Distress and Betrayal - May 2022

9 May 2022

“I’m Not OK”

By 9 May 2022, something inside me was breaking.

Earlier that day, I was in my car outside the Kogarah electorate office after discovering what had happened behind the scenes. The very office I had turned to for help had become part of the silence. The office of my own elected representative.

I had gone there seeking assistance with regulatory failures. I had gone there because SafeWork NSW, SIRA NSW, my employer and the insurer had all failed to act.

I believed my local member would help ensure that the laws the regulators were expected to enforce, were actually enforced by SIRA NSW and SafeWork NSW.

Instead, I found myself confronting a different reality.

I was confronted with a political office that appeared more interested in protecting relationships and institutions than protecting a vulnerable constituent whose life was unravelling because of regulatory failure. 

The betrayal was devastating.

What followed on 9 May 2022 was a series of emails sent in distress to Cheryl Han at the Kogarah electorate office, to ACU governance, to lawyers, and eventually to the Sydney Catholic Archdiocese.

These emails reveal just how frightened and alone I had become.

In one email I wrote simply:

“I’m not ok.”

Those three words carried the weight of everything that had happened over the previous three years.

I was facing the possibility of losing my home. 

(See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-home-i-was-trying-to-secure-and.html and http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/05/stability-existed-then-was-illegally.html ). 

I had exhausted leave entitlements.

(See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/09/theft-of-two-decades-of-accrued-leave.html ).

I was still trying to have an Injury Management Plan implemented that had existed for almost two years.

(See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/06/injury-management-plan-legally-binding.html and http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/09/injury-management-and-rehabilitation.html ).

My employment and statutory entitlements were needed to secure my mortgage arrangements.

I was trying to save what remained of my life.

And I was doing it entirely alone.

That isolation is what stands out most when I read these emails today.

When my father died by suicide years earlier, the grief was overwhelming, but I was not completely alone. My family was around me. Friends were around me. There were people who stepped in to shield us from further harm while we struggled to survive the shock.

This was different.

This time there was no protective circle.

No support network.

No institution stepping forward.

No regulator intervening.

No insurer assisting.

No employer cooperating.

And now, even the office of my elected representative was unwilling to act.

The emails repeatedly return to the same themes: 

fear, isolation, desperation, and a simple plea for someone to do their job.

I was asking for lawful treatment.

I was asking for communication.

I was asking for cooperation.

I was asking for implementation of an Injury Management Plan.

I was asking to recover and return to the job I had held since 2001.

I was asking for the opportunity to save my home.

I was asking for dignity.

None of these should require a worker to feel that they need to ask for permission. They are statutory rights. This should NEVER have happened!

Again and again, I described feeling frightened and alone. Again and again, I spoke about losing my home, losing my livelihood and losing hope.

One passage captures the despair perfectly:

“I’m frightened and alone. I’m paralysed with fear.”

That’s the language of somebody trying desperately to survive.

The emails also reveal something else.

I was still trying to believe that people would eventually do the right thing.

I still believed that if enough information was provided, if enough evidence was supplied, if enough people were informed, someone would step in.

Someone would recognise the harm.

Someone would stop it.

Someone would care.

That hope was fading, but it was not yet gone.

What makes these emails confronting is the contrast between what was happening publicly and what was happening privately.

Attached to one of the emails were social media posts showing public statements about workplace safety.

Statements about protecting workers.

Statements about doing better.

Statements about preventing harm.

At the very same time those messages were being shared publicly, I was sending emails begging for help because the systems supposedly designed to protect workers had completely failed me.

The words sounded compassionate.

My lived experience felt anything but.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking aspect of these documents is how often I referred to dignity.

Not money.

Not revenge.

Not punishment.

Dignity.

The dignity of being treated fairly.

The dignity of recovering in my job.

The dignity of keeping my home.

The dignity of being heard.

The dignity of knowing that my family had not suffered for nothing.

As a daughter of Greek migrants, I repeatedly spoke about Philotimo — the idea that dignity, honour, responsibility and respect extend beyond the individual to the family itself. The humiliation I felt was not mine alone. It affected my mother. It affected my family. It touched wounds that were already deep from the loss of my father.

What strikes me most is not anger.

It is vulnerability.

These emails document a person at the edge of her endurance.

Someone who had spent years trying every official avenue available, complied with process after process, had asked repeatedly for help and received silence in return.

By 9 May 2022, I was no longer writing because I believed another email would solve the problem.

I was writing because I did not know what else to do.

And perhaps that is the most troubling question these documents raise.

How does a worker who reported psychosocial hazards in 2019 end up, nearly three years later, sending emails saying “I’m not ok” to regulators, politicians, church leaders, lawyers and university executives?

How many systems have to fail before a person reaches that point?

Because by 9 May 2022, I wasn’t writing from a position of strength.

I was writing from a place of fear.

And still, nobody stepped in.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 318-319.