Brinley

‘It’s engrained into the police culture that these women are laughed at, humiliated, interrogated and punished for making the complaint in the first place.’

Brinley is a First Nations woman in her 50s. She is autistic and lives with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Brinley lived with a violent partner for more than a decade before she finally turned to the police. In her experience, she told the Royal Commission, police ‘openly discriminate against women reporting domestic violence … especially women with a disability’.

‘When I did report domestic violence, I was always surrounded by men in the house who were quite adversarial. Never once, even after I requested it, would they send a female to the house.’

A couple of years ago, there was a violent break-in at her home. Brinley said the attackers physically restrained her and ‘tried to murder’ her.

When she escaped and reported it to police, Brinley said their attitude was, ‘Does she sound believable?’

Finally, she ‘got them to take some action’ and the matter went to court, with the offenders pleading guilty.

‘But I became homeless for six months. My mental condition became critical, I nearly died.’

Brinley said that in the regional area she lived in, there was no place for her to turn to for help as a ‘victim of violent crime’.

‘[Helplines] refer us to support services, but we then fall through the cracks because there’s nowhere for you to go as a woman with a disability.’

Prior to the break-in, Brinley spent three decades working in the disability sector ‘doing occupational therapy and rehab’. She helped set up a community visitor scheme, where ‘you would go around and visit vulnerable people in the community … then put the appropriate support in place’.

She eventually found support herself at a community family violence program for First Nations people. Now, she wants to see that idea go nationwide.

‘If we had a community-based organisation where people could be referred by anyone and they could refer themselves, it would help.’

This would allow women ‘to sidestep’ the police.

‘If these people were able to connect with a visitors program like this, it would be identified very quickly what supports they need in place in order to leave domestic violence without a whole big police kerfuffle.’

Brinley is doing a support coordinator course so that she can get her idea ‘up and running’.

‘Because it works. It worked for me. It has worked for people that I have been involved with, and it could just change people’s lives … There are too many women dying. And the cure is community connection, and that can be set up for nothing.’