Speaker 1: Hello, I'm torri Archbold. For two decades, I've nurtured the
Speaker 1: world's top performing retail brands and celebrities. Now I'm asking entrepreneurs, CEOs,
Speaker 1: and influencers to share their own secrets to success. They're highs,
Speaker 1: their lows, the game changing moments, and how they got
Speaker 1: to where they are today. It's a podcast equivalent of
Speaker 1: opening the best Little Black Book of Contacts. Ever. If
Speaker 1: this resonates with you and you're ready to step outside
Speaker 1: of your comfort zone and into your power zone, I
Speaker 1: invite you to join my exclusive community via our website,
Speaker 1: The Powerful dash Steps dot com. Welcome to the Powerful
Speaker 1: Stories Podcast. Now today we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: financial abuse, which a lot of people don't want to
Speaker 1: admit to, or they don't want to talk about what's
Speaker 1: actually going on in their life, whether it's with friends,
Speaker 1: whether it's with family or colleagues. Now I feel very,
Speaker 1: very privileged to have a dear old friend of mine,
Speaker 1: Katherine Fitzpatrick, who is the founder and director of Flequidy Adventures,
Speaker 1: an independent consultancy that helps businesses improve outcomes for their
Speaker 1: customers experiencing vulnerability. Her mission is to disrupt financial abuse,
Speaker 1: but most importantly, she's an advocate for systematic change, so
Speaker 1: knowledgeable on this topic. You are an AFI one hundred
Speaker 1: Women of Influence. You are the right person to be
Speaker 1: deep diving on this very powerful conversation today. Welcome Catherine
Speaker 1: to the Powerful Stories podcast.
Speaker 2: Thanks Toy, I'm really pleased to be here. And you
Speaker 2: did say old friend, I think long time acquaintance would
Speaker 2: be better than old Thank you.
Speaker 1: I did think that when I said old, but I
Speaker 1: like long time because we have known each other for
Speaker 1: almost two decades. I would say, since Speller is almost twenty.
Speaker 2: And the same with my daughter, which I think is
Speaker 2: when we met when I was doing some work for
Speaker 2: UNISEEF and you were working for Murray Claire and we
Speaker 2: help to raise awareness of their fantastic programs around HIV
Speaker 2: AIDS by joining with fashion designers to design outfits for
Speaker 2: teddy bears.
Speaker 1: Amazing, I know, and who would have known that We're
Speaker 1: now advocating for another area that women need help with.
Speaker 1: And I'd love to be able to just deep dive
Speaker 1: on the topic of what actually is financial abuse because
Speaker 1: a lot of people listening to this, like Tory, what
Speaker 1: is this topic? How does it apply to me?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So Financial abuse is something that a lot of
Speaker 2: people don't necessarily even recognize when they're in it. It's
Speaker 2: a form of domestic and family violence. And what it
Speaker 2: is is when someone tries to control another person in
Speaker 2: the relationship through their access to money. What does that mean.
Speaker 2: It might mean that you get an allowance, and you
Speaker 2: only get the allowance if you weigh the right weight,
Speaker 2: or if you do the jobs that you need to
Speaker 2: do around the house that you're instructed to do, or
Speaker 2: you might not get any money at all, so you
Speaker 2: don't have any ability to make decisions for yourself or
Speaker 2: in fact, even try to leave if you're in an
Speaker 2: abusive relationship. I saw your face when I said some
Speaker 2: of those examples, Tory. They are examples that my colleagues
Speaker 2: and I, over the last decade or so, have heard
Speaker 2: from women.
Speaker 1: So if I'm sitting here in an absolute shock, which
Speaker 1: no doubt you were as well when these came across
Speaker 1: your desk in various roles that you've had, why did
Speaker 1: you decide that you wanted to change the system, that
Speaker 1: you wanted to empower others, that there was another way
Speaker 1: to be in a relationship.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess it started for me when I was
Speaker 2: a pretty young journalist and I was twenty four and
Speaker 2: I covered a terrible crime in Western Australia where a
Speaker 2: woman was in bed with her children and her ex
Speaker 2: husband laid in wait and then shot and killed the
Speaker 2: two children, shot her in the leg, she lost her leg,
Speaker 2: and he committed suicide. About a year after that crime,
Speaker 2: I contacted her and asked her could I please tell
Speaker 2: her story. Her name's Anne O'Neil. She's extraordinary and she
Speaker 2: gave me the great privilege of being the first journalist
Speaker 2: to ever interview her. And when I spoke to her,
Speaker 2: her experience just affected me profoundly, and it's always motivated
Speaker 2: me in every single role that I've had. So I
Speaker 2: was a journalist, I've worked in politics and government and
Speaker 2: not for profit and in corporates. So when Rosie Batty
Speaker 2: was then made Australian of the Year in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: so that was like twenty years after I first met Anne,
Speaker 2: I was very fortunate to be working at an organization
Speaker 2: where our CEO just came back and said we need
Speaker 2: to do something and I said, well, here, I think
Speaker 2: this is what we need to do. So he said,
Speaker 2: go do it, and I rang and said, can you
Speaker 2: come and help us, can you tell us what we
Speaker 2: need to do. I worked for a really big bank
Speaker 2: and we really needed to work out what's a role
Speaker 2: for a bank in domestic and family violence. Isn't this
Speaker 2: something that's behind closed doors? And we talked to a
Speaker 2: lot of victim survivors, a lot of people in the
Speaker 2: women's safety sector, and said, we do have a role here.
Speaker 2: And one of the ways it shows up in a
Speaker 2: bank and any financial service is through financial abuse. That's
Speaker 2: sort of the motivation for me, and then I found
Speaker 2: that working in a big bank. I've worked in two
Speaker 2: of Australia's biggest banks. I've been on advisory councils for
Speaker 2: the Commonwealth government and for the New South Wales government
Speaker 2: and through other organizations. I'm just motivated to change it
Speaker 2: because women shouldn't have to choose between violence and poverty.
Speaker 2: They shouldn't have to they we just need men to stop.
Speaker 2: The reason I set up my social enterprise is to
Speaker 2: disrupt financial abuse. It's to disrupt gender bias. It's to
Speaker 2: do that through better product and service design. Because everything
Speaker 2: that we've been doing today isn't working and there are
Speaker 2: vast amounts of women who are stuck in really violent
Speaker 2: relationships who don't have the ability to leave, and it
Speaker 2: shouldn't be up to them to leave, It should be
Speaker 2: up to the men to stop.
Speaker 1: So some of the statistics around this because I think
Speaker 1: financial abuse is something that a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: physically see, and traditionally we see domestic violence as in like,
Speaker 1: it's violence, like someone hitting someone, it's not like emotional
Speaker 1: and psychological. What are the warning signs and what are
Speaker 1: the trigger points that might alert someone to be able
Speaker 1: to help another person that's stuck in a situation like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's really interesting because a lot of
Speaker 2: people who are in a financially use of relationship don't
Speaker 2: realize necessarily that they're in it, but other people might
Speaker 2: be able to see, or they might not because it
Speaker 2: is really hard to see. And there's a lot of
Speaker 2: people who live with the shame and the guilt and
Speaker 2: the terror of being in a controlling relationship. So we
Speaker 2: know that one in six women are impacted by financial
Speaker 2: abuse over their lifetime. That's almost the same rate as
Speaker 2: physical violence. So one of the things that you might
Speaker 2: see if you were a friend or family member or
Speaker 2: a colleague is someone might just say, look, I can't
Speaker 2: go out with you and make excuses where they used
Speaker 2: to be able to go out because they need to
Speaker 2: be home on time, because they don't have any money
Speaker 2: to be able to pay for things. They might not
Speaker 2: be buying coffee anymore at work, some little signs like that.
Speaker 2: But I guess for women who might be experience andying
Speaker 2: that financial control, they might come to see that there've
Speaker 2: been credit cards that have been taken out in their
Speaker 2: name that they had no idea about. There might be
Speaker 2: cash that was in the offset account, or cash in
Speaker 2: a joint account that's all of a sudden been cleared
Speaker 2: out and they've got no access to it. For when
Speaker 2: somebody separates or divorce, that is a time that financial
Speaker 2: abuse can either start or it can worsen and escalate.
Speaker 2: So unfortunately, the ways that perpetrators try to control someone
Speaker 2: through their access to their money might happen long after
Speaker 2: they've separated or divorced or escaped that relationship.
Speaker 1: So I've been on the receiving end of this where
Speaker 1: I woke up one morning and I'd had credit cards
Speaker 1: that I didn't even know that I had were wrapped
Speaker 1: up with tens of thousands of dollars. I also was
Speaker 1: on the hook for someone else's dead. I had someone
Speaker 1: who wanted to take out a car lease in my name.
Speaker 1: And I've also had someone that has said that they
Speaker 1: were paying the rent but didn't pay it. And then
Speaker 1: I got asked to leave my family home with my daughter. Now,
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of people are not as
Speaker 1: fortunate as what I am because I have the get
Speaker 1: up and go to go out and you know, create
Speaker 1: and make money, you know, And I think that there's
Speaker 1: some kind of makeup in me where I have that
Speaker 1: ability to survive, but not everyone has that ability. Where
Speaker 1: can you seek help? Because I know when this happened
Speaker 1: to me, I was very ashamed about what was happening.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to say anything. I was being chased
Speaker 1: for debt that I knew wasn't mine, but I was
Speaker 1: responsible for because it was placed in my name. It's
Speaker 1: a really hard situation to be Now. I didn't ask
Speaker 1: anyone for help. I just extracted my self out of
Speaker 1: that situation because I was embarrassed by it. But if
Speaker 1: you decided to get rid of the guilt and the
Speaker 1: shame around that, where can you ask for help?
Speaker 2: First of all Tory, I'm so sorry that that's happened
Speaker 2: to you. And unfortunately you're not the only person I've
Speaker 2: heard that from. So many women have experienced that, and
Speaker 2: it can be the consequences can last for a lifetime.
Speaker 2: It's why we see women who are over fifty five
Speaker 2: as the fastest rate of homelessness people in Australia because
Speaker 2: they're saddled with this debt. And you know what's really
Speaker 2: interesting is nobody's saying, actually, well, very few people are saying, well,
Speaker 2: it's in my name, but I don't want to have
Speaker 2: to pay it. Most people will actually try really hard
Speaker 2: to repay the debt when it's in their name because
Speaker 2: they are ashamed and they don't want to have that
Speaker 2: black mark on their credit report and all of those things.
Speaker 2: But they shouldn't have to because actually it was somebody
Speaker 2: else who did that to them. So ways that you
Speaker 2: can get help, obviously, there's one eight hundred RESPECT, which
Speaker 2: is a free national service that you can call and
Speaker 2: they will help point you to some specialist services. There
Speaker 2: are a range of different organizations that do specialize in
Speaker 2: financial abuse and economic abuse. I could name a few,
Speaker 2: like the Center for Women's Economic Safety, good Shepherd has
Speaker 2: the Financial Independence Hub and here in New South Wales
Speaker 2: there's Redfern Legal Center which has got a specialist financial
Speaker 2: abuse service which is really terrific because they bring together
Speaker 2: financial counselors as well as community legal center support, so
Speaker 2: lawyers who can help extract all the different things. I think.
Speaker 2: Also you can ask your friends for help, right if
Speaker 2: you feel okay to do that and safe to do that.
Speaker 2: One of the other things I've really learned is that
Speaker 2: when you're in it, you're the only person who knows
Speaker 2: about your own safety, and you need to be the
Speaker 2: person who makes your own decisions about that. So you're
Speaker 2: going to know best, but it's where to go for
Speaker 2: that help, and the first person you speak to is
Speaker 2: usually the most important.
Speaker 1: So important. So this happened to me when my daughter
Speaker 1: was nine months old. So the first person I called
Speaker 1: was my friend and I said, I need to leave
Speaker 1: my family home and thankfully she was going away for
Speaker 1: a month with her husband and gave me her apartment
Speaker 1: and I was able to leave that situation. And really,
Speaker 1: I mean my daughter wasn't even walking at that age.
Speaker 1: It was incredibly hard. But really map out a plan
Speaker 1: as to how I was going to get bught, and
Speaker 1: I mean, you know my story. It took me twelve
Speaker 1: years to win the keys to freedom from everything that
Speaker 1: went on, but I ended up self representing, winning full
Speaker 1: custody of my daughter and got restraining order. But I
Speaker 1: find this topic so fascinating because nineteen years ago, none
Speaker 1: of this information was available, and the papers and the
Speaker 1: work that you've done to bring these to life is
Speaker 1: so important. But it also does start with the institutions
Speaker 1: and the banks to be able to see the patterns,
Speaker 1: you know, so that women like me and like you know,
Speaker 1: thousands of others out there don't have to go through
Speaker 1: this emotional, you know, turmoil because it's completely stressful, it's heartbreaking,
Speaker 1: and you know you're running on empty trying to solve
Speaker 1: the situation. But how through your research and work, do
Speaker 1: these banks and institutions now have trigger points where they
Speaker 1: can actually call women and say how can I help you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look, Tory, I just want to say I
Speaker 2: stand on the shoulders of so many people who have
Speaker 2: been doing this work for such a long time. So
Speaker 2: I feel very privileged to have worked with a lot
Speaker 2: of people who've worked in women's safety, who've worked in
Speaker 2: financial counseling and victim survivors who've been willing to talk
Speaker 2: about their experiences so that people like me who've worked
Speaker 2: in the corporate sector can better understand what are they
Speaker 2: going through and how could we help. So one of
Speaker 2: the things that I've seen in banking, So in banking,
Speaker 2: not everyone loves a bank. Let's face it, people don't
Speaker 2: really like banks. But you know what I've seen over
Speaker 2: the years is banks have really understood that actually they
Speaker 2: play a really critical role when somebody is experiencing domestic
Speaker 2: and family violence and financial abuse. Why is that Because
Speaker 2: research shows that women are more likely to contact their
Speaker 2: bank about economic abuse than they are to talk to
Speaker 2: a specialist family and domestic violence service. That's a really
Speaker 2: big responsibility for banks. Why do they do that. They
Speaker 2: do it because money gives you choices. They do it
Speaker 2: to separate, to disentangle, and to start again. So you'll
Speaker 2: see that there are a lot of banks that now
Speaker 2: have trained people with specialist teams. I set up a
Speaker 2: team at Commonwealth Bank to do that, for example, where
Speaker 2: we had special training. This is what domestic and family
Speaker 2: violence is, this is what financial abuse is. Unfortunately, sometimes
Speaker 2: people have to repeat their stories, and that's something that
Speaker 2: I know that lots of organizations are trying to work on.
Speaker 2: So you shouldn't have to ring up and say I
Speaker 2: am experiencing domestic violence. Here is my AVO, my apprehendive
Speaker 2: violence order or some other police statement. You should just
Speaker 2: be able to ring up and get to the right
Speaker 2: person quickly. But when you do that, you'll find that
Speaker 2: people will be able to put in place some supports,
Speaker 2: whether it's relief from a hardship, belief from paying your
Speaker 2: mortgage for example, setting up a safe account, those sorts
Speaker 2: of things. The other area that I didn't understand until
Speaker 2: I saw it was anywhere that you've got a joint
Speaker 2: account or anywhere that has got digital services is very
Speaker 2: likely to be something that can be abused in an
Speaker 2: abusive relationship. What do I mean by that? So when
Speaker 2: I was at Commonwealth Bank and my team was supporting
Speaker 2: customers experiencing domestic and family violence, one of them said
Speaker 2: take a look at this, and in the account there
Speaker 2: were these one cent transactions payments from her abusive ex
Speaker 2: partner and they were really awful. And so I had
Speaker 2: a teen of data scientists and I said, can you
Speaker 2: just tell me is this a thing, and they looked
Speaker 2: at eleven million transactions in a three month period and
Speaker 2: found eight thousand of them were really serious abuse, threats, harassment,
Speaker 2: all sent for as little as content. Yeah, where you
Speaker 2: would where I might send you some money through the
Speaker 2: app and I would say thanks for lunch, happy birthday.
Speaker 2: Those sorts of things people were writing, I hate you,
Speaker 2: unblock me from Facebook. I read one that was nine
Speaker 2: hundred messages long, nine hundred messages one cent at a time,
Speaker 2: so cost a total of nine dollars, and that included
Speaker 2: I can see you, I'm standing out the front. I
Speaker 2: want to kill you. I want to kill them all
Speaker 2: in a bank account. It's shocking, it's shocking and just horrendous.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine what it would be like to be
Speaker 2: on the receiving end of those messages. So that's called
Speaker 2: tech facilitated abuse, but it's really linked with your finances.
Speaker 2: What I'm really proud of in my career is that
Speaker 2: I was able to catalyze all Australian banks in Australia
Speaker 2: to respond to that, taking that information, talking to victim survivors,
Speaker 2: talking to the e Safety Commissioner who said, look at
Speaker 2: safety by design, this is what I've built with the
Speaker 2: tech sector and applying that in banking. So now that
Speaker 2: was twenty nineteen. Now we've seen banks have blocked over
Speaker 2: a million of those transactions. So they just block the
Speaker 2: bad words. So you can't send someone rent and say
Speaker 2: midget pawn, which is what apparently a lot of young
Speaker 2: people do, or other things like that. Gross, don't put
Speaker 2: it in your bank account. Seriously, I tell my kids
Speaker 2: and their friends. People can see what's in your bank account.
Speaker 2: Don't put stuff in there that you don't want to
Speaker 2: print out and take when you want to rent a house, right,
Speaker 2: just treated as something a formal statement. But people so
Speaker 2: bad words are blocked. Now there's also a number of
Speaker 2: the banks use artificial intelligence and they run machine learning
Speaker 2: and they look at for the patterns of that abuse,
Speaker 2: and then they have humans who read that and then
Speaker 2: they intervene and so they could be contacting the recipients
Speaker 2: of those messages or in two cases, banks told me
Speaker 2: they write to the people who send the abuse and
Speaker 2: they say, hey, we can see you. If you don't stop,
Speaker 2: we will suspend you or will exit you from the bank.
Speaker 2: And what they told me is that more than ninety
Speaker 2: percent of people who get those letters stop sending the
Speaker 2: abuse through bank accounts.
Speaker 1: Well, that's very powerful because I don't think i'd ever
Speaker 1: want to receive a letter like that. But when you
Speaker 1: get someone who's like my eyes on you make a change,
Speaker 1: it is extremely powerful. What are some of the statistics
Speaker 1: around domestic violence linked to this, Well.
Speaker 2: We do know that one in six women experience financial abuse,
Speaker 2: and that's about the same rate as women experience physical violence.
Speaker 2: It's about one in twelve men who might experience financial abuse.
Speaker 2: We know that in domestic and family violence cases about
Speaker 2: ninety percent of them experience financial abuse, so that's present
Speaker 2: at the same time as violence. And when men use
Speaker 2: money to control they are more likely to use physical
Speaker 2: violence as well. There's been some reports that show that
Speaker 2: the cost of financial abuse to victim survivors is five
Speaker 2: point seven billion dollars a year in Australia. It's a
Speaker 2: huge amount of money that then women who suffer from
Speaker 2: the gender pay gap, who don't have as much money
Speaker 2: in their superannuation, who are taking time out of work
Speaker 2: to be primary carers, and then they might experience this
Speaker 2: lack of access to money and it being used to
Speaker 2: control them. It just accumulates.
Speaker 1: So I have a crazy story which I haven't shared
Speaker 1: on the podcast, but I think it could be time.
Speaker 1: So I was the primary care of my daughter, and
Speaker 1: as you know, I was in and out of court
Speaker 1: for twelve years. Not only was I taken to court
Speaker 1: so that I would end up with nothing, I also
Speaker 1: had my frequent flyer cardbroken into to find out what
Speaker 1: plane I was on. And my ex ended up placing
Speaker 1: himself when he claimed he was unemployed. Next to me
Speaker 1: on a plane from Sydney to Melbourne and said to me,
Speaker 1: we're in the middle of you know what's going to
Speaker 1: happen with my daughter? And I said, it's about her.
Speaker 1: It's not about us, it's whatever the outcome is. It's
Speaker 1: about her highest and greatest good, her stability, her future.
Speaker 1: And he said to me, I will never stop taking
Speaker 1: you to court until you're left with nothing. And I
Speaker 1: was obviously very visibly distressed, and the air hostess kindly
Speaker 1: came over and got me and moved me further up.
Speaker 1: And I remember calling my lawyer after that, saying, number one,
Speaker 1: how did he end up? We don't even share the
Speaker 1: same last name. Next to me on a plane he's
Speaker 1: claiming he's unemployed. He keeps changing lawyers so he doesn't
Speaker 1: have to pay for anything. I'm showing up, I'm putting
Speaker 1: food on the table, I'm building a business. I'm paying
Speaker 1: my bills for legal representation. How did all this happen?
Speaker 1: And he goes, this is a one in a million
Speaker 1: chance that this man could have done that, and it
Speaker 1: years later I knew what it was. He'd broken into
Speaker 1: every single password in an account that I had, and
Speaker 1: it was like this terror train of like no matter
Speaker 1: where you turn, something's there to block you. And then
Speaker 1: I remember sitting in court, you know, after one time
Speaker 1: paying eight thousand dollars to renew my daughter's passport so
Speaker 1: that she could travel with me for work when she
Speaker 1: was younger. And now I look at it and I
Speaker 1: think it cost a couple of hundred dollars to run
Speaker 1: your passport. I paid eight thousand because I had to
Speaker 1: jump through hoops, because he really did want to drain
Speaker 1: me with nothing, right, He wanted me to have nothing.
Speaker 1: But what he didn't realize was that that would affect
Speaker 1: my daughter. I remember my lawyer saying to me, this
Speaker 1: is never going to go away. And then he said
Speaker 1: to me, this is about money, and I said, I know,
Speaker 1: and he said to me, I know, this sounds really terrible,
Speaker 1: but what if you offered him money to go away?
Speaker 1: And that was a very very real consideration for me.
Speaker 1: And I won't disclose what happened at the end, but
Speaker 1: that just triggered a whole thought process to me as
Speaker 1: like a reign of terror of twelve years of my life,
Speaker 1: which left me with PDSD, left my daughter with PDSD.
Speaker 1: How do you untangle yourself? And it does come down
Speaker 1: to that financial abuse piece and what makes the other
Speaker 1: person tick. But I reclaimed my power because what I did,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to recommend this to other people as well,
Speaker 1: is I went and so a psychologist and I said,
Speaker 1: take me inside the mind of who this person is,
Speaker 1: what makes them tick, and what do I need to
Speaker 1: do to have that breakthrough to get the keys to freedom.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the reasons why I downsized my
Speaker 1: agency and became more available to myself, because, as you know,
Speaker 1: I had that near death experience and that was just
Speaker 1: complete complete stress of this whole situation, which is why
Speaker 1: I really wanted to share today this story about financial abuse,
Speaker 1: because if you are in a relationship like this right now,
Speaker 1: you can get help. Don't be afraid to ask for help.
Speaker 1: But also you can end up with a happy heart
Speaker 1: because I married a great man many years later, and
Speaker 1: you know I got the keys to freedom, but it
Speaker 1: was after twelve years of like complete help. What is
Speaker 1: the usual cycle that people stay in this for? Like
Speaker 1: how long are they in this before they can actually exit?
Speaker 2: Look, i'd I don't know, But what I do know
Speaker 2: is that it can take a woman up to seven
Speaker 2: times before she's able to leave. And the first person
Speaker 2: that she tells and talks to about that experience is
Speaker 2: one of the most important. And it's why you hear
Speaker 2: people say believe believe her when she tells you don't
Speaker 2: judge her. She is the best person to judge what
Speaker 2: her safety is, what she needs to do. We know
Speaker 2: that if you have no money, the choice between staying
Speaker 2: and leaving is often a choice between violence or poverty.
Speaker 2: You've got to start again. It doesn't surprise me that
Speaker 2: you had all of those issues. One, you've got a
Speaker 2: stalker behavior where somebody is literally prying into all of
Speaker 2: your accounts. That's called tech facilitated abuse. These days, they
Speaker 2: probably didn't even talk about it that much twelve years old,
Speaker 2: you know at the start of that that is really
Speaker 2: typical now. And you talk to people who are working
Speaker 2: in the sector and they will say, before a woman
Speaker 2: goes into a refuge, they have to sweep her phone,
Speaker 2: they have to sweep her car and remove all the
Speaker 2: tracking devices. Changing passwords is just not good enough. You
Speaker 2: have to get new devices. They need to be safe.
Speaker 2: You've got to set up things really differently. So there's
Speaker 2: stalker behavior, there's the abuse of the court system. I'm
Speaker 2: going to keep taking you into court, so I'm going
Speaker 2: to bleed you dry. And it isn't always actually about
Speaker 2: the money. It's about control. So it's about this is
Speaker 2: the way I'm going to keep you in my life,
Speaker 2: dancing to my chin and so breaking free of that
Speaker 2: is huge. The fact that you were able to do that,
Speaker 2: the fact that women are able to do that with
Speaker 2: support or sometimes just on their own, is extraordinary. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a community attitudes survey that's done in Australia and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people who still hold the belief
Speaker 2: why didn't she just leave? Where I think the question
Speaker 2: is why didn't he just stop? That's the first question
Speaker 2: he should just stop. Why didn't he stop? And then
Speaker 2: when you say why didn't she leave? Well, she may
Speaker 2: love him still, he could still be the parent of children.
Speaker 2: She might not even have the ability to leave because
Speaker 2: he's using these coercive, controlling tactics and keeping her in
Speaker 2: there and reeling her in. And you've probably heard the
Speaker 2: expression like gas lading or love bombing. So it's like
Speaker 2: I love you, or do all these things for you,
Speaker 2: lovely kindness and loving acts, and then the next thing
Speaker 2: you know, it's slap. I'm just not even physically, but
Speaker 2: it's just like, nope, now you're not doing what I
Speaker 2: command you to do, so therefore you're going to be
Speaker 2: punished for that. Living in that arrangement, it's like walking
Speaker 2: on eggshells, women say, and always saying, what do I
Speaker 2: need to do now so that I'm not punished or
Speaker 2: money is not with held, or love is not with held,
Speaker 2: or I'm treated really violently. So I think that there
Speaker 2: is a really macabre dance, and it's so hard for
Speaker 2: someone to extract themselves, and you've just described that.
Speaker 1: I often think my life story is a little bit
Speaker 1: like a Jackie Collins novel, only with a really good ending,
Speaker 1: because now you know, it's like it's had everything, and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of thinking, was I jinxed when I used
Speaker 1: to sneak those books into my bedroom when I was younger,
Speaker 1: read all this stuff and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it all becomes true. But what I do want to
Speaker 1: leave on this note is that we can all survive
Speaker 1: and we can thrive if we lean into the power
Speaker 1: of experts and you know people, as you say, who's
Speaker 1: the first person you call? One of that was my friend,
Speaker 1: but it was also the local police station and sitting
Speaker 1: in there going I think I'm crazy, but maybe I'm not,
Speaker 1: and then saying to me, you're not. I still keep
Speaker 1: in contact with Amelia who helped me nineteen years ago,
Speaker 1: and ironically, you know, she ended up being high up
Speaker 1: in the police force. But ironically she texts me a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago and said, I'm going through the
Speaker 1: same situation. Can you help me? And I was like,
Speaker 1: of course. So I do think it's important for women
Speaker 1: to speak up. I do think it's important for organizations
Speaker 1: to tap into what you were doing, Catherine. But most importantly,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this podcast today and something triggers
Speaker 1: something in you, where can we share with people that
Speaker 1: they can go to either speak with someone that's going
Speaker 1: to help them, or access information that you've created, Catherine,
Speaker 1: so that they can just read and work out the
Speaker 1: next powerful step. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Look, I think the best place to start is one
Speaker 2: eight hundred Respect. It's a free service and they will
Speaker 2: then point you to the right organizations that are where
Speaker 2: you live, and there's a number of other fantastic agencies
Speaker 2: that provide you with that support. From my perspective, I
Speaker 2: work with business to say what do you do and
Speaker 2: what can what's your role in domestic and family violence.
Speaker 2: So there's a national plan in Australia that there's a
Speaker 2: ten year blueprint for the country and it's got this
Speaker 2: ambitious goal to end gender violence in one generation and
Speaker 2: it says there are three roles for business. One is
Speaker 2: you need to foster gender equality in the workforce. The
Speaker 2: second one is you need to provide lead to people
Speaker 2: experiencing domestic and family violence so help and you know,
Speaker 2: some organizations will provide leave to victim survivors. They'll also
Speaker 2: provide leave to perpetrators so they can go to court
Speaker 2: and those sorts of things, which is important because if
Speaker 2: they don't that could also be a trigger for more
Speaker 2: violence and abuse. But the third part of the National
Speaker 2: Plan says that businesses need to have products and services
Speaker 2: that are safe, that prevent misuse, and that hold perpetrators
Speaker 2: to account. So that's what I work on. How do
Speaker 2: you make sure that your products and services are safe
Speaker 2: if they're being weaponized in the context of domestic violence.
Speaker 2: No one wants to be the business that's a safe
Speaker 2: haven for abusers. So how do you make changes to
Speaker 2: those to disrupt the abuse, to make it much harder
Speaker 2: for perpetrators to do that? How do you send a
Speaker 2: strong signal to them saying we don't want you to
Speaker 2: misuse our products and services? And then how do you
Speaker 2: make sure that you are guiding that better protection for
Speaker 2: victim survivors? Because we've all got a role to play,
Speaker 2: and there's something that everyone can do in their own
Speaker 2: sphere of influence, and Tori, I think about the people
Speaker 2: who are going to listen to your podcast and do
Speaker 2: your programs, smart capable, powerful women. If every single one
Speaker 2: of them said what can I do? What can I
Speaker 2: do differently and took action, it will be part of
Speaker 2: that movement that we need and the best one is
Speaker 2: to support other women.
Speaker 1: Were we going to support you as you create this movement?
Speaker 1: And I just want to say thank you for sharing
Speaker 1: what financial abuse is most importantly, but how big business
Speaker 1: can get behind and prevent it.
Speaker 2: Thank you Catherine, my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you for being here with me today. I trust
Speaker 1: that you enjoyed listening to yet another powerful story. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we can forget just how incredible we are as women
Speaker 1: and how important it is to support each other. I'd
Speaker 1: love you to take a moment to review the podcast
Speaker 1: and help support the show. You can also take a
Speaker 1: screenshot of this episode and share it across your social media.
Speaker 1: Be sure to tag me so that I can give
Speaker 1: you a shout out too. I'm a true believer of
Speaker 1: women supporting women, and I look forward to connecting with
Speaker 1: you again soon. Much love, Torri