All I ever wanted was a loving marriage and a happy family. 

I hadn’t expected to have an unhappy five-year marriage, to be stalked for 18 months after I ended it or to be lying in my bed sleeping with my two children, when my estranged husband broke into my home, shot dead our two children, shot me and then killed himself in front of me.

I hadn’t been prepared for any of this or for any of the things that society would do, or what the media would say.

To wake up in my hospital bed after they amputated my right leg to hear the media saying I kept a neat cottage, that we’d been arguing, what a nice guy and loving father he was and that he hadn’t seen the children for months, even though he’d returned them at 6.30pm after weekend access. 

That I had taken him through the Family Court of Western Australia for months, despite it all being by consent, that child support payments were to blame ... it was terrible.

The only thing worse than having your family murdered is being blamed for it.

These stereotypical, misinformed, decontextualised stories led to the finger of blame being pointed everywhere but at him – the man who   chose to buy a gun, who planned for two months and waited to meticulously kill a whole family – our family (not his).

The most common question I got asked after this event was “What did you do to ‘make him do that?'”

I figured out a really smart-ass answer to that, some 15 years later: “I happened to be breathing, and I think that’s what really pissed him off.”

Researchers across the world have found that this is not just my experience. The media rarely document a history of violence by perpetrators, but have a hyper focus on sensationalism that focuses on the method over the cause – as if it were more important for readers to know how, but not why, men kill their partners.

Over the years so many people have said to me “I heard/read your story and never expected to meet you”.

 I tend to react to the word “story” with: “Our family was not fictional, our children Kyle and Latisha are real, what happened to them is real, their loss of their right to breathe and all the opportunity that goes with that gift is real”.

I am delighted and elated that increasingly the media are standing up against violence against women and their children. That they are no longer telling “stories” about family domestic violence. You are reporting on the reality of family domestic violence.

So here we are with the Prime Minister, Opposition Leader, so many senior representatives of the media and standing together, united and committed to using their influence to accelerate the pace of change.

It really moves me to see how far we have come since that day 21 years ago when Kyle and Latisha were killed.

It fills me with hope to see the Australian community from the top down challenge the culture of silence – the traditional view that domestic violence is a private matter or, even more worryingly, that this is something that happens “all the time” and therefore isn’t a story – is changing, and it’s changing fast.

Violence against women has dominated the headlines over the past year like never before (though I wish with all my heart we were not reading on a weekly, and sometimes daily, basis about another tragedy.)

This national conversation honours and does justice to the experience of women who have for too long suffered in silence, some paying the ultimate price.

As a researcher, writer and educator I have taken the liberty of summarising what current re- search tells us we need to assess when reporting domestic violence into an acronym (ASSESS) so we don’t end up telling stories:

Avoid victim blaming or focusing on victim’s behaviours;

Stereotypes (myths) and sensationalism must be challenged;

Sources must be carefully selected – expert voices must be included;

Excuses must not be offered for abuser’s behaviours;

Social context of abuse must be provided; and

Sources of help and support listed in every report.

Using this information will not only change lives, but it will save lives.