PartnerSpeak provides support to the partners and family members of people involved with child sexual abuse material.

The organisation, which was officially established in 2012 but began as a grassroots movement online many years earlier, is looking to have a peer support officer based in Wodonga in 2019, as well as a number of other regional areas across Victoria.

CEO Natalie Walker started a forum online after her former partner was discovered with child abuse material 17 years ago.

That forum became a go-to source of support after the execution of Operation Auxin in 2004, a nation-wide operation which saw 190 child pornography suspects arrested on more than 2000 charges.

That forum eventually morphed into PartnerSpeak, an organisation she said had been incredibly important for herself and other women in similar situations.

“Back then people were confused, and understandably horrified,” she said.

“Even now, the myth of collusion still persists – that the partner must have known.

“In one of the leading stories at the time, due to the man’s occupation, his partner was named in the national media.

“I was still in the midst of my own crisis at that time, but I realised nobody else was going to stop this woman from being vilified.

“The first iteration of the online peer support group started then – now things are much more sophisticated.” 

Ms Walker is hoping to find someone from Wodonga willing to become a peer support worker for PartnerSpeak on the Border.

She said someone with their own experience of this would be ideal.

“It makes such a massive difference – almost every person, if not every person, who has been involved with us comments on the significance of being able to talk to someone else with that lived experience,” Ms Walker said.

“If it’s a person you think you know and trust, then everything you know about your world falls away.

“The first and most important task is to simply connect – that connection can be transformative and start redefining the narrative of your world.” 

An information session will be held in Melbourne on Thursday, January 31 at 5.30pm. More information can be found at partnerspeak.org.au.