At the office of Safe Steps, Victoria's dedicated 24/7 family violence response call centre, phone counsellors receive a call every three minutes. Many women are repeat callers- on average, they will go back to an abusive partner eight times before leaving for good. 'You must get so frustrated when you think a woman's ready to leave and then she decides to go back,' I say. 'No,' replies one phone counsellor, pointedly. 'I'm frustrated that even though he promised to stop, he chose to abuse her again.'
Women are abused or killed by their partners at astonishing rates- in Australia, almost 17 per cent of women over the age of fifteen - one in six - have been abused by an intimate partner.
In this confronting and deeply researched account, journalist Jess Hill uncovers the ways in which abusers exert control in the darkest - and most intimate - ways imaginable. She asks- What do we know about perpetrators? Why is it so hard to leave? What does successful intervention look like?
What emerges is not only a searing investigation of the violence so many women experience, but a dissection of how that violence can be enabled and reinforced by the judicial system we trust to protect us.
Combining exhaustive research with riveting storytelling, See What You Made Me Do dismantles the flawed logic of victim-blaming and challenges everything you thought you knew about domestic and family violence.
