“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” Isaiah 43:1
By late June 2022, I had reached breaking point.
I was no longer making choices.
I was surviving them.
After years of trying to do everything the right way—reporting workplace bullying, asking for a safe work environment, engaging lawyers, relying on regulators, complying with every process placed in front of me—I found myself being forced into a decision that should never have existed.
I accepted a significantly below-market offer for my investment property.
Not because I wanted to sell.
Not because it made financial sense.
Because I had been cornered into it.
As I later wrote:
“This was not a market decision. It was a forced survival decision.”
None of it should have happened.
If my employer and insurer had complied with their statutory obligations, I should have been recovering in my role. My weekly compensation should have been paid. My return to work should have been supported.
Instead, years of non-compliance created a financial crisis that spread into every part of my life. I was forced to sell assets under pressure, draw down on my superannuation, and accept substantial financial losses simply to preserve some stability.
What was being taken from me wasn’t simply money.
It was years of work.
Years of planning.
Years of financial security.
The crisis didn’t stay financial.
It spilled into my family.
In desperation, I searched for any way to save my home. Conversations that should have been practical became painful. The people who should have been my support network were themselves overwhelmed by circumstances they couldn’t fully understand.
Instead of finding solutions, I found conflict, misunderstanding and isolation.
I had no partner.
No one living with me.
No effective support network.
I was carrying financial collapse, institutional failure, family conflict and relentless uncertainty all at once.
No one should be expected to carry that level of cumulative pressure alone.
——
After I was given that below market offer, I simply got into my car.
I didn’t really know where I was going. I felt like I was losing my mind.
I just drove.
Eventually I found myself heading south.
I switched my phone off.
I sat alone in the darkness for what felt like hours.
I remember staring into the night, trying to make sense of how my life had unravelled so completely.
How had asking for a safe workplace led to this?
How had complying with every system left me on the verge of losing everything I had worked for?
The silence around me matched the silence I had encountered everywhere else.
Every authority that should have intervened had looked away.
Every regulator that should have enforced compliance had failed to stop the harm.
For the first time in my life, I truly understood what it felt like to have nowhere left to turn.
I felt so alone, so frightened and uncared for. I felt taken for granted or advantage of by people, organisations and a society I served so honourably. And in return for my service to our society, I was systemically abused and exploited beyond comprehension when I too, for once, requested something reasonable: a psychosocially safe work environment. Instead of protection from greater harm and exploitation, the “system” took the exploitation and lack of safety to a whole new level.
As I’ve said before, when I suddenly lost my dad to suicide, I had some kind of support network around me. When this level of institutional abuse was directed at me, I found myself all alone in the middle of the night, staring at the ocean from a national park lookout. Yes, I chose to take the scenic route.
Isolated, frightened, alone. Numb and rendered vulnerable and helpless. From one extreme expectation of having to be superwoman for everyone, to the other extreme caused by a system boasting bullshit regarding safety and regulatory compliance. In reality, this “system” created the helplessness and vulnerability I was experiencing. It is a completely unacceptable and really messed up system.
——
Eventually, I headed home. Or so I thought.
Given the combination of trauma, shock, cognitive exhaustion, fear, confusion and the darkness of my surroundings, I wasn’t even sure whether I was travelling north or south anymore.
I had completely lost my sense of direction - in more ways than one.
That was when two police officers from Wollongong PAC located me. My family had called, worried. Such systemic harm causes family conflict. That day included another incident of that kind. It all became too much.
I may have lost my sense of direction, but our phones can now be tracked. I had switched mine back on as I tried to navigate where I was and if I was going in the right direction. It turned out, I wasn’t. It’s like one irony after another.
One thing I remember clearly is that they called me by name. They saw me. I have a name. There was kindness in their voices when they said my name. They made me feel safe.
They didn’t dismiss me like their colleagues at St. George PAC (from the moment I tried to report the harassment from a senior executive of my publicly funded university employer, around September 2020).
Wayne and Jill spoke to me with kindness.
They listened. Really listened.
By the end of our conversation we were joking and laughing together.
Constable Wayne said something I have never forgotten.
“You need to be the light of your own lighthouse.”
I responded that it was difficult to be your own lighthouse when everything you had worked for was being taken away and there was no one left standing beside you.
No advocate.
No regulator.
No institution prepared to stop what was happening.
Just me.
Trying to protect what little remained.
 |
A few words of kindness in the darkness stayed with me: "You need to be the light of your own lighthouse." |
Before I left, they handed me their card. I promised I would call them once I arrived home safely.
They trusted my word. I intended to keep it.
When I reached my apartment garage, I made that call. They were genuinely pleased to hear that I had arrived safely.
Then they quietly told me something they hadn’t wanted to tell me while I was still driving.
St George Police had forced entry into my apartment. My front door had been broken. Everything changed in an instant.
I remember screaming. I lived alone. My cat was inside.
——
My home—the very home I had nearly lost because of systemic failures—had now been violated.
When I reached my apartment, I wasn’t greeted by relief. I was greeted by a shattered door.
A broken lock. Splintered timber. A home that no longer felt secure.
The financial reality struck immediately. This wasn’t an ordinary front door. It was a fire-rated apartment door that would cost around two thousand dollars to replace.
It was money I simply did not have, not because I had been irresponsible. Because I had been forced into financial decisions that should never have existed.
For quite some time afterwards, my security system consisted of a dining chair pushed firmly against the inside of my front door. That was all I had.
I was incredibly grateful for neighbours who quietly looked out for me. But neighbours can’t replace a secure home. Nor can they remove the fear of living alone behind a broken door.
Another thought haunted me. If someone entered my apartment while the door couldn’t be properly secured and stole anything, would my insurance even cover the loss?
That fear stayed with me. For months, every unfamiliar sound made me jump. Every night I wondered whether someone would walk in and attack me.
I had asked for a safe workplace. Instead, I had lost the feeling of safety at work, and now I had lost it in my own home.
——
What has stayed with me just as strongly, however, is the extraordinary contrast between two different responses.
Within days, I wrote to NSW Police to formally acknowledge the officers from Wollongong.
I wanted their professionalism recognised because they had done something profoundly simple.
They listened.
As I wrote at the time:
“The professionalism and kindness and understanding of Jill and Wayne was a massive relief in my severely difficult predicament.”
And:
“They did something St George police don’t do. THEY LISTENED.”
That wasn’t something I wrote years later with the benefit of hindsight. Those were my words, written within days of that night.
Compare the empathy of Wollongong police who gave me courage to “be the light of my own lighthouse” (despite the adversities making that impossible at the time), in contrast to the insult from a St. George police officer, who went straight to victim blaming, without, LISTENING to the circumstances that resulted in this cruel situation. That junior police officer, who still lacked life experience, said, “You don’t take self-responsibility.” WOW. Let’s read what I’ve been through so far, as I’m sharing on this blog, to truly “observe” if that’s true.
I’m in this cruel situation because I’m the only one taking responsibility while public servants have done NOTHING to protect me and stop further harm!
I took responsibility to protect my team from further bullying, discrimination and harassment and even stepped aside from my job to let that toxic manager engage in unethical conduct, because I REFUSED TO BE UNETHICAL.
I cared, mentored, and supported academic clients, students, colleagues and researchers.
I was financially responsible but no one took responsibility in the system to stop the fraud and wage theft or the harassment from the national manager of employment relations and SAFETY.
I tried to take care of my health and well-being while being compromised in my very health and well-being by a toxic work environment, while also trying to protect my privacy, my family’s privacy from that intrusive manager, and trying to care for members of my family as per my employee rights that are supposed to be generally protected too, as needed, all the while having a manager who expected the “obligation” to the university to come first, even if you or someone in your family is dying (or tragically takes their own life like my dad - see paragraph one of http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2024/08/from-day-after-tragedy.html).
I was told at my work, “everyone needs you Vicki”, but where is everyone when I needed them! But hey, according to police officers at St. George PAC, I apparently don’t take self-responsibility!!!
Needless to say, I lost it when that remark was made. I don’t think that police officer will be quick to make a comment like that again.
DON’T JUDGE WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON.
All these years, I had to carry this ALL ALONE. I had to battle what clearly became something akin to a white collar criminal enterprise. Where were my comrades? Who in authority showed the leadership and governance required to stop this corporate conduct?
Where was the responsibility and duty of care owed to me by my publicly funded university employer, CCI, SafeWork NSW, SIRA NSW and NSW Police?
Instead of protecting me and keeping me safe, from the moment I initially reported the harassment from a senior executive at my university employer, St. George PAC ultimately broke my door, leaving me unsafe even in my own home. The way I feel right now, I don’t feel safe in the presence of local police anymore. Even if I have a serious need to contact them in the future, I’d rather take a risk and not make that call.
NSW Police later confirmed that my compliment had been forwarded to Wollongong Police Area Command, while my “concerns” regarding St George Police had been referred to the Central Metropolitan Region Professional Standards Manager for assessment (another useless unit that does nothing to resolve the issue).
The broken door became yet another symbol. It represented what had happened to every part of my life.
- The workplace had become unsafe.
- The statutory scheme that should have protected me had failed.
- Regulators had stood by while the harm escalated.
- The financial pressure fractured family relationships.
- And finally, even my own home no longer felt like a place of refuge.
As I later reflected, what defined this period wasn’t one isolated event—it was the accumulation of workplace harm, regulatory inaction, financial loss, family conflict and institutional failure, each compounding the next until there seemed to be nowhere left where I was truly safe.
That was the real cost.
Not simply a broken door.
But the loss of the one place every person should be able to count on.
Home.
—
And to all who expected me to be some kind of superwoman, I don’t apologise for not being made of steel. My humanity is as real as each person complicit in this abuse.
Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 427-429.
