See What You Made Me Do

by Jess Hill

  During the years before this order was made, Carly’s mother, ‘Erin’ – whose story of financial abuse we heard in Chapter 2 – had tried to shield her children from their father’s violence. Finally, in 2012, blunt advice from her GP gave her the push she needed to leave. In front of their screaming children, John had choked Erin so hard her eyes had rolled back in her head. ‘If you don’t leave,’ her GP warned, ‘you’re as bad as he is.’

  So she did. But she was still terrified: John had threatened that if she left, he would hunt her down like a dog and shoot her. Seeing that she needed protection from him, a magistrate issued her with an intervention order.

  Soon after, John applied to the Family Court for visitation. Despite the intervention order, the advice from Erin’s family lawyer was blunt: consent, or risk losing custody of your children. Her evidence of abuse would not be enough to argue for full custody, and besides, she should ‘stop playing the victim’ and get over it. Against her better instincts, Erin consented to visits. But when both children refused to see or even speak to their father, Erin felt she had no choice but to support them and breach the orders.

  So John made another application – this time for sole custody. When the Family Court assigned a social worker to interview each family member and write a report for the court, both children refused to be interviewed with their father. Their position was supported by their counsellor, who told the court such a meeting may be ‘harmful’.*

  The kids had a laundry list of reasons for why they were afraid of their dad. He had choked their mother in front of them, held a knife to her throat, thrown Zac across the room, and put their cat in the dryer – with the dryer on – to torment them. Then there were other things that were just as frightening but harder to explain. The temper tantrums he’d throw, where he’d smash things around the house. The weird paranoia he had that Erin was poisoning his food. The little ‘evil’ smile he gave while he tormented them. The times he would walk around the house saying he wanted to die.

  Carly and Zac explained this to the court-appointed social worker, but he paid scant attention to their concerns. Instead, in his family report, it was Erin’s motivations that were questioned and her parenting that was criticised. The social worker recommended that Zac be ordered to live with his father for three months and have no communication during that period with his mother. This was a preventative measure: if Zac were to live only with his mother, there was a risk that because he bore a strong resemblance to his father she may eventually reject him.#

  In 2014, two months before the scheduled custody hearing and without Erin’s knowledge, the Family Court suddenly held an interim hearing and made temporary orders for John to have sole custody. ‘I was not represented, not notified, and no reasons were given [for the change in custody], because it was only an interim hearing,’† says Erin.§ The orders were inexplicably severe. ‘I was to have no contact with the kids, despite there being an AVO in place. I couldn’t even ask about their welfare.’ Erin thinks the court may have made this sudden interim order because the Independent Children’s Lawyer (ICL)‡ told the court she had ‘absconded’ when she and the kids went away for the school holidays.

  The interim orders directed federal police to collect the children from their mother and deliver them to their father. But for Erin, that was not an option: Carly had threatened to kill herself if she was made to live with him. ‘I was asked by my children to protect them. So we fled,’ says Erin.

  When the police finally caught up with Erin and her kids nine months later, they were travelling through regional New South Wales. They had run out of money and were on their way to the nearest Children’s Court to seek help. The night before, Carly had finished writing a protest letter. Erin handed the letter to the police and asked them to read it.

  My name is Carly and I am scared of my dad. I have seen him in a rage throw my brother across the room. He has held a knife to my mother’s throat telling her how easy it would be to cut it … and the court has given me to him.

  I have tried to tell all the legal people involved how scared he makes me but I am too young for anyone to listen. Why am I not allowed to help decide what happens to me? I feel like I’m screaming in a soundproof room because my voice has been stolen from me … At what point do I become old enough to have a voice? At what point will those with the power choose to let me be heard?

  I need someone to hear my voice and understand that all I want is a life without fear. The only person to listen to me is my mum. She believes me when I tell her I am scared and keeps me safe but they will jail her for listening to me … I need your help.

  That afternoon, police drove Erin and her kids to a nearby town, where Erin would later front a magistrate on criminal charges of falsifying the children’s passport application – a charge that carries a maximum sentence of ten years. There was one last chance to say goodbye, and then the children, distraught, were taken away.

  ‘When I was separated from Mum at the police station, I spent, like, six hours inconsolable on the floor, along with my brother,’ says Carly. When their father arrived, he told them how much he had missed them. The kids were unmoved. ‘My brother and I were both like, “No, we’re not going anywhere. We hate you! You hurt us, you hurt Mum! We don’t want to be with someone like you!”’ Carly says. ‘This went on for a good half-hour, and then a policeman came up and essentially threatened to remove me and my brother to the car by force.’

  For the next two months, Carly and Zac refused to live with their father and stayed with friends instead. They only agreed to move in with him when he promised to help them see their mother: an easy promise to make, because it was virtually impossible to keep. They now lived several hundred kilometres away and, for Erin to see them, she would have to travel interstate to a contact centre, where her visit would be short and supervised, at a cost of more than $100. This would be impractical for most people, but it was inconceivable for Erin: she was now so broke that she was sleeping in her car and showering in public bathrooms, surviving on just a few dollars a day and the kindness of friends. The only way she could imagine being with her children again was to play the long game: go back to university, study law, represent herself in the Family Court and get them back for good.

  In the meantime, the court process rolled on. The new orders forbid Carly and her brother from contacting their mother, and their father forbid them from contacting their maternal relatives (and even threatened their grandfather with legal action should he try to contact them again).‘That ruined me,’ Carly told me by phone from Newcastle. ‘I love my mum’s parents. Dad’s parents are weird; they’re not nice. But my grandma and grandpa on my mum’s side are really involved, they take pride in all my achievements.’ Quarantined from her mother’s family, Carly decided she had no choice but to try to make peace with her father. ‘For a while there I wanted to believe he was the great person he says he is. I was just going along with everything, because I knew if I argued, there would be a really, really big issue.’ But as the months progressed, Carly began to feel more and more like her father’s prisoner. ‘He was always asking, “Where are you going? Who are you going with?” but not in a protective way: in a possessive, sort of aggressive way. There was only one time I was out alone with my friend. She was like, “I’m surprised your dad’s not here this time.”’ Living with her father made Carly so anxious, she often couldn’t go to class.

  In October 2016, Carly wrote a letter to Robyn Cotterell-Jones, a veteran advocate for victims’ rights, based hundreds of kilometres away, in Newcastle. ‘I am extremely unhappy living with my father and I fear for my safety,’ she began.

  There is a frightening history of family violence committed against my mother, my brother and myself by my abusive father. Yet the court finds him a fit parent … I’m so frightened that I never fail to lock my door whenever I enter my room … No one should feel like this in an environment where they are meant to feel nurtured and supported.

  I d
on’t understand why I have been denied access to my own family. I have been denied my own mother. This is not justice – this is not an outcome beneficial to me or to my brother. I can’t stay here any longer. I am so afraid here. No one should be forced to live in so much fear. Please help me.

  Two days later, just over a year after police had returned her to her father, Carly got ready to run again. She decided it was too risky to take her younger brother. The night before she left, she sat him down to explain what she was about to do. ‘I tried to tell him I was going, but that I’d never abandon him and I’d come back and talk to him and everything. As I approached the subject, he just burst into tears and said, “I don’t want to be here, Carly, I want to kill myself! I don’t want to be with Dad – I miss Mum.”

  ‘And he’s twelve!’ Carly exclaims. ‘No twelve-year-old should think about killing themselves!’

  Now, as she got off the train near Newcastle, Carly felt as though a huge weight had lifted. A short bus ride brought her to the offices of the Victims of Crime Assistance League, an advocacy group Carly and her mother had contacted just before the police caught up with them in 2015. There to greet her was a surprised** Robyn Cotterell-Jones, its executive director and founder. She ushered Carly inside and told her that as a mandatory reporter she had to call child protection.## Soon after that, Cotterell-Jones called me.

  A legendary figure in victim advocacy, Robyn Cotterell-Jones was awarded an Order of Australia for her commitment to helping victims of crime find hope and courage. We’d spoken about heinous cases of child abuse in the past, but I’d never heard her this upset. ‘What are we doing to our children, Jess?’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘This is just madness. I’ve been working on this issue for twenty-five years, and it’s only gotten worse. I feel like a failure.’

  *

  There is little reliable data on how many children are affected by domestic abuse in Australia: it’s simply not officially measured. One oft-cited but small survey of 5000 Australian children found that 23 per cent had witnessed physical violence against their mother or stepmother.1 We also get some indication of how many adults grew up with domestic violence from the Australian Bureau of Statistics: the most recent Personal Safety Survey found that before the age of fifteen, nearly 2.1 million women and men witnessed violence towards their mother, and nearly 820,000 violence towards their father.†† If you think that number is high, consider this: one in six women and one in ten men report being physically or sexually abused before the age of fifteen.2

  The kids growing up with domestic abuse live on your street and go to your local school. They return home each day to houses where they feel defenceless and afraid, or where it is their job to protect their mother and siblings. They know all the best places to hide, and how to make themselves disappear when the yelling starts. They hold their mother while she cries and they help her wash off the blood; they comfort and hush their siblings; they call police to beg for help. They are recruited as spies. They blame themselves – and get blamed – for the violence, and they fantasise about hurting or killing their parents. They beg their mother to leave, because one day he’s gonna kill her. They see their parents come home from hospital and carry on like everything is normal. They watch their father get arrested. They know the violence is their own fault and that if they can just find a way to be good enough, to do or say the right thing, it will stop. And deep down, many are terrified that when they grow up, they too will turn into an abuser – or end up marrying one.

  The sheer magnitude of domestic abuse in this country is overwhelming our child protection system. In South Australia, an astonishing one in four children are reported to child protection by the time they are ten.3§§ If you find that figure hard to believe, you’re not alone – researcher Fiona Arney, with twenty-five years’ experience in the area of child protection, didn’t believe it either. When she saw it quoted in the report from the South Australian Royal Commission into Child Protection Systems, Arney asked to access child protection records to verify it. The records, covering 300,000 children born since 1999,4 confirmed it. ‘We don’t have a system that is equipped to meet the demand,’ Arney told the ABC. ‘We are facing an absolute crisis.’5

  Children trapped in abusive environments have to develop their own strategies to survive – not just physically, but psychologically. As Judith Herman writes, these children ‘must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness’.6 These children can become master tacticians, with senses fine-tuned to the onset of violence and danger.

  These are the children we refer to as ‘witnesses’ who’ve been ‘exposed’ to domestic abuse. Such language does gross injustice to their experience. These children are not bystanders. They are victims in their own right, with needs, fears and loyalties independent of their abused parent. This is a fact recognised in Australian law: exposure to domestic violence is now considered a form of child abuse.7 When children experience domestic abuse, we know that they are also much more likely to be physically or sexually abused themselves: domestic abuse co-occurs with approximately 55 per cent of physical abuse, and 40 per cent of sexual abuse against children.8 That’s not to mention the many instances in which a female victim becomes abusive towards her children – because she yearns to feel some kind of power, becomes addicted to drink and drugs, or believes that if she disciplines her children harshly, it will shield them from getting worse from the abuser.

  In Australia, the media really woke up to the reality of violence against women after a father murdered his son in broad daylight. But although eleven-year-old Luke Batty was the primary victim of this crime, we still haven’t really grappled with the impact domestic abuse is having on children. In news reports, children often get only a cursory mention, as though they are mere extensions of their parents.

  Many journalists baulk at interviewing kids about trauma, believing they don’t have the skills for it. Those who do make the effort can find themselves rebuffed by advocates, who fear that even adolescents are too immature and vulnerable to speak for themselves (and journalists too untrustworthy). This caution is understandable. Children do need to be protected from insensitive or predatory journalists and should only be interviewed if they are safe, supported, and on the proviso that they are not identified. Journalists who interview traumatised children need to take extra time, be more sensitive, and seek advice from expert bodies, like Our Watch, on how to avoid retraumatising them. But there are many child survivors who want to tell their story, and who are distressed that the adult world denies them their right to do so. Instead of us assuming we know what’s best for young people, why don’t we ask them, ‘Do you want to tell your story?’

  For kids like Carly, this silencing is patently dangerous. The family law system too often treats kids as little more than parental property, and domestic abuse as an adults-only affair that is resolved once the parents separate. Within this system, children are given very limited opportunities to be heard. Even when they bravely offer stark, detailed testimony to psychologists and lawyers, they can end up having their words twisted in court and are too often dismissed as unreliable witnesses. ‘It’s like wading out into the middle of an ocean; you can see a big wave coming, and you know it’s going to crash over your head,’ explains Carly, describing the court process. ‘I’d tell my ICL I didn’t want anything to do with my dad, that my dad is abusive, and then in court she was like, “There are a few minor problems, but otherwise things are going very well.”’ If we as a community don’t make an effort to listen to children, why should we expect our justice system to be any different?

  The silencing of children still vexes Australian author Ruth Clare, now in her late thirties, who grew up dodging her father’s sadism after he returned from Vietnam a damaged and violent man. She remembers how invisible her trauma was to the adults around her, no matter
what she did to try to get them to hear her. ‘I cannot think of a single time during my childhood when I felt my views were heard, considered or taken seriously,’ she writes. When Clare was thirteen, she woke late one night to her mother’s cries for help. She climbed out of bed and followed the noises to the kitchen, where she found her mother pinned to the ground beneath her father. When Clare tried to intervene, her father threw her across the room, and threatened to scoop out her mother’s eyeballs with the cap of his beer bottle. Police arrived after Clare bravely ran next door to get help, and though her mother refused to press charges Clare persuaded her to seek protection in a refuge. In the backseat of the police car on the way to the refuge, Clare waited for the officers to ask her and her brother what had happened. ‘Instead, they asked what grades we were in and the name of our budgie,’ she writes. ‘It felt like they were showing us what we were expected to do. Act normal. Put it behind us. Not dwell.’ Instead of feeling comforted by this distraction, Clare took it as proof that aside from emergencies, police would be of no real help. ‘My problems were my problems and it was up to me to figure out how to deal with them,’ she writes. ‘The story they didn’t want to hear now felt unspeakable; by association I felt unspeakable, too.’9

  Listening to children is a matter of national urgency. Kids as young as five are harming themselves at alarming rates: in the decade up to 2016, 33,501 children aged five to nineteen deliberately poisoned themselves. That rate has been rising by 10 per cent every year.10 Kids aren’t just self-harming – they are killing themselves, and in increasing numbers: in 2015, the suicide rate for girls aged fifteen to nineteen shot up by 47 per cent.11 In First Nations communities, the child suicide rate is catastrophic: Indigenous kids, who make up around 5 per cent of the child population in Australia, accounted for 40 per cent of youth suicides in 2018.12 Overwhelmingly, Indigenous kids that suicide have lived in poverty, and many were subjected to family violence and sexual abuse. This is a crisis that is only getting worse: in the first two weeks of 2019, five Aboriginal girls under fifteen suicided.13 There are no words strong enough to describe the devastation of this loss, or the shame we should feel that Indigenous kids are living and dying like this.