My Story - My Voice

22 August 2022

On 22 August 2022, news.com.au published an article about the death of former NRL player and coach Paul Green.

Less than an hour after reading it, I sent an email to senior leaders within ACU.

The subject line was:

“…Paul Green’s story sounds similar with my dad – it’s time for me to speak up publicly and what ACU leaders are doing to me and my family.”

The timing matters.

The article had hit something profoundly personal.

My father had taken his own life.

And as I read about Paul Green, I was confronted not only by another family’s devastating loss, but by a question that had become inseparable from my own experience:

Why don’t people speak up?

And perhaps an even more difficult question:

What happens when they do?

——

A struggle even his family couldn’t see

The article, Paul Green’s mental health demons were secret, even from his family, reported that Green had been privately experiencing mental-health difficulties for many years.

His best friend said Green had first spoken about those struggles approximately 18 years earlier. Yet they weren’t something Green wanted widely known.

According to the article, there was an employment dimension to that silence. It reported that Green didn’t want his mental-health struggles to become widely known because he was concerned that disclosure could affect his ability to obtain and retain another head-coaching position.

That stopped me. Here was a story about mental health, but also about work, professional identity and the perceived consequences of revealing vulnerability.

The article described a man who could appear happy, who loved his wife, children and family, and who was financially stable.

His parents hadn’t understood the extent of what he was experiencing.

His mother described seeing him only hours before his death. They had sat together, laughed and talked. She said she saw no signs of depression.

His family was left trying to comprehend something they hadn’t known was happening to the extent that it was.

And then there was something else in the article that resonated deeply with me.

Paul Green was described as:

“the rock for everyone else”.

Someone other people could turn to.

Someone who encouraged others to call if they needed to talk.

Someone who carried things for other people while apparently carrying something largely unseen himself.

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“We need to be able to talk about it”

In the aftermath of Paul Green’s death, Johnathan Thurston made an impassioned plea about mental health.

He rejected the old Australian attitude of “she’ll be right, mate” and called for people to talk about what they were experiencing and seek professional help when they needed it.

His conclusion was simple:

“We need to be able to talk about it.”

I agree.

But reading those words raised another question for me.

What happens when we do talk about it?

What happens when someone does exactly what society tells them to do?

What happens when they seek professional help?

What happens when they disclose trauma?

What happens when they tell their workplace they’re being harmed?

What happens when they ask the people responsible for workplace safety to make the workplace safe?

——

“Dear everyone that hasn’t listened to my pleas for help”

Less than an hour after that article was published, I began my email to ACU senior leaders:

“Dear everyone that hasn’t listened to my pleas for help,”

That was where I had reached by 22 August 2022.

I wasn’t writing about the abstract importance of speaking up.

I was living the consequences of trying to do it.

I wrote:

“I’ll most definitely be speaking up about why people don’t speak up by sharing my story publicly about what ACU exploited and is still doing to me and my family.”

Those words read differently beside the article.

I was speaking up about why people don’t speak up.

And I was telling the people receiving my email that I was reaching the point where I would no longer keep what was happening behind closed doors.

——

My father’s death and my return to work

Paul Green’s death took me straight back to my father.

In my email that morning, I told university leaders what had happened after my father took his own life.

The morning after his death, my manager came into my family home to find out when I would return to work.

I was back in less than two weeks.

I even boarded a plane to Wagga to provide training to EdD students.

I wrote:

“No one cared and no accommodation was ever even offered. There was no compassion or understanding.”

I kept functioning.

I kept working.

I carried grief and trauma while continuing to perform professionally.

For seven years, I suppressed it.

Then I finally did what we constantly tell people they should do.

I sought help.

I went to grief and trauma counselling.

And, as I recorded in this email, my manager subsequently labelled me “ill”.

I wrote:

“No one should have to prove resilience and not ‘ill’ whatever that means, like this.”

That’s one reason the Paul Green article struck me so forcefully.

Here was an article describing a man who reportedly didn’t want his mental-health struggles widely known partly because of concern about what disclosure might mean for his professional future.

And here was my own experience.

I had sought counselling for grief and trauma after my father’s suicide.

Rather than that being understood simply as a human being appropriately seeking support after trauma, I felt that my vulnerability had become something that could be used to define me.

Not to mention the repeated boundary and privacy violations from my manager and malicious gossip and rumours that were destructive. This wasn’t only directed at me. It was a pattern of behaviour. No one was safe from the risk of harmful gossip. I didn’t trust her but it was impossible to protect myself.

See examples:

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2024/07/part-2-bullying-discrimination-and.html

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2024/09/part-2-suicide-and-greek-orthodox-church.html (sixth paragraph from the end of the post).

But there is something terribly wrong with telling people to seek help while maintaining workplace cultures in which people can reasonably fear what vulnerability might mean for their careers.

In my case, it was reprehensible conduct by university leaders, to authorise an official letter with falsified and slanderous statements, dated 13 May 2020, by the person employed as the national manager of employment relations and safety, Rena Christmann. I cannot begin to describe the distress this caused, from leaders of a university, committed to the dignity of the human person in its very mission.

In addition, there were policies, a code of conduct for ALL staff, the capabilities framework, and the entire Directorate of Identity and Mission which is against such conduct, social injustice and unfair and undignified work conditions. That’s before we even get into laws and regulations breached in this entire inhumane, immoral and unethical situation.

The production of this vexatious and slanderous letter, “on behalf of the university”, was the reason that I took the advice of the now third employment lawyer, and made a claim because, to quote my then legal representative verbatim, “It’s not worth your health.”

The injuries were being caused by the employer. Little did I know how much worse it would get, with the help of CCI. It’s nothing less than fraud, that no regulator took seriously.

It’s time regulators take this corporate conduct seriously.

——

I was not silent

This distinction matters enormously.

I wasn’t silently suffering while everyone around me remained unaware.

I was telling people.

I had been asking for help.

I had been raising workplace safety concerns.

I had been asking for a workplace free from discrimination, harassment and bullying.

And by 22 August 2022, I was writing to people in positions of authority telling them in unmistakable language that what was happening was causing profound harm.

My language was raw because my experience was raw.

I described it as the “psychological violence of mobbing”. I made serious allegations concerning particular HR and WHS personnel and the handling of WHS psychosocial hazards and ultimately a workers’ compensation claim - the latter caused by the harmful conduct of HR senior executives, “on behalf of the university.” What does that tell us?

It was all part of the documentary record.

But underneath all of that language was an extraordinarily simple plea:

“When someone has begged for so long for it to stop, and it doesn’t, it’s abuse.”

Then:

“So please stop the abuse this week. All of you.”

This is important to the chronology of my story.

These aren’t words reconstructed years afterwards.

They’re what I wrote on 22 August 2022, while I was living it.

See examples:

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/vice-chancellor-on-notice-delivered.html

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/05/on-noticeagain-what-leadership-knew.html

——

This was not my choice

Even then, I was still giving ACU an opportunity to respond privately.

I told the recipients that I would speak publicly if action wasn’t taken in relation to its WHS safety obligations, ethical governance, duty of care, a mentally healthy workplace, the university’s mission and values, and my statutory entitlement to recover and return to my work in a safe environment.

Later in the email I put the choice plainly:

“Shall we continue this conversation in private with leaders of ACU ending this blatant disregard for the law and exploitation and cruelty right now? Or shall I get public support.”

I was still offering a private avenue.

I was still asking people inside the institution to act ethically.

What I could no longer accept was being required to remain silent while serious harm was continuing.

My life and work contribution mattered. And I was doing what I could to save my life from this level of abuse of power that chose to target me.

——

“Our stories unite our humanity”

In that same email, I wrote:

“Our stories unite our humanity.”

That was the connection I was making when I shared Paul Green’s story.

I wasn’t claiming to know his private experience. Nor was I saying our circumstances were the same.

They weren’t.

What connected his story to mine was something deeply human.

His death took me back to my father.

The article confronted me with what families may never know.

It confronted me with the fear that can surround revealing mental-health difficulties professionally.

And it confronted me with society’s repeated instruction that people must speak.

“We need to be able to talk about it.”

Yes.

We do.

But if that statement is going to mean anything, then our institutions must also ask:

Are we safe people to talk to?

What happens to someone after they disclose trauma?

What happens when an employee seeks counselling?

What happens when someone reports that their workplace is harming them?

Do we listen?

Do we protect them?

Do we address the hazard?

Or do we make speaking itself another source of harm?

——

The contradiction I could no longer live with

By the end of my email, I was asserting something that was being progressively stripped away from me: my professional identity.

I’ve been working at ACU for approximately two decades.

I knew the quality of my work.

I knew what I contributed to the university community.

And I knew that seeking grief and trauma counselling didn’t erase any of it.

I wrote, with defiance, about being the:

“brilliant information manager I am.”

I also said:

“My work was all for the benefit of the community in ACU. It was the only time I requested support and a safe work environment free from discrimination, harassment and bullying.”

That was the contradiction I could no longer reconcile.

ACU publicly spoke about mission and values, community engagement, empathy, kindness, duty of care and mentally healthy workplaces.

I was asking to experience those principles in practice.

I wrote:

“I live the mission and values of ACU in action. Your actions prove the opposite to your public image in words.”

And finally:

“Either walk the talk or walk away and let ethical leaders take over.”

——

What “speak up” must really mean

Looking back at these two documents from the morning of 22 August 2022, the timing is extraordinary.

At 10:15 am, an article was published describing the largely hidden mental-health struggles of Paul Green and the devastation following his death.

It included a public plea:

“We need to be able to talk about it.”

At 11:01 am, I sent an email saying:

“I’ll most definitely be speaking up about why people don’t speak up.”

Forty-six minutes.

One article.

One email.

And behind my email, the death of my own father and everything that experience meant to me.

We absolutely need to encourage people to speak.

But that is only half of the equation.

Someone has to listen.

Someone has to make it safe to speak.

And when the person speaking is telling an institution that its own conduct or workplace is causing harm, encouraging them to “talk” means very little unless the institution is also prepared to hear what they are saying and act appropriately.

By 22 August 2022, I was no longer prepared to accept a version of “speaking up” in which all responsibility rested with the vulnerable person.

I had spoken.

I had asked for help.

I had asked for safety.

I had pleaded for the harm to stop.

And now I was telling them that if they would not hear me privately, I was going to find my voice publicly.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 451.

——

Reference

news.com.au, “Paul Green’s mental health demons were secret, even from his family,” 22 August 2022.

https://www.news.com.au/sport/nrl/paul-greens-mental-health-demons-were-secret-even-from-his-family/news-story/dedde0a5034656b4c1d718bd756726ef

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My Story - My Voice

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

We Need to Be Able to Talk About It - But What Happens When We Do? - August 2022