Dr. Narelle Dawson-Wells
Registered Clinical Psychologist, former Deputy Director of the Crime and Corruption Commission responsible for Crime and Public Policy, former United Nations representative, writer and researcher.
Focus
Crime, public policy, psychology, research and integrity
There is no woman I admire more.
When I began putting the RE GROUP Committee together, the first person I asked to join was Dr Narelle Dawson-Wells.
Narelle is a registered Clinical Psychologist, former Deputy Director of the Crime and Corruption Commission responsible for Crime and Public Policy, former representative to the United Nations, writer and researcher. She was also personally engaged by a Director-General for five years to work on one of Queensland’s most heinous juvenile murder cases.
Her nickname is Minerva.
It suits her.
She is formidable, resilient, fiercely intelligent and uncompromising when it comes to truth and integrity.
After recently resolving a 16-year litigation battle, her mantra remained:
- “Let right be done.”
Her areas of interest include suicide prevention associated with litigation stress and alleged police corruption; improving understanding of prosecutorial processes for people exposed to sexual violence; malicious prosecution; Misconduct in Public Office; and the potential weaponisation of defamation law.
But my admiration for Narelle isn’t based only on that extraordinary résumé.
I have walked through many chapters with this woman and seen first-hand what she is capable of.
Whenever that little voice we all have says, “I don’t know if I can do all of this,” Narelle has never stopped reminding me what I am capable of.
What an honour it is for me to have her in this committee.
So What Needs to Change?
Narelle and I spoke about the women who seek help but feel they aren’t heard.
We spoke about why so few victims are able or willing to navigate court proceedings.
We spoke about how police and courts could more efficiently and effectively identify patterns of coercive control, and whether specialist civilian practitioners could operate alongside police as a domestic violence triage service, so the first face a victim encounters does not always have to be a police officer in an already overstretched system.
We spoke about better mechanisms to respond to offenders who hold wealth, status or influential positions and whose behaviour may be particularly difficult for victims to report.
Because ultimately, the same law must apply to everyone irrespective of money, title, occupation or influence.
But our biggest discussion was about something deceptively simple:
- Why is coercive control so difficult to explain?
The Umbrella Slug
I was working on a coercive-control assessment, trying to turn an enormous pattern of someone’s lived experience into the chronology required for a report.
Narelle happened to phone me.
During the conversation, she started telling me about umbrella slugs and their extraordinary number of tiny teeth, in fact 750,000 of them over their lifetime that are continually replaced as others are lost.
It immediately clicked in my mind.
- “Narelle, that's coercive control.”
Because coercive controllers can operate in exactly that way.
If intimidation stops working, another tactic appears.
Manipulation. Gaslighting. Money. Surveillance. Litigation. Third parties. Reputation. Employment. Children.
Another tooth.
Every time one avenue of control is recognised, challenged or removed, another can emerge.
And that made me think about how we sometimes ask victims to explain their abuse.
Which tooth bit you?
Was it the threat? The financial abuse? The court application? The smear campaign? The child caught in the middle?
But the power of coercive control was never in one tooth.
It is in the pattern of repeated bites.
The damage isn’t one tooth or one bite. It is the endless capacity to grow another.
That distinction could change the questions we ask victims and potentially how police and courts recognise coercive control.
It also reminds us that coercive control does not necessarily remain inside the home. It can move through workplaces, institutions, technology, finances, reputation and legal processes.
Power and professional status do not make somebody incapable of coercive behaviour. They may simply make allegations against them more difficult for a victim to raise.
What RE Group will Do
One of the very first things I wanted this committee to do was find 10 women we could help immediately.
We want to hear from approximately 10 women who experienced domestic violence or coercive control, sought assistance through police or the courts, but believe they were not heard, their experience was misunderstood, or they were left at risk because they struggled to piece together a complicated story.
We want to examine those cases carefully.
Where did the system lose her story? What wasn’t recognised? What could have been done differently?
RE GROUP intends to use what we learn to develop practical recommendations around interviewing, assessment, evidence, victim support and the identification of coercive-control patterns.
This committee isn’t being created to have another conversation about how terrible domestic violence is, or be critical of Government, Police or Courts. We are looking at doing meaningful and collaborative work.
It is being created to ask a harder question:
- What can we all actually do differently?
And I couldn’t imagine a more extraordinary woman to be the first person I asked than Dr Narelle Dawson-Wells.
Sometimes a new way of understanding an enormous problem begins somewhere completely unexpected.
For us, it began with my assessment at the time, a phone call from Narelle, and a light bulb moment about an umbrella slug.
Renee Eaves
Founder, RE Group Committee
More Committee Members will be Introduced Soon
RE GROUP brings together people with relevant knowledge, experience and perspectives to explore practical ways of understanding and responding to family and domestic violence.