Dear OAM council/board,
I write today to query the criteria for recipients of the OAM award.
I query because of its awarding to a man named Charlie King. I wonder whether the OAM considers the violence an award participant projects prior to distributing.
Charlie King, this violent man, is a reward recipient of the OAM and I am unsure how the board does not do its research prior to awarding. Research that has the potentional to block recipients whose personal/lives away from the public are hypocritical to the award they are receiving.
Charlie King received his award for services in Domestic Violence. He received for creating a program that focuses on removing family violence from communities, promoting equality, breaking down the walls of rascism and discrimination, working towards peace.
However all of these unsafe violent behaviours Charlie projects towards staff, towards the CEO of the organisation, a position and relationship that Charlie abuses for his own pursuits. Charlie is allowed to do this because everybody around him, including the executive, comments it is Charlie King, nothing can be done whenever his actions are brought into question.
Charlie manipulates, bullies and dismisses everything and everyone in his environment. The manager he hired has been left in tears multiple times from Charlie’s interactions with her, his bullying her.
Charlie attempted to bully me, I did not allow. I complained as was my right to the organisation, the organisation responded, bullying, that’s a big word Fred, and are you sure you want to say this. Said to me by the primary victim of his bullying.
Charlie is the barrier to the education of family violence in the Northern Territory. When Charlie’s violence becomes public, which it will, the work with domestic violence gets put back again. It should never have been allowed, you allowed it by handing an award to a violent man.
I have many stories about Charlie, this weak man, many. I’ll share just one with you, what Charlie’s ego is doing to his people.
My role for the No More program was the field officer, I worked in multiple communties. The job was simply to listen to people and support the building of their ideas.
Gunbalanya was one of my communities. After a year of hard work myself and the community made beautiful progress together, so beautiful that during an end of year visit by Eddie Betts they were also excited to get together to talk about the safety in their community. The old men were all on board, Charlie was the tool that was bringing them to the meeting.
Let us reiterate safety first, what I mean by community safety. Just two simple examples.
Four weeks before the event I was in Gunbalanya sitting outside having a coffee and a cigarette. I watch as a women is walking up the road holding her daughter’s hand. Very quickly it came apparent that the women was heading to the medical clinic. As she came closer and I was able to pick up her features the only thing that stood out was her battered face, battered by her partner.
Two weeks before, same community. Same activity, sitting having my morning coffee and cigarette. I hear screaming from the medical clinic, I look up and a women is walking around the building smashing her fists on the walls and doors demanding to be let in. Her face, arms and more are battered to the point of almost being unrecognisable.
The medical clinic will not let her in, they cannot, they are not allowed. They are not allowed to because they are attending to a man’s sore wrist, the wrist he hurt making sure his partner could not be recognised through the blood, bruising, missing teeth and whatever else.
Safety is the priority, safety we could do something about.
Charlie was supposed to come to the event, promised he would, promised the old men he would. No matter how many times I told him to book the private planes we always do, that all workers take, he would not. Charlie was coming on the police plane and the police plane only.
He knows, and I repeated, how unreliable this is. That it has every chance to be redirected and not be available. Charlie knew this but any other form of travel was not good enough for his status, the only thing that matters to Charlie is his ego, is covering up all the violence he continues to project to the world.
The night before the big day I was invited just to hang out in the community, help do a few things, be a guest judge for the christmas light competition. Phenomenally beautiful evening, out of all my community trips nothing was as positive, relaxed and inclusive as this, everybody was involved. We knew tomorrow was going to be a beautiful moment in the tragedy that is Aboriginal community life.
10pm we finished, I arrived to my accommodation to the sound of my phone ringing, it was my Team Leader, the police plane has been cancelled, Charlie won’t be there, Charlie is breaking another promise.
I had to call my mate, the organiser of this beautiful event, a man who has given his life to this community. Given, not sacrificed like Charlie did me, he gave it. He broke and hung up, he knew as well as I did tomorrow was not going to be what it needed to be.
Not one old man showed up to the event, not even to see Eddie Betts. When you lose the trust of the old men in an Aborginal community you lose the community, you put them back through the repeating of every worker, government agent, outsider that has come into the community saying they will help.
My life was physically put at risk because of the ego identification of a coward, a coward awarded an OAM.
Remember before I continue, the two women, their children, actually reflect on it. Imagine watching this yourself. These two occurences are not unique.
Not one of the community safety discussions took place, not one, no progress at all. Charlie King is to blame for this.
Charlie is to blame yet he was not there, to the community it was not him who broke the promise, it was me. I accepted it and took responsibility, didn’t bitch and moan and complain about Charlie every time someone brought it up. I said it is my fault every time as I represent the organisation, I accept responsibility. The heartbreak was clear in my face and my voice, the breaking of trust broke me as much as the community.
People would not talk to me, I would help with activities and they would walk away from. I was asked to help with the barbecue for a bit, I walked over and everybody left. I did not care, I continued to help, I cooked alone, I collected footballs alone, I said hello to everybody and nobody said hello back.
Eddie noticed, he didn’t know the background, but he noticed how hard I was working despite the interactions with me. I was holding back tears cooking the barbecue when he walked over to me and had a chat, we laughed together, smiled and he walked away. The community started talking to me again.
My friend, the organiser, he started talking to me again, said he knew I wasn’t at fault and invited me to some activities, I was involved in the community again. I was safe again when Charlie made me unsafe. This man you awarded an OAM, this man who let two women and more be beaten half to death in Gunbalanya and other communities.
Where is the integrity in your award, I’ll give you an example of integrity and then ask yourself if there is any in anything you do.
I demanded a meeting to discuss Charlie’s behaviour, this week and ongoing. Instead of a meeting I was chastised for being a man, my manager, a women managing a team to remove discrimination chastised me solely through discrinmination. I asked her for evidence every time she made a claim, she had none, her only response was that you are a man.
My Team Leader bullied me, knowing she could because of the coward standing next to her. I laughed at them.
At this point I had signed a contract three months earlier to keep me there for six more years, this work is me, the organisation knew it. In a year the progress I had made in all five communities far surpassed anything the organisation had done in all the years previous. We were making ground finally, we did it by listening.
I had a unit, beautiful friends, a phenomenal life in the place I loved. A future that was more secure than anything I could possibly imagine, particularly when one takes into account the repetitive torture I was subjected to as a child. My future was bleak, as it is for most repetitive violence victims, I pulled myself out of it, made my life something and finally had all the safety I could imagine.
The next day I walked into the office and said to my Team Leader that I am going to take some time to decide if this environment is right for me. I never went back, I have not gone back to working for organisations, and I never will again. Not while they project all the abuse they say they are trying to undo, not while they live in hypocricy.
The three years since have been horrible, I pursued violence, domestic violence, safety, healing, and all the rest to understand it. It cost me everything.
September my life was sleeping in the bush in Tasmania in a hammock, with a fire basically going right under me to try and stay warm. I had a root canal that needed treatment, it was incredibly painful, no money for the option of pain killers, for months I used mouth wash to make it as painful of possible so I could get some form of relief on the comedown. My only food options were weetbix and water.
I did all this to understand violence, to show the world that when we say something means something to us we will do anything for it, even maybe take a private plane rather than acting on the desperate requirement for ego and status validation and reinforcement.
The No More program and Catholic Care NT are a violent organisation, committing violence within their own walls and nothing is being done about it. I guarantee were there an independent audit into this organisation there would serious concerns around the manipulation of power, bullying, unsafe work practices, financial and personal misappropriation. Charlie King’s OAM would be stripped, it needs to be for the benefit of all domestic violence and safety work in this country.