When people like Sophie face the impossible choice between shelter and safety, your support helps them find both.
"He hurt me. I wanted to leave but I had nowhere to go."
These were Sophie's* words when she faced an impossible choice – stay with her violent partner where the abuse would continue, or flee with her daughter and be left out on the street.
When Sophie and her 11-year-old daughter Olivia* first moved to Australia, it felt like a dream come true. But that dream quickly became a nightmare.
“He pushed me down. He dragged me. Sometimes I would cry. My daughter would cry too,” Sophie remembers.
While battling breast cancer and enduring violence, Sophie sent Olivia to stay with a friend for safety. But she herself remained trapped for months, desperately searching for a way out.
Read more
Through Wesley Mission, Sophie found hope. We provided her with safe housing where she could reunite with her daughter. Today she says:
“We have everything here. We have love, we have laughter, we have our lives back. We're free now, and we're both very happy here.”
Sophie was one of the lucky ones. But thousands more women face this same impossible choice every year.
Your gift today can help give them somewhere safe to go.
1 in 4 women
reported violence by an intimate partner or family member during the 2021-22 Personal Safety Survey.1
45% of women and girls
seeking homelessness assistance do so due to family and domestic violence.2
Every year, an estimated 13,000
of women return to violent homes because they have nowhere else to go.3
Domestic and family violence can happen to anyone – men, women and children.
It creates an unstable and dangerous living environment that often leaves people facing an impossible choice: stay and face ongoing violence, or leave and confront homelessness.
$75
can help deliver clothes and bedding to a family forced to flee their home.
$250
can contribute to emergency funding that helps a survivor gain financial independence and leave their violent partner permanently.
$650
can help fund practical support services and care coordination for those experiencing family or domestic abuse.
$2000
can help provide safe and secure accommodations to a person escaping violence this Christmas.