From Prison to Preventing Violence Against Women

**Meshel Laurie** (0:03)
This is Australian True Crime with Meshel Laurie. Unfortunately, we don't hear a lot of stories about long-term prisoners transitioning successfully back into society. But we have one for you today. Pete Bates runs The Pete Bates Project, a fast-growing platform dedicated to exposing coercive control, post-separation abuse and the behavioral patterns that put women and children at risk. He joins us to talk about his mission.
This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. A warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

**Pete Bates** (0:45)
I remember going to pubs with men and they say, if I ever saw a bloke do this to his woman, I'll do this and I'll do that. And then being at barbecues where a bloke has said something to his missus or put his missus down or disrespected her and all the men at the barbecue look at their shoes when that gets said, you know?
So just with my past and where I've been, I feel like I'm in a position where I can stand out front and say something.

**Meshel Laurie** (1:15)
And the thing about you, Peter, is if I may say so, your look and your vibe is very welcome in the space, I think, because I think, you know, you're a very masculine, manly man covered in tats. You know what I mean, right? Yeah. Because we women are always asking men to step up more in this conversation, right? About family violence and misogyny.
And oftentimes the men who do step forward, bless them, are a certain genre of man, softies, lefties.

**Pete Bates** (1:48)
That's true. I remember when I was younger and I was going through drug addiction and I would have, there would be a counselor there talking and they're reading from a textbook while they're talking to you. But then one of the older blokes that who actually lived addiction, gets up and speaks and he's walked that road. It's a bit more impactful. So I think if I can get out front and I can speak from the heart, I experienced extreme domestic violence when I was a child. My father was a horrible, violent, terrifying man as I was a kid.
I remember being that little kid, hoping that a man like me would come through that door and grab me and get me out of that house. So in a way, I feel that I'm speaking for those kids now, they're looking out the door and hoping someone comes along and saves them.

**Meshel Laurie** (2:44)
I mean, you talk about it a bit on your socials. Do you want to talk about some of the things that happened when you were a kid, the sort of environment that you grew up in?

**Pete Bates** (2:52)
Yeah, I don't have to talk about anything, mate. I talk a lot about how women are.
Everyone goes, why don't you just leave him? Why don't you just leave him? Now, I used to watch my father knock my mother out against the fridge and hold her up with uppercuts when she was unconscious. So, and then the police would come, and by the time the police got there, us kids were given scripts to say to the police, she was given scripts to say to the police, she had her busted lips, whatever. And then the police here ended up joking and laughing with the police, and she's just being silly, she's drunk again. Now, the one time that she did get the courage up to leave him was the scariest moment of all because he went quiet, he disappeared, she was in the room packing her bags, she had the suitcases on the bed, and then he disappeared for a few minutes, and he's come back upstairs and I was sitting in the hallway, and then as he's come back through the door, he had 20 litre jerrycan full of petrol, and he just started dousing all the furniture, walked up the hallway where I was sitting, poured petrol over me, and he said to her, are you still going to leave slut? And then he pulled his lighter out, and she had to submit. She submitted to Save My Life, because he probably would have went ahead and let us out.
Now, so many women are in that position where that's why they don't leave, because the consequences are so much worse.

**Meshel Laurie** (4:21)
And also, in a lot of cases, they don't have any money of their own, they don't have anywhere to go, they're unaware of services and what's available to them because they haven't been allowed to use the phone whenever they want to, they haven't had the privacy to talk to a doctor about it, all of those practical issues. Where do you go?