Once we repaired things — Part 2

I need to say this clearly. I am extremely vulnerable now, but I was not when this happened. What I experienced didn’t come from fragility. It contributed to creating it.

After the first date, I sent Paul a message that was honest and open. I said I’d had too many bad experiences with too many so-so’s. It was context — me telling the truth about my history so I didn’t have to pretend I arrived unscathed by it.

He replied with reassurance. He said he was authentic and not another so-so. He said he wanted to get to know everything about me.

I let myself believe him. That wasn’t naïve. It was a reasonable response to what I was being shown — and to the care I thought I was sensing.

Things were going well until the end of one date, when something shifted. I felt it immediately. Passive aggression. Subtle, but sharp enough to register in my body before I could explain it to myself. A small internal tightening that said, something just changed.

Earlier that evening, almost casually, I’d said: “There are a lot of jerks out there.”

He disagreed with me.

I remember feeling quietly dismissed. It’s easy to disagree when you haven’t lived the accumulation behind a sentence like that. Women don’t arrive at conclusions like that lightly. They arrive there after years of being treated as disposable, misread, or expected to absorb poor behaviour politely.

I didn’t know then what was coming.

That weekend, I found myself unsettled. Alert in a way that felt deeply familiar. That old sensation of walking on eggshells — of scanning for signs, wondering if I’d done something wrong without knowing what it was. Not because I was weak, but because my nervous system recognised a pattern I’ve spent much of my life navigating: managing someone else’s mood without explanation.

By Sunday afternoon, I worked up the courage to ask what was going on. That took more out of me than it should have, because part of me already sensed the answer might not be safe.

What followed caught me completely off guard.

One moment I was asking a genuine question — what’s going on? — and the next I was being met with anger that felt sudden and disproportionate. The tone shifted so fast I struggled to keep up. Accusations came without explanation, stacking one on top of another, as though a private narrative had already been decided and I had been cast in it without my knowledge.

I remember trying to orient myself in the middle of it — trying to understand what I was supposedly being accused of, trying to remember things I was said to have said, trying to find a way into the conversation. I couldn’t. There was no space.

When he compared me to someone from his past, something in me went cold. I hadn’t consented to being placed into someone else’s story. I hadn’t been known long enough to be spoken to that way. I felt myself shrinking internally, not because I believed what was being said, but because I suddenly understood I wasn’t being seen at all.

My heart was racing. My hands were shaking. I could feel my body going into shock as I tried to stay calm and listen, hoping there might be a pause where I could finally speak. That pause never came.

Then he hung up.

The call ended abruptly, without resolution, without care, without even the most basic acknowledgment of how destabilising that moment was. I sat there staring at my phone, shaking, my chest tight, trying to steady my breathing and make sense of what had just happened.

I felt frightened — not in an abstract way, but in my body. The kind of fear that comes when emotional safety is pulled away without warning. I had done nothing to deserve that treatment, yet I was left alone to carry the shock of it.

Was he willing to listen?

No.

And that moment landed heavily.

Because this mattered to me. I had allowed myself, carefully and consciously, to feel safe and at peace — something I do not do lightly. I believed I was dealing with someone who meant what he said about being authentic and wanting to know me.

Realising that sense of safety wasn’t real was deeply destabilising. False safety hurts more than no safety at all.

I didn’t know what to do. It felt like my last hope had been smashed by the very thing I was promised it wouldn’t be. I didn’t know whether to try to respond, because how do you speak when someone has already decided a story about you and refuses to hear anything else?

I was frightened.

I was alone in a misunderstanding I had no voice in.

So I did the only thing I could.

I prayed.

I didn’t know what to do.

What continues to trouble me is how familiar this pattern is for women. No matter how kind, reasonable, or accommodating we are, the responsibility somehow shifts back onto us — to explain better, be calmer, try harder, or absorb more.

I’ve been told all of it:

• You’re not bitchy enough.

• You’re trying too hard.

• You’re not trying hard enough.

There’s even a book — The Rules — filled with instructions for women on how to manage themselves so men might finally “step up.”

Why is the burden always here?

Why can’t men step up simply because they are with a good woman?

Why is male anger so often excused or normalised, while women are expected to carry the emotional consequences quietly?

I was not okay with being compared to someone from his past in that angry call. I was not okay with being accused and then silenced. I was not okay with being left shaking, afraid, and unheard.

I am my own person.

Authenticity requires listening. Getting to know someone requires patience, curiosity, and emotional regulation. What happened that Sunday did not reflect those things.

I am angry — and my anger is valid.

In the days that followed, the impact didn’t fade — it settled. I replayed the call over and over, trying to locate the moment where things went wrong, wondering how a simple question could have led to such hostility. I felt raw and unsettled, my body still holding the shock. Sleep was shallow. Ordinary things felt harder. My thoughts kept circling back to the same questions, because I had been left without any answers. I carried a quiet ache — the grief of something that had felt promising, and the deeper grief of recognising yet another moment where my voice hadn’t mattered.

My fear and anger came from being harmed, not from being flawed. That was the truth I was forced to suppress. Getting to know someone requires communication. Where was my voice? Silenced, again. 

I can’t be silent anymore. Because this matters to me. 

To be continued…

See also : http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/10/interlude-mrs-harris-goes-to-paris.html

Frightened, alone, misunderstood, shamed, silenced, harmed. 

I Asked for Boundaries - The Code Calls That Courage

I was not trying to be brave.

I was burnt out.

I asked for role clarity.

I asked for a realistic workload.

I asked for reasonable boundaries.

I asked for a safe and sustainable work environment.

That was all.

Under the Staff Code of Conduct, Courage is defined as “acting ethically and professionally in spite of known fears, risks and uncertainty.”  

What the Code does not say — but lived experience reveals — is that sometimes the act requiring courage is not whistleblowing or dramatic disclosure.

Sometimes it is simply saying:

“This workload is not safe.”

“This role is unclear.”

“This behaviour is harming me.”

I knew the culture. I feared retaliation, not because I was doing anything wrong — but because I had seen what happened to those who challenged dysfunction.

When a local Associate Director acted incompetently and without consultation, I was thrust into escalating instability. Decisions were made that affected my work, my reputation, and my wellbeing — without transparency or procedural fairness.

I did what any reasonable employee is told to do:

I followed the proper channels.

⸻

Acting Despite Fear

The Courage section requires staff to act ethically and professionally despite fear and uncertainty.  

I did not disengage.

I did not behave unprofessionally.

I did not bypass process.

I documented concerns.

I sought clarification.

That is what facing challenges and difficult issues looks like in practice.  

⸻

Raising Concerns Responsibly

Courage includes “having the strength to raise potential unethical behaviours” and to report concerns appropriately.  

Excessive workload.

Role ambiguity.

Instability created without consultation.

These are not personal weaknesses. They are recognised psychosocial hazards.

Asking for a realistic workload is not defiance.

Requesting boundaries is not misconduct.

Seeking clarity is not insubordination.

It is professional responsibility.

⸻

The Obligation on Leadership

The Code makes clear that Courage also requires those in authority to:

• be open to receiving information

• take reasonable steps to respond appropriately

• make well-considered and justifiable decisions

• ensure fairness and dignity, especially where adverse effects may result  

These are obligations.

Instead of openness, there was defensiveness. Instead of proportionate response, there was obstruction. Instead of safeguarding health, there was escalation of harm.

When raising workload and safety concerns results in reputational framing or increased instability, the Courage obligations have not been met.

⸻

WHS Context: Realistic Workload Is a Safety Issue

Under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), employers have a primary duty to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers — including psychological health.

Psychosocial hazards include:

• excessive or unrealistic workload

• role ambiguity

• lack of consultation

• poor organisational justice

• misuse of positional power

A realistic workload is not a luxury. It is a safety control.

When an employee identifies workload as unsustainable, the appropriate response is risk assessment and mitigation — not silence, obstruction, or adverse treatment.

Fear of retaliation following safety concerns is itself a red flag in any WHS-compliant system.

⸻

What More Could I Have Done?

The Code required me to:

• act ethically

• raise concerns appropriately

• face challenges professionally

• attempt resolution 

I did.

The Code required leadership to:

• respond openly

• exercise positional power properly

• treat staff with dignity

• make justifiable decisions where impacts were foreseeable  

That did not occur.

The question “What more could I have done?” is often what conscientious workers ask when systems fail them.

But the Code does not require silence in the face of harm.

WHS law does not require workers to absorb unsafe workload or psychological risk to protect hierarchy.

At some point, responsibility shifts:

Not to the exhausted employee asking for realistic workload and boundaries — but to those entrusted with authority.

⸻

Courage, Properly Understood

My courage was not dramatic.

It was:

• asking for a realistic workload despite fear

• requesting boundaries in a toxic culture

• following process while under strain

• remaining professional while instability escalated

That conduct aligns with the Courage section of the Staff Code of Conduct.  

The response I received did not. 

And that is where the real divergence lies.

Video

NOTE: Incivility can be covert, not only overt. 

Why being respectful to your coworkers is good for business by Christine Porath

When Safety Is Denied at the Threshold - May 2021

"If evil people unite to do evil, then all the more should good people unite to do good. If the strength of bad people is that they are together, then good people must do the same to become a force." Leo Tolstoy.

I wanted to attend the Commemoration Service of the Rwandan Genocide on my own campus.

This was a weekend event, not a workday obligation.

It was a moment of remembrance, community, and moral witness.

For more than two decades, since 2001, this campus had been a place where I felt safe to work, to serve, to belong. The Rwandan community are my friends. The campus ministry was going to be present. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been a place of pastoral care and collective dignity.

But by late May 2021, nothing about my circumstances was ordinary.

By then, I was too traumatised and too unsafe to step foot on public university grounds alone.

When Support Becomes a Barrier

Because I feared further interception, obstruction, or misuse of my communications, I could not safely contact campus ministry myself. My emails had already been blocked. My attempts to seek pastoral care—care that exists precisely for moments like this—had been treated as threats rather than cries for help.

So I asked a trusted friend to act on my behalf.

This was about immediate emotional safety.

My friend had already encountered hostility when she contacted the WHS manager to raise concerns about their legal obligations. Despite this, she agreed to call again—this time to the Dean of the Strathfield campus, someone I had respectfully served, supported, and worked alongside for many years. I had supported her academic work, her teaching, her research, her professional aspirations. This was not a stranger.

A Dean of Campus holds WHS responsibilities.

That duty does not disappear when a worker becomes inconvenient.

On 27 May 2021, my friend called. She introduced herself. She explained she was calling about me—because I needed reassurance that I would be supported if I attended the commemoration.

The response was silence.

When my friend said, “you do know her,” the reply came slowly: “yes.”

When she said, “I just need to talk about Vicki,” she was cut off.

“No, thank you. Goodbye.”

She tried again.

“This is very important.”

“No, thank you. Goodbye.”

The call was placed on hold and then terminated.

No conversation.

No inquiry.

No duty of care.

Immediately after the call was terminated, my friend received a call back from a private number.

There were three separate attempts to call her.

She did not answer.

No voicemail was left.

This detail matters, because it did not occur in isolation.

By this point, my communications had already been blocked. Third parties attempting to raise WHS concerns on my behalf had already been met with hostility. The sudden appearance of a concealed number, immediately following a refusal to engage, formed part of what would become a repeated pattern of behaviour.

We both suspected who it was likely to be.

At the time, the national manager of employment relations and safety knew—or ought reasonably to have known—that what was occurring was reckless, unlawful, and placing me at serious risk of harm. The use of a hidden number, rather than transparent and documented communication, only intensified the sense of coercive control and intimidation already surrounding my attempts to seek safety and support.

The Immediate Physical Consequence

When my friend told me what had happened, my body reacted before my mind could catch up.

The shock triggered a sudden and severe spike in blood pressure.

I suffered a nosebleed.

I began hyperventilating.

Blood pooled in my throat and I started choking.

I am medicated for hypertension because of prolonged stress caused by workplace harm. This was not an abstract reaction. It was acute physiological collapse.

My friend stayed on the phone, trying to keep me conscious and calm. She very nearly called an ambulance.

Had she done so, she would have been forced to expose herself to serious health risks at the height of COVID—despite living with a white blood cell disorder and other conditions that made such exposure dangerous.

This is how far the harm had spread.

The university’s failure to meet its WHS obligations did not only endanger me.

It began endangering those trying to keep me alive.

“I’m Dying”

The next morning, I wrote an email to a friend and colleague I did not want to write.

Everything that follows was written in real time—not as reflection or rhetoric, but as documentation of what my body and mind were enduring after the shock of the night before.

“I got a severe nose bleed from the shock and nearly choked on blood last night… Everyone’s silence and incivility is killing me.”

But that was only part of what I documented at the time. In the same period, I described the broader psychological reality of what was being inflicted:

“This psychological thriller has been more surreal than my dad’s sudden shock of suicide. As we say, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ And I add that university staff have become experts at doing nothing.

Worse than government departments.

What did I ever do to become such a threat to this individual? I suspect the answer is I didn’t die or go away destroyed. But the staff bystanders are now succeeding. I assume it’s because if someone agrees to have a cuppa and I tell them what I’ve been put through, it might cause compassion and empathy and support for weeding out the toxic behaviour, and making it a university with integrity again.

So the goal is that I (Vicki) must die. Well everyone ignoring my plea for support will do that. But no one can disagree that I haven’t fought, on my own, to the very end. But everyone doing nothing—no duty of care and support—it’s the staff, who could’ve been in my shoes, that will succeed in the executive goal of negligence and serious offences to destroy me.”

These were contemporaneous descriptions of lived reality under coercive control, mobbing, and institutional abandonment.

At the time, the national manager responsible for employment relations and safety was actively engaged in conduct that escalated harm rather than preventing it. The Vice-Chancellor, as the senior officer with ultimate WHS accountability, authorised a system that allowed this to continue unchecked.

This was not an isolated failure.

It was a culture.

What This Says About Governance

A public university has non-delegable WHS obligations.

Pastoral care does not require permission.

Human dignity is not conditional on compliance.

Yet in this moment—when I was trying to attend a genocide commemoration with support—I was treated as a problem to be shut down, silenced, and ignored.

The result was medical crisis.

The result was terror.

The result was the near-involvement of emergency services.

This is what reckless endangerment looks like in practice.

Not dramatic language.

Not hindsight embellishment.

But documented harm, contemporaneously recorded, witnessed, and survived.

Why I Am Writing This Now

I am sharing this because formal processes did not stop the harm.

I am sharing this because silence nearly killed me.

I am sharing this because WHS failures do not stay contained—they radiate outward, endangering families, friends, and communities.

And I am sharing this because remembrance events are meant to affirm our shared humanity—not become the setting where institutional cruelty is most starkly revealed.

No one should have to choose between dignity and survival.

———

If this brings up anything heavy for you, please pause, breathe, and take care of yourself—dignity includes care for your own nervous system.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 172.

No Duty of Care

Further reading 

Brown, M.E. and Mitchell, M.S. (2010). ‘Ethical and Unethical Leadership: Exploring New Avenues for Future Research.’ Business Ethics Quarterly. 20(4):583-616. DOI:10.5840/beq201020439 

[Online approved OA version]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298852866_Ethical_and_Unethical_Leadership_Exploring_New_Avenues_for_Future_Research

Duffy, C. (2025, 19 September). ‘Senate inquiry calls for cap to vice chancellor pay as chair lashes 'rotten culture' hurting university staff and students.’ ABC News. [Online]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-19/senate-inquiry-interim-report-university-governance/105795694