A shattering book: clear-headed, meticulous, driving always at the truth.
At the office of Safe Steps, a 24-7 family violence helpline, the phones have gone quiet. “I get nervous when they stop ringing,” says one worker. It’s a rare occurrence. At its busiest, Safe Steps receives a call every three minutes. Many women are repeat callers: on average, they will return to an abusive partner seven times before leaving for good.
“You must get so frustrated when you think a woman’s ready to leave and then she decides to go back,” I say. “No,” replies one phone counselor pointedly. “I’m frustrated that even though he promised to stop, he chose to abuse her again.”
Domestic abuse is a national emergency: one in four women has experienced violence from a man she was intimate with.
But too often we ask only one question: why didn’t she leave? We should be asking: why did he do it?
Investigative journalist Jess Hill puts perpetrators - and the systems that enable them - in the spotlight. See What You Made Me Do is a deep dive into the abuse so many women and children experience - abuse that is often reinforced by the justice system they trust to protect them. Critically, it shows that we can drastically reduce the violence - not in generations to come, but today.
Combining forensic research with riveting storytelling, See What You Made Me Do
challenges everything
you thought you knew about domestic abuse.
The most important book of the last decade on one of the most critical issues in our time.
Jess Hill is a brave woman. Her book gives us a chance – just a slim one – to shift our thinking on domestic violence past the stalemate we are in.
Winner of the 2020 Stella Prize
Winner, Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year, Australian Booksellers Choice Awards 2020
Finalist, 2019 Walkley Book Award
Finalist, Human Rights Commission Media Award
Shortlisted, Victorian Premier's Literary Award
Shortlisted, Australian Book Industry Awards
Shortlisted, Davitt Awards
Longlisted, Indie Book Awards
A call for action … unlike any that has yet been written … capture[s] the visceral feeling of domestic terror.
Domestic abuse is hard to write about, hard to read about, hard to think about—everything in our culture makes silence the easy option. Breaking the silence takes skill and courage, and Jess Hill has both. Essential reading.
The most
important work of Australian non-fiction this year.
A landmark work by one of our finest journalists.
IN THE MEDIA
