Shenane Hogg spends most mornings walking along the banks of the Swan River in Perth’s western suburbs.

Warning: This story contains references to domestic violence.

“I actually find the river really healing, just the sound of the waves lapping and the birds,” she told 7.30.

“It quietens the noise in my brain.”

There was a time when the slightest sound or smell would trigger an intense reaction for Shenane, a Torres Strait and South Sea Islander woman, jolting her back to a chapter of her life she prefers not to think about.

In 2017, she woke from a nine-month induced coma following an attack by her then-partner.

The perpetrator was jailed for the assault.

Shenane woke to find herself homeless and in debt, with a traumatic brain injury.

“I look back and I don’t even know how I survived,” she said.

“I didn’t even know if I was going to be back talking and walking properly.”

The incident had been the last in a series of physical assaults, but Shenane says the first red flag in the relationship was much more subtle.

How the financial abuse began

At the start of their relationship, Shenane was working in well-paid job at a city council, while her partner worked “on and off”.

“It started with me paying for stuff,” she said.

“Then it extended to lending people in his family money, and him taking my key card off me.”

Shenane said if she asked for her card back, it would lead to a confrontation.

“The intimidation would start, doors would get slammed, and I would feel unsafe to even ask,” she said.

“There were a lot of times where I wasn’t even able to buy the basics of just toiletries or food.

“I felt like an idiot — I had been able to secure myself a fantastic job, and yet at home I was copping ridiculous behaviour.”

The abuse became physical, culminating in the horrific assault that put her in an induced coma.

It wasn’t until she woke that she realised the full extent of her financial situation.

“He’d encouraged me to apply for three different credit cards,” she said.

“I didn’t realise until after the relationship finished that he’d actually clocked up quite a large amount on those credit cards.

“I found out that I was about $56,000 in debt.”

The long road back

Shenane has slowly rebuilt her life, moving across the country and finding work with a charity raising awareness about brain injuries and domestic violence.

But it took about eight years, and plenty of help, to get here.

“I was literally being left with about $48 a fortnight for about two years,” she said.

“If I didn’t have that financial abuse and I didn’t have that debt, I would have been able to kick-start my life again a lot easier.”

Shenane shared her story with her local MP, Zaneta Mascarenhas — a former engineer elected as the federal member for Swan two years ago.

While door-knocking during her campaign, the Labor MP was surprised to find financial abuse was a prevalent issue in her electorate.

“The thing that I’ve also seen is that our community does not actually know what economic abuse is, and because they don’t necessarily know what it is, it’s difficult to identify,” Ms Mascarenhas said.

Ms Mascarenhas proposed a federal parliamentary inquiry to raise awareness of the issue and explore how financial institutions and government agencies could better spot and prevent such abuse.

Economic abuse ‘under the radar’

About one in six Australian women have experienced financial abuse, according to a government survey last year.

This commonly involves abusers refusing to contribute to household expenses, withholding income, preventing partners from working, taking out loans in a partner’s name or making a partner liable for joint debts.

Centre for Women’s Economic Safety chief executive Rebecca Glenn says this form of abuse is under-recognised.

“Economic abuse often does go under the radar, and sometimes for really good reasons because we need to have that focus on the immediate physical safety of someone experiencing violence,” Ms Glenn said.

“However, if you don’t have economic safety, you don’t have safety.”

One aspect of the inquiry will examine how banks can identify and prevent financial abuse.

Ms Glenn said many banking regulations were designed before there was public awareness of domestic violence.

“What we now know is many of those systems and products can actually inadvertently facilitate financial abuse,” she told 7.30.

For Shenane, dealing with various banks while trying to repay her debts only compounded her trauma.

“A lot of the time I would not get nice answers. I would get, ‘Look, you need to pay it and you need to pay it now,'” she recalled.

“It could be made a lot easier if people are more aware and people are more empathetic … when you’re trying to gather your life together.”

Australian Banking Association (ABA) chief executive Anna Bligh said banks dealt with people experiencing domestic violence “on a daily basis” and had specialist teams who were trained to recognise abusive situations.

“Ultimately, they’re not social workers or psychologists, but they take the opportunity to refer people to services when they can,” Ms Bligh said.

However, she said the ABA had developed an industry guideline on how to deal with financial abuse.

It includes advice on how to respond to abuse in online payments, whereby customers make multiple transfers – often only one or two cents – and send threatening messages in the description field.

Australian banks reported intercepting more than half a million abusive transactions between 2020-2022.

Nine out of 10 customers stopped the behaviour after a warning letter from their bank.

“Banks are in a unique position to identify financial abuse and to support women and others who are experiencing it, so that responsibility is taken very seriously,” Ms Bligh said.

“There’s always more work that can be done.”

As the inquiry gets underway, Shenane hopes it will encourage more women to speak out.

“A lot of people don’t talk about it for fear of feeling silly. I hope that it brings out people’s stories that need to be heard.”

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