I have had several interactions with Evelyn since the project began. She is proactive in her involvement. She is engaged and interested in the research, naturally, as she was an academic in Gender Studies before a workplace accident left her with permanent physical impairment. Evelyn describes herself as Australian, though as a result of her parents’ heritage her first language was German. She communicates with a sense of urgency about her what has happened to her and the intense, incessant nature of the abuse perpetrated by ex-husband, Jai. She ensures no detail is left out. This is reflective of the constant risk assessment and decision-making processes of victim-survivors. The impacts of violence and abuse, including social isolation and poverty are evident. She highlights the need for healing and justice. Evelyn is focussed on agency, and like many other women with disability, she is advocating for herself and others. She acknowledges the particular situation of women with congenital disability, that is, from birth, noting the stigma and discrimination impacting them is disproportionate and life-long. Evelyn joins me online from her Melbourne home, where she has lived for 12 years. While she owned a previous property, her current house is part owned by Jai and she is buying out his portion. Considering she retired in 2006 and is now approaching her senior years, this leaves little left over for the bare necessities. She was forced to retire after being caught under a collapsing building, which resulted in a career limiting injury to her right hand. Prior to becoming impaired due to injury, Evelyn had a role as a senior lecturer at a university. Following the accident, she tried to maintain supervising students, but this became untenable. Unknown at the time was that the accident had caused a degenerative condition leading the muscles to atrophy: ’essentially my body didn't recover from the catastrophic physical injury’. She tells me it is reflex dystrophy type one, meaning the muscles are told by the neurological functions of the brain to atrophy and in 21 years, she has had 23 kilograms of muscle loss. While her condition is degenerative, Evelyn was significantly ahead of her prognosis at the time when Jai’s use of DFV began. That is, she had not experienced physical decline at the rate which was anticipated. However, Evelyn notes DFV dramatically increased her physical decline: ‘I got down to 32 kilos with the domestic violence, which is clearly emaciated. So, I'm pretty scrawny’. She notes that, until recently, her experience of disability and DFV was largely invisible. Around six weeks ago an undiagnosed hairline fracture of a vertebrae necessitated her using a wheelchair for mobility. She notes stress is also a chronic health issue. This is unsurprising given the nature and extent of Jai’s use of violence, power and control, which he perpetrated more severely during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Evelyn describes Jai’s use of DFV: ‘malignant, narcissist, sadistic and paranoid. Fearless, guiltless, remorseless. Calculating. Ruthless, inhumane, callous, brutal, aggressive.’ While they were together, she would constantly assess her safety. She describes trying to predict the unpredictable. Small changes in mood, signs anger and violence were about to erupt. ‘I got used to this anger like a volcano at any hour of the day or night, just couldn't predict. I spent my whole life trying to predict to kind of shuffle things away, distract.’
As the state endured protracted lockdowns throughout 2020-22 totalling 262 days, Evelyn was forced to isolate with Jai. Her period in lockdown was made longer due to being immunosuppressed and being required to self-isolate: ‘So I was entrapped’ for 465 days. Jai also worked in higher education, and Evelyn noted his not being able to work on campus escalated his anger, frustration, and violent behaviours. ‘I tried so hard, I gave him gifts to distract him from not being able to go out. I tried so hard. I did all, all the domestic labour.’ ‘I was imagining that if I tried hard and if I was good, you know, I could keep myself safer.’ Evelyn experienced severe and prolonged violence and abuse. She noted Jai used physical violence in 35 separate incidents, five of which were strangulation attempts (with strangulation being a high-risk indicator for intimate partner homicide). In the most recent incident of strangulation, she was thrown on the table and heard a crushing sound; this was a vertebra fracturing. ‘I've been thrown so many times. I've been dragged, dragged across tiles, 8 metres’. Jai would purposely target places on her body impacted by impairment, such as her feet. Evelyn had the foresight to document her injuries, however, she rarely had the opportunity to be alone with during online Telehealth appointments as Jai would sit shoulder to shoulder with her during appointments. Perhaps as a way of parsing violence and abuse to which she was subjected, Evelyn provides clinical detail of her injuries and physical victimisation, including suffocation and strangulation. She uses the photos she has brought to outline the places around the house where Jai perpetrated violence, however, she notes it was difficult to capture the degree of violence or hear her voice within the depictions. She relays the ways in which she kept herself alive. Like when, between Jai’s attempts to suffocate her, she would take a breath while he verbally abused her. Evelyn describes PUV choosing to assault her in a room of the house, which was least likely to be heard by neighbours, however, one night the neighbours entered the house after hearing Jai assaulting Evelyn. Jai fled to avoid arrest.
Much like Annika, Evelyn’s treatment by systems left her feeling disempowered and disbelieved. She points to the example of the police response, the fourth time the police attended the property ‘was as horrifying, arguably, as this experience [of assault]’. The attending officers were both male, and while one demonstrated empathy towards her situation, the other was dismissive of Evelyn’s account of what had happened. ‘…at the beginning I said [to the officer], “Can I touch you? Can I just hold your hand or something? I'm so frightened”. “Yes, of course.” [He] said. Of course. You know this, this huge guy comes in and says don't touch my colleague and he just, all he said was, “I don't believe you”. And then walked out. I didn't say anything to him. But he just said “I don't believe you”. But then at the end he called us to the kitchen table. The very table where I've been strangled. [He] said I can section 32 you. That means put me in this psychiatric institution, he said. I'm going now to do the paperwork. We'll be back in an hour with the paperwork.’ I reflect on our own conversation, the dizzying pace. At times the subject of the conversation gets lost, who said what? Is this an incident, a view, an opinion, a reading, a piece of research? It is symptomatic of the hurried, urgent and at times, disrupted sensemaking that occurs under the duress of DFV and coercive control. Stories and timelines may be fractured, as the events are retold out of order, a possible indication of a trauma response. I reflect on the epistemic injustice which can play out when survivors tell their stories. Seemingly, the more stalwart and emphatic about their experiences, the less likely they are to be perceived as credible. It is a paradox what we expect of survivors. A career in gender studies has heightened Evelyn to the exercise and abuse of power, identifying it as she sees it. She describes a ‘lightbulb’ moment, depicted in one of the photos, when a nurse working with her gave her information about types of DFV perpetrators. Identifying Jai’s behaviours were associated with ‘malignant narcissists’ helped Evelyn to make sense of his use of violence. Evelyn is interested in the medium to long-term needs of victim-survivors: ‘it's too short termism’. She believes the community organisations and workers need to acknowledge the longer-term impacts of DFV on victim survivors which may continue to affect their lives years into the future. The experience of both ableism and sexism has been visceral. ‘It's the disrespect for women that it allows that fertile ground for domestic violence. And I was nothing more than a lower caste servant slave in my own house’. This has left her with a strong desire to seek justice: ‘we don’t want compassion, we want justice… okay, but a lot of people [are] not even compassionate’. She notes Jai’s class also had implications for how people responded to his use of violence and her experience of his violence. ‘…there's a whole lot of unwritten assumptions around classism’. She also holds particular consideration for women with congenital disability and the discrimination they face. ‘Women who are disabled from birth visibly suffer additional, horrifically different, horrifically worse discrimination, like it's appalling. Appalling. Like there's no word for it. And I feel a tremendous responsibility, therefore, to work in this space and to advocate in this space, because I have a background where it's taken me two years nearly to find that person, that advocate, that's that they can speak. Not for disabled women, but with them/ beside them’. In one photo depicting ‘Trauma yoga’, Evelyn explains practising yoga has contributed to healing for Evelyn and led to connection with her community. She notes, while she has been doing yoga for over 20 years to assist with physical function, she has found it helpful in managing the impacts of violence. She is working alongside a friend who was her nurse to share yoga with other women who may benefit from it: ‘I always look to see how can I give back? [There’s] reciprocity here and I'm really excited that we're developing this trauma yoga to share with very needy women who suffered domestic violence’.
Evelyn is determined to move forward with her life. Be it in improving her physical health and function: ‘But I'm determined, even though it's degenerative. Look, I was doing really well up until the domestic violence, and yeah, really well in terms of my physical disability.’ She is still experiencing financial impacts from DFV and separation: ‘basically I had superannuation until yesterday and I withdraw it to pay to pay my friend and who has paid for all my food, all my medicine, all my medical appointments, even my legal bills, everything’. Her resilience is bolstered by her connections with others, including friends and medical practitioners. Recently, a friend helped her to pay for food, medical bills, and legal needs. ‘So I've got warrior women. I don't call them girlfriends all the time. They're my Warrior Women. They’re my Warrior Women. I'm very lucky.’
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