Border women create photo project to mark women killed by family violence

They were both 17 and in their last year of high school but Judy Langridge was kicked out of home a few weeks before her HSC started.

She was homeless so his parents allowed her to move in and at first it was "all lovely and wonderful".

It was so very gradual - "just like the frog in the pot", Judy recalls.

It started with him being hostile to her friends so they wouldn't come around; he'd start futile arguments over nothing - "arguments I could never win", he'd keep her awake, he'd call her "fat" and "frigid".

Then it was the yelling and screaming, the punching cupboards above her head.

"He'd point his finger into my chest below my collarbone," she recalls.

That was when Judy began using substances to self-medicate.

She was depressed, she was anxious and she was scared "but I'd never heard of terms like coercive control".

The pair were on and off again for four years until the night "I got my head punched in" - two days after Judy's 21st birthday.

This time the argument escalated when they were out; he ripped Judy's bag off her (containing her house key), and went and trashed her flat.

She called the police, drove around Albury looking for him, decided she was safer back down the street and eventually staggered home about 2.30am.

She was nearing the street where she lived when he ambushed her.

"He punched me once between the eyes and I went down," Judy recalls.

"I got up, he punched me again and I went down.

"He dragged me along the street by my hair and I thought, 'Oh, shit we are around the corner from my flat, he's going to kill me'."

She sat in the street and began to scream and scream ... until someone called the police.

"He was still yelling at me when the police arrived, he said 'I'm going to kill you, I'm going to shoot you and everyone you know'," Judy recalls.

She spent 9 hours in the hospital emergency department "lying in my own blood", just another "DV" case, she heard someone remark.

"My nose was broken but the nurse told me it would knit in a few days," Judy says.

"(Later) I got to have a shower in the police station; there was so much blood and I had all this gravel in my elbow."

He walked away from court with an $800 fine and Judy walked away with a life sentence of trauma to work through.

At least 56 women and 20 children were murdered by men (former or current intimate partners) in 2020, reports Impact for Women, a volunteer charity that helps women and children flee extreme violence.

It reports 1 in 3 Australian women will experience some form of physical abuse in their lifetime.

On Monday, a group of Border women will gather at Albury's QEII Square for a powerful photographic project to mark the number of lives lost to family violence in 2020 - and to say enough!

Judy will join Corinna Adams, Julie-Ann Mills, Sarah Benoy, and Jen Tait for the event that coincides with national day of action, March 4 Justice, to protest gendered violence and the recent sexual assault allegations in federal politics.

Jen Tait will choreograph 56 women (wearing black to signify the death of the mind, body and soul and a red scarf to represent the harm done), with local photographer Corinna Adams to capture the poses, which will be curated for an exhibition as part of the Step Out Against Violence initiative later this year.

Albury councillor Amanda Cohn will speak at Monday's 12pm event.

Organiser Jen Tait says the mark of a civilised society is how it treats its most vulnerable.

"We must be pretty uncivilised, if women and children - more than 50 per cent of society - are scared, at risk, or being murdered," she says.

"There was plenty of political will to combat the COVID-19 pandemic because every politician, every privileged white male in politics was at risk.

"Yet we still can't keep women and children in Australia safe."

Ms Benoy says it's of further concern that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, pregnant women, and women with disabilities are under-represented in the statistics.

"Women with disabilities are statistically more likely to be harmed through sexual and physical abuse," she says.

Every two minutes police are called to a domestic violence incident.

"Every 2 minutes," echoes Judy, who is the human face of the statistics.

"How many more have a mental illness, or have suicided, or have engaged in self harm?

"Really the figures are so rubbery because so much of this is still hidden."

Judy considers herself one of the lucky ones.

Now happily married with an incredible partner - "he is my rock" - Judy has found the courage to tell her story and help enact change through the annual Step Out Against Violence campaign and community march each November.

She was galvanised to take up the fight after more recently becoming one of 14 women sexually assaulted by Albury masseur Xiawen Shen.

Her husband was beside her for the court case, which ultimately saw Shen jailed for three years, and has encouraged her activism.

"This is why I can speak out," she says.

"I have the luxury of freedom and of safety ... and for me it's free therapy."

Judy says she doesn't know one woman who doesn't have a story related to violence against them.

"The leader of this country thinks we are kittens up trees who need saving," she says.

"No, what we need is men to observe our basic human rights and offenders to be brought to justice rapidly and effectively."

While ever leaders pay "lip service" to the issue, women will keep being raped, burnt, bashed and murdered, she says.

"There's a woman out there in this country who won't be with us next week," Judy says.

"It's a real-life horror movie!"