Sarah Kopp

It's just seeing what you can get away with gradually.

But the biggest thing, like, you know, people then go, oh.

I've done this and my groomer, you know, I've, but it's like, it's not, it's a pattern and it's targeting a particular child.

You know, there's plenty of great teachers out there that go above and beyond and do nice things for their students, but they're probably doing it to a range of students.

You know, they're offering the same level of attention and support to their whole class.

The problem is when that it's laser focused on one particular child and it's something that they're getting that nobody else is getting.

That's when you should be sort of starting to ask questions like, why is that particular child so special?

Yeah, I know, I know there was changes with legislation or policies back roundabout when it happened to me actually, I think it was the year after.

If there was suspicions of something untoward happening to a child, back then it was up to the school to investigate that and to find sufficient evidence of harm.

before it got escalated to police or child safety and things like that.

And so schools aren't equipped with the resources to really know how to do that.

The teachers, admin staff are not qualified.

Yeah, but it's a bit different now.

I know that has slightly changed, that you can, you know, raise concerns.

Like, you don't need to have piles and piles of evidence.

And this is why I wanted, like, I do what I'm doing because I think the more you can arm people with the correct language...

the easier it's going to be to present this kind of stuff.

It's the same with coercive control.

It's such a – it can be such a wishy-washy kind of term that, you know, people who have been through it 100% know what that's like.

But when you go to try and articulate that to somebody and explain what you're going through, it kind of you're like, hmm, it doesn't really sound substantial, right?