“Please save my life… I’m frightened.” - October 2021

 A point where isolation starts feeling dangerous.

There is a point where isolation stops feeling quiet...and starts feeling dangerous

There is a particular kind of fear that doesn’t come from a single event.

It builds quietly at first.

Then all at once.

When it reaches its peak, it no longer feels like a workplace issue, or a complaint, or even a legal matter.

It feels like survival.

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I reached that point when the very system that was supposed to help me — the complaints process, the regulators, the oversight bodies — became part of the harm.

The turning point for me was the way my complaint was handled by IRO.

What should have been a safeguard became something else entirely.

Instead of support, I experienced responses that escalated my distress.

Instead of clarity, I was left more confused.

Instead of protection, I felt exposed.

At a time when I was already psychologically vulnerable, trying to navigate serious workplace harm and statutory non-compliance, the handling of my complaint didn’t just fail to help — it intensified everything.

I wasn’t just dealing with the original harm anymore.

I was dealing with the system itself.

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Escalating Fear

There are moments captured in my own words that I can barely read back now.

“Today I’m paralysed with fear.”  

That wasn’t dramatic language.

That was reality.

The situation had reached a point where every interaction felt unpredictable.

Every response carried risk.

Every silence felt like something worse was coming.

I described it at the time as a “psychological thriller.”

And that’s exactly what it felt like.

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Reaching Out — To Anyone, Anywhere

When people are safe, they follow process.

When people are not safe, they reach for help wherever they can find it.

By that point, I had exhausted the formal channels.

So I did something I never thought I would do.

I started reaching out to anyone I could think of.

My local electorate office in Kogarah.

Members of Parliament.

Community organisations.

Even my neighbours.

“I’ve started sharing the truth with our Kogarah electorate residents…”  

That wasn’t strategy.

That was desperation.

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Grabbing at Straws

There is a moment in trauma where logic gives way to hope.

The Vice-Chancellor had already been put on notice multiple times.

He is Slovenian.

So I reached out to the Slovenian community.

Not because it made procedural sense.

But because I was trying to find a pathway to humanity.

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What Desperation Actually Looks Like

People often misunderstand desperation.

It looks like persistence.

Relentless, exhausting persistence.

It looks like sending emails late at night.

Making calls while shaking.

Explaining your story over and over again, hoping this time someone will listen.

It looks like trying to hold your life together while everything that gave it stability is being stripped away.

Your work.

Your income.

Your sense of safety.

Your future.

Your home.

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When Those Words Became Real

At some point, everything condenses into a single moment.

A single sentence.

“Please save my life… I’m frightened.”  

No one writes that lightly.

No one says that unless something has gone very, very wrong.

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When the System Doesn’t Intervene

The most frightening part of all of this wasn’t just the original harm.

It was what followed.

The absence of intervention.

The deflection between agencies.

The failure to enforce what should have been enforced.

At one point, even an IRO communication caused harm that reverberated into my family, leaving me “alone and frightened again.”  

That is what systemic failure looks like.

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Legal Framing — Quietly, But Clearly

This is not only a personal account of distress.

It raises serious questions about statutory purpose and administrative responsibility.

Within the NSW workers compensation framework, bodies like IRO exist to support and protect injured workers navigating a complex statutory scheme.

Where conduct instead contributes to harm or escalation of distress, the issue becomes whether:

• the protective purpose of the scheme has been undermined

• the response reflects legal unreasonableness in the face of clear vulnerability

• or there has been, in practical terms, a failure to exercise the protective function required by the scheme

This is about whether a system designed to protect can, in effect, become part of the harm.

My case proves it can and does, in a serious way. 

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A Real-Life Psychological Thriller

When I described my experience as a “psychological thriller,” it wasn’t hyperbole.

It was the closest language I had.

Repeated harm.

Escalating fear.

Isolation.

Betrayal.

All while trying to navigate systems that were supposed to protect you.

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Why I’m Telling This Story

Because no one should have to reach the point where they are contacting anyone — community groups, politicians, strangers — just to feel safe.

Because no one should have to beg for intervention.

Because silence allows this to continue.

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A Call for Humanity

At the centre of all of this is something very simple.

Humanity.

When someone is telling you they are frightened, you don’t redirect them.

You act.

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And When No One Acts

You start reaching.

To anyone.

Anywhere.

Hoping that somewhere, somehow, a human response will break through.

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A Call to Accountability

This is no longer just a personal story.

It is a matter of accountability.

When a worker raises safety concerns,

when a compensation claim is made,

when distress is clearly communicated —

the law does not permit silence, delay, or harm in response.

The framework exists for a reason.

To protect.

To intervene.

To prevent further injury.

Where that does not occur — where harm is allowed to continue, or is compounded by those entrusted to prevent it — serious questions arise about responsibility, oversight, and compliance with statutory obligations.

This includes:

• whether protective mechanisms were properly activated

• whether complaints were handled in a manner consistent with their purpose

• whether decision-makers engaged with the substance of the material before them

At its highest, a failure to properly engage with relevant evidence and the protective purpose of the scheme may constitute jurisdictional error, or legal unreasonableness.

Because at its core, this is simple:

A system designed to protect cannot be allowed to become a source of harm.

And when it does,

it must be examined,

it must be acknowledged,

and it must be corrected.

Not eventually.

Now.

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Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 207-208