Ashleigh Freckleton

And that's the point.

That's one of the mechanisms of that coercion and that control is that everyone is kind of siloed or have these airlocks, you know, between them.

So they can't communicate about what's happening and they can't get that feedback back.

I was very worried about telling them.

Yeah, I didn't know how they would take it.

My dad is very...

spiritually kind of open and would talk about a lot of these topics with me and then my mum was raised Catholic and we were raised Catholic but then over time she's also become quite open and we've always had a lot of spiritual conversations.

This is a lot.

Yeah.

And I didn't know the reality of the situation either.

I was still trying to figure that out.

They weren't the first people that I told, but eventually when I did tell them, it all came out one Sunday morning around the table.

And I just remember that they were incredibly supportive.

And, you know, I've done a lot of training myself on what to do when people make disclosures of abuse.

And I could see my mum flipping into that mode and they just, you know, they're saying this isn't your fault.

You haven't done anything wrong.

I can't believe this happened to you.

It's okay.

We're here.

You know, they were just really, really supportive.