Family Violence is stereotyped, but we've all come to realise it can happen to anyone in any form of life.
Allison Baden-Clay was a highly educated and generous woman. It is important to her family that Allison's legacy is a positive one and that by sharing her story she may help others.
The Allison Baden-Clay Foundation is partnering with Griffith University's MATE Bystander Program which trains people in how best to approach someone in an abusive relationship.
Griffith's program is targeted towards business and corporate environments to teach people how to identify and handle a domestic violence situation.
Social and financial isolation are often early warning signs someone needs help and that's when there's an opportunity to intervene that's sensitive and careful.
Yes, these are private matters, but they can also be matters of life and death.

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Apparently it’s a thing – guys taking off condoms without you knowing and without your consent! It's something the media is calling 'steal thing' and it is actually a form of rape because your consent to sex was contingent on the use of a condom.

​Read the full article here.

Anj Barker was just 16 when her abusive boyfriend changed her life forever.
"He tried to strangle me and repeatedly bashed my head into a steel bench and made it like jelly … and I ended up with a severe brain injury," she said.
He also stomped on her face, snapping her jaw and leaving her perilously close to death.
"He kicked her in her ear and she bled out of it for three days, with brain fluid leaking out of it as well," Anj's mother, Helen Barker, said.
"We thought she would die and we're just very lucky that she lived."
Ms Barker was in a coma for three weeks and remained unresponsive for nine months.
"Because all my vocal chords were severed because of the strangling, it took me five years to speak and eight years to walk with a walking frame," Anj, now 32, said.
"They said she'd be a vegetable for life," her mother added.
"I'm very proud of the way she gets through everything and has managed to keep going … I don't think I could have ever done that."
40% of family violence victims had brain injuryMs Barker's speech and mobility have been permanently impaired but her sense of justice remains razor-sharp.
While Ms Barker's case is at the extreme end of brain injuries inflicted by abusive partners, a report by Brain Injury Australia has revealed the extent of damage wrought by family violence.
Researchers from Victoria's Monash University examined data from hospital admissions between July 2006 and June 2017, and found that 40 per cent of 16,000 family violence victims had sustained a brain injury.
While the victims were most often women, the report found nearly one in three of the victims were children — and one in four of them had sustained a brain injury.
"They're shocking figures and yet the vast majority of women who experience family violence don't get medical attention," said Nick Rushworth, chief executive of Brain Injury Australia.
"So it's bound to be the tip of a very large iceberg.
"While around 1,800 victims of family violence go to Victorian hospitals each year, there are 26,000 cases referred to specialist family violence services and 37,000 intervention orders sought in the courts."
Brain Injury Australia has called for the creation of an integrated brain injury and family violence service to support diagnosis, rehabilitation and harm reduction, to bridge what it calls "significant gaps" in service responses and support.
"Australian state and federal governments need to develop a comprehensive system of services for women and children living with the consequences of brain injury from family violence … and that includes everything from screening through to therapeutic supports nationwide," Mr Rushworth said.
Brain injury not on victims' radar: expert
Mr Rushworth argues such a move would save money in the long run because the estimated cost of family violence-related brain injury in Victoria was $5.3 billion in 2015-2016 alone.
The report also drew on information from practitioners in the community and family violence sector, and the experiences of women and children who had suffered a brain injury.
"They'll talk about snapping, they'll talk about being incredibly tired and having memory problems — but they can attribute that to so many other things: being stressed … potentially mental health problems that may be happening, so brain injury is not on their radar," Monash University researcher Darshini Ayton said.
Many victims were also unaware of the cumulative impact of mild traumatic brain injuries "and the fact that multiple blows to the head over a long period of time can really lead to significant disability and brain injury", Dr Ayton said.
"The fact is that waiting lists to get assessed can sometimes take 18 months, so when you consider that along with the complexity and the chaos that might be happening in these situations, that's just not realistic in terms of being able to get accurate assessments and diagnoses."
She said the report also found that perpetrators were twice as likely to have sustained a brain injury themselves in the past — in some cases, inflicted during childhood — creating "a vicious cycle of inter-generational violence".
The study is the first of its type in Australia focusing on brain injury caused by family violence.
"A lot of the literature on concussion is done in sport and in military and people who are playing rugby and football and getting concussion and that's where the research has focused on the long-term impacts," Dr Ayton said.
"The practitioners all talked about the need for different agencies and the community and the sectors to come together to work to address this problem, it's not something that they can do in silos."
Anj Barker said the report was a wake-up call for care-givers and victims alike.
She has given talks to more than 38,000 schoolchildren, women and community groups in the hope that telling her story will save other victims from a similar fate.
"It makes me very happy that I'm able to give people the courage and the awareness to realise that they are in exactly the same situation and get out of it safely."


This article was written by Stephanie Ferrier and was copied from here.

In Australia, today’s May 2 vigils are the only national public commemoration of those lost to violence.
As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time digging deep into our violent history, it saddens me that this is the best we can do as a nation for murdered Aussies.
It is also sad that our Federal Government is considering spending $50 million to erect another statue of Captain Cook — a man who will always be linked to the white persons’ slaughter of our indigenous people — but it has never given one dollar to fund a national memorial to recognise all murder victims.
Ask anyone who has lost a loved one to violence and they will tell you their biggest fear is knowing their son, daughter, sister, brother, niece, nephew, mother, father, friend, neighbour or colleague will be forgotten once the headlines about that person fade from our conscience.
Janet Mills Clarke has spent the past 28 years mourning her daughter Stacey-Ann Tracy.
Stacey-Ann was just nine years old when heinous child killer Barry Gordon Hadlow raped and murdered her.
Janet and I are tied together by this tragedy in a strange way — Hadlow was married to my mother when he killed the young Roma schoolgirl.
Despite the fact a person connected so strongly to me killed someone connected so strongly to Janet, we speak from the same page about the impact of murder.
“I would like for there to be a national memorial for all victims of violence,” Janet tells me.
“It would make me feel that all victims would never be forgotten.”
Now based in Victoria, Janet says a national day of mourning and remembrance would mean so much for her, Stacey-Ann’s sister Elizabeth and Stacey’s grandparents who live in Bundaberg.
“I don’t think the victims of violence should ever be forgotten — I feel it’s important for them to always be remembered,” she says, revealing she will soon move to Queensland so she can be closer to Stacey-Ann’s grave in Roma.
“It would make me feel great to know Stacey was not just another statistic.”
In Northern NSW, Robyn Summers-Shelley has spent the past two decades waiting to find out who murdered her son.
Paul Louis Summers was sleeping on a couch in a biker clubhouse at Gosford when someone sprayed the building — and his body — with bullets.
The 31-year-old’s killer has never been found despite NSW Police offering a $100,000 reward to solve the crime.
A national memorial would mean so much for Robyn, who fears she will die without knowing the truth about Paul’s death.
“To have my son Paul honoured this way would exceed all of my wildest dreams,” Robyn says, suggesting a memorial wall listing the names of all victims would suffice.
“Murder often is put in the too-hard basket, but to have his name inscribed there, everyone would know he lived and that his young life was cut short at the hands of unknown persons.
“Apart from family, people forget unless it directly affects them.”
Peter Rolfe is the president of Support After Murder Australia, which he began about 11 years ago to provide a network to help people who have lost a loved one to murder.
Peter’s partner Stephen Dempsey was murdered in 1994 by Richard Leonard.
The 22-year-old abattoir worker shot Stephen to death with a bow and arrow at Narrabeen in NSW.
The psychopath then carved up the 34-year-old’s body and took it home where he placed it in a freezer.
Over the past 24 years, Peter has turned his grief into supporting others who have walked in his shoes.
He has long advocated for a national day to commemorate Australians lost to violence.
He says the money the Federal Government plans to spend on the new Captain Cook statue could be used in a much more meaningful way.
“It would be marvellous for me and for others to have a memorial because it would highlight the injustices done to us,” he says.
Peter is close friends with Ebony Jane Simpson’s mother Christine.
Ebony was murdered in Bargo, NSW, during 1992 by Andrew Peter Garforth.
Peter says he would love for a national day of remembrance to be held on August 19 — the day Garforth abducted the nine-year-old as she walked home from school.
Garforth forced Ebony into the boot of his car driving her into the bush where he bound her tiny body with wire, raped her and then threw her into a dam.
Like my stepfather Hadlow, Garforth had the hide to join the hundreds of community members and emergency services personnel as they searched for his victim.
Garforth was sentenced to life in prison and is unlikely to be released.
Some 26 years later, Peter says Ebony’s death paved the way for a national help service for families bereaved by murder.
 
He says setting aside August 19 for would be a fitting tribute to Ebony’s parents who played a fundamental part in the formation of the national Homicide Victims’ Support Group.
When Ebony died, two strangers stepped up to help the Christine and Peter navigate the rough road they were suddenly forced to travel.
Garry and Grace Lynch knew exactly what the Simpsons were going through — their daughter Anita Cobby was raped and murdered by a group of men in Sydney.
At the time of Ebony and Anita’s murders there were no support services for people who had lost a loved one to violence.
The Simpsons and the Lynch family decided to change this and thanks to them Australia now has the Homicide Victims’ Support Group.
Garry and Grace have both passed away but Christine says her dear friends would have loved to see Anita’s name alongside Ebony’s on a national memorial.
“There needs to be more of a public conversation about murder and violence and a memorial would help that,” Christine says.
“The government, corrective services and most people do not understand what your life is like after murder.
“You can’t function. It destroys your family.”
Commemorating these victims is the least we can do.
It would be so easy for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to declare a national day of mourning that honours all Australian victims lost to all forms of violence.
A small annual grant fund could be set aside for local communities to commemorate these victims while commissioning a special sculpture or adding a garden of peace and reflection in our nation’s capital would ensure their loved ones know they matter.
While the pleas of Janet, Peter, Christine and Robyn will likely never reach the ears of our nation’s politicians, it’s up to the rest of us to let these special Aussies know their voices have been heard.
If you light a candle today for the Aussies lost to domestic and family violence, please do one a small favour for all the other families who are grieving a loved one.
Look into that flame and spare a thought for all the Aussies lost to violence — it’s the least we can do for the men, women and children who lost their lives because of someone else’s violence.

This article was written by News Corp journalist Sherele Moody who is the recipient of 2017 Clarion and Walkley Our Watch journalism excellence awards for her coverage of domestic violence issues and has been copied from here.
Sherele is also the founder of The RED HEART Campaign and a member of the Femicide Australia Project.