Tahlia Isaac

Well, yeah.

They're living by law and they live off country.

Yeah, and they live and don't even speak English maybe.

And so there's that like –

that's just wild to me and women who you know defended themselves against violence and found themselves in a prison cell because they defended themselves against violence and then there was women who you know had harmed other people yeah because they've been harmed and that's that's often why people harm other people because they've been harmed and i just thought this is so wild like and and fast forward a little bit after i got into prison and i

You know, I was trying to get out.

I'm trying to find any way out.

And I stumble across Denise.

Yeah, she was an outside therapist.

And it was crazy to me on reflection that that was by chance and not by design.

Yeah, well, she was a sexual assault counsellor and, you know, there's like 300 women in the centre and she's one counsellor and she's there three days a week.

And I was so lucky to just be walking past her room when the door was open and no one was in there and I popped my head in and asked.

that i got onto her rotation because she had a wait list of so many people and um it would have taken so long for her to get down to me so i was so lucky but yeah like on reflection i was like how are we not offering this to every woman that comes through those doors because we know the statistics and i only learned this after i got out of prison but i knew it from living it is that

Pretty much every single woman in that prison or in our prison system is a survivor of violence in some form.

So you're talking over 80% of women have experienced domestic and family violence.

Over, I think it's 66% have experienced all three forms of violence, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, family violence.

Right.

That's a lot.

And we're not offering therapy as a mandatory thing.

offering to women and resourcing it properly because my interaction with Denise saved my life.