March 2015 - The Sun-Herald
Kay Schubach: A successful eastern suburbs woman who was abused by her partner and almost killed, has become a domestic violence ambassador. Photo: Wolter Peeters
Experts say they are highly alarmed by the results from a trial of a groundbreaking new multi-agency response to women at serious, imminent risk of domestic violence.
The figures, obtained by The Sun-Herald, reveal that 1205 eastern suburbs women were referred by police to the Safer Pathways pilot site at Waverley Local Court between September and February.
Of the eight women referred every day for being at serious risk of violence, two are at immediate risk of being killed.
"It's shocking to see such high numbers in such a small area," said Helen Brereton, executive officer of the Women's Domestic Violence Court Advocacy Service, which runs the Safer Pathways trial sites.
"It's also shocking to see that most of them have children and we know the devastating impact domestic violence has on them."
Women are referred to the Safer Pathways co-ordination point if they have come into contact with police across the Eastern Suburbs, Eastern Beaches, Rose Bay and Botany local area commands.
A team kicks in immediately, co-ordinating a safety response across all local service providers. Women at risk of being killed are added to a fortnightly meeting of senior police, domestic violence workers and service providers who come up with an action plan.
It prevents victims from having to repeat their story or be passed from agency to agency.
Four hours after being referred to Waverley, one woman, who had been choked and strangled by her partner, had her locks changed and an application under way to help her with moving costs.
Within eight days, she had signed the lease on a new house and had an AVO finalised.
"It's groundbreaking because it brings everybody together," said Domestic Violence NSW chief executive Moo Baulch. "It's finally creating a model whereby everyone sits around a table and does something straight away."
The alarming statistics show that no part of Sydney is immune from domestic violence, especially the wealthy eastern suburbs that include electorates of federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Housing Minister Gabrielle Upton.
"It's about power and control and we find that, even more so in the eastern suburbs, it might not be physical assault but depriving her of money to look after the family, isolating her from friends, continually putting her down," said WDVCAS solicitor, Susan Smith, who co-ordinates the Waverley site.
"You often find that their finances are tied up together, the husband might be paying the school fees. It can be so difficult to leave."
However, organisers have warned that not enough commitment has been shown for rolling Safer Pathways out statewide and providing enough funding for the end-point services, like beds in refuges.
After launching trial sites at Waverley and Orange in September, the state government has promised expand to Bankstown, Parramatta, Broken Hill and Tweed Heads.
The program will be statewide by 2019, said Minister for Women, Pru Goward.
In Orange, 694 women were referred between September and February. One third were at risk of being killed, a much higher proportion than at Waverley.
Shadow Minister for Women, Sophie Cotsis, said feedback on the ground has been overwhelmingly positive and Labor will continue the expansion to four sites if elected.
"We urgently need to have this across the state because, at the moment, the system is too ad hoc," said Ms Brereton. "There is no streamline process so women are falling through the cracks and you're talking about life or death."
She would also like to see referrals coming from hospitals, doctors and schools rather than police only.
A survivor's tale of horror among the high-flyers
Kay Schubach knows how insidious and secret domestic violence can be in Sydney's eastern suburbs.
When she desperately walked into Rose Bay police station, having been strangled by her new boyfriend, she was told it was one of the busiest stations in Sydney for domestic violence.
"There is a social cliche that domestic violence doesn't happen in the nicer suburbs and it's absolutely wrong," she said.
"It's more of a hidden menace. There's a whole different set of circumstances that keep it hidden – social stigma, embarrassment, maintaining the status quo. No one ever wants to admit the fairytale lifestyle has gone wrong."
Ms Schubach, 50, was working as a financial manager with celebrity clients when she was wooed in a cafe by Simon Lowe.
In just eight weeks, she had moved in with Lowe and started talking about having a baby. But her life resembled a "horror movie" with wild mood swings, controlling behaviour, insane jealousy and escalating violence.
"He would be critical and mean and then the next minute he'd be really loving and remorseful," she said. "I kept blaming myself, thinking I had done something wrong. I thought, as a successful business woman, there's a problem, I can solve it."
She had a good upbringing and successful friends. She had no idea what domestic violence looked like.
"I remember one of my girlfriends getting increasingly worried and telling me it was like I had battered wife syndrome. We didn't even know the term 'domestic violence'," she said. "It was not in my vocabulary, I had never been around it."
One night, Lowe tried to strangle her in their Point Piper apartment. With no idea where to go, she ran to Rose Bay police station but Lowe later coerced her into retracting the AVO they issued.
"We were down at Redleaf and he cleared this patch in the sand and wrote my parents address in Queensland in the sand," she said. "It was terrifying. He frog-marched me home and got the police on the phone."
Eventually a trip down to Melbourne to see some friends convinced her she had to leave. She asked the police to sit in her apartment while she threw all her belongings together and escaped.
Lowe was jailed for 12 years in 2008 for the rape and assault of another women. Ms Schubach was too terrified to give evidence at his trial but, instead, wrote a book, A Perfect Stranger, to process her ordeal.
Rachel Olding
Read the article on The Sun-Herald website.
