Deborah Thomson’s family moved a lot throughout her childhood, and she attended 17 different schools. In 1974 the family were driving along the Oxley Highway when they spotted 50 acres of land for sale not far from Apsley Falls. 

“We drove into Walcha and bought the property intending to start a little like-minded community of people who wanted to live environmentally and economically,” Ms Thomson said. 

“This did not eventuate, and my parents left Walcha, but I refused to leave and at age 15 moved in with the Fortescue family for three years. I owe the Fortescue family a lot because their taking me in, and making me feel a part of their family enabled me to remain in a town that I loved and able to attend Walcha Central School from year 8 through to year 12. Walcha is an amazing town, and during high school, I made lifelong friends.”

While attending university Ms Thomson was a shy, immature university student with low self-esteem when a man took an interest in her.

“Wayne  (name changed) came along and showed an interest in me, and I sort of fell for that,” she said. 

“Counselling has shown me since that his intense interest was really grooming.”

The couple got married, had three children, owned a business together and had two houses. Everything looked perfect on the surface, but behind closed doors, Wayne was violent to his wife.

“It was emotional, sexual, physical, psychological, anything and everything. There were incidents where he tried to kill me,” she said.

“Finally it was my four-year-old daughter who came up to me one day and said ‘Mum he’s showed me a gun, he’s going to kill you with it, you need to leave’ and I went to a refuge then moved to Tasmania.”

Ms Thomson has worked through the trauma and has come out the other side wanting to help others in the same situation. Her recently published book called ‘Whose Life is it Anyway?’ is a memoir about her experience which she hopes will become a resource for counsellors and other family violence survivors.

“It’s quite confronting,” she said.  “It’s a no holds barred. There are diary entries that talk about everything from attempted murder to rape. So it’s a really honest account.”

Ms Thomson’s two eldest daughters moved back to where their father lives and she does not want others to recognise them or their father, so she cannot disclose where the abuse occurred other than to say it happened while the family lived in the New England region. 

“ ’Wayne’ continued to threaten my life when I left with our three daughters in 2003 so I have kept the town where the story occurred, secret from everyone bar my family,” she said. 

“I often wish I could 'out' the perpetrator because he has never been charged for his abuse but in the end I am living a wonderful and productive life with a partner who is everything 'Wayne' was not and I am not seeking retribution.”

Owing to a physical genetic disability Mrs Thomson can not work in the field of counselling and case management for which she is qualified.

“My book is my voice now,” she said.

“I can speak out about domestic violence if only to make sense of what was, senseless abuse.”