Appoche production.

Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand.

I'm your host, Adam Shand.

Imagine you're the victim of a random crime of violence, which is, sadly in Australia's capital cities are pretty regular event these days.

A man bashed while walking home from a train station.

Police say the attack appears completely random.

What will be the long term effects on you?

How will that change your life?

Victims of unprovoked assaults often suffer ongoing psychological trauma long after physical injuries.

Here, perceptions of safety and security are being destroyed by the reality that you can be attacked and seriously injured by someone you don't know, simply because you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Police say groups of youths have targeted strangers that trains, attacking simply for the thrill of violence.

My guest today knows exactly how that feels.

A former colleague from Radio six PR in Perth, newsreader Lance White was a victim of a serious and unprovoked attack thirteen years ago at a suburban railway station, Beaten.

By multiple attackers and left bleeding at the scene.

He was set upon by a group of young men who just wanted to bash someone anyone.

The offenders have never been brought to justice, despite the police having CCTV images and a detailed description.

There's also a twist in this story where the victim becomes a suspect in another crime because of DNA.

For Lance White, this bizarre twist has prolonged and deepened his trauma.

I caught up with Lance recently to discuss this story, which really is a cautionary tale for our time.

Las.

It is so good to see.

I'm seri you sayce Perth six PR.

We go a long way back, don't we.

We do we do?

It's what do you do these days?

Absolutely nothing.

I've got my little sleeping bag here with me and I'm out of radio and just wondering.

What's going to come next.

Yeah, right enough, But you're still living with.

The after effects of that incident out several years ago.

Yeah over in Western straight, tell me what happened?

Okay.

So going back to twenty twelve where we got six PR, it was until twenty seventeen, okay, so this is a bit before you got there.

So it's three News Saturday night at six PR on the way home on the train from Wellington, street to Glendalow station, and while I was on the train that there was a big ruckus and somebody who had been closet on the train.

But the person, the victim, Obbert, didn't want to take it any further.

So there was about four years who got kicked off the train by the guards and I haven't been getting off at the same station with all of them.

They went at Glendalow's station.

It's on the upper level of the train line.

The street level is one level down below.

So I thought, I'll just wait at the platform till they go, till things settle down.

Got on the escalator to go down, and sure enough, these proof.

Of views are waiting at the bottom and I'll go, oh no.

So we get to the bottom of the escalator.

I'm walking out towards the street, trying not to make eye contact with them, and one of them says to me, are you racist?

And I said, no, mate, I'm just heading home.

Continued trying not to make eye contact, kept walking and I just cleared the outside of the station, felt this target on the back.

Of my shirt, right in the middle of my back.

One of them swung me around, punched me as hard as he could in the left eye, and then it just started so just being swung around.

It just seemed to be one main attacker, but yet three events made with him.

It kind of came.

To an end where there's a concrete wall at street level at Glendalow training station which has sort of got it's a jagged edge concrete scene, and they got me up against back and then there was one sort of final punch that bland in the left eye and my gash to the back of my head opened with the skin on the back of my head.

I got some sort of cuts to the forehead and I realized at that point that there was pretty much no way out of this because I was outnumbered and they're more powerful than me.

And you have that realization in your mind, I think I'm going to die.

And I've heard this from a lot of people who've been attacked.

The meuse It's a common thing I keep hearing over and over again, and that seems to trigger a lot of the trauma that goes on.

That feeling like you're going to die.

And you said that a lot of people feel that way.

I think that's absolutely true.

Yes, And as I see you recount this story.

I can feel your visceral response to that moment.

It's still very real for you, isn't it.

Yeah, it's the only part of what happened that is with me there every day, even this last year, now that I've got some distance from radio, I was thoroughly spent a lot of time this last year just trying to sort of make some more sense of it, see if I can speed up the recovery.

And for most of the bashing, I'm okay with that.

Now it's just this last punch and the reason why I'm okay with the rest of the bashing.

It is actually like another incident that I had when I was coming into the six PR.

I was waiting at a bus stop in Mainstream Bolton Park and a guy had just turned out and done a liquor store robbery and came up to me and said you want to have a go, mate, And I said no, I'm just waiting in for the bus and punched me as hard as you could in the right eye.

I managed to keep my feet, I didn't go down on the back of my head.

Cops got him a short time later and find one thousand dollars for a common assault in the court the next day.

But that incident in Mainstry didn't bother me, and it hasn't bothered me, And there's been other incidents that haven't bothered me.

The glendalo Station one did, so I've been able to match what happened for most of the Glendalow attack with the other incidents cleaning on that this year that haven't bothered me.

And just that one punt for my head going back against that just totally reverberated through my mind, every part of my be and that's what still stays with me.

Anyway.

At that point, I realized, if I just give him whatever money did he wants.

One of the attackers actually said stop, and that seemed to count things down.

But he reached into my wallet, got my five.

Dollars out that I had in there, and they lived pretty happily and walked up the street.

And I can't describe the feeling of relief that I'm my goodness, I've got out of this.

You just go through so many extreme abnormal emotions all at once.

The feeling of disorientation.

While you're being thrown around, the intensity of the hit on the head, and that feeling of probably went around, called cops on payphone.

Yeah, you you're on the phone.

You look back and see the trail of blood coming back from where you were.

Some pool bathard in trans Earth had to clean up.

But you got me to Charles Garden the hospital in the ambulance and just remember going back in the in the ambulance.

There were noticed so many speed hunts in my life here.

So we get to hospital.

Had a bit of a panic attack at the hospital when because they really when they leave you at Tacon while of the game dance, people do the handover to the hospital staff and I just felt abandoned and something I couldn't.

Breathe, and it's like and then in your you're in the hospital.

Having great care, being taken obviously by the nurses, and all thoughts about the word stuff.

So you call police which station, I don't know.

Which station they came from, but they were on the scene pretty quickly and discorded me to hospital.

It was mirrorbook and detectives who later took up the investigation.

But I don't know if.

You're able to give a good description of your attackers.

I believe they're indigenous youth, is that correct?

They are of African descent, so it was dark, it was out of camera range.

But the authority transfers and the police they had delusion of them going past the cameras off the train.

But the spot when batching happened, it wasn't captured on video to my knowledge.

There was a car yard optic.

I don't know.

Police try to access the car yard video of what happened.

Okay, so they've got video of these individuals.

There plenty of leads from mirror booker detectives to follow what happened next.

Okay, so we do the hospital run.

The police take my clothes at the hospital for forensic analysis.

I'm standing out in front of Charli Gardener's hospital and my hospital Breens to get a tax you home contacted work the great Ron timing and I'm not going to be in for a while.

So I'm pretty shaken up and had about a week and a half off work and I did actually go into six PR Monday.

I thought it so this happened on the Saturday night.

By the Monday, I thought, I've got to get back on the train.

Do the commit to work, because you've got to get back on the horse.

And I remember going back to Glendalow's station, feeling extremely self conscious with my black eyes, and went into work and arrived there and I think I've got a few double takes from the John Nichols and John Tlvander and all the other people who were worked with me, But I had to do the journey back in straight away.

You got it in your living and it's important, as you say not to, I guess give in to the trauma that there must be really enveloping.

You at this time.

As I spoke to a psychologist later on, you know, it's all about control.

You've got to feel as a victim, but.

You're in control of certain controlled with a certain extent is taken away from you.

Your personal space is seriously invaded, and that seems to.

Correlate with the level of trauma that you feel.

Many other incidents, or a handful of an incidents that I've had that have been similar to that invaded in my personal space, but nothing like this.

It's like the.

Difference between if you're a minor bingle in a car park and a shopping center, Oh, that's a bit of a nuisance, but if you're in a serious crash where you lost the ability to be able to walk rps, you put severe burns.

That's much more an invasion of personal space.

And I'm just seeing so much in the last few months, even with talking about the crime problem around Miltne, that people are feeling like their personal space is being invaded.

And that seems to me to be at the core of the start of trauma and going up in the grades to you you get to that point where this trauma has totally invaded you and changed who you are, and you're so hyper vigilance.

I remember walking down Hay Street to six pr and this is about a week later.

You get all these weird sensations, like I had to suddenly grab onto the top of my head because I thought the top of my head was being pulled apart, sort of my left side going left, my right side going right, like it was a coconut being broken, and you know it wasn't, but that's what my brain was thinking.

It's just the effect of the concussion.

I was going to say, concussion, yeah, And were you getting medical treatments through this?

By the way, No.

I got a little pamphlet from police about two or the government two weeks later about are you a victim?

Of crime.

Well, you know, these are the people you can call.

You just don't know what's happening to you.

You don't know who to approach or things have changed, but you think I'll just get beyond.

You know, things at settled out normally.

You don't realize that, you know, this is actually a life changing thing.

You don't realize that till a lot later, right, Yeah.

And I think a lot of the recovery and the progress afterwards is dependent on what sort of service you get from the police.

Oh yeah, how did that transpire?

Okay, so it would have been I think it was about two weeks later.

They called up and said, can you come into memory book to detect.

His And they took my DNA so that they.

Can examine well without breaching all their investigative techniques.

They they can look at the clothing and they look at items on us if they can find any DNA, and they get your as the victims DNA so that they can exclude my own DNA from whatever they find.

So that when I was told at the time that your DNA just relates to this crime.

And I remember covering the story when they first introduced DNA legislation in Western Australia.

No, it will just be part of that crime when you give your DNA sampling, it won't be linked any further than that.

And there was a big bating point at the time and got through parliament and yeah, I remember the detectives giving me my clothes back after they forensically analyzed it, and the closes of coming in blood.

It's just a huge refindwer of what happens.

Taken back into that moment again.

Yeah, yeah, and you have to tell your story in so many different people from the attending police at the hospital, the nurse is curious about, oh, what happened, So you told the story again.

Then you're going to tell the detectives again what happened.

But you can't just tell your story once.

But I'm talking it out is a way of processing it, but it means reliving it.

And I've seen since then.

I think one of the things that makes something go from a bad incident to trauma is when you go to school and you hear what's being taught and clart you're gett encouraged to go home and do homework and review it.

And it's the reviewing of it which what keeps it in your memory.

What are people to learn at school.

I think it's the same thing in trauma.

Because you're reliving it over and over again, it's making it permanent in your mind.

So I don't know how you get around that in being able to try and think through the issue and resolver at the time and rehashing.

It all the time, you know, whether it's later going to quart or whatever.

I think the past still exists.

That's my area around the relativity and so forth, you know, the space time continuum.

I think the past does exist in our minds, particularly when we think about it all the time, and it's very real, and it brings back sensory memories of the moment, smells, sounds, this type of thing.

It's extremely real.

I think this is what informs trauma, the reality of these memories.

Yeah, I get your old sensation and it's like it's sort of like an echo where you suddenly feel like you act in the head a little bit, or even The weird thing is that sometimes you want to sit yourself in the head to try and recreate the moment and resolve it.

This is all the weird stuff that if you've been through a trauma, that you go through your mind there strange things to try and resolve the situation, and it's outside the normal if your previous existence, and you just feel like real weirdo when you're thinking of these count of things and you can't tell your work colleagues or you.

You're made too because it's just so far out to here.

And you want to go back to normal, and you don't want us to come in there as the guy who's got the trauma, the guy who's got the burden.

You know, you want to be able to be functional again.

I can see how that operates.

And you know, obviously, mobble out there you've gone through exactly what you've gone through.

I love to hear from them, by the way, Adam chand Wright at gmail dot com.

And there's a lot of people out there who will walking around just like you.

And this is the importance of this discussion.

How important was it to your recovery that justice be done somehow?

Was that part of your thinking?

I thought that the bloke who was the main attacker could kill someone.

I had no doubt about that.

But this was one savage bloke.

So I thought from that perspective that I was surprised that there wasn't a greater effort put into the investigation, knowing the direct threat.

And it was at the time where we were going through this whole thing of the terrorism threat.

If you see something, you say something.

This is something that actually happened on our streets.

And I was kind of expecting, all right, I've got to Monday.

I thought maybe the news services might run it, you know, to you know, blood gets blash bashed in mindled station that usually gets to run and didn't.

I thought TV might be onto it.

I did find out later that TV station's RAMSISPR and we're told that I wasn't interested in talking.

They sp for you.

They spoke for me, which I was surprised by that.

Bay.

I did do an interview on the Monday.

I was talking to doing with the Perth Paul Murray an interview on air.

But if there's.

Any audio still existing of that, I wasn't making a heck of a lot of sense.

I was talking on there can cast.

I was saying that I really feel sorry for these blokes for feeling that they had to attack someone because they felt on the receiving end of racism.

So you're too nice of blow.

That's the problem here.

You have no way of thinking.

About something like this, You've never had to think about it before.

There's no path to follow that you can pull back from somewhere.

Like I wasn't an angry person.

I wasn't a hateful person.

It wasn't until I actually got to the Mirror book and detectives and I was trying out this line and I sort of felt sorry for them, and the detectives said to me, look, there are people who come from Africa to here that have had a hard time in their country and they don't feel the need to be able to have to attack someone to.

Get it out of their system.

And that sort of helped me to think, oh, maybe I should start a push and some blame to these place because I just had no concept of what.

I was dealing with now for sure.

And I think forgiveness is also a key element of recovery as well, if you can take away that feeling of anger and bitterness.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're going too far there, and I think, you know, the detechnique was exactly right.

We can talk about an African crime problem, or we can talk about individuals within various communities who were dysfunctional who.

Think that randomly bashing people is okay.

The vast majority of the African communities and the Vietnamese and whoever else.

Want to mention, don't get involved in this.

You never ever hear of a white crime problem, and this drives me nuts.

And virtually every media release from police person whose community crime is Caucasian, we don't talk about a white crime problem in this country.

We have a young man crime problems because.

In the other incidents where I was attacked, the bloke who did the liquor store robbery before punching me out an Olphen Park, he was just a white, blonde hair blot.

The bloke had got me this year at the McDonald's Intelimon has a bit off his face on drugs.

Try to steal my bag and I got to when I went to retrieve it got to kick in the.

Neck and chest.

But I was able to put into effect when this year's incident happened.

Everything I've learned, don't personalize it.

It's nothing to do with you.

You're just random person with a random event that's happening.

I treated it like that.

I felt sore for a couple of days.

It's a weekend for the injury, and by depersonalizing it, it's just like just a polymic.

Now it comes into that place of being an amusing incident that happened.

The crazy states.

Someone is in in that moment to randomly attack.

Somebody, and this is probably going to be one of several incidents across this person's day and it's not going to end well for them.

These are ways to rationalize it.

But you've still been attacked.

And let's go back to the Glandelow incident.

So detectives have got it and they've done all the right things DNA samples and so and so forth.

So I need ask the officer, Okay, so how are you going to follow this up?

And his words were, I'm night shoot in a couple of weeks, so we'll go out and have a look.

And from that reply to now, that's all I've gone directly from them.

I haven't heard from them since.

But a later incident, which I think we're going to go into, I was able to find out a little bit indirectly about what happened with the police.

But we've got in the interim, so they do nothing effectively, or they don't tell you what they've done, and how long it lapses before the next milestone in this story.

Okay, I was just throwing something else there which might be of interest.

The night I got back to six Bigar so I think it was the Wednesday, week after the attack, so it had about ten days.

And got into the newsroom and I don't know how to put a news bulletin together.

It's just not in my hand.

You just do when you put a news bullets together, get your weather, you get your intros and your outros, and you look through the stories of the day.

I'm sitting there.

I didn't sell John.

Nichols or I think Amerew glen Cross was in there two at the time that I can't remember how to put a bulletin together.

So this is about I got in at about five o'clock.

Or just before five o'clock.

I'm sitting there going what do I do.

So for the first couple of bulletins, I just read some bulletins from earlier in the day, and about eight thirty at night, it's just everything clicked back into place.

It's like a part of my mind woke up again and it had been shut down because of the concussion from the attack.

But again, because you don't know what's happening to you, just go Not only do I not know what's happening to me, I don't know how to respond or to you with this situation.

And one thing in media is you need to project an air or competence at all times.

All times.

I don't feel like you know, sometimes when you talk to police, they're great, and sometimes you talk to them and they're like, oh, I've had.

A bad day.

I don't want to talk to you.

No, with me, you've got to be on all the time.

So fast forward the Big Boss for six PM.

You express some you know, this great sympathy for me, when about three weeks after the tack when you visit in Perth and got right in made me redundant.

So I came back to Victoria from closest job, like you get to my hometown.

And too long with colin the western districts of Victoria.

Yes, And we're in a staff meeting one day and just talking about the usual crap and one of the staff members walks into the Star being it says Lance, there's two detectives from way at the door for you.

Okay, no idea.

Maybe it was about the attack or something in pintlope what.

You're thinking, this is probably a good development.

They got they caught the attackers.

There's something going to happen now.

No, I just thought I've got no idea to hear.

There was one thought about the gown.

Lizy Well, I just had no idea.

So I was We're the WA Sex Assault Squad and we're here to investigate a sexual assault which happened this time this date.

So we go into the boardroom, we sit down, and we start talking about the sexual assault.

And after about a minute of this, I'm.

Thinking, I know, I haven't done anything.

Did they tell you who the victim was?

Well, we're about a minute into this.

Is the victim a male or a female?

Because I'm gay and if it's a woman, I haven't so I asked them, is the victim a male or a female?

And I think, oh, it's a woman.

And it's like, I'm like, I don't the kids have a term for a now gold and gay.

So that's someone that's never had sex with a woman and had no intention of It's just like, you know, you're just back for the one team.

I fully intend to go out at the end of my life with a you know, bout under my arm, back to the million, holding my hea up with pride, you know, with a golden duck.

So as soon as they say it's a.

Woman, I just roll my eyes and I just told one gay I could see the two detechnique to sort of look at each other.

They've traveled from Firth to Melbourne too klak.

To talk to a gay guy about.

So we go through the wig role, the process and they show me pictures of the victim, the young lady.

I'm racking my brains.

I'm thinking, because I'm taking you it's just someone from I know, from six pr or from church that I'm running to, or has made accusation against me that I don't know.

I don't recognize her anyway.

They I sort of half heard one of the detectives on the phone outside the station is they say, we were going to go down to Kolak Police station.

We're going to interview you.

So I could.

See since one of the detectives on his phone obviously went back there office in perthday that's something guy.

But we go through the ring arole, we get down to Klake Police station.

I get a mug shot taken.

We go into an interview room.

They asked me the hard questions.

It comes up that apparently how I'm linked to it is that they've found some DNA at the crime scene, which is my DNA in bull Creek in What's and I've found out since then by ringing about it in media rating Will said what they were investigating was a woman had told police that there was a bloke who was whistling and acting like he was trying to find his dog, and he threw her to the ground and sexually assaulted her.

And that was the complaint that they were investigation.

This was the night before Australia Day in twenty sixteen.

According to the article, this is what I'm going on.

But my DNA is on a shoe at the crime scene.

So they go back and investigate on their computer system.

Right, DNA matches lands White.

He's got DNA at two crime scenes.

That's what they can all.

Their computer tells them the crime scene in bull Creek and the crime scene in Glendelow.

But the police don't know that I was the crime victim, victim, not perpetrator in Glenlo.

So they're following a lee who've got a.

Bloke they like in these situations.

They don't give advance warning.

They're coming across from Perth to cool A, thinking, get the handcuffs.

Three, we've got the suspect.

The DNA's there, what else do we need?

Well, I did say that they were interviewing a number of people.

They did tell me that I wasn't the only person being questioned about this, so I kind of knew straight away.

Okay, this hopefully will resolve pretty quickly.

I'm laughing about it now.

It wasn't funny at the time because I was dreamely stressed.

They could be speaking your number of people, but they come all the way from Perth to kol Act they're not.

You're the number one suspect, I can guarantee.

Okay, that's interesting to know, right all right, Well, yeah, I didn't look at it that way at the time.

But otherwise the local compass could have could have dealt with this.

They could say you aside, they wouldn't have to come all the way from Perth, and so I think that that in the case they will ready to grab you and extraduct you back to Perth.

Wow, okay, okay, so I'm pretty much again it's a personal spacing.

I feel hugely in vain.

I'm just nervous.

It's uncomfortable in the office with the poor old days because I don't explained to the rest of the staff why the two cops from ware they nursed in the middle of the start beating.

So I was just up front with it, this is this is what's going on.

And to their credit, the guys in the office were great.

Ladies were uncomfortable and we've got a potential sex attacker in the building.

So I fully get that, fully understand that, but it's still stressful, not knowing how long this was going to take to resolve.

So it was about a month later I got call that I've been eliminated as a suspect.

And on the article about the bull creep attacking Perth, they had a photofit picture on the article.

Who was I'm dark haired, dark eyed, this guy was having sort of Jiji hair like.

They were looking poor, seven years younger than me.

I didn't look so I'm assuming that the lady was attacked.

Was shown the photo of the make shot of me and said, no, I don't know that, I'm assuming.

I wonder if they could.

Have done that before they you would let the birth for Kolak.

Maybe they had a footy game you go to or something in Victoria.

I was once actually, I detectives come across from Victoria to Perth once actually to talk about some information that I had regarding a murder.

And they came on the Friday when there was a big game Collingwood was playing.

I think that was the I think that was the actual plan.

A month after they visited you, what happens there's another communication.

Okay, So I'm on a train back to Cola from my home to long and I get a call on the train and they start asking me more questions.

Have you been to poor Ragoon?

Oh, by the way, we eliminated you as a suspect since a leaf the path over me.

And the cop goes, oh, sorry, I suppose I should.

Have opened up with that.

Yeah, And I tell my but it's at work.

It gets back to normal ish.

It was still awkward dealing with the police a little bit, just a part of my job as a journalist.

And then a few.

Weeks only a few days sorry, after the big boss of the three csmes Ace radio came down.

So we're making redundant, so I think they panicked.

They never at any stage stopped for me to explain, you know, the time of what happened.

They just thought this blokes a bit dodgy.

Let's getting out of here.

Because I was been praised so high heaven for turning the Collac service from the worst in the network to the best in the network.

And I didn't know at the time that I found out just after I'd been made redundant, and I've been nominated for an ACRO for a best News thread of the Commoscial Radio Awards, and I found.

Out a little bit later.

I wasn't invited into the ceremony, but once so, I'm confident that everything I did at Colact was as good and professional and top munch as it could be.

And I just got seen as being damaged goods and you know, a nuisance and you're out the door.

You could certainly come to that conclusion the sequence of events.

But I mean, the listeners and I are both wondering that the DNA.

I mean, that's the thing, like they've bore.

He's been eliminated, But how the hell does his there?

This is like a movie.

You got previr instancy how.

Do I get what I know in my head into someone else's head that I'm innocent and this is what happened.

How do I get my knowledge of this into your head so that you know exactly what I know about what happened.

So I tell them that, Well, I buy my shoes at Murray Street Perth.

I worked by the same sort of shoe Murray Street per Target because they're cheap and easy and comfortable into ten bucks.

And they tell me, and I show them my shoes.

I was still wearing the same type.

I said, yep, it's the same touch shoe, but a different size.

So I put together what's happened And I'll never know this for sure.

When I go to buy shoes, they hang from a rat in the store.

I'm shy at nine, so you usually got six, seven, and eight.

I put my finger or my son in the shoe drag, the six long drag, the seven long drag, the eight A long til I get up side nine put my size nine.

I always wear a nine.

I don't know the size of the person's shoe that was found at the scene.

I don't know if it was bigger than mine or smaller than mine.

And I'm assuming because it was my son had been in the shoe.

And they did tell me later that my thumb print, my thumb print was inside the shoe, and they came to the conclusion they told me that I must have tried the shoe on.

I don't try the shoes on.

I know I'm side nine.

And the next time I went to tay this is in gil on.

You just subconsciously did the same thing.

And as soon as I did it and draged you along with my thought, ah, this is how it's got in there.

And really a bit more about DNA.

It's a lot more sensitive apparently in being able to detect DNA than when they first when DNA first became a thing, so to the point where it can become a hindrance to the investigation because you got you've got DNA on everything.

I've got DNA on your furniture.

Here in this there's probably some of my DNA on you from when we shook hands.

I can be in trouble.

You're you know, you're a known person to the police.

Well seeking I was going to broke the news to three I w's Ross Stephenson, who was he was using the same panel in Coolak when he on the weekend he did some Saturday morning kind of show where we would go into three sis Kolak and use the same panel in me.

Does the DNA.

Travel from me touching the desk to Ross touching the same butt.

I don't know.

In this day, even with partial DNA, they're going to be able to fill in the gaps with AI.

So it's an incredibly powerful tool and will only get more powerful than I think.

Unfortunately, it does have these little quirks in it that the inadvertent transfer of DNA onto other surfaces and items can lead to.

Just this situation.

I'm sure the people out there, or maybe there are, maybe they are, they're the same experience.

Get in touch if you have Adam shand Rather at gmail dot com.

Next time you go shoes shopping, mightn't suggest you wear latex glass and maybe about lava as well.

Don't do that.

But all of this doesn't help you in your trauma because.

You're expecting those coppers are coming from Perth with news about that they caught you a perpetrated So I mean, I'm glad to hear that they're following up on.

This ball Greek section assault but yeah, so what had happen to you?

A book?

I wish to put the same effort into investigating my bashing as I did with this poor lady who I'm glad they're going.

To that the effort to follow it up.

I hadn't done that part of the mixed feelings you have about the whole thing.

I'm glad you're doing your job, and they did with the job in the end to put me through just hell.

In the meantime, I'm just thinking about DNA now, as like with the officer who asked me.

The officer had to ask me what was the crime scene at Glendalow, so that's not on his computer.

So I could walk now through another crime scene and I avoid an if police are out doing a job, I don't know whether you're the crime scene because I could touch something.

My DNA shows up on a computer parnabas and now it's Sam's white.

Three crime scenes and the investigating officer of the third case doesn't know what the second and the first crime scene once were.

Where I was the victim of.

Crime in one circumstance and an eliminated suspect of the second.

So I apparently got to go through the Supreme Court in WA to get my DNA take off the register.

I don't want to go through that process.

I just to avoid crime scenes.

There's no real sort of win in this.

Good plan avoid.

Crime scenes is avoid crime scenes.

But you don't know next the question, next the question that your.

Attackers man handled you or three of them, and their DNA would have been all over you as well.

And you can't tell.

Me that they haven't already offended, since I'd be very surprised if they hadn't.

You wonder whether or not their DNA has come up in relation to your case.

I kind of looked at it like the Clarmont serial killing scene, where I think it was about twenty years the Kimodo on the closed line was the link that said Bradley Edwards and but plants Williams.

I think it was the public servant who you know a lot, or Peter Waigers.

The Clermont man was a suspect.

Nearly every taxi driver in Perth had their taxi gone through.

Lots of people get caught up in these things and you never hear about them.

So I know I'm not Robinson Crusoe.

But in terms of dealing with this, but it did make the trauma from the original batching worse and still does to this day.

Because I've done dealing with I'm still dealing with the collect thing to a lesser extent than what I'm dealing with.

Particle and work is part of that.

Part of the reason why I'm not working not interested in going back to work was the response from workplaces.

I made it worse, and I don't blame the workplaces for that.

They were dealing with something that did not come across before.

I was dealing with something that I had not come across before.

That they didn't know how to help me.

I didn't know how to help be disappointed with Fairfax Media.

We're the owners at the time, and I would have thought the war correspondents coming back from war zones, but his paper correspondents to the Age Syney Morning Carol.

Surely they know how to deal brief people have been in traumatic seitu are, but there was I know that the station in Birth was getting advice externally about how to deal with me, but all the advice was making everything worse for me.

Because one of the problems that came from the attack was when I was been thrown around during the bashing.

I didn't like being disorientated, and what did they do?

Let's change answers ship.

All I want to do was get back to normal.

Let's change let's put in Let's have me reading the six o'clock news and starting an hour earlier.

Let's have him going home.

All I want to do is get back to my same routine.

I wasn't being consulted in this.

Decisions were being made for me.

Again, I don't blame anyone because but I hope we learned from it, and the media organizations or any business, if they've got somebody coming back to work, knows the best way that the person needs to feel that they're in control, that they had the backing at the workplace.

Fully the I'm a little bit wary of these.

Employment assistance programs because I've heard I didn't have enough trust in them to approach them, because I'm aware that you mist results with them.

Some of them are UNI students who've done a psychology degree whole dealing with people who are ever inter organized.

But trust is a big thing that goes out of the window when you're dealing with this kind of thing.

So it's hard you need other people in your life to be proactive inquiring, and maybe you'll rebuff them, but eventually you'll just get to a place of just mental exhausting.

It's like I need help that can come weeks, months, years later.

I'm sort of at that place now where I mean a thirteen years later, we're in a much better place to deal with it, and have been dealing with it this parts year.

So learned a lot about personal space.

I've heard from war veterans that when they go horseback riding in the high ca trigger it seems to do it good because they're getting out and reclaiming their personal space, which after an attack, all your personal space previous limits, like you know, uncomfortable sitting opposite you now.

But if I was at the beach at Ocean Grove the last Christmas and there was a black father and son throughout the service, they're three hundred meters away, they were in my personal space.

So getting used to walking past people on the street who are not in control of their behavior, or working for a radio manager who's not in control of their behavior that will trigger you, and a trigger.

I've only had one full on trigger.

That's when you that's when I was at home with Mum, I was asleep.

She touched me on the back in the exact same spot that the attackers did.

For the next ten minutes, I'm just almost screaming, crying, can't breathe can't catch my breath.

But i know from the psychology will help to receive.

These are just feelings.

They will pass and that's probably the best.

And twice I've got hard to hear at the time.

But yeah, you can get to the point where you always have a little sort of traces of the traumas there, but it doesn't dial up, and for hours of a day they can just you're not even thinking about it.

But usually every day something comes into you your mindsector you think about either that or did you see a police officer, and you're taken back to cool Wak and.

Mats.

Thank you for sharing the story.

It's a very important one.

I think it's important for all victims of crime.

I think in some way, Truman Italy, these incidents will leave an imprint on us, on our psyching, on our bodies, physical scars, mental scars.

It's how we deal with it.

And you've just given a graphic depiction of.

The long term issues that are involved here, so thank you for sharing it with me, and I want to urge other people out there.

If you've been a victim of crime, if you haven't that good service from the police, or you're still dealing with the trauma, I'd like to hear from you.

But also this extraordinary story of lands is this twist in the story where he goes from victim in one crime, doesn't get any service, becomes a suspect in another.

If you've had the same experience, I'd love to hear from you.

Adam Shanned writer at gmail dot com.

You can also report crime to crime stoppers one one hundred, triple three, triple zero.

But maybe you don't trust the cops after this story, I understand that too, but you can always call me or write to me.

Adam Shann writer at gmail dot com.

Thank you lads for coming in and sharing.

This one can hold up a lot of that.

Not a problem.

This is what I'm here for when I'm here for the audience exactly in this way, So please don't instad get in touch.

This has been adding sham for real crime