“After I left my violent partner, the people who really helped me were women who had also left violent or abusive partners – and some great professionals who work in domestic violence.”
This is what gave Hazelbrook resident, Anni Gethin, the idea for new initiative supporting women around Australia - “why not bring these two groups together?”.
The Brigid Project aims to create an online forum of support for women struggling with a partner’s or ex’s violent/abusive or controlling behaviour.
Ms Gethin found several other Blue Mountains women who had also survived domestic violence to work with her.
“It was both great and alarming how easy it was to find women who’d had the same experience as me,” she said. “We are all from the Blue Mountains, but The Brigid Project is for women across Australia.
“We’re creating a web resource with all the things we would have like to have known when we were going through it. We aim to help women from those first uneasy questions ‘is my partner being abusive?’ through whether and how to report to police, going to court, the realities of family law, how to find good trauma therapy and critical things like finding somewhere to live or how to stay in your home.”
On the site, women will have a chance to ask questions (ask Brigid), share their own knowledge (tell Brigid) and watch interviews with professionals including lawyers, police, psychologists, cybersafety experts, DV and social workers.
“I was homeless with two children, unable to find a rental property anywhere in the Blue Mountains” said Bronwyn Reed, who also works on the Brigid Project. “We will be able to help women avoid this and other really bad situations; the reality is that it takes years to rebuild your life after leaving a a violent, abusive or controlling partner.”
The survivor and expert knowledge will be provided for each local government area and jurisdiction in Australia – starting with the Blue Mountains.
“A lot of that information is already out there on great sites,” said Ms Gethin, “but we bring it all together from a survivor perspective. We will also add the information you won’t find unless you talk to other local women and workers – like which GP or psychologist to go to, affordable lawyers and sympathetic real estate agents.”
“We will structure this all on our website around the ‘journey idea’. “Domestic violence is a horrible journey but it does have quite clear stages that we all go through. We want to give women clear and simple steps they can take at each stage – because the reality is you can’t think very well when you are scared and traumatised.”
The Brigid Project recently launched their Crowdfunding campaign on Chuffed.org https://chuffed.org/project/brigid-project and needs to raise $20,000 in the next three weeks to complete the website and run the project.
For more information contact: Anni Gethin anni@brigidproject.org.au.
