in the chaos of covert abandoning the office to work from home has become the norm for many australians of course the intention has been to keep us safe but it hasn't been so for everyone in some cases lockdowns have turned homes into prisons which in turn has made escape from abusive relationships virtually impossible now though the outcome of a legal battle that actually began long before covert could change all the rules about working from home it's a decision putting bosses on notice that they need to look after their workers no matter where they're working it's
a routine repeated in millions of australian homes every morning 24 year old delia fernandez is getting ready for work but putting on her makeup is no everyday task she needs to take extra care to hide an ugly truth this beautiful young woman is the victim of terrible abuse inflicted she says by the man she loved i would have died for that man we were very very in love i could not even believe he did it i couldn't believe it what did you recognize as domestic violence for me if i would have sum it up i
would put it down to maybe a 40 or 50 year old man coming home after work the old-fashioned way beating his wife and kids this is what delia fernandez works so hard to conceal the damage from a collision of events that up until a few months ago she could never have imagined domestic violence triggered by the covert lockdown he was clearing the dining temple he had a glass in his hand and he turned around and he fly pegged a drinking glass at my face and that was it julie that is so awful there was a
lot of a lead up and possessiveness and obsession and the drinking glass that he threw at my face close range oh we've got the same set here this is the exact glass and i needed emergency facial surgery it's courageous to talk publicly about such a dark subject bedelia wants other victims of so-called covert violence to know they're not suffering alone do you think the lockdown measures in place because of the pandemic exacerbated the situation made your experience worse a hundred percent a hundred percent yes he was obsessed with covert as well which was very strange
at the time he'd put on like you know the live news updates shutters are down the doors are closed hundreds of thousands of workers forced to stay home they've come watch this quick like look what's happening we're not we're not leaving the house we're not we're stocking up on tuna and rice we know during covert 19 there has been an increase in first-time violence sadly covert 19 has meant patty kinnesly the ceo of family violence prevention network our watch has never been so busy frontline workers are telling us that there's an increase in intensity and
rate of violence against women at the moment we're also hearing that that um covert is being weaponised in a range of ways so saying to women that they can't go out because they'll catch it or they're not allowed to go out is also part of that isolation before covert the figures were already staggering in australia every two minutes police were being called to an incident of family violence and on average one woman a week was being killed by a current or former partner lockdowns and working from home made things worse giving perpetrators an almost free
run at their victims greater access and greater control so women are really losing their independence over that period of time and perpetrators can exert greater control and and diminish their ability to seek help and support as they're with them 24 hours a day keeping an eye on their movements and their phones and so during covert 19 that's been amplified regrettably one example is what delia fernandez has endured but her ordeal began so differently two years ago she thought she'd met the man of her dreams julian sebastiao i really could not fault him at the start
he ticked all the boxes and he was kind and yeah i just thought i'd found my soul mate and i thought i'd finally found my place in the world this is all gonna be sorted out young love is often impetuous and soon enough the couple moved into an apartment together wow baby looks so nice it was chosen because it was close to delia's work as it turns out it was far too close scaring and [ __ ] i was excited and i was like oh my god my boyfriend's visiting me oh he's sending me flowers
or he's doing this and everyone was like deals your boyfriend is absolutely like he's he he might as well work here they had a running joke you know you feel babe [Applause] whilst everyone and myself included thought that was so romantic um that he would bring me lunch and stuff even though we woke up together we went to sleep together we had breakfast and dinner together now he's bringing me lunch too i thought i was just the most special lady in the world but i also realised that that was stopping me from socializing with my
work friends so what seemed at the time to be a loving committed relationship you now interpret as controlling and possessive behaviour i would have probably never never ever while i was whilst i was in that bubble thought of it like that because i didn't know that i was being controlled but then covert hit delia was forced to work from home like many others she found the new normal tough going she says in their small apartment her boyfriend julian sebastiao made lockdown feel more like locked in his work was reducing so he was at home a
lot more and i was working from home but because it was a studio apartment it was literally four walls work and home became the same place i was right there always 24 7. i was isolated with him you just become like a caged animal sometimes this man had become a monster yeah the man that i laid my head next to every night for or over a year at that point that i loved with all my heart i think there are opportunities for domestic violence to occur that perhaps didn't exist so readily in the past because
people are locked down chief magistrate lisa hannan says the lengthy covert lockdown victoria endured last year means her courts are being inundated with domestic violence cases thank you mr registrar call the next letter please we're seeing a greater number of incidents of domestic violence because of the economic pressures that people under because of the financial strain you know so many losing their jobs what i'm being told by the magistrates who are hearing these matters every day the pressure cooker environment of those combination of factors is certainly contributing to applications before the court the covert 19
pandemic has directly led to more women experiencing domestic violence the australian institute of criminology surveyed 15 000 women in the first three months of the coronavirus outbreak they found that of those who reported physical violence a third said it had happened for the first time i think the rise in terms of first-time family violence seems to be significant and that has implications because the people who have no experience with the court and its processes or indeed with services and their processes are likely to be finding it more difficult to access those services in a lockdown
situation he just clicked and he jumped on top of me i couldn't believe that my life was just absolutely flipped in in the blink of an eye delia fernandez still can't make sense of what happened the night the man she thought of as her soulmate curled a glass at her but her humiliation didn't end with it smashing into her face he was screaming and he was freaking out that is when i really thought it was my life was over because i knew that he was now in self-preservation mode he did not care about my well-being
i couldn't even walk like i was trying to crawl to a mirror to see the damage and he ripped me back by the legs and told me if i tried to look in the mirror again like that was it and he turned every mirror in our apartment around face down or faced the wall and he said that i was not allowed to look into the mirror and i knew then how horrific the injuries must have been with deep cuts to her cheek and glass fragments in her left eye delia couldn't stop the bleeding when she
was eventually taken to hospital she was rushed into emergency surgery i was not only mortified by what happened but i was also grieving i lost my whole life that night i lost everything i lost my normal way of life and i was defeated a cruel irony of australia's fight against covert 19 is that while most of us have at times been forced to work from home to keep the community safe some of our most vulnerable have never been in more danger 24 year old delia fernandez has the scars to prove it the biggest problem started
after work from home had begun i had nowhere to go it was literally like i slept in one place i ate in another and i cooked in another and i worked in another and it was all within the same four walls at the height of the coronavirus lockdown last year delia and her partner julian sebastiao's studio apartment was both their home and office but confinement in such a tiny space was disastrous sebastiao's already controlling behaviour took a violent turn when he hurled a glass straight at her face and then you look at it and you're
like but why like why did i have to be permanently and viciously scarred like this i can't escape it i can't wake up and pretend it's not there because it's there right there for me to see the attack on delia ended up in court where on december 18th her now ex-partner pleaded guilty to common assault and reckless grievous bodily harm he was sentenced to a 15-month intensive correction order meaning at least 12 months in home detention but cases like this now have other implications too especially for bosses who ask their employees to work from home
they're being held responsible for the safety of their staff no matter where the worker is when they're doing their job look there she is she's grandma and it's all because of a shocking case of domestic abuse that happened 11 years ago long before anyone had ever heard of covert 19. i was at school i remember sitting at there at the time feeling really ill like something wasn't right and uh they ended up catching the bus home it was the 16th of june 2010 and tragically the then 16 year old liam carroll's instincts were spot on
his mother michelle who'd been working from home had been killed by her de facto partner stephen hill [Music] i walked into their bedroom the master bedroom and i saw mum on in ensuite on the ground and him beside her passed out um and uh like i was kind of in a freak at the time so i'd realized that she'd passed [Music] it all started so innocently in 2004 when single mum michelle met and fell in love with stephen a financial advisor it wasn't long before they were living and working together i was 10 years old
yeah i was pretty happy fine with the situation and things were fine for farewell but things changed when michelle and steven decided to run their finance business out of their basement at home there was no escaping the long hours and the stresses of the job which seemed to fuel a violent streak in stephen hill for michelle home became prison she just was this mentally drained thrall i guess you could say like the stuff that just abuse and like just mind games and picking can cause is uh yeah pretty full i know so it's not as
though work was restricted to a nine till five schedule yeah like sometimes i wouldn't say mum come up from work till like eight o'clock at night there was office work everywhere like you know there were people's files all along the like dining room area there were falls in the kitchen there were files in their bedroom and when home and the office are the same place finding any reprieve is near impossible it all just becomes the same thing your house your is your office your office is your house complicating the pressures on michelle and steven's professional
relationship their personal lives were also changing they had a child on the way it was far from a joyous time and just weeks after giving birth to another son stephen killed michelle while they were both working from home sixteen-year-old liam and his baby brother charlie lost everything oh lamb it's it's heartbreaking yeah it was definitely heartbreaking i was shattered for a long time i didn't sleep for a long time or not properly anyway it was always going to be a difficult case i wanted to help because michelle died as she was working from home lawyer
john ryan had the unusual and untested idea of pursuing a workers compensation claim on behalf of the orphaned brothers and so began an extraordinary battle well there's two hurdles that you need to establish and and that's first that the injury or accident or death in this case happen in the course of employment and the second part is that it's that employment has to be a substantial contributing factor getting the case to court was an ordeal in itself it took years but then john faced what many legal experts thought was impossible proving michelle's death was work-related
he asked liam to testify so that's where liam's evidence had to come in he was saying yeah absolutely she was working at seven in the morning if needs be if a phone call came in she would be on the phone in the kitchen she would be on the phone in the bedroom she'd be working in the bedroom she'd be working all over the house and she'd be working even weekends the court was satisfied that at the very least she was on call the court case and multiple appeals took four long years but eventually in march
last year liam and his brother charlie won they were awarded a 450 000 payout money they desperately needed but the victory also set a groundbreaking precedent and is a warning for all employers who want their staff to work from home i think they'll realize that if an employee is working from home that their obligation to ask that broad question about is it safe for you to work from home sarah mccann bartlett is the ceo of the australian human resources institute yeah because once upon a time domestic violence wasn't really a conversation many people would have
with their employers is the tide turning a little bit i think the tide is turning and we're now trying to normalize those conversations around domestic violence particularly when it's a working from home situation so i think employers definitely need to be hold accountable to hey are you safe working at home is everything good that you know people aren't always truthful and definitely scared people one's if you had a really good work and they end up dying one day [Music] back in sydney delia fernandez is getting her groove back morning hey beautiful how are you today
she says she is now in control of her life and is using a strength she didn't know she had to help others who find themselves in a similar position yeah for sure just hearing all the stories like it is overwhelming but it brings me peace because i feel like no good is going to come from this situation besides that part do you feel like your old self now i mean you were robbed of who you were do you feel like you're dealier again you know i've got my puppy and i've got i'm living with a
girlfriend and and we've got i feel like i've got my life back here the old me where i see my friends and there's a lot of trauma that came along with it but it was almost like a blessing in disguise because i'm free now if this story has raised issues and you need to speak with someone there is support and counselling available by calling 1-800 respect which is 1-800-737-732 hello i'm sarah arbo thanks for watching 60 minutes australia subscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week and don't miss out
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