, I noticed that John was standing beside me. We got chatting, and this time we really hit it off. I learned that he was studying organic chemistry at RMIT, liked reading law textbooks for fun, was passionate about social justice issues and standing up for the underdog in any situation, and was a talented musician and singer who could play multiple instruments.

He really reminded me of Matt Damon’s character in “Good Will Hunting” with his genius-level intelligence, rebellious and non-conformist persona, his dark and handsome looks and that feeling of excitement and slight sense of danger I got when I was around him. It was the same feeling I would get when jumping off the rock cliffs at Guthrie’s Falls near the farm I grew up on. There would always be that moment where I would stare down into the deep, dark water of the river which flowed beneath the cliffs and try and calculate how much of a run-up I would need to get out safely into the water and not connect with any low-hanging Red Gum branches. The thought always lingered in the back of my mind as to whether there were any obstacles waiting to hurt me lurking underneath the water. However as I did the run-up and launched myself off the rock cliff, these thoughts had to be put to the side so as to not create any last minute stumbles of uncertainty. That feeling of release as I felt myself flying through the air and being drawn down by gravity to inevitably create a great splash in the water, and then sink to a depth where the sunlight no longer penetrated was the ultimate adrenaline rush. So on that night in Bridie O’Reilly’s, with the mirror ball and lasers creating a technicolour visual wonderland, and the DJ playing Darude’s Sandstorm, John and I ended up on the dance floor. The electric thrill of that moment was a feeling akin to embarking on a new extreme sport.

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, choke, 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.

It was around this time that John formed a band with his similarly musically-talented brothers, a university friend of mine and another friend of his. Our house became the location for band rehearsals. Initially having this creative outlet, and non-family members in the house caused him to adjust his abusive behaviours towards me for at least the time band activities were occurring. So I welcomed the frequent noisy intrusion into what was originally intended to be a very feminine and peaceful space. I attended the band’s gigs at local pubs as these were some of the few occasions I was allowed to go out to socialise without having to endure his irrational jealousy and a subsequent interrogation of where I had been and who I had been with. After a while though, my presence at his gigs was no longer welcomed as he made it quite clear that he preferred these to be boys’ nights out for him.

So I gave up going out, which was really hard for me because until I had met John, I was the ultimate party girl. I loved hanging out with my mates, watching live bands, going to music festivals, being a regular patron at the Backpacker’s night at Pugg Mahones, trying out the latest nightclub hotspot, going out for a Sunday session at one Melbourne’s plethora of awesome beer-gardens or raving until the sun came up. I kept turning down invitations from friends to attend different events, and it wasn’t too long before these invitations trickled out. This saddened me immensely, but I knew I had no other choice whilst I remained in that relationship. John’s controlling and isolating behaviour was completely pervasive, and his jealousy made him extremely volatile and like a ticking time-bomb which could always be relied upon to go off. One day he had gone through his usual repertoire of calling me names such as “fat cunt” and “ugly whore,” when he turned around and said to me with a look of total loathing and disgust on his face, “What is wrong with you? You never go out any more. You just sit here at home reading or watching TV. You’re so boring!” I felt like turning around and retorting defiantly back at him, “Why the hell do you think that is?!” I didn’t though, I was too scared of the beating I would endure if I did.

At this time John was working at a fruit and vegetable shop owned by a prominent local Italian family. A number of shady characters hung around this shop, and John was fairly quickly drawn into the seedy criminal underworld which was notoriously linked to the Italian mafia and their stronghold on Victoria’s fresh produce industry and markets. This led to him becoming involved in drug-dealing. Initially he kept these activities away from our home, however as he became more comfortable with the control and power he had over me, he started to openly deal and store drugs in the house we lived in. John saw himself as the local neighbourhood friendly weed dealer. He even allowed people to ring our landline phone number to organise a deal. It was not unusual for there to be numerous kilos of marijuana stashed in our kitchen pantry on a regular basis, however it was the time he came home with a bag full of five hundred ecstasy pills which he said he was looking after for a “business associate”, that I summoned up the courage to say something to him. I pointed out to John that if the Police were to visit the house or become aware of his illegal activities, they were hardly likely to believe that his girlfriend and two younger brothers who he lived with had no involvement or knowledge of the drugs. When I begged him to stop putting us at risk, he responded emphatically that he would do whatever the hell he wanted and that I needed to shut my fat mouth and just live with it. I was constantly scared that the Police were going to bust him for his drug dealing and that he would implicate me, regardless of the fact that I was completely innocent of any involvement in his criminal behaviour.

Through becoming part of Brunswick’s criminal underworld at the time when a lot of the gang warfare depicted in the “Underbelly” series was actually going on, John developed an over-inflated ego which made him have the arrogance to believe that he had the right to dish out vigilante-style justice. I will never forget the time I attended one of his band’s gigs at a rough pub on Brunswick Street, Fitzroy opposite the Housing Commission flats. My cousin and a friend of hers came to meet me at the pub and to watch the band. When my cousin walked into the pub, she was in no way intoxicated. According to her friend they had only consumed one glass of wine with dinner prior to coming. I went to the bar with my cousin and we purchased drinks. As we sat down a young guy came up next to my cousin and asked her how she was doing, after he got a short response from my cousin, he then walked off. Within half an hour my cousin was collapsed on the floor in the toilets. I asked her friend if this was normal for my cousin when she drank, given that she’d only had two drinks all night. The friend said it was not. The band was having a break in their gig and I got John to help me to get my cousin outside so we could get her and her friend in a taxi home. As we were walking out the door, the young guy who had approached my cousin earlier in the evening said with a grin on his face, “She looks wasted. Is she ok?” At the time we just ignored him and kept assisting my cousin. It was at this point that we were waiting on Brunswick Street and looking to hail a taxi. John and I were both holding up my cousin and were standing in one of the parallel parks which lined the street. A man driving a large, imposing, black 4WD beeped his horn aggressively at us as he wanted to park in the car-parking space we happened to be standing in at that moment. John yelled at the man “Can’t you see we’re trying to help this girl, you fuckwit!” The taxi came and my cousin went home safely with her friend.

As we were to learn the next day, the guy who had approached her at the pub had actually spiked her drink with a ketamine-like substance. Hence the reason she collapsed so quickly in the toilets. What did John do in response to this with his newly found sense of gangster-style power? He took some of his associates and tracked down the guy from the pub and threw him down the stairwell at the Housing Commission flats where he lived in Fitzroy. He was not finished there with dishing out vigilante-style justice, John also managed to locate the driver of the 4WD through connections he had. The 4WD driver sustained broken legs for having had the audacity to beep his horn at us outside the pub the night of the gig. Yes, the driver was rude and inconsiderate, but did he deserve to have his legs broken? No way! It was knowing John’s capacity for extreme violence against me and random strangers, as well as his ability to incite people to commit acts of violence with him, which absolutely petrified me. This was exacerbated by the awareness that there would be times he would be looking after unregistered firearms on behalf of his underworld associates, and more often than not these would be stored somewhere in our house.

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 will always remember the birthday where he held me hostage at gunpoint and wouldn’t allow me to leave the house, and when I called the police for assistance he was successful in convincing them that nothing was going on as he turned his customary fake charm. They did not even make any attempt to search for the gun, something which has always completely amazed me. The police did not remove him from the house and place me in a position of safety as they should have done, instead they asked if I wanted to leave. I did. The police drove me to Southern Cross Station and dropped me off there as I had informed them that I had family in the country I could travel to be with. The reality of what happened next was that I was too scared to get on a train back to the country, even though that is what I wanted to do more than anything in the world. I longed to be at my childhood home at the farm, cuddling my beloved border collie x kelpie Chep and crying to my Dad who has always been my rock of strength at times of crisis. I did not do that though, instead I jumped on the first train that came for the Upfield line, and went straight back to my house in Brunswick. Such was the level of power and control that John had over me that I was more scared of what he would do if I did not return. I was also worried what he might do to the house. The lease was in my name, and the majority of the furniture and other possessions belonged to me. I was really concerned that if I did not face the music and return to him that he would go on an orgy of destruction. I was not ready to tell my family what I was going through at this point, so I went back to my house of horrors.

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.

There came a tipping point though, and this came in the form of an obnoxious, filthy, homeless man who had decided randomly to take up residence in the growing pile of rubble which was forming in the backyard in the house next door to ours which was being demolished. His name was Harry and as he cheerfully informed us, he had recently been released from Thomas Embling Hospital’s high security forensic mental health unit due to committing arson. He was just the sort of lost soul that John liked to take pity on and befriend. I too, am an extremely compassionate person who likes to advocate for and assist people experiencing homelessness or suffering from a mental illness in whatever way I can, however my gut instinct was telling me with big alarm bells, and huge flashing lights, that this man was dangerous and extremely bad news. My suspicions about Dirty Harry, as I had started referring to him as in my head, were very quickly justified. He loved nothing more than jumping out to scare me in the dark when I was walking past the gate of the house he was squatting at. Dirty Harry, it turns out was also an unlikely film buff. He particularly enjoyed regaling us with his review of how amazing he thought the ultra-violent French film Baise-moi was. He found the rape scene inspirational and according to him, the woman who endured it “completely deserved it.” So it became a major concern to me when I discovered that John and his brothers were allowing Dirty Harry into our house to use our bathroom and wash his clothes. I communicated with John how unsafe this man made me feel. The response I received was that I was overreacting, that Dirty Harry was harmless and I should continue to make him welcome in our home.

It was around this time that posters started to go up along our street stating that a neighbour’s cat Thomas was missing. I had not seen the cat, and did not think much further about the “Missing” posters until a horrific incident occurred on one sunny autumn day. John, his brothers and I were walking back home from the shops when like a Jack-in-a-box, Dirty Harry popped out of the gate next to ours just as we went past. He invited us in for lunch. I immediately felt nauseous at the possibly of what we were about to encounter, but the look John gave me in that moment made it apparent I would not be able to excuse myself and go into our house. Dirty Harry had a pet dog, which was a skinny flea-bitten mongrel of dubious heritage that liked to snap at your ankles if you crossed its path. The dog greeted our arrival into its territory with a snarl twisting up its ugly features. To me, the pet and its owner bore a very striking resemblance. Dirty Harry camped next to the pile of building rubble in an open-sided shed with a simple rusted corrugated iron roof. He almost constantly had a campfire burning. With a great deal of trepidation, I sat down with the lads and waited to see what lunch was. Although I am a farm girl and not scared of a bit of dirt, when I saw the meat he was offering us, the level of hygiene was definitely a concern for me. I did not really fancy a bout of food poisoning, so I politely declined what I was offered saying I was not feeling too well. The lads did go through with eating the meat and gave appreciative thanks. It was at this moment that Dirty Harry decided it was the right time to declare, “You know that meat you were just eating there boys, do you know what that was?” The lads said they did not have a clue. “Well you know all those posters up for that missing cat? Well you just ate Thomas!” With that Dirty Harry fell onto the ground in fits of laughter, whilst John and his brothers were stunned into silence with looks of shock on their faces. I took that moment to excuse myself.

It was not long after this, that emotionally I hit rock bottom. I felt so trapped in my circumstances with my relationship with John, and having the stress of this horrible damaged man squatting next door just made things so much worse. It was early one morning, and I went into the upstairs bathroom with the intention of attempting suicide. I truly could not face another moment living with the abuse I was enduring. It was at this moment of sheer desperation that I noticed out of the window that overlooked next door’s backyard, Dirty Harry was sitting peacefully at his campfire, having a cigarette and patting his dog. The smoke from the fire curled up into the sky and danced playfully with the breeze. I stood there looking out the window for the longest time, completely transfixed by the scene playing out below me. I thought to myself, if a man as clearly disturbed as Dirty Harry can find happiness and peace in a pile of rubble, whilst here I am feeling like a prisoner of my own mind and my own home, then something is clearly wrong. That moment was what finally helped me to find the resolve within myself that I had to get out of that house before either John killed me or I killed myself.

When I finally found the courage to move away from him 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. Over the years I reached out to the police, medical practitioners, and legal processes to get support and justice. 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 and the chance of meeting people I normally wouldn’t come into contact with. More recently, I decided in 2015 to make a submission to the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence. As a result of my submission and the evidence I was called to give, two of the 227 recommendations which came from the Royal Commission were because of me.

So what can you do to assist in the prevention of family violence? As well as being a volunteer advocate and a family violence survivor, I have a background of working for Centrelink, and I currently work in superannuation. I consistently talk to my managers and executives about how they can improve processes around family violence. When I switched from working for Federal government to working in superannuation last year, I asked the question in training “What do we do if a client discloses family violence?” The trainer responded, “That does not happen here”. Whilst I decided to not push the point with the trainer in my new job, I chose not to accept what the trainer had said and instead I decided to gather empirical evidence and start the conversation with management once I had concrete examples to provide.

18 months later, I have now succeeded in getting family violence onto the company’s agenda, family violence leave is going to be provided for employees, we are also developing a policy of how customer service staff respond to disclosures of abuse by clients, and we are having a discussion about bringing-in financial counselling referral pathways for clients who are financially vulnerable. Within the finance sector it is important that all employees receive a level of training around family violence awareness in general, and about financial abuse more specifically. Many people who are seeking assistance from financial institutions, insurance providers and superannuation funds are experiencing financial abuse, and deserve to be treated with respect, compassion and empathy when receiving professional referrals and advice. 

However the easiest thing that any of us can do if a colleague, client, family member or friend discloses abuse is to listen without judgement, believe them, do a safety check about their current level of risk and provide an appropriate referral to a family violence specialist service such as Safe Steps on 1800 015188 or 1800RESPECT. Family violence is everyone’s responsibility and it could happen to anyone. This could be your mother, sister or daughter and if this was happening to someone you know, wouldn’t you want them to get the right support? You don’t have to be a family violence expert, you just need an awareness of the issue and a phone number you can provide someone if they need professional advice. Who knows, you might just save a life.

(*) Name changed for safety reasons