When Fatime sought refuge from family violence, all she found was grief and tragedy

When Fatime Tahir Adoum fled family violence with her four-year-old son, she thought she was running to help, not into a life of excruciating grief in a country where the safety net does not apply to her.

Adoum was 23, distraught and recently arrived in Australia, having followed her husband who was doing his PhD in Melbourne.

Tension turned to physical and verbal abuse two weeks after she arrived, she says, and after fleeing to the street, she was spotted by a cab driver and taken to Broadmeadows police.

It triggered events that led to the loss of both her son and her baby daughter, and an existence so precarious – but, women’s advocates say, so common – that Refugee Legal chief executive David Manne calls it “a large-scale crisis that is largely hidden”.

Fatime’s then-toddler son, with whom she fled family violence.

Although there are about two million people on valid temporary visas in Australia, vast numbers of women among them are not eligible for government-funded family-violence welfare.

“Sixty per cent of our clients are homeless,” says Ajsela Siskovic, executive manager of legal services at inTouch multicultural women’s family violence service.

Samia Baho, founder of the Sunshine-based migrant women’s support group, the Centre of Advancing Women, has five words to describe marginalised women like Adoum: “It’s like we don’t exist.”

This includes holders (and their dependents) of temporary skilled or working visas, student visas and postgraduate visas, which Adoum’s then-husband held.

It also applies to those on tourist and working holiday visas and applicants for permanent skills visas, says veteran inTouch solicitor Luba Tankevski.

Fatime Tahir Adoum wants to help bring attention to the impossible challenges facing women on a range of temporary visas who do not have access to family violence provisions available to other victim-survivors.Credit: Jason South

Former child bride Adoum says the only government-funded support she could secure, during what descended into life-altering trauma, was the night that police put her in a hotel after she fled her husband with her son.

That date – October 29, 2017 – was the second-last day she saw her little boy alive. She has not seen her baby daughter since.

Before they came to Melbourne, the Chad-born couple had been living in Malaysia, where Adoum’s husband did his masters, and where both children were born. Her baby did not yet have an Australian visa, so had to stay behind when she came to Melbourne to see her husband.

Such is the vulnerability of women such as Adoum, that the day she ran to Broadmeadows police was the first of two occasions she says police told her abuser where she was.

Fatime Tahir Adoum, who says she lost her two children due to lack of family violence support, and the woman who helped put her life back together, Samia Baho.Credit: Jason South

“When I went to the police station, I was out of control, crying and shaking; even the police didn’t know what I was saying – they got me an interpreter of a different [Arabic] dialect,” says Adoum.

“They took my passport and put it on the system, [and] said, ‘We are going to put you in a motel and you call us tomorrow morning’.”

“He told them I was having a mental breakdown. The police gave him my address.”

Fatime Tahir Adoum

A shopkeeper let her make that call, in which she was told her husband was on his way to collect her.

Adoum later discovered her husband lied to police: “He said I was having a mental breakdown: ‘She’s sick and has my son and is dangerous’. The police gave him my address.”

She fled again before he arrived, this time to the Craigieburn home of the only people she knew – the brother of her husband’s housemate and his wife.

The man called her husband, asking him not to go to their home until after his shift finished at 4pm. He proposed that “we can make a solution as a community”.

But her husband came straight away: “He took our son, put him in his car and locked it. Then he started to search for our passports [which she had hidden].”

Adoum’s son, pictured in Malaysia, where the family lived before coming to Australia for her husband’s PhD study.

“He was so abusive,” she says.

“The woman gave me the address of a Sudanese lady living in Dandenong and sent me from the backyard. She was scared he was going to kill her, but she said, ‘We’ll take your son, it’s OK’.”

Four months later, on March 28, 2018, her little boy was hit by a motorbike while playing in the street in the capital of Chad.

Unbeknown to Adoum, her husband had a travel document made for the boy, collected their daughter from Malaysia and had left both children in his home country with family members.

A ‘sub-group in society’

After leaving the children in Chad, her husband returned to Australia, where he allegedly harassed the African family sheltering Adoum, who tried and failed to get family-violence support at many government-funded agencies.

“All of them told me, ‘Oh, graduate visa, you are not eligible for this, you are not eligible for that’. They’re the only words I heard,” she says. “I was not even sure what they meant by ‘visa’.”

Principal lawyer at migrant women’s family violence agency Ajsela Siskovic (right) and migration agent Luba Tankevski say they see cases like Fatime Adoum’s “on a daily basis” and because the welfare of such women is rarely discussed, “they are a sub-group in society”.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Siskovic, the solicitor, says cases like Adoum’s are common, but rarely discussed. “We see this daily,” she says.

“There’s a group of women, who when they are referred to us, there is a limited amount we can do to support them, because of their visa status: they come from all sorts of countries where it’s very difficult to go back.

“We have never been funded to support women like Fatime ... these women and their plight needs to be recognised,” Siskovic said. “They are a sub-group of society.”

InTouch is one of many agencies pushing the federal government to create a new category of bridging visa for temporary visa holders in legitimate relationships who have experienced family violence.

CEO and founder of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre Kon Karapanagiotidis speaking at Parliament House in Canberra in May, has also called for decent family violence support provisions for temporary visa holders.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

This was not adopted in the government’s 2023 Migration Strategy that resulted from the inquiry, nor in the National Plan to End Violence Against Women.

Advocates say state and federal governments have been well aware of the problem for years.

In 2018, the National Advocacy Group on Women on Temporary Visas Experiencing Violence released its Path to Nowhere report highlighting a “national crisis affirmed by evidence and reviews nationally” affecting women not provided with violence supports.

It recommended “immediate law and policy reform by the Australian and state and territory governments”. The group has produced two blueprints for reform, the latest in 2022, including a two-to-three year visa allowing such women just services.

Michaela Rhode, senior solicitor at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said many women on visas like Adoum’s found it hard to even be accepted into the Victorian family-violence hub, The Orange Door, because they often had no fixed address.

Refugee Legal’s Manne describes Australia’s treatment of such vulnerable women thus: “We have a legal architecture which not only discriminates, but results in wide-scale harm.”

‘My life is already done’

In the months after her husband took their children, it was only down to the kindness of the Dandenong family that Adoum found shelter.

When her husband – who has a different surname – returned to Australia from Chad and began to harass the family in November 2017, Adoum decided to leave for their safety.

Fatime Adoum has been given legal support by the volunteer-based agency run by Samia Baho in Melbourne’s west and is now an NDIS support worker.Credit: Jason South

“He started bullying, shouting at them, threatening them ... After a few weeks, I said, ‘Look, guys, send me elsewhere, I will leave you alone and go. My life is already done, I lost everything and I don’t want to stop yours’,” she says.

“They gave me some money and said, ‘You go to Richmond, you will find black people and an organisation that will help you’.”

After a day searching, Adoum flagged down the Australian Federal Police. They took her to Victoria Police headquarters in central Melbourne, she says, where police asked her name and found a missing persons report.

They notified her husband, who sent a friend to collect her.

“The friend said, ‘Hey, Fatime, let us go home’. I looked at him, and didn’t say anything. Then two policemen came and grabbed me,” she says.

“They grabbed me under my arms, and they threw me like a potato in his car.”

Fatime Adoum, on her alleged treatment by police after her abusive husband sent a man to collect her from Southbank Police Headquarters

“I remember one of them saying, ‘don’t make a drama you have to go back to your husband’. I was sitting down crying and refusing to go. So after that, they grabbed me under my arms, and they threw me like a potato in his car.”

Victoria Police confirmed a report was made to Broadmeadows police on October 31, 2017, in relation to a missing woman. Records do not indicate that police divulged her location.

“Police checked on the welfare of the woman, who did not want to disclose her location, and welfare services were provided due to homelessness,” the statement said. Police have no reports on record of other incidents. Adoum said the only services provided were the night in the hotel.

“Victoria Police have not received any complaints made in relation to this matter, however, are committed to investigate complaints thoroughly,” the statement said.

Adoum says that after the man came to get her from Southbank, she was so terrified, she flung herself from his moving car.

”She was planning to kill herself rather than going to her husband,” says Baho. “As soon as the man took her from that place, she threw herself out onto the street.“

Adoum was taken by ambulance to the Royal Melbourne Hospital. She was eventually housed in a church-run refuge for those at risk of homelessness, before living in a group home for asylum seekers for four years.

She now lives in community housing and works as an NDIS support worker. She is also close to securing permanent residency. Meanwhile, Fatime’s husband is living in Chad permanently.

Baho is among the many advocates saying Australia cannot continue to leave women such as Adoum so exposed to disaster. Since it opened in 2020, her small agency has supported hundreds of women “falling between the cracks” after being rejected by mainstream services.

“These women are experiencing extreme trauma, they are a tick and flick on paper; all family services and the government know about it,” says Baho.

“Their voice is never being heard.”

If you or anyone you know needs support, you can contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), Lifeline 131 114, or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636.

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