Changing Australia: Jess Hill on reform and unmasking coercive control

0:00What's time now for changing Australia? And in her youth, Jess Hill tried to start a new magazine to provide an alternative to women's publications at the time. She went on to become a tenacious journalist reporting from the Middle East. And after returning to Australia, Jess was asked to write about domestic and family violence. And that was life changing. She has not stopped. After years of reporting on the epidemic, she published her groundbreaking book, See What You Made Me Do, which won the 2020 Stella Prize, and was subsequently made into an acclaimed television series. Her work has helped to drive change and transform our understanding of coercive control and major flaws in our system. As we mark Radio Nationals' top Australian books campaign, I'm delighted to be joined by Jess Hill. Jess, welcome to Changing Australia. G'day, Sally. So nice to be with you. It's good to talk to you again. What do you like as a teenager?

1:01It sounds like there was a lot of idealism there and a lot of energy. I was very driven. And I didn't have much time for school, I've got to say at the time. I had a lot of big ideas about what I wanted to do. And as you said in the intro, what the main one was, I wanted to provide an intelligent alternative to women's magazines. And that's what I actually went and shopped that around to advertisers around the country at the age of 17. A lot of hoots bar, a lot of hubris. And it didn't quite work out. But ended up with a corner officer neutral bat at the age of 18. Got pretty close. But yeah, I think I recognised from an early age that even though I didn't have any clue about feminism, because we're right in the middle of backlash and I was on the Northern beaches, I did look around and think, why don't we not see women talking about politics and current affairs? And why do women's magazines only seem to serve up fashion, beauty and advice about blow jobs?

2:02There seems to be something really out of whack here. So I think that was the beginning of my radicalisation, as Gloria Steinem would have said. And it sort of has continued from there. So you went on to become a journalist and to report on all sorts of things you were in the Middle East as well. You were then asked to write about a domestic and family violence for the monthly. It's something that journalists criss-cross over that issue a lot and then some deep dive and some don't. Did you know much about it at that first time? I knew bugger all about it, Sal. I went to that commission with a sense that I was carrying a huge responsibility. But at the time, I didn't even know how I would fill 4,500 words on the subject. And I had a lot of the old stereotypes and tropes that people in the community still have, that this is just a situation where some men get out of control.

3:04Come home on a Friday night after having too much booze and beat up their partners. And I had no sense that underlying domestic violence was this insidious pattern of power and control that we now refer to as coercive control. I couldn't even ask the right questions. I'm sure you've had this similar situation where you feel like I'm not even starting in the right places. And it was frontline workers and victim survivors and just so many people that I spoke to who put me right in the nicest possible way, sort of firm but fair, and where I started to ask the right questions. So understanding pretty quickly why she doesn't leave and then setting out to find out why doesn't he let her leave. And that's really what defined this work going forward is we put so much emphasis on the behavior of victim survivors and so little on what they are subjected to and the mindsets of their perpetrators.

4:05And for me, that was a much more confounding question. And I guess a broader question was, why don't our systems let her leave and let her kids leave? And that's what I've continued to work on is why aren't we seeing accountability for government-run systems that enable perpetrators to continue their abuse to stop women and kids from claiming their independence and freedom once they've left violence? These are systems that governments can control and that they can change. And that's, it's the work of the frontline, it's the work of advocates around the country to try and get those systems to change. Jess, what is the biggest misconception about... I mean, they're very different patterns and individual cases, but what is the biggest single misconception about family and domestic violence in this country? Ooh, it's a competitive field, tell. I'd say probably the biggest misconception is that

5:07men and women do it equally. And it's a tricky misconception because when we talk about men and women using violence or aggression in their relationships, there is a lot of aggression used in relationships, a shocking amount, actually. And men and women both may use a type of violence in their relationships, that's true. But when it comes to coercive control, which is a series of tactics and behaviors that are used to subjugate, dominate, and entrap a partner and often their children as well, that is a really gendered form of violence in heterosexual relationships. In LGBTQI relationships, you can have gay, trans, what have you, queer people perpetrating this type of abuse. But in heterosexual relationships, this is a very gendered form of violence and it is predominantly perpetrated by men against women. And so I think there's still a broad feeling across the community that men and women are just as bad

6:08as each other and that's just not correct. When you're looking at these situations with men enforcing coercive control and or family and domestic violence, it's almost an impossible question, Jess. But what is at the absolute heart at the kernel of this? Is this fear of or inability to deal with rejection? Is it power for the sake of power? Like what is the atom here at the center of all of this? A $64 million question, Tally. But I think that what I've certainly tried to draw more attention to and with the help of my partner, who's a psychotherapist and really worked a lot with me on this book, is the nexus of shame that is at the heart of so much of this violence. And anybody who's sat with a, particularly a man who is deeply insecure and who seems to need to take control over their partners knows that sense that this person

7:11feels dangerous. And what many people who've studied violence have said is that shame is actually at the root of all violence. And when we look at what our shame operates in domestic violence is you pair a toxic sense of shame with a toxic sense of entitlement that I should not feel this way and I should not have to. And in fact, the way that I will stop feeling this way is to gain power over this person and to make them feel like they are the shameful person, not me. And so you have these people who are deeply shame-ridden who sort of put a firewall up in front of that shame so they never have to really acutely feel it. They put a firewall of grandiosity and narcissism and control. They control their intimate environment so that they never feel out of control again. Shame about what, Jess? Shame about their ability to live up to expectations of masculinity.

8:12Shame that may be the product of being neglected emotionally abused as a child or have been bullied to feel that I will never be the person who is overpowered again. I will be the person who has the power. And that shame, that shame place in someone is that feeling that not just I've done a bad thing, that's guilt, but shame is I am bad. I am inherently unlovable. And if anyone were to truly see who I really am, they wouldn't want to be anywhere near me. Certainly my partner, she'd probably leave, she'd go have an affair with some other guy, I am an unlovable person. So what I need to do is put up that mask, I need to keep the mask firmly fixed and I need to control my environment because what I am, I nobody would want to be around. So I need to create a fiction. So how does that then fit with something like rejection?

9:14Is that fear that the other partner is dangerous because they know so much about the offender? Yeah, well, there's this concept that was developed in the 70s, I talk a lot to magistrates and judges about called humiliated fury. And it's this sense that there are so people who have these shame based personalities are so high-portuned to abandonment or the potential for abandonment or rejection that they see those signs even when they're not there. So for example, you see a headline like, man kills wife over burnt toast. You know, like clearly it was not the burnt toast. But what they see in that burnt toast is you don't care about me. You burnt the toast because you don't give a shit about me, excuse me. And I have to now take revenge for this. You know, we've had, I've seen on charges, on police charges that a man used intense violence against his partner

10:18because she failed to put the garbage bins out to the curb as he'd instructed her to do. And in that way, she had disrespected him. How do partners spot potential offenders who may have this system of thinking at the heart of their identity? Well, it would be nice to think that you could just sort of line up a bunch of red flags and spot them early. Sometimes you can. And I think when you see really distinct patterns of insecurity, which lead then to, you know, your partner, perhaps preventing you from seeing friends or preventing you from living your own independent life, that's certainly a warning sign. But the problem is for so many of these women, particularly I speak to, those warning signs don't emerge until they fall on pregnant, or they've given birth, or they've gotten married, or they've bought a house together. So until they are actually in a situation

11:19where it is very difficult now to extricate yourself from. And I think to some extent, you know, there's theories that basically this behavior maybe doesn't emerge until it's safe to do so. And then before that, it can be a fairy tale. And that's why we get, you know, terms like love bombing. And this sort of pitching of this relationship that's going to be the dream, you know, everything you've ever wanted, you're the most respected, the most seen, the most admired you've ever felt. And then you get pregnant, you know, you get birth, you get married, and quite suddenly, sometimes almost on a dime, things can start to change. And by then, it can feel too late. Jess, it's the kind of area that we could talk about for hours and hours, and is of such importance as well. Thank you very much for being my guest this morning on Changing Australia. It's lovely to talk to you again, thank you so much. My pleasure, Sal, thank you. Jess Hill is a journalist, educator,

12:19a researcher and advocate on gendered violence and coercive control. She's the author of the book, see what you made me do, power, control, and domestic abuse. And if you, or anyone you know, needs help, you can call 1-800-Respect. That is 1-800-737-732. And if you would like to evoke for any books you think should be included in Radio Nationals Top 100, you can text the word bookworm, that is one word bookworm, to the Radio National Text Line, 0-418-226-576. And you will magically get a reply text with a link to the voting page, a voting closes on the 1st of October at 7pm sharp Eastern time.