Thanks for offering to help ...

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Ben Schokman
Human Rights Law Resource Centre
Melbourne, Victoria



Dear Mr Schokman,

Thank you for the phone conversation and the information you shared with me.

Please find following –
2-page letter to named members of the National Council to Prevent Violence Against Women and Children (mailed 3rd May 2008 with dvd “How Then Shall We Live: A Process for Developing a Plan to Escape Abusive Relationships” which my eldest child and I were involved in, am mailing you a copy)
2 pages contact details re National Council to Reduce Violence Against Children and Women
1 page letter to Law Council of Australia (mailed express 27th May 2008 with extensive documentation)
1 page article today’s Sydney Morning Herald, mentions new council

If the members of the newly announced National Council to Reduce Violence Against Women and Children were aware that you and others were aware of our situation and these issues would we be safer and more likely to receive assistance?

There are so many other twists to and hypocrisies involved with our situation, i.e. Jack Layton, Canadian federal MP, leader of the NDP, is one of the co-founders of the White Ribbon Campaign, he did not responded to my phone call and emails begging for assistance, and it is the NDP who were the provincial government in … , Canada at the time that province’s justice department was having its employee misrepresent information in court about immigrant women and their children’s experience of domestic violence. In both Canada and Australia politicians, academics, delegates to international and UN conferences who say they care about the issues of violence against children and women will not assist us or speak up on these issues.

So would it be appropriate for you to share this information with Transparency International as well?

In my online resource/blog www.womenwhowant2gohome.blogspot.com the post “As it is written …” mentions some of the laws and international instruments that should have protected us.

There are some important things about our situation and these issues I would like to be clear about:
- We need and deserve immediate safety, security and support
-I want to be part of the solution, as those in the disability community say “Nothing about us without us!”, there are already too many who have participated in creating a domestic violence “industry” which benefits those “experts” who never have and never will experience domestic and family violence while doing little to change children and women’s lived reality of domestic violence and systemic and judicial abuse. There has to be something productive I can do with my experiential knowledge and extensive research, instead of others trying to benefit from it and appropriate my intellectual property without assisting us. I would be quiet happy to be an additional member to the new Council, have recently applied to the NSW Premier’s Council for Prevention of Violence Against Women (no response as yet) and had applied to participate in the Australia 2020 Summit – and was rejected! (See post “Further out of view … further out of mind …” at my online resource/blog).
- I see these issues as interconnected with and not divisible from other social justice, governance, economic and sustainability issues
- These issues need to be part of public and political discourse, and until my children and I are safe we need to not be in any way identifiable, knowing you can ask for assistance and remain safely anonymous would be an important factor in other women and families coming forward to share their information of similar experiences, which would assist in starting to collect statistics and other helpful information. (Maybe the groups you mentioned could host a publicity campaign and toll free phone number for a period of time – or request the new Council to do so).


If it is helpful I can mail you the extensive supporting documentation that I have shared with many others while trying to gain support and assistance for us and other children and women in similar traumatic circumstances.

Sincerely,

…


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Ben has let me know that he is trying to compile the extensive documentation that I forwarded to him so that he can share that in a more comprehensible form with organisation that the Human Rights Law Resource Centre has been working with to enable them to advocate for us and all Australian children and women trapped overseas by domestic violence and systemic and judicial abuse.

At one stage in one of our conversations Ben thought I was angry with him because of the loud angry way I was speaking. I felt very badly about that, especially since he was one person who had offered to do something to help! I tried to explain to him that I wasn’t angry at him but at the situation my children and I and other children and women were experiencing, at how difficult it was to get any assistance or support when supposedly so many people find violence against children and women unacceptable, at how there was immediate assistance for drug traffickers and Douglas woods and bomb blast victims – but nothing for children and women who have experienced domestic violence – and how long it was all taking and how afraid I am that considering some of our and others experiences there is a chance that we will not survive this.

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