Friends With Dignity: The Gold Coast women driving domestic violence support service across the nation
WHEN the headlines have stopped screaming, the pain of domestic violence still lingers. Three women touched by domestic violence explain why they’re taking their quest national to end the silent suffering.
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WAY back before she was an investment banker, travelling the globe as she was on that horrendous day in Singapore when she tuned into the Baden-Clay funeral, Julia McKenna was a little girl who looked forward to playing with the cousins on the Welsh side of her family.
Among them was Allison Dickie, a woman Australia would later recognise as the face of domestic violence when she was killed by her supposedly loving husband Gerard Baden-Clay.
Allison and Julia weren’t first cousins but in their formative years they all lived in the same neighbourhood.
“She was a couple of years older than me so I was more friendly with her younger brother. But we danced together at the same school and caught up every few years at family functions,” Julia says.
“We were overseas when Allison went missing so I couldn’t do anything. Even though we hadn’t seen each other for probably close to 20 years at that point it really affected me.
“I was sitting in a carpark watching the broadcast of the funeral bawling my eyes out and asking, ‘How could this happen to someone I know? Some in my family?’
“As far as I was aware domestic violence is not something which had happened to anyone I knew before.”
Zoe Scharenguivel has spent 25 years at the helm of theme parks in Australia and around the world. She spent a decade at Sea World, moved her family to Malaysia as general manager of the largest water park in South East Asia and was a tourism consultant to Abu Dhabi and Qatar.
Even when she was in the trenches raising her three young children she still kept in contact with her vast professional and social network, among them the vibrant Fabiana Palhares.
Fabiana was her best friend’s nephew’s girlfriend. A tenuous link on the surface, perhaps, but someone who made an impression on Zoe on the occasions she met her out at dinner or a party.
So when the relationship broke up and Fabiana moved on she was missed. Then came the horrendous news a pregnant Fabiana had been killed with an axe by her new partner.
“My friend’s nephew was very, very affected by what happened. He still is,” Zoe says.
“When someone is killed we tend to focus on just the victim but domestic violence causes such a ripple effect on such a wide network of people.
“It happened at a time when so many other women on the Gold Coast were being killed. There were three of them in such a short space of time and each time, my youngest daughter Indianna was only seven months old at the time, I’d light a candle.
“But then I thought, enough is enough. No more lighting candles. I am going to do something about this.”
And so with three children under the age of four along for the ride and a determination only a corporate professional turned mother can muster, Zoe began making phone calls. Soon, she’d organised a sold out charity event which raised $5000 for a domestic violence prevention.
It was here Zoe met Manuela Whitford who at the time was heading her previous domestic violence non-profit Assist A Sista. Manuela, who like both Julia and Zoe is a mother of three, is a clinical nurse specialising in drugs, alcohol and mental health issues.
She was working at a women’s prison at the time and many of the inmates under her care were victims.
“They were committing crimes such as petty thefts to come to jail as a sort of respite from their situation,” Manuela says.
“There was one woman who because of the court order we had to release at 7.30pm at night. We weren’t allowed to keep her one minute longer. And so we sent her off with her little bag of stuff with nowhere to go except back to her partner.”
By this stage it was 2015 and Julia was back home in Brisbane. Her beloved cousin’s accused killer was back in court arguing for his charge to be downgraded to manslaughter and all Julia could do was throw an extra toothbrush or deodorant in the shopping trolley and donate her haul to charity.
She stumbled across Manuela’s prior charity online and so the formidable trio was united.
They soon decided to start their own non-profit Friends With Dignity with Manuela as CEO, Julia as chief financial officer and Zoe as the chief operating officer.
Two-and-a-half years later they have more than 100 volunteers who have helped them furnish more than 315 homes for families fleeing violence, often with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Five of these sanctuaries were created for battered men and they are receiving an increasing number of referrals for members of the LGBT community.
While Manuela still juggles her charity work with her job as a nurse Zoe and Julia have devoted themselves full time to the non profit.
They have a number of corporate sponsorships but most things are donated by members of the public who give new or pre loved items in good condition whenever they put a call out on social media for a toaster, bunk beds or fridge.
The volunteers never meet the recipients of their goodwill as all referrals are made through social workers who hand over the keys to the family’s new, often drab community housing home, which is then transformed.
Friends With Dignity initially operated only in southeast Queensland, from the Sunshine Coast down to the Tweed, but it’s currently recruiting volunteers Australia-wide with a national rollout on the cards.
They’re already helping child victims across the country with their Little Friends educational sponsorships which are sponsored by Jeunesse Kids.
It takes a victim of domestic violence on average seven attempts to permanently leave her abusive partner.
“The question we get the most is do they go back?” Manuela says.
“I don’t know the answer to that but hopefully if one of the barriers they have faced in the past is being able to have a safe place to live with everything they need that’s a gap we have closed. We haven’t just given them stuff. What we have given them is hope.”
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
Follow Friends With Dignity on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to receive instant updates on what items they require to help vulnerable families. Become a volunteer, give your unused household items, organise a charity fundraiser or ask your employer to make a corporate gift.
Call Friends With Dignity on 1300 512 393. Make a donation via donate@friendswithdignity.org.au
ARE YOU A VICTIM?
If you are in danger always call 000. Contact the National DV Hotline on 1800 737 732.
ATTEND A FUNDRAISER
May is Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Month and Friends With Dignity is hosting high tea events across the country to mark the occasion. Events will be held in the Gold Coast, Brisbane, Newcastle and Perth and guest speakers will include Rosie Batty and Allison Baden-Clay’s sister Vanessa Fowler.
NOT JUST BLACK EYES
According to the Queensland Police Service, domestic violence isn’t just when someone is physically hurting their partner. It also includes: sexual abuse; emotional or psychological abuse; economic abuse; making threats; coercive behaviour or doing anything that controls or dominates the second person and causes that person to fear for their safety or wellbeing or that of someone else.
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