AFL legend Adam Goodes in conversation with Virginia Trioli at the Comcare conference. Photo: Comcare.
Public servants attending the Comcare conference in Canberra over the past week were given two stellar opportunities to hear from former elite athletes sharing their experiences of abuse in the workplace.
AFL champion and former Australian of the Year, Adam Goodes, featured in a ‘fireside chat’ with broadcaster Virginia Trioli (the conference MC) at the conference dinner (15 September).
The next day, former World Number 4 Jelena Dokic addressed the audience.
With the conference theme being A people-first approach to workplace health and safety, their messages were powerful, pointed and relevant.
Goodes quit the AFL in 2015 after winning two Brownlow Medals, being a dual premiership player with his club, the Sydney Swans, and being named the 2014 Australian of the Year.
But his early retirement from the game followed years of racist abuse on the field, which eventually took its toll.
“Ninety-eight per cent of my working life as a footballer I was in a safe environment,” he told the Comcare crowd.
“I felt safe with my teammates, and the club I played for was very supportive.
“They were active in promoting inclusivity and making sure everyone respected each other.
“But for a couple of hours every week, playing the game in front of thousands of people, I was placed in what felt like a very unsafe environment for me and was subjected to all sorts of abuse.”
In the first match of the 2013 Indigenous round when the Swans were playing Collingwood, a 13-year-old girl Collingwood supporter yelled at Goodes, calling him an “ape”.
He pointed her out to security guards, and they escorted her from the ground.
The girl later rang to apologise to Goodes, and the footballer accepted it, publicly saying he didn’t blame the girl herself, but wanted to highlight how “shattering” the slur was.
He was constantly booed and racially abused at games after that incident, yet took every opportunity to speak out against racism in Australia.
In 2015, during the Swans’ Indigenous Round game against Carlton at the SCG, Goodes celebrated a goal by performing what some described as an Aboriginal war-cry dance and mimed throwing a spear at the Carlton supporters.
By the end of that season, Goodes had retired from the game, worn down by the abuse.
In June 2019, the AFL and its 18 clubs apologised unreservedly to Goodes for failing to support him adequately in the face of this abuse.
The AFL apology ended with: “We never want to see the mistakes of the past repeated.”
While Goodes acknowledged the apology, he did not return to the game, and devoted his time and influence to a wide range of Indigenous organisations.
“I was surprised at how much influence the AFL doesn’t have, or doesn’t want to have,” he said on Tuesday.
“Here’s an example. There was a teenage boy from a local club who started sending me pictures of monkeys and that kind of thing.
“I thought it would be good for him to maybe get some education about what he was actually doing and the impact of those kinds of actions, so I asked the AFL to maybe reach out to the kid and give him a lesson.
“They just came back saying they had no power to do anything at the local level and could only take action with actual AFL clubs.
“It seemed to me like they didn’t really get it. I think they could have done something. It’s at that level where minds and attitudes need to be shaped in the right direction.”
Former World No. 4 Jelena Dokic told her story at the Comcare conference. Photo: Comcare.
The Dokic story, also very public, played out even closer to home.
As a teenage rising tennis star, the abuse she copped – at work and at home – was from her own father.
Dokic pulled off one of tennis’s biggest upsets as a 16-year-old by beating then World Number 1 Martina Hingis in the first round of the 1999 Wimbledon Championships.
It was a decade earlier that her father showed up with a tennis racquet “that was bigger than me” after watching a match between Monica Seles and Steffi Graf at the 1989 French Open.
“Right after my very first tennis lesson, my father physically abused me,” Dokic said during her keynote address on Wednesday.
“My father’s abuse was made worse by his alcoholism and … by the time I was 11, I was hit with a leather belt constantly.
“There was mental abuse too … I was told ‘don’t you dare say anything. Don’t you dare say anything to anyone or I will kill you’.
“Those were the words I heard almost daily from my father. I was trained to be silent.”
Dokic’s journey with her father is well documented, not least because she managed to get away from the abuser.
“He was getting worse. He was unravelling. Some of his outbursts were becoming public,” she said.
“I decided to escape home at the age of 19, during a tournament, and run for my life.”
At 22, Dokic attempted suicide and by 29 she had ended her tennis career early.
Now a public speaker, author, broadcaster and tennis analyst, Dokic says her greatest achievement was finding her voice and telling her own story.
“That’s what saved my life,” she said.
“It’s been nine years since the day my first book came out, and it was the best day of my life.
“It saved my life. I really felt like I could start healing now.”
Dokic shared the three factors that made it all possible for her: people around her encouraged and helped her tell her story; she embraced the power of being vulnerable by sharing her story; and the support she’s received since she did.
Original Article published by Chris Johnson on Region Canberra.
