We want you to meet a very real woman. Her not-real name is Aish*. 

Aish was living in Australia, an ocean away from her home country and family. She wanted to share her ideas and put her education into practice. She was trying to find purpose and connection through work. But something was stopping her.

“Every time I had an interview or a volunteering opportunity, I would miss it. I would sleep all the way to two or three o’clock in the afternoon and wake up feeling completely groggy.” 

As Aish shares on the FW podcast There’s No Place Like Home, on the nights before these missed events, her husband had “sweetly” coaxed her awake, placed a pillow behind her back and handed her a warm drink.

“He’d tell me, ‘Ah, love, here you go, here’s your chai latte. I heard your stomach growl while you were sleeping and I didn’t want you to continue sleeping while you were hungry’.”

Years later, Aish believes that her husband was drugging her. And this was just one of the isolating tactics he used to cut her off from her family at home – and keep her from getting a job and building a network in Australia. 

Aish is now a victim-survivor advocate working in the family violence reform sector. She represents a group of women who, often because of social isolation, are at higher risk of their romantic partner abusing them. 

In 2021, a landmark survey of almost 1400 migrant and refugee women across the country found that one in three are impacted by domestic violence. This cohort contends with language barriers, systemic racism and a lack of culturally safe support. As do other groups. 

Also in 2021, a UNSW research paper commissioned by Commonwealth Bank found that First Nations women may be at greater risk of experiencing domestic and financial abuse than their non-Indigenous peers. For Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander women, intergenerational trauma may result from colonisation, dispossession of land and Stolen Generations.

With over a decade of experience working in the domestic and family violence space, proud Kamilaroi woman Hannah Taylor-Civitarese speaks about how colonisation, inherently, is the act of exerting power and dominance. 

“A lot of systems that have been built now mirror that type of behaviour, as well,” says Taylor-Civitarese on FW’s There’s No Place Like Home. “A perpetrator will use the systems designed to coerce and control people against the victim-survivor.”

Systems abuse was part of Aish’s story. When she eventually confronted her husband, he left her alone in their home, signed the lease into her name and shut off the power and water. He also revoked his sponsorship of her spousal visa. 

“We can’t keep building refuges for women.”

With no local support, it wasn’t until Aish connected with two women who had also married her perpetrator – and were also victim-survivors of his abuse – that she stopped feeling responsible for what had happened. 

“That’s when I realised, this isn’t okay… I kept blaming myself, [and] when I heard them blaming themselves was when I could see, oh my gosh, why are they blaming themselves about it?”

Sharing stories like Aish’s – bringing them out from behind closed doors – raises awareness. The solution to ending domestic and financial abuse also lies, as Taylor-Civitarese says, in cultural change.  

“We can’t keep building refuges for women. We have to call out behaviour and we have to teach our children that there is a better way.”

CommBank Next Chapter believes in a brighter future for everyone. Which is why their specialist team offers free and confidential support to all Australians affected by financial abuse – even if you don’t bank with them. 

The more we know, the more we can help one another.