The She is Your Neighbour Podcast interviewed Sarah in the “How Femicide Affects Children Sarah Robertson”, discussing Sarah's experience caring for five children and how she navigated intimate partner violence. Sarah discusses her experience as a child welfare worker and former board member of women’s crisis services, and how her knowledge helped her in many ways navigate the court systems. However, Sarah was still caught in an abusive relationship and is now a survivor of domestic violence that deals with the many side effects.
Sarah explains how her relationship happened fast and seemed positive, but the perpetrator slowly became coercive and manipulative, causing her perceptions of a healthy relationship to become distorted. Sarah discusses the use of power and control in her relationship, and how the abuse slowly wore down her self-esteem and inevitably increases the power of control. She explains how she would second guess herself more from her partner gaslighting her and keeping her isolated. She found it hard to reach out to others and talk to people due to the shame that she felt, and the people closest in her life had no idea the extent to the abuse that was taking place.
She also explains how difficult it was to try and leave the relationship, especially when there were children involved. The podcast discusses the risk of safety when leaving an abusive relationship, and how the children's safety would be at risk so she had to strategize very carefully. After leaving the partner he would stalk her and show up where she would be in public settings, this caused Sarah to find it hard to feel safe again as it took her two decades to not feel like she was constantly being stalked.
Sarah also talks about her struggles dealing with the family courts and services, since she was told it was her responsibility to maintain a positive relationship and share custody. This caused her to feel “gut wrenching” when the kids were with him, and she explains how he would use the kids as leverage to manipulate her further.
The podcast concludes with a discussion on how her family and work was very helpful in supporting her leaving the relationship, as well as crisis lines she would call when she felt the most isolated. Her and her kids will always be impacted by it and have their own triggers that remind them of the abuse, and it is important to support the many adults and children who have been impacted by intimate partner violence and femicide in their lifetime.
