When a cop becomes the victim: Caroline Clarke Pt. 1

Caroline Clarke spent nearly a decade as a police officer on the rough streets of West Yorkshire chasing down criminals, working the drugs squad, and stepping into homes torn apart by domestic violence. But nothing in her training prepared her for what happened when she became a victim-survivor herself. In this episode of I Catch Killers, Caroline opens up about growing up in a home where love and violence lived side by side, the silence she inherited from her mother, and the sexual assault that left her questioning why her body froze when she thought she would fight. Caroline breaks down the freeze response, a trauma reaction still misunderstood by police, juries, and the public, and explains why survivors are so often blamed instead of believed. Caroline is now the founder of the No More Silence movement, dedicated to helping survivors break their silence and shift the shame back to where it belongs. Subscribe to our new Youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@ICatchKillers-Podcast Follow I Catch Killers: Instagram:@icatchkillers https://www.instagram.com/icatchkillers/?hl=enTiktok:@icatchkillerspodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@icatchkillerspodcastFacebook:@icatchkillers https://www.facebook.com/icatchkillers/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The public has had a long-held fascination with detectives. Detectives see a side of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent 34 years as a cop. For 25 of those years, I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  If you think being a police officer makes you immune to being a victim, you're mistaken. Today's guest, former police officer Caroline Clark, grew up in a home where love and violence live side by side. Her mother's suffering became a template for her own. Caroline spent almost a decade as a police officer in the UK. Then, in 2024, at a routine massage appointment, Caroline was sexually assaulted. She froze. And for a woman who has spent her career in control, who had trained for threat, who had seen what silence does to victims, her response was one that she couldn't explain. What followed was a pursuit of justice, a reckoning with her past and the unravelling of a cycle of abuse she could finally trace, all the way back to her childhood.

• 1:33Speaker 00

  Caroline Clark, welcome to I Catch Killers.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  Well, I'm looking forward to having the chat with you today. We're going to delve into some interesting things. And some of, let's be open, some of them are fairly traumatic because I'm going to ask you to talk about a time when you were sexually assaulted and the process that you went through and the impact it had on you. But... I think it's important that we find out who you are before we start talking about a thing that had a dramatic effect on you. I notice you've come in wearing a T-shirt, no more silence. What's that about?

• 2:10Speaker 01

  So this has come on the back of the sexual assault.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  And understanding how many people have been abused. And there's so much stigma, particularly around sexual abuse.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  So the no more silence movement was created to help people to break their silence and then to hand the shame back to where it belongs.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  I like the concept of that, that for too long victims of sexual abuse have felt like they've contributed in some way, whether that's child sexual abuse or other forms of sexual abuse. And the victims are vilified sometimes. And so, good on you.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  Let's speak up about it. There shouldn't be any shame to it. And the only shame is on the people that perpetrate these crimes.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. So no, this mission has grown somewhat since that sexual assault, which is great.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  Interesting backstory you got yourself. You're a police officer over in the UK.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  I was. I joined in nineteen ninety-four when I was twenty years old. So I served nearly eight years in West Yorkshire.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  In the north of England. So yeah, I think it's very much shaped who I am today, those years in the police force.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  What made you want to join the police?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Well, I grew up in a little mining town. I always had this dream to go to the city lights or explore the world. And I got a job in an insurance company.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  And I just realised every single day, the same faces on the train, all looking miserable. And I was like, is this people's lives forever? Just like nine to five. Anyway, I was sitting at my desk one day typing and my colleague was having this conversation on the phone and sounded really exciting. And she put the phone out. I said, what was that? She's all my sisters join the police force and she's just been chasing some criminals through a car park. And I thought, oh, that's, that sounds a lot more interesting than just tapping on a keyboard. So I thought, oh, okay, I'll give them a call and perhaps I might join and. They said at the time that it was an eighteen month waiting list. I didn't tell anyone.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  So I thought, oh, if I don't get in, I don't want the shame of not being good enough.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  So I went on a waiting list for eighteen months and yeah.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Got in. Okay. Well, that that's interesting because people who listen to my podcast probably have heard me talk about why I joined the police. And I was having lunch from on a building site and I saw the cops chasing a bad guy. And I I thought that looks like fun. So you didn't join for any noble reason. You joined because you thought it would be exciting.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think I was ambitious, courageous, determined. And I think all of those qualities and values I had within almost like came up to the surface and went, well, I'm not actually fulfilling that in this role in an insurance company. So I felt there's probably a lot of wasted qualities within me that could have been used elsewhere. And I thought, okay, I was I was quite like that, though. I'll give that a go. What's what's the worst that can happen is, you know.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Well, I, yeah, I found it a fascinating career and you you see a side of life that most people don't get to get to see. Uh, it comes with with costs, as we all know, anyone that's spent a length of time in uh law enforcement. It comes with costs, but there's a lot of interesting things that occur as well and job satisfaction. Yeah, you talk about going to the same office day in, day out. That's what I loved about the cops. You never never knew what you were going to do each day. Your day could start out boring and it could be the most exhilarating, fascinating or traumatic day you've ever experienced. You just didn't know.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  And I think that's what I loved about it.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  I think I hate that just mundane life. And I would wake up and go, God, I wonder what I'm going to face today. Sometimes it would be horrific, other times it could be um, you know, exhilarating. You could come home and go, I really changed someone's life today. And I think for me, I was always in service to humanity in some way, shape or form. And that job just met completely with my values, just knowing that you could make a change. And I think this is why I've probably gone on to do what I've done with every experience in life. It's like, how can I change that around into something good to serve. Of the public and I think the police did that very well.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  And I I think regardless of why we join or why people join the police. If you do commit to that job, you do understand that it is a public service and there is a lot of good. And it makes you feel good about yourself, like doing work to make people's lives a little bit better. Um Yorkshire, where you were a police officer, describe the area that you were stationed in.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  So for me, when I joined, I was lucky enough that my cousin worked in the recruitment department. So she said, you can choose any division.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  Oh, that's a handy inside.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  But again, the character that I had, and I think deep down, when I've really done the work and looked into this, I think I was always trying to impress my dad. Because my dad was a very harsh man. So it was like, if I just throw myself in at the deep end. Then I'll get praise from him. I'll finally be seen. I'll finally be commended in some way. So I thought, okay. I said to her, choose me the most notorious crime-ridden division, throw me in there. Well, as you would know, if you're a good officer in a terrible area, you can't you can't leave.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, you get get busy.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  You get stuck there. So it was called Killingbeck. And yeah, I mean, it was, I mean, it was eleven miles from where I grew up. But I I couldn't believe, like, it was almost like a different world. I'm like, do people really exist like this? I think it was a short, sharp shock. Even though I grew up in, what I now realise is was a pretty domestic violence home, seeing that. And I was just gobsmacked and appalled at the generational cycles of abuse. That were just continuing over and over.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it's, I I would imagine in an area like that, majority of crime on the. Probably the main crime is domestic violence and that that type of thing in low socio economic areas. Uh that's quite often, quite often the case.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it was very low socio economic, but you laugh because it was that bad that the script writers from the bill would come out. And get stories.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  I love that show.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  I enjoyed the bill, although it was so, I I found it so realistic in part. Sometimes when I was just tired of police work, I didn't feel like watching the bill because you you could. You felt like you understood all the characters in there, the nature of it.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  It was so real and we used to joke and said, oh, you know, if you can't remember the caution, just watch the bill and then you'll get reminded.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that's right. I did a little bit of work over in London and various police stations over there. And it looked like the set of the bill. It was, I felt very familiar with it. How did you feel the first, like you go through the academy, how did you feel the first day that you went out in uniform and working as a police officer? Because you think you're ready for it, but it usually comes as a shock. Have you got any experiences that showed you how little you knew?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  I think I was just really naive when I look back. And as I say, I had that strength within, but I'd not really caught up to um, the reality of life, almost like I was probably living in a little bubble.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  So I remember the first time on foot patrol and you'll remember back in the early nineties, like women wore skirts and culottes, we wore stockings. So you're like a proper lady. And it was my tutor dropped me off. He said, you know, do two hours, but you have to get so many tickets and.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  So, okay. I remember these two kids walking at the other side of the street and the shouts, oi. And I'm thinking, they can't be talking to me. Surely they won't speak to a police officer like that. So I carried on walking in there, oi, oi, you. And I looked around and said, excuse me, come here. In that sort of like teacher voice. Uh, I said, who are you speaking to? And they're like, evof or something like that. I said, where are your manners? You know, you don't speak to me that same please. And I think in that moment, I realised that like the world I've grown up in is not the world that I'm going to survive in the police force. It's like I have, you almost have to meet them at their level.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  So I had a lot of undoing to do and naivety to survive in that job.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  Did you do single unit patrols in those days? That's interesting. Like it's, we do have them over, over in this country. But it's very rare. Um, that's a, a sharp learning experience because at least when, when I started.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  Invariably, you had a partner that you could rely on. It didn't take very long before you became the senior partner, but for the first couple of months, you you had a buddy that looked after you and and pointed you in the right direction. So.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  I mean, when you think about it, even putting a female out on her own is pretty ludicrous. I mean, I remember chasing a car by myself and times when you called to a hostage situation, but they would usually say wait outside the address until somebody arrives. But of course, if you're outside an address and you can hear commotion and then you're just sitting in a car helpless. But, you know, we, it was all down to numbers. If you didn't have it, you had a certain amount of cars, six cars, and you had to fill them.

• 10:55Speaker 00

  Yep. You weren't armed as well, were you?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Back in, back in those days. Now, that that seems like a foreign concept to someone from law enforcement in this country, because we always had the firearm as the backup. But that would have let you felt fairly vulnerable, I would imagine, in certain circumstances.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Completely. I mean, when you think when we joined, all we had was a little truncheon.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  This long, that's it. There was no capsicum spray, there was no side handle button, there were the floppy handcuffs.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  So we were really exposed. But I remember when they first brought the capsicum spray in, we finally felt that we all had something more than just, because no one really, I think you only use your truncheon to smash a window.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  But we never had issues with guns back then.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  It was always knives. So I, I, my philosophy was, well, if we've got a gun, they're going to try and outbeat us in some way. So I don't know, part of me thought, if we had guns, would there have been more gun crime in the UK?

• 11:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Perhaps maybe.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  I, I understand where you're coming from, because it's, I, I was amazed that you could do the policing that you did in London without, without the firearms. But it does tend to escalate. If you've got a firearm, all the bad guys have got a firearm, and then it keeps going, going that way.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Um. Did you have any scary experiences, any, any where you genuinely feared for your, your safety?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there wasn't too much of that. Actually, it's probably the safest I felt in my whole life, in the sense that growing up with a a volatile father, for the first time, I was actually surrounded by some really safe, protective men.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  And I think for me, that was extremely comforting. I remember the first time, probably the scariest time, when I first joined, I went to this burglary and it was, as you know, when you would get a call, by the time we arrived, time's elapsed and they've gone. But this time, we were around the corner and my colleague said to me, you go wait at the front and I'm gonna go inside, meaning I'll face the danger, you can just be the observer. So I'm stood there thinking, okay, what do I do? No word of a lie, it was a textbook robbery. He literally jumped through the the the front glass window with his swag bag. And I thought, what do I do now? Like, my tutor's not here to give me direction. So I chased after him down the street. He was about six foot two, but he had this little ponytail.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  So I grabbed hold of him, grabbed his ponytail, pulled him, because obviously you've got leverage with that.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Dragged him to the ground. I remember we were rolling and I'm just thinking, what the heck am I doing? Like, where's my colleague? And the area that you're in, nobody comes to save a police officer. In fact, they just look over and laugh at you.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Anyway, when I eventually got up and I thought, oh, this job's fun. This is must be what you do every day. You get, you know, pretty naive. And this guy, there was a warrant out for his arrest. And they're like, do you realise? Like, I think I got a bravery commendation for that. Do you realise what you've just done? I was like, oh, I just thought this happened every day.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  But they're the things, the situations that you find yourself in. And, you know, when you get through it, sometimes I think, and we get paid for this because the excitement, the adrenaline. And I was drawn to that. I enjoyed that aspect of it. But it brings back memories like when you, an alarm, a break in, and you might be on night shift and you're creeping, creeping around in the dark, not knowing what you're gonna find. So, yeah, it does leave impressions.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  I mean, back in those days, it was when they used to take the ATMs out of the walls. Do you remember when there used to be a spade of that?

• 14:17Speaker 00

  We had a spade of that in the two, early two thousands and.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  With the forklift trucks. And then I remember one guy, I think he was drunk, he'd obviously come out of the pub and thought it was a good idea to go back in and take the safe. And he had like a little shopping trolley and we caught him like pushing it down the street. So I mean, you have to laugh at those kind of incidents, really.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  You've got to love, love, love those moments. I, I still laugh. I, very early in my career. I, and I think it went for about a kilometer and a half, chasing, chasing a naked man down the, down the street. At two o'clock, three o'clock in the morning, that we're looking out for a kidnapper that had been abducting or had abducted a child. Chasing this naked man, thinking this is a kidnapper and going hell for leather. I had an old sergeant with me at the time. That wasn't really the type that was in a foot pursuit. So I'm, I'm ahead of him, chasing this naked man. I still. And then we're running up a hill and down streets. And I remember, and I wasn't going to do it, but I thought he's getting away, getting away from me.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  And I, I yelled out, stop or I'll shoot. I wasn't going to shoot. I didn't have my firearm out, obviously. And he stopped at that moment and I ran and, and grabbed him and wrestling with this naked man on the road. The sergeant, I think I nearly killed him because he thought, who is this young idiot, as in me, saying, stop or I'll shoot. So he sprinted up the hill. He collapsed beside us. But yeah, it's, it's strange, the circumstances that you find yourself in.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  And it's funny, isn't it, how when you're in a conversation, how it actually invokes old memories.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Cause I've, there's so much that I've forgotten, but when you start to have a conversation, and I remember chasing some kids.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Cause I was pretty fit back then.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  But you know, some of these little whippersnappers, you just, you can't catch them, right? And I remember running, you know, and your feet are running faster than you and I, I literally fell over.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Like ripped all my tights and skin was hanging off my leg. And I remember this, all these kids just laughing at me. And I thought, oh God, I hope I never, ever see them again.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, that's the joys of policing. Did you get into the criminal investigation side of policing?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, as far as I got was in drugs. I went into the drugs team.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  What, what was that like? That would have been interesting times, cause drugs would have been pretty prevalent, as they are now, but very much so in the, in the nineties.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, very prevalent. I think the fun part of that was doing all the concerts. Like I remember V97, we did the, um. Yeah, we did, we were in plain clothes. I remember. Been told, look, we we're not gonna arrest for cannabis cause there'll be that much of it unless it's a a serious amount, but just take it off them. And like we were walking around with pockets and pockets of weed and um yeah, it was it was fun. I I think the downside to that was all the surveillance. And I just wanted to be in the heat of the moment. I wanted to be in the thick of it on the front line, whereas there was hours and hours.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Sitting in cars, almost falling asleep, watching houses.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, yeah, you say it, it's like memories. I I think the countless times I've been sitting in a car at all hours of the day, night and sitting there trying to uh trying to stay awake and try not to miss anything. And uh being cold or hot or all the different different things. But yeah, well, that's that's what you sign up for when you uh when you do policing. You uh worked child protection uh as well.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  So that was outside of the police, which has been interesting, cause I think I've always been driven towards understanding trauma.

• 17:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Even though I didn't realise I was. So the child protection was in twenty four hour homes and it was kids who'd literally been passed through from you know, parents to foster care to the point where they had nowhere to go. So I mean, these were heavily, heavily traumatised children. And I I struggled.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Because there were kids who were hitting you, spitting at you.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  And I thought in the police force, we we had powers to do something. And of course, it was no fault of these children.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  However, the children were heavily protected.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  And I was I was drowning in that job. I was like, you know, bosses would just turn a blind eye. And I think for me, there was a big part of my vulnerability was still quite exposed. I had I had that mother figure in me. I just wanted to help everyone. But again, when we talk about, does that help you to survive in a home like that, that mother inside of me didn't.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  If if you wanna help everyone and you jump deep enough into a dark area, you you find that you just haven't got the capabilities of it. That's too much to uh too much to deal with. What um you left the police, what uh why did you decide to leave the police?

• 18:50Speaker 01

  I had a car accident.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  So it wasn't.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  Working.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Um, yeah. So it wasn't a choice and I, that was a very dark time in my life because as you know, you join a family. And literally, we would have, back then, we had bars in police stations. I don't know whether you had those.

• 19:07Speaker 00

  Uh, not, huh, not officially.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  We deny that allegation, yeah.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  So you had little secret underground bars, but we had proper bars. So if you worked, say, a two to ten shift, everybody would go up for one drink. We would debrief, we would connect. And we all relied on that as that sort of camaraderie and connection. So two thousand and one, I had a car accident.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  And I thought, I'll be fine. I'll just, you know, get fitter and get back to the job. But back then, they were like, we pay civilians a lower wage than you. Why do we wait for you to get fit and be back on the job? So I was pensioned out and I, I went into quite a deep da- depression. Cause as you know, like suddenly, where is everyone? I thought these were all my friends. And it was a lonely, scary as time. I mean, I was obviously in a lot of pain with my back, but everyone who I thought was my friends, or a lot of them, weren't, weren't there.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's funny, cause you, you join the police and as distinct from other careers, it's like, you're part of a, a, I don't know, a club, a family, you call it a family. I think that's played out too much because once you've left that so-called family, you realise it's not so much of a, of family. Yeah, you have friends in there, but uh, yeah, there is a saying, there's nothing more excellent than an ex uh, uh, police officer. So it does impact on you because that's part of your identity when you're a police officer. I, I, I speak for myself, but I, I, I think it's generally accepted that uh, that is part of your identity as a police officer. So when you leave, it's not unusual to be a little bit lost.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Well, it's like, who am I?

• 20:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  I mean, if you think.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  You had purpose.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And and I, if you think about leaving, you know, a bank, you can go to another bank. Well, you can't go to another police force.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  There's no role that they want to provide for me because they don't want to take on me and keep my wages as a civilian. So it's like, well, I've got all these qualifications, but what am I actually qualified to do?

• 21:03Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  So there was that period of where do I belong? But yeah, the the the losing the family was really tough for me because it was everything. I mean, you're literally when you're not at work, you've got, you know, a small amount of downtime. I was single, so I didn't have children, I didn't have a family life, so they were everything to me.

• 21:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  So I struggled.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Well, because your work, shift work, two odd hours and the type of things that you're doing, you do tend to socialise with police, especially if you're on night shift, there's, you can't play with anyone during the day other than the other people that are on the on night shift. So, yeah, it's, I can understand, I very much understand how it can be difficult when you leave and not by your own own choosing. Can we talk about your your upbringing now? I I want to want to raise that. Where did you grow up before you found your way in policing? What was your childhood like?

• 21:56Speaker 01

  So I grew up in a little mining town.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  So I went through the miner's strike that was pretty tough.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  So this is for help us that live on the other side of the world, but Yorkshire is, that's how I identify as a mining town.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of coal mining.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So a tough, hard, hard town.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  So I, yeah, I was born in nineteen seventy three, you know, in the eighties, there was all the miners' strikes. Luckily, my dad didn't work in that field. He was a printer, so we weren't as affected. Um.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Cool. I'll just stop you there, just on on that aspect with the miners' strikes, because I still have recollections of seeing the vision on the news. They were violent strikes, weren't they? And the and the police were at the forefront of policing stuff and there was some real violence that played out in that.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Oh, terrible. And I mean, you know, there were people who. Wanted to go to work but stayed off, so they were the ones that were protesting. But there were some that had families that had to go to work, so they used to call them scabs.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  And they would like throw things at the bus because the bus would have to go through, you know, the protesters.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  The picket line.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Through the picket line. And, you know, I think we'd never seen police with the, you know, the shields and that. I mean, this is just at the end of my road. It was really confronting. And I remember kids at school had no money, no clothes. It was a really tough period of time in that town.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  Your family, family environment.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there was mum and dad and my sister was fourteen months older. Look, it's hard to know what I remember and what I've gone back and re like rejigged all the memories through my healing. But, look, it was very, um, very controlling. Mum was terrified of my dad.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  You know, those kind of homes where it was, shh, your dad's coming home. That kind of like dad's coming home, we need to go and hide. I, when I was three years old, I, I was confronted with the first time I ever saw dad and mum almost in a fight. When I ran to pull my dad off my mum, he was drunk. In fact, you know, the, the vision of that moment is so strong in my mind. It just goes to show how trauma embeds itself in you that I even remember what he was wearing. And I was this little three, four year old and I must have heard screams, so I jumped out of my bedroom. And I jumped onto his bed and I was his height, so I must have been small because he's only a small man.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  And I remember grabbing his shirt, so imagine he's wearing a button shirt like you and ripping it. And I remember the scene, the buttons.

• 24:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Flying off and screaming like, don't you hurt my mum, leave my mum. And you imagine as a three year old, that's her protector, her safe person, suddenly he's not safe anymore.

• 24:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  So I think that would have been a pivotal moment in my childhood to go, well, if he's not safe and he's not protecting us, it's now my job.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  And when I look at my journey into the police force.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  I was already trained, Gary. You know, you think about to, I mean, as a three year old to confront her father. No wonder every time I went into a domestic violence situation. I said to my male colleague, I'll take the man. As we feel quite emotional now. And he'd say, well, why are you taking the man? I said, I can deescalate.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  I had no idea. It's because I'd already confronted danger many times over. So. I think that path for me was always meant to open up.

• 25:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Now, that's, that was my earliest memory. Everything else is quite foggy, but I, I, we were petrified of him and I. Even as a teenager, I remember standing up to him, which we rarely did because we knew what would happen. And he threw me against the wall in the house. I remember my head hitting sort of the hard artexin wall and just being absolutely shocked to the core.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Of how we went from naught to ten in a split second. And I was a teenager.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's not, not a good environment. There was something in, in prepping for the podcast I read that had been written about your childhood. And I'll just read, read it out if that's okay, and then we'll, we'll talk, talk about it. Caroline grew up in a home where love and violence live side by side. She witnessed emotional and physical abuse, control and fear. And she watched her mother suffer through all of it in silence. The silence became her inheritance.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  Talk us through that. What are we reflecting on there?

• 26:19Speaker 01

  So in two thousand and nineteen, I went back to the UK and I went to see my mum's best friend of fifty years.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  And I talked a little bit to her and I said, can you give me some indication? Because my mum had, um, she was in dementia at that stage, quite, quite late stages. Just to give me some indication of what my childhood was like. And she said, your mum used to come to work with chunks of hair pulled out. Well, you know how hard it must take to.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  And with, and bruises. And she would always say, I fell down the stairs, as we know. Now, you think chunks of hair pulled out. It's not conducive with falling down the stairs. So they started to give me this sort of picture of my childhood. Now, if mum didn't tell anyone.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  She was already. Born into that silence herself. So I felt my role was to keep mum happy. So if mum was happy, she was almost the barometer of the home. If mum's happy and mum's safe, then I'm safe.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  And I think that's how a lot of people grow up in childhood domestic violence is they become that parent figure to the parent. So they're robbed of the childhood. So mum's silence was passed on to me, that we don't speak about abuse. We don't, we make excuses that we protect the man. Because if we don't protect the man, then the person who's in line for the punishment would have always been my mum.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  And how does that manifest itself in a child in a family home? Like, you would be very mindful to not trigger anything in your father, to say the violence escalates and you're protecting your mother by staying silent and keeping the peace because your mother was the person that was going to bear the brunt of it.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, I do remember even when she first started in the early stages of dementia, she was still able to verbalise. And I would always stick up for her. I remember her pulling me one side and saying, do not stick up for me because I cop it when I go home. So she was, she was almost silencing me. So don't you say anything, don't protect me because I'm going to be the punchbag.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  So you see how this generational silence is passed on. So then in me, inbred in me is what would happen if I was to speak my truth. And the consequences in me would always be what my father did. So even if I go out to the world to speak my truth, I've got this little voice going, remember what happens when you speak up.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Which is the father figure. So you're almost in every situation fearing the father until you actually do the work to not be afraid of him, which I did, to confront him and not be afraid of him anymore.

• 28:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm understanding where you're coming from. And it makes me quite sad when you're hearing you reflect on your life and the trauma that's passed on from your mother, from that family environment. Because whether you like it or not, you are a product of the environment in which you grew up. There's another passage that's been written in relation to yourself. And if I could read that out, then we can talk further about that. She was a good girl. She learned early that keeping the peace was safer than telling the truth. That being loved meant making herself small and that attachment was worth the cost of her authenticity. She carried that blueprint into adulthood without knowing

• 29:39Speaker 00

  it was there. So that's exactly what you were talking about, that making yourself a small girl, not going to upset it.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  So what happens is, I mean, we're all born authentic. We're born pure. We're born with our individual expression. Now, what happens in the first several years of life is we start to trade that authenticity, which is our true selves, for attachment. So if there's disapproval, dismissal, you know, you're oversensitive, you're too much, you're too dramatic, all those labels we get told, they start to get imprinted. Well, if I'm too much of this and not enough of that, you're constantly trying to work out, how can I get love from these two parents? And if they tell me I'm too dramatic, then I have to be quiet. If I'm too sensitive, you know, then I have to sort of toughen up.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  So you're constantly reassessing because you're wanting to keep this cord of attachment to the parents. So this is how we lose who we are for those first several years and become who we need to be to have love and belonging. Because you think a child can't survive by itself.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  So they need that sense of belonging and they need that nurturing. So they do whatever needs to be done.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Protection. Because when you think about it, that's it's you're in survival for those first few years of your life. And, you know, when you talk about telling someone, I remember running to my grandma's house when dad had done something to me. I was about nine years old. And back at that time, I was having incredible migraines, nosebleeds. So something happened to me at nine that I'm not quite sure.

• 31:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  I haven't sort of gone back and pulled out the memory. But I remember running to my grandma's, my paternal grandma, very protective of her golden boy. Grandma, grandma, grandma, dad did da, da, da, da, da. And I explained what he did and just thought, finally, I can just sit down and be held. And she just looked at me and she went, your dad wouldn't do that.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  And I thought, wow. So of course, in that moment, I'm like, I am not believed.

• 31:35Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  And I've told the truth and she's defending my father.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  So you see also this sort of, you've got this father who was violent, he was volatile. His mother is basically saying, my son could do no wrong. And the reason she did that because she feels some sense of responsibility because she raised him. So she's also protecting herself by going, no. So the silence continues. I did speak up, I went for help and I got told that didn't happen.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  So it's like, would I risk then speaking up again?

• 32:10Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Because then I have to carry it and think, oh, well, I'm a bad girl, I may be exaggerated.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  I've suggest Yorkshire would be similar in, in what I'm talking about here, in the communities that I worked. And the, the communities I grew up in, like domestic violence, it was almost like, well, you don't talk about that. Like you let, lived in a, I've grew up in a suburban street and there might be someone's, you're always hearing things come from that house. And the response is, oh, that's just John, he gets, uh, gets cranky when he's, he's had a drink, that, that type of, uh, type of commentary. And it was swept under the carpet. People wouldn't talk about, uh, yeah, we call it for what it is. These days it's domestic violence and coercive control and all the other, uh, labels that we've got for that type of behaviour. But there was a generation, and not that long ago, where it was sort of accepted and we just don't talk about it.

• 33:00Speaker 00

  And that's a lot of life that, uh, women are born into when they're in a, in a marriage. Um, do you think we've changed and progressed?

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Hmm. I'd like to say yes, but when I look at the domestic violence rates and the amount of women being killed so far this year.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  I would say, I think we've progressed in the sense that women are getting a voice and there's services for them to be heard. But I think we've got a long way to go when it comes to protecting women.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  For women to be believed. And I'll talk about it when I go into what happened to me, but I think the culture around domestic violence, sexual assault is very much to blame the victim.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  And I think that's what needs to change is to. Stop going, what did she do? And rather look at, it was his choice. Why did he do that? So I think we've got a long way to go, Gary, with the justice system with, I mean, Queensland's just cut the domestic violence funding by thirty, thirty odd million this week alone.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  Oh, I didn't realise that. I thought if anything needed to be increased, it would be that.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  So the public are looking and going, you know, how can we be protected? How can women feel safe? And they're saying, well, we're taking the funding away.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  When, you know, four women have just been killed in four days.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  So I, I think, I call it like we've got a ceiling level of there's only so far that we can go as the public, but we can do way more than what people imagine, which is to talk about it, to mates to call their mates out. So I think let's not be so disheartened that change isn't happening immediately, but we can all make changes in our community.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  I, I think that I, I agree with you. And I think what you said, mates need to call their mates out. Yes, I, I think, yeah, if men are the root of the problem with domestic violence and the perpetrators of domestic violence. I suggest there's no one that commits domestic violence that someone doesn't know other than the victim, that that person's committing domestic violence. Yeah, we, we know it. There's, there's people that you go, that person looks a bit violent when he gets, gets drunk. You can tell, and invariably because they're cowards. It doesn't happen out in the public because someone might call them. They wait till they get behind, behind closed doors. But I think we need to change, change the narrative that it's just not on. And

• 35:16Speaker 00

  I was speaking to Hannah Clark's parents about, and, and from Queensland, you'd know that, the tragedy that befell their family. Uh, with a violent person that set their daughter alight and their three grandchildren. And Hannah's father made, I, I think, a very telling point. And he was a, a knockabout bloke, played football and a really decent human being. And he was saying that when you're out at the pub with your mates and someone talks disrespectfully about the, their partner or whatever, and it could be as simple as. The phone rings, it's just the wife, she's nagging me, she wants me to come home. We've got to start checking, males have got to start checking each other on that type of behaviour.

• 36:00Speaker 00

  Not to disrespect women and to call it for what it is and domestic violence, it's just cowardly. I think all perpetrators of domestic violence should be put in the boxing ring with someone that can fight.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 00

  See how they feel being slapped around.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've got so, so much I could say about this, but on the mateship thing.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  I know it's even in the minds when the blokes are sort of like talking derogatory about women and.

• 36:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  And I remember saying to one guy, like, do you call each other out? And he said, no, it's not, it's not for us to do that. It's none of our business. And I said, but you have to make it your business.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  So I think that's the, almost the mentality that needs to change is, oh, well, he's, he's a mate, but that part isn't my business. Well, if it's a mate, it is your business.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I know, but I agree with you, but I also understand that that could be a response from a male and that we don't like to deal with the hard issues. You know, we'll talk about the football and it's when blokes get together, how's life? Good. And they could be going through a terrible time and we don't like to talk about those issues. So maybe we've got to get it out there and okay, if someone is violent or someone's mistreating their partner. As a mate, you should first of all ensure that doesn't occur, but find out what the root cause of the problem is. Why is this person doing this? And I'm, I'm sure we've, we've just got to change it. You've been a police officer, you know, we can't arrest our way out of situations. Yeah, like, yes, we can put more resources into, um, yeah, domestic violence.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Legislation that helps protect victims of domestic violence, but we've got to prevent it in the first place if we can. Rather than going hard, hard through the courts and policing. We've got to work out, why is it happening so often?

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Well, just going back to the whole mateship thing, if you think about, you made a really valid point. You said, oh, we just want to say, how's your day gone and keep it quite surface level? We don't want to dip down into talking about emotions. Well, this is culture, Gary. This is, men don't show their feelings.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Men just toughen up. Well, this is what we want him to change. And even if you think about suicide, how much. You know, material is out there in the media about mates need to check in with each other.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  So if you put suicide and domestic violence together.

• 38:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  You're just checking in and saying, how are you going? Like, you know, I've just noticed your wife's been on the phone, like you say, like, how do you feel? So it doesn't matter what's going on behind closed doors with mental health, DV. It's about really going beneath the surface and asking yourself a question. If I feel uncomfortable, really going deep and asking.

• 38:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  In what's going on, what is it with me that I'm afraid to ask him?

• 38:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  The same question, because we want everyone to talk. We want young boys to talk. We want to change that culture mentality around girls can't get angry and boys can't cry. Which comes back to generations and generations ago that I feel we're still breaking free of that.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that's how we're raised.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  That's how we do things. I I shouldn't laugh because of these potentially the core of the problem, isn't it? Because that that's what we're taught, not to not to show emotions, bottle up the emotions. Which I've got to say, I agree in part, like sometimes men need to step up and and be men. But you've got to show a little bit of vulnerability too, that if you're struggling, reach out to a mate. That's what mateship's meant to be about. And then for the girls, as you've described in your upbringing. And I I I like the way that you've described it because it's really given me a thought on or an understanding of how this is occurring, that you've just grown up in the environment that I've got to be small. I can't upset, if I upset, there's going to be violence inflicted, not necessarily on me, but on someone else. So I'm not going to make waves.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  And there are a lot of women that go through that. You see, and you you would have seen when you're a police officer, that the timid woman, that you walk into a place and you know something terrible's happened, like there's been domestic violence and the wife is sitting there or the partner's sitting there going, no, it's all fine, it's all fine. And trying to downplay it, not cause problems.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  And you've, I think this is a really good subject to talk about. So if I could just rewind and talk about how I ended up sort of being bullied at school and in relationships that also kept me small is because it's almost like there was a computer program running. So that first several years, you know, the protector, the safe person, the dad was everything but that. And then I learnt to play small, stay quiet, don't upset him. So of course I get bullied at school. Because what happens is you can't outlive the pattern. The pattern had already been stitched into me about how to show up, never ever cause conflict, don't stick up for yourself. Because I said to you earlier, when I did, dad threw me against a wall. So that was in me. Don't ever

• 40:55Speaker 01

  face someone and be courageous and speak out because you're going to get thrown against a wall. So all throughout high school, I got bullied by someone smaller than me. But it wasn't about a size, it was about what I'd been trained. Just keep walking, it'll stop. Just keep walking. And she was kicking me like for 20 minutes all the way home. And I was like crying on the inside. Bradette turned around to her because I saw what happened when my mum did or I did. So then you go on and then you wonder why all these women end up in relationships where they're being controlled. There's a bully because they've learned early on, they haven't outlived the pattern. They're still trying to outrun their father. But you're running into

• 41:38Speaker 01

  exactly the same four walls. A, because it's familiar. Oh, well, at least unconsciously, I know what to expect. I've been here many times before. So when people ask, how do you end up in the same domestic violence homes? They don't intentionally walk there. But the first time someone raises a hand or they cower down and go, I know how to keep safe here because I've done it many times over.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  Well, you're talking about something that the question is quite often asked where Someone's been a victim of domestic violence and they go straight from that relationship into another relationship with another perpetrator of domestic violence. And you see it time and time again. But the explanation you gave there might add some light to it.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Well, I also think this is where police possibly and first responders would really benefit from being trauma trained.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Because, you know, you have trauma bonds.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  And it's just the familiarity. And there's a saying that you marry the person you've got the most psychological wounding with. So let's go again, look at my father so that people can understand. So I'm going to keep meeting versions of him.

• 42:43Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  I mean, luckily I never ended up in a violent relationship. I were in a lot of manipulative.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Relationships that I didn't understand. I mean, back in the day in the police force, no one talked about cohesive control. It was only ever if they've got a bruise, there's evidence. So as we know now, the evidence isn't evidence isn't necessarily a bruise.

• 43:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  So you marry the person that you've got the most wounding with.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Mum or dad. So you're going to keep meeting versions. And I think when people really understand that, oh, perhaps I've just, I'm back in a relationship with my father because I need to heal that relationship with him psychologically.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  It's deep, very deep. But yeah, I understand what you're saying and it does make sense.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  And then the cycle continues.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  Because if I have to be honest, in the police force, I would take a statement, there'd be a woman who'd been beaten up, and I knew the chances that she'd revoke the statement. You've been there, right? And the chances were so high. Honestly, I hate to say this now, but I used to feel frustrated.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, she's pulled out, you know, look at her, we know it's going to happen. So from a bystander's perspective, we can see exactly what's going to play out, right? And it's just going, the cycle's going to keep on continuing. Now I know the trauma side of it.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  I've got the utmost compassion for these women. Now, if people don't understand why she goes back, this is again, the woman gets judged.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  How can she be so stupid? She knows what's going to happen. It's way more complicated than that. When you add in the trauma, the trauma bonds, the psychological wounding. So if only police and first responders knew what was deeply going on under the surface, we could have more compassion for. Or say to these women, have you ever heard about a trauma bond? This is why you keep going back.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think education along those lines would be beneficial because it almost becomes a, yeah, well, they've done it again. And I can see where you lose the compassion. If someone's gone from this relationship into the next one and the next one. And if you're staying policing long enough in the same area, you just see the pattern over and, oh, hi, Mary, how are you? Oh, another partner. You've got to choose a better partner, but they keep going back to the same type.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're not choosing a partner from a conscious mind. You're choosing it from what you've known from childhood. And this is the, or you have to choose a better partner. Whereas the partners find each other. Because we're here, we're just here to evolve and learn. And every relationship's a lesson. But if we roll our eyes and go, oh, there she goes again.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  The education for people, whether it's through school, is it a responsibility of schools? Do you think we can do something more in the education space? Because as you know, there's a lot of children that are not growing up in healthy environments. And so they're caught in that world as much as we try to protect them with the services that we provide for children at risk. Invariably, it's an unhappy childhood filled with trauma. How can we break the cycle? What's your thoughts on breaking the cycle?

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it takes a village. So I think there's no one answer. And I think it's unfair to put the responsibility on the schools.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Because, you know, it's like you plant a seed in the ground and it grows in that environment. That's the home.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  And it needs to nourish and flourish in there. But if parents are raising children and they haven't looked at their own blueprint and their own past and their own, say, violent background, it just regurgitates. And again, it's not something that's conscious, it's unconsciously passed on. So for instance, I've got four sons. So I'm like, okay, I've been gifted four sons because I've been asked to break the generational cycle of male abuse. How wonderful that I was given four sons. So I go, okay, if I've got an opportunity now, how do I want to raise those boys differently? Now, that takes a lot of awareness. It takes a lot of self introspection and it takes a lot of casting yourself aside and going, what does their future look like?

• 46:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Okay, and I'm programmed in them every single day. So it's the family home, it's all looking at where did we come from? How has it affected us? And you know, anyone who's been in a violent home, it has to, we've all carrying trauma.

• 46:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  So we can't go, oh gosh, yeah, my dad was an alcoholic and my mum just sat and boxed herself in and played small them, but I'm absolutely fine.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, no, so I think it's, it's been, that's the courage and we talk about vulnerability is the superpower.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  So the way I raise my sons is to say, show your emotions, but take responsibility for them, so not be a victim of poor me.

• 47:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  So there's a fine line between, I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel hurt.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  But it's my responsibility then to um unpack that and let it be a superpower rather than a failure for boys and young men. So I think it's, it's actually to looking at our stuff, changing the next generation.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  And I think the school education is around consent is huge.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it's another topical issue, isn't it?

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, consent and I think accountability.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  I mean, we'll talk about the justice system, but unless someone owns what they've done.

• 47:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  I did that.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  I take ownership for it. And then how do you repair it? Which is what I always did with the boys when they scuffled. It's okay saying, sorry, you know, I could some go, sorry, and you know full well, it's just, sorry is just a word, right? So how do we teach children to own it and say, it was a mistake? As my youngest goes, it's just a beautiful little accident.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  So not punishing children for their errors, because if you're punished for your errors, how are you ever gonna own it then?

• 48:29Speaker 00

  Hmm, hmm.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  So, and then repair. If you've, it's make amends if you've messed up.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Go to that person, I'm sorry, what can I do to make it better? How can I, how can I mend that? Because all these prisoners are in prison. If they don't take accountability for anything, they're just then thrown back out onto the street and regurgitate what they went in there for.

• 48:50Speaker 00

  Well, accountability is a big thing and I, I worry in today's society, if you're talking the woke society, like at the extreme and that, you know, there's good aspects of it, there's bad aspects, like any, you know, views. But we need accountability.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  I'm worried that I, I see a generation of people that have never had to accept setbacks. They're rewarded, like, I think it was a good lesson in life when you, uh, went in your first swimming carnival and you came last, you know? Or the kid that put in more effort came first, but we don't have that, that is encouraged that there's no, um, responsibility for your actions.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Accountability, I, I'd like to see more accountability, as you just described the story there. If someone's done something wrong, yeah, I know I did something wrong, but why? You explain to me why you did, uh, why you did that and the impact it had on, on people.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  And, uh, get them to un- understand that. I worry that we're not teaching those skills with, uh, with the generation, the kids grow- growing up now. What's, what's your thoughts there?

• 49:57Speaker 01

  And it's interesting, say, about teaching. My model is being.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Okay, so imagine you're my son in the home and I mess up. I say, I didn't do that.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  So how can we teach it if we're not being it ourselves? And this is what I say to my clients is it's your state of being. So I'm always watching, if I mess up, this is a beautiful opportunity to show the children that I'm human.

• 50:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  And that I can say, oh gosh, mum's made a mistake. But this is what I do with it. And I loved what you said, when you said the impact. I mean, you put this into, imagine reading a victim impact statement out. You're showing the offender the effect it's had on you. So imagine if that's what we did, it's not about necessarily your behaviour, it's how it made me feel.

• 50:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  So if we could start to have those conversations with. Our children but owning it and not deflecting. And I see it all the time in parents going, I didn't do that. And I'm thinking, oh, my goodness, if you, if that's what you're modeling, how is your child ever gonna look and go, oh, I know what to do now. When I make a mistake, I'll just deny it. Cause that's what mum and dad does.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, you know, you you sort of touch into restorative justice. And I think that's such a big thing too. Like people taking accountability and understanding the impact that their crimes or their actions have had. And I I talk crimes, it doesn't have to be a crime, the impact your action has had on uh someone.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  And I think the question I would ask, and it would be the same of my sexual offender would be, what happened to you? What's your memory of the response you got when you owned up to something? And it might be, you know, and I come here from absolute compassion, I got a beating.

• 51:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  So again, we go back to childhood trauma. I always bring it back to that. Like if they've got a memory of something dreadful and devastating happened, when they said, I did that.

• 51:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Then there's a part of them going, don't you ever own up to anything again, cause you'll get a beating. So it comes back to parenting.

• 51:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Not that punitive disciplinarian, it's sitting down and going, you're human.

• 52:01Speaker 00

  We all make mistakes.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  We all make mistakes, but it's what we do with the mistake. How do we repair it? How do we look at the impact and how do we change our behaviour?

• 52:10Speaker 00

  Some interesting stuff. We could talk for hours hours about it. Prior to uh you coming on the podcast, we had a conversation and I I raised with you, if you're happy to talk about it, but you were sexually assaulted and you alluded to it at the start of the uh start of the podcast. Are you happy to talk about the circumstances of of what happened?

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. So I had a really bad back, um which I've had since the police force. And I went, I was recommended a massage therapist. I tried chiropractor, various other things. And when you're in pain, you'll do anything to to quell that. So it was the fourth massage with this particular person. And, you know, at first I thought, oh, a man. And my friend said, no, he's got the safest hands. And amazing how, again, you go on recommendation. And you're like, if someone who I trust has said that he's safe, then I'll go with that.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  And um yeah, it was the fourth massage and I was lying there and you can imagine, I mean, we're probably three quarters of the way through. I mean, I'm on my back, fully relaxed, eyes closed. I mean, you're almost in a unconscious state.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Dream state, yeah.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Um, I just remember thinking, what the heck is that sensation?

• 53:34Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  And it's, again, I feel like time just slows down and you would know this from the police force, when something happens, you feel like it takes you an eternity to react. Like, what the heck is that sensation? And then I realised we were doing that, like this, this whole feeling came over my body of surely not, surely not. And then this panic.

• 53:56Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  And this panic, and it was like this little tiny part of me was going, no, no, no, stop, stop, stop. And it was a child, like a childlike cry. And it was this feeling of how can I be crying and screaming so loudly, but nothing is coming out. It's like it was, the, the noise was bouncing off my ribs. My whole body went limp. And I would say that it felt like there was a disassociation, but also a part of me just thinking, when's it gonna stop? When's it gonna stop?

• 54:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Interestingly enough, at the time, I was watching a Netflix show about a backpacker from the UK that was, went on a Tinder date. She never made it out of his hotel room. It was so fascinating. I'd watched that the night before. Now, bearing in mind, I'm in a darkened room.

• 54:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  On a massage table, in his, in his home. Nobody knew I was there.

• 54:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  So when we think about survival instincts, part of my mind would have been going, am I gonna get out of here alive? But what I couldn't understand, Gary, and this is what I grappled with, if I could take men down in the street.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  If someone grabs me in an alley, I would fight back. This two parts of me going, what the heck happened that put me into such a limp state? That I not only couldn't fight him, I couldn't even speak. And that's what left me in with so much shame, guilt, humiliation of not being able to understand why, why I couldn't protect myself.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I understand what you're saying there and and people might say, well, why didn't you tell him to stop? That type of narrative, but I've yeah, had a conversation with you and and understand exactly why that didn't take place. But here you are beating up yourself going, why didn't I do, why didn't I do this? Why didn't I do that? So, and I I wanna talk about the um, uh, freeze response and I I wanna talk about it in in detail and we'll we'll unpack that in in part two. But when that happened to you, like, uh, and the importance of sitting down, speaking to you before we go straight to to that in the podcast, I wanted people just to understand, you know, that what a confident woman that you are.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 56:11Speaker 00

  And that you've gone through this situation. Can you tell us, and and we'll talk about how how you got justice for what happened? How you processed what happened and and how it's virtually changed your life or or given you a direction in life? But after it happened, you you've walked out, what what was going through your mind?

• 56:31Speaker 01

  So firstly was, let's let me just get out of here.

• 56:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Now, usually when you get changed after a massage, you're left in the room by yourself. The person will say, call me when you're ready.

• 56:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  So my clothes were near the door, thankfully, because that was my exit route.

• 56:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  And probably 10 seconds after I went to get dressed, he walked behind me. I thought he was gonna hit me over the the head. I could feel him. He was probably, you know, between you and I away, watching me. So part of me is just get the hell out of here. So I got dressed and I sort of turned my head where I couldn't look at him in the eye. I was so, so utterly disgusted and betrayed. And I said to him, do you do this to all the women? That's all I could say.

• 57:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  And he said, no, just to you, because I've got a crush on you.

• 57:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  So of course you leave and then you start to, and this is the head mess. Oh, he had a crush on me. Does that, so it's almost like that makes it okay. So part of you that wants to internalize it, oh, well, he's thirty four. I'm fifty one. Oh, maybe I should be flattered. So I get in the car and all of these things, because guess what I'm trying to do? I'm trying to dilute it so it's not so much of a big deal. So I can push it under the carpet.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  You know, and then I don't have to unpack it. I don't have to face it. So I got in the car and I remember just driving home, thinking, what the heck? Crying, I would walk over broken glass for my four sons. I took men down in the street, like beating myself up, like, oh, my God, you know, you're weak. You're pathetic. Like, why couldn't you speak? People are going to think you wanted it. How, what are you going to say to, are you going to say anything at all? And I got home and I remember going into my bedroom and just bursting into tears. Going, what the heck do I do with this now?

• 58:24Speaker 00

  Well, all, all those questions that you were asking of yourself, that's where, yeah, perpetrators get away with things because they put the shame on yourself. So I, I'm, I'm sorry that you, you went through that. Appreciate you talking about it and, and being open and honest about all the things that are going through your head when you, you've experienced something like that. We'll take a break now, if that's okay. And when we get back, I want to really have a deep dive into the freeze response because I think people need to understand that. And you, you've said that this is something that the, the court, the police don't understand. Why the public, juries, people just don't understand. And I think the explanation that you give for it and the, the way that you describe it is worthwhile people understanding.

• 59:10Speaker 00

  Because the, and I'm, I'm playing devil's advocate here. The response from people would be, well, why didn't you tell him to stop? Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? It's not that simple, is it?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  It's not simple at all. And I think unless we educate the public. The silence is going to continue from the victim and the bystanders are always going to be blaming

• 59:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  the survivor and we need to flip that around. So I think talking about why the body does what it does will not only help survivors to be compassionate with themselves, to take the blame away and for to educate the public on how to have a conversation with a survivor that doesn't involve judgement

• 59:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  and doesn't involve questioning like an interrogation.

• 59:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay, important things. Let's have a break and when we come back in in part two, we'll talk about that and also talk about the important work that you're doing as well.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Cheers.