Domestic Violence The Fallout - The Documentary by Stephen Riley "Riles" An Australian story!

[Music] [Music] domestic violence is the most debilitating thing a woman can go through i know i've been through it according to the australian institute of health and welfare the australian bureau of statistics 2016 personal safety survey indicates that one in six women that is 17 or 1.6 million have experienced physical or sexual violence by a current or previous partner since the age of fifteen compare this to one in sixteen men six point one percent or five hundred and forty eight thousand when i first fell in love with my first husband i i had such high hopes so many dreams of the little cottage with the white picket fence and the children running around in the backyard it was a beautiful dream but unfortunately that's all it was some of the most um traumatic experiences that i remember i was around six years old six years old hopeless what can i do it's just very traumatic seeing your mother crop such abuse i'm an ex-police officer i served 11 years prior to 2018. i spent seven years in general duties policing and the last three to four years as a dvlo which is a domestic violence liaison officer this is a very much a specialised role when my first child was about three weeks old was the first time i got hit and that was just a slap i thought well i can get over that pretty quickly but he said to me i'm no good to you i'm no good to you take the ute take the child and go back home unfortunately i spoke to another woman who was going through it and she said oh look he didn't mean it he loves you he he won't do it again it's it's just one of those things no i didn't go yeah i didn't leave because it's probably the worst thing i did or didn't do at least but i stayed it's very sad but it's a true statement the only things that i remember are mostly bad things when i was growing up at a young age it's you know the good things don't stick so much i'm sure there were some good times but um you know the most traumatic stuff is what's really stuck with me through my life i was trained in the dynamics of domestic and family violence child protection procedures victim support and core davio processes it was my job to provide advice and support to other police and victims and also to monitor repeat victims and perpetrators it certainly is a national health and welfare issue that can have lifelong impacts for those well for both of those parties and from then on it was no slap it was full fist every time every bit of money he spent was going on grog and it didn't matter if i had black eyes or not i still had to go to work sometimes i think i had more black eyes than a forest full of pandas it wasn't just me that was suffering either it was i had three children yeah so that means all my early childhood right from conception has been affected by domestic violence during the first seven years that i served in the police rarely was there a shift that went by that i didn't respond to a dv job this type of violence is rife in the community it's a common job for our police examples of the types of jobs ranged from common assaults intimidations sexual assaults stabbings woundings right up to murders and everything in between every time the bruises started to clear up it was another fist in the face another fist in the face didn't matter what i did it wasn't right the children weren't fed right the cooks what the cooking wasn't cooked properly the house wasn't clean enough it didn't matter what i did i couldn't seem to do it right enough to feed him so mum went through a lot of traumatic experiences and through the domestic violence you know it would have broken the strongest of souls but she sold it on and done the best she can a huge majority of these crimes are inflicted on women and children by a male partner or a family member the common denominator more often than not with dv offenses is alcohol and drug use it has been my opinion for many years that the abuse of these substances is a real cancer in our society he had a very bad habit of bringing men home and of course i had if i even if i was in bed it was midnight willa crocker didn't make any difference i had to get up and cook them a feed the children would wake up and come out and they'd put something on their plate for them and this one night he brought home a guy that had been in the through the wall and yes i felt sorry for the guy but when he actually reached over and took the food off one of my children's plates i thought that was just going a little bit too far so i said something which was a very bad thing to do because then i copped it again sitting he was sitting at the other side of the table and straight across the table lamb after that it didn't matter what happened it did you'd come home night after night as soon as the bruises went down it'd be another work and another way in another way so every time dad came home from the pub being drunk mum had to literally walk on eggshells watching everything she said everything she did in fear of when that next fist was going to land on her face it's very common for a victim to feel trapped in these violent relationships they are torn by the fear of poverty of homelessness of further violence if they leave the relationship but also quite often they love the person who is abusing them and because of this it is common for victims to want to hide what is happening to them and they certainly can be reluctant to report to the police i stayed for 80 years the last time he hit me he smashed my teeth he broke my nose there was blood everywhere two main incidences that had haunted me most of my life so yeah one morning after mum had copped a beating i remember sitting at a dining table i was sitting at title mum was sitting across from me and um mum had bits of her false teeth on the table and she was um harold dieting it back together so she could put it have some teeth back in her mouth um that was then i remember at the time thinking that um here we go again you know like it to me i remember it wasn't the first time that mum had to arrow light those bolts teeth back together for victims who physically survived domestic violence the trauma and fallout of this insidious crime is devastating i need to make this clear that it is the leading cause of death illness and disability for women under the age of 45 and psychological trauma is real i've seen it in many victims the impact on the physical mental and emotional health can include depression shame anger and look even suicide the risk of homelessness and substance abuse is high and i thought there was nothing that i could do but he was always saying get up and fight you [ __ ] get up and fight every time i went down there's one time he brought this woman home he bought her home to fight me well she put me straight down and that's when it started get up and fight get rich get up and fight get up and fight i wasn't going to put myself down that far so i didn't i just stay it lay down and took it the second most traumatic experience that i remember was um another time that you know mum and mum was copying a beating and i remember being out the front of the house with me siblings and because we're out the front trying to get away from what was going on inside and mum came crawling out the front dad walking behind mum you know pretty well on the ground reaching out with some coins some money trying to give to us kids to get us to ring an ambulance and dad was threatening to kill her if we rang an ambulance or gotta help so yeah young ages it's it's um it's hard you know it's very hard to see what mum had gone through at the time for children who have had exposure to the effects can also be debilitating i've worked with women whose kids have suffered ongoing anxiety depression problems concentrating and there's other disruptive behaviors the list of these behaviours is long children need a secure nurturing environment to grow and to thrive domestic and family violence within the home destroys lives the next morning after he broke my nose and smashed my teeth he was still in bed i got up and got the children off to school and did what i had to do and then i thought well he wants me to fight so i went back into the bedroom where he was still in bed and i punched him fair in the gut after that i thought well this is really bad now because now that i've started it's going to end up with one of us dead and that would probably be me one man is killed every 29 days by their partner on the other hand one woman is killed every nine days by their partner so sure my growing up is not just domestic violence but um you know i've had an arachnophobia really bad throughout my life not so bad now but growing up for many years i would just freak at any spider daddy long legs or anything that all stems back to when i was younger dad be joking around he'd pick me up because i'd be scared of spiders he'd pick me up and then hold me towards the spiders went up really close and i'd be absolutely terrified the rippling effects of domestic violence can go well beyond those directly involved it can and it does filter through to impact the lives of family and professionals who deal with it on an ongoing basis i stayed for about 10 days until the bruising went down enough for him to go back to work i got the children from skill got the money from the band and i got a train ticket back to gimpy where i was going to be bit by some family members we got on the train [Music] and came back home i went back once [Music] for just a couple of weeks but of course i ended up with more black eyes and believe me i didn't go back again i know right into my early teens that um i would have nightmares about spiders just all in my bed i would jump out of bed screaming and go to mum wake her up and say mum mum you know can you can you get the spiders out of my bed and she would pull the bed to pieces and um so there's no spiders then she'd make the bed again and then i'd be like mum mum you know just check again and she might do it two or three times before i would be calm enough to go back into bed and eventually go back to sleep i don't know it just it destroys you it's something you really never get over for years i used to have some terrible nightmares and i'd wake up crying and yeah it's not a good thing so i always grew up with very bad news i did see a doctor and he he picked up a few things and knew that i was um you know not doing too well it is very common in policing to suffer trauma and burnout from the constant repetitive nature of the job 15 years it it took me to get over it i started drinking and for that 15 years i drink and drink and drink and i know the children suffered through that too but it was the only way that i could get through life without doing something really serious anyway i just said look i've got a really bad nervous disposition i'm just a nervous person you know i'm very nervous and very self-aware when i'm around people and he diagnosed me with complex ptsd so complex ptsd is my is a lot around childhood trauma which is what i had growing up with domestic violence and because of my bad nerves i didn't stop wetting my bed until i went to high school because i asked mum a while ago and i said you know when did i actually stop wanting my wetting my bed because i knew i had a problem and she said you know when you went to high school i was started giving you some certain pills and then that helped you to stop wetting your bed it is very common in policing to suffer trauma and burnout from the constant repetitive nature of the job it actually ended up getting the better of me and after long-term counselling i left my job the nightmares the sleeplessness anxiety have been very common for me the last few years have been a slow journey in recovering my mental health and any woman any woman any girl any woman that is going through domestic violence if you get hit once don't stay get out immediately they'll say they're sorry they'll say they love you they didn't mean it trust me they never stop once you get hit once get out get out get out it will not stop and it will get worse and worse and worse and this is why so many women get killed because they stay in a domestic violence relationship it's bad it's the worst thing i i can't think of anything worse than a woman going through that growing up in my life there have been people and they would say you know i'm not going to amount to anything so i've had very low self-esteem all my life i've found it very hard to fall out in my life has been a lifelong depression anxiety low self-esteem [Music] and that all stems from well domestic violence emotional abuse is domestic violence physical abuse is domestic violence whether it be against your partner or your children and what i want my aim for making this story is not to to degrade anyone in my family my father or anything but just to tell a story that what you do is can affect your children or anyone [Music] hi i'm joy i'm steve's wife i grew up in a loving caring family with my mum and dad and sister they taught us to show love and respect to one another and we never saw any violence or abuse in our family my mum and dad have been married now for nearly 56 years i didn't want to leave a legacy like my father i wanted to break the cycle of domestic violence steve and i met and i think i was about 17 we fell in love and steve was a rather shy type of guy but i loved him heaps and a few years later we got married and then we got a puppy like most young couples do and a few years after that we had a couple of children as we got to know each other more and talking about our lives and how we'd grown up found out that steve had had a different upbringing than what i had and he had seen a fair bit of abuse and domestic violence in his family which had affected how he'd grown up because i saw you know my family do things it's just who i am it's in my dna but is it in your dna or can you choose to change and not follow in your parents footsteps it doesn't like being around groups and large groups in particular and situations that cause anxiety steve's been a great loving caring father and husband and we have two adult children now and he's always looked after us steve and i have been married for 34 years now you can choose to change to make a difference steve found it hard to do school and because of all these issues and was wagging school and in fact was a grade 8 school dropout but he's been a very hard worker and over the years he's taken on all sorts of jobs to provide for his family he's gone on to do some great study including an advance to player in theology a certificate four in horticulture and a bachelor of film and after seeing everything i've seen i can't see how anyone can choose to be the same as what you've seen growing up and putting your partner or your children through so much trauma and terror over the years stephen my relationship together has been a loving caring one and we want that as an example to show to our children and to others that we can have a life without abuse and violence if you or someone you know is experiencing domestic or family violence you can contact 1-800 res pect or 1-800-737-732 or through online chat [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Stephen Riley “RilesMedia”

Views: 20,360

Keywords: Domestic violence awareness, Australian story, rilesmedia, Documentary, Domestic violence, DomesticViolence, Domesticviolenceawareness, Mentalhealth, Depression, Violence, Victims, Family, realitytv, reality tv, Anxiety, sleeplessness, Nightmares

Id: npLdkPwDvgw

Length: 23min 8sec (1388 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 01 2021