The domino effect of domestic violence The ramifications of domestic violence are widespread. IN AN emotion-charged speech, Rosie Batty accepted one of the highest accolades a state can give last week - she was awarded Victorian of the Year. Since her son Luke was killed by his father Greg Anderson in a domestic violence-related incident in February, Ms Batty has stunned everyone, embarking on an active campaign to change the perception of domestic violence and the fragmented way each state deals with it. I'm here because of Luke and I'm here because one in three women is affected by family violence. And one in four children," she told the audience as she accepted the award on Tuesday night. There's a long, long way to go before their journey is recorded, validated, supported. My journey is nothing unique. What made it unique is the worst happened. I didn't want Luke to have died in vain and my quest was to do whatever I could. My commitment is, I will continue to push this message. I want to tell everybody that family violence happens to everybody, no matter how nice your house is, how intelligent you are. It happens to anyone and everyone. I accept this award for all victims of violence who have no voice. Rosie Batty accepting her award. Picture: Sky News Source: Supplied Ms Batty's campaigning and her honest portrayal of living in a violent circumstances are already having an affect. Other women have started sharing their stories, and 26-year-old Alice* is one of them. Like Ms Batty, Alice knows the domestic violence situation only too well. She too wants people to realise that violence within the home - and its ramifications - are everyone's concern. The primary school teacher from Sydney was subjected to domestic violence as a child, at the hands of her biological father. Then, just two years ago, Alice's mother committed suicide after being clinically depressed for the better part of ten years. My mum came to Australia and had me at 26. She slowly found out what kind of man my biological father was," Alice tells news.com.au. There was excessive violence. There were also things like, they'd go out on a trip to Scotland Island, but then he'd leave her out there and take the boat because she couldn't swim. When I was about three, mum found out that my biological father had sexually abused me. That was the catalyst for mum leaving. She had to plan her escape so carefully, especially because she couldn't drive. She picked me up from preschool and managed to get to a women's shelter safety. There's a lot of it I don't know, but she protected me as best she could. But leaving Alice's dad wasn't the hardest part. The process of counselling, court cases and custody battles proved extremely trying for Alice's Malaysian-born-and-raised mum. "From what I understand there weren't a lot of options that were available," Alice explains. She was a single mum in an unknown country. She had to seek refuge in a women's shelter, and it was really hard for her to even get custody of me. The court case was tough. The judge was racially biased towards supporting my father - I guess that many years ago people weren't as open minded as they are now. The ruling was that I had to have annual visits with him, and I saw him up to the age of about 16. Domestic violence affects everyone. Mum didn't challenge it. She would have had to go through an entire different court process, and she'd just been through a whole process to get custody and she just couldn't do it again. She didn't have much money, she had no family here, she was still in her 20s. It's so trying that even in the worst cases of abuse, women don't challenge it. If they can they get out they do, but they do little more. She didn't like to talk about it so I didn't realise how much she did for me or how bad it was until a few months before she died. I've since seen all these files and court cases and documents from my child psychologist sessions, and it's quite apparent there was abuse going on. I have asked my solicitor why mum didn't press charges for abuse, and she told me a lot of mums don't do that because it's really hard to prove, and it's so emotionally trying for the woman. All they want is to get custody and get safe. That dilemma is also one that Ms Batty is challenging. She tackled the court system, but after enduring 12 months of failed hearings in an attempt to distance herself and Luke from Mr Anderson, his abuse lead to murder. She is now campaigning for all the different agencies people come into contact with in situations like this to work together. "I couldn't afford any legal representation, so I was very alone on the journey trying to understand what was happening," she told ABC News. No organisations work together. The police, corrections, child protection, welfare services, they don't have a complete picture of one individual, so there's no cohesiveness. We've got to push the politicians and we've got to say, you put so much focus on your public transport safety and all these areas of public concern, but we don't go the hard yards and really look at this huge, huge societal problem. And it's not going away," she said to The Age. "Why should a mother and child have to disappear interstate with false identities, why should they have to go into refuges while the perpetrator is probably just having a beer with his mates, holding down a job?" she said. Rosie Batty also one the Courage Medal at the 2014 Pride of Australia Awards. While Alice remembers little of her and her mum's escape - "Those years are just blank, I don't know if I've wiped my own memory but there's absolutely nothing there" - the knock-on affects of being abused are significant. This is the aspect of domestic violence Alice is passionate about raising awareness of - she herself has had depression, has been in two long term, abusive relationships, and just under two years ago, Alice's mother committed suicide. "My mum took her own life," says Alice. I strongly believe it was because of the deep seeded depression she'd had for years, because of what happened with my father. One thing people don't realise is that abuse can manifest itself later in life, as in my mum's case 20 years down the track. The pain was suppressed. No-one could help her, she just slipped through. The lack of resources and the lack of help around mental health is our downfall, and it does tie in to any kind of abuse. People are going to suffer in some form afterwards. From my perspective, you can't control external things like my father, but I wish there had been more support services around for her. Mum was really well educated but left the workforce in her early 40s and couldn't go back to work. She was completely depressed, she was not functioning. In her last year of being alive it was attempt after attempt after attempt. And that's what many people do, they bottle up their emotions and think they should just push on, but that's not the way to deal with things. My counsellor has already warned me that I need to deal with this in the right way, too. The domino effect is real. Her passing away has completely affected my life, it added a year onto my studies because I couldn't cope with everything, I've spent hundreds of dollars in counselling fees, I've also had depression. I'm quite open about the fact than mum suffered from depression and committed suicide, but not the abuse aside of it. I'm almost quite ashamed, which I know shouldn't be the case but it's just how I feel. But I do want to change that. To think that something that happened 23 years ago is still affecting me now ... I'm going to have to be so careful with my mental health to make sure that it stops here, to make sure it stops with me. White Ribbon Day also seeks to raise awareness of violence against women. Whatever I do in my life now I want to do my mum proud. I feel like she's almost sacrificed her life to protect me, I feel like I want to do something bigger with my life. I don't have all the resources to do big things, but if my story somehow contributed to changing laws or changing perceptions she'd be so proud. If it's going to potentially change women's lives, that's amazing. name has been withheld