Voices about economic abuse
The collection hosts insights based on interviews with people with lived experience of domestic and family violence focused on the financial abuse they experienced. The initiative to conduct the interviews was from an informal pro-bono collaboration by Rosie’s Place, WASH House, and the Mt Druitt Family Violence Team. The narratives were provided by the individuals for the benefit of others.
The interviews were conducted by Rosie’s Place and the narratives were assembled by the Insight Exchange team.
Open the collection of lived experience insights focus on financial abuse.
Explore lived experience insights about experiences of financial abuse
- Deepa '"You are not my wife. I just keep you to work here."'
- Amrita 'He only married me so he could keep me as a slave. I was tricked into marrying him.'
- Tamara 'Meanwhile, he was pouring money through the poker machines.'
- Maryam '"I told you three years ago that you need to leave that man”.’
- Bronwyn 'He would try and make me get money from my mother as she was on income support as well'.
- Amira 'His money was his money, and my money was our money'.
- Belinda 'It was his way or no way.'
- Anna 'Thirty dollars a fortnight for four kids.'
- Renee 'Once I gave up work, my control went.'
- Brittany 'I was like the ATM.'
- Liz 'When you have nowhere to go, what do you do?'
- Jasmin 'When he'd come around, money would go missing.'
- Teresa '"This is my home. I am the boss here."'
- Rochelle 'I was a very independent person before I met this guy.'
- Helena 'He would take the keys to the car to leave me without a car.'
- Deb 'He must have had another bank account I didn't know about.'
- Allanah 'He would use my money with the promise of paying it back.'
- Jessica 'Nothing we'd had together was in my name, so I had nothing.'
Thanks and acknowledgement
Our thanks to every person who generously share lived experience insights for the benefit of many. We acknowledge that no matter how accurate the representation of someone’s experiences of violence and adversity, we can never fully understand all that the experiences mean to a person now or through their life. We understand that no one’s life experience can ever be fully represented in language or any other form.
Our thanks to Rosie’s Place for conducting these interviews and providing these transcripts to Insight Exchange to ensure the voices of lived experience are able to help inform and strengthen social, service and systemic responses to domestic and family violence.
Explore examples of related information and reflection resources:
My Economic Safety - information and insights about economic abuse
Dad - your choice - Unpaid child support hurts children and limits living. Children don’t have the safety or means to contest unpaid child support debt. Their experiences of poverty are real and lasting. Day to day. Year on year. Unpaid child support is preventable poverty.
I am I can - invites reflection about the use of violence (in any form) being a ‘choice’. We can each choose non-violence in all relationships.
Being Safety is a reflection resource written for, with and by mothers who are (or have been) parenting while subjected to violence and abuse by a co-parenting father.
Children - Children matter. Explore 'An imperfect letter'.
You can browse more materials on the exploring page.