On Saturday morning, we woke up to the news of another domestic violence murder. A 39-year-old woman. A 37-year-old man. A car taken by police for forensic testing. As I followed the story throughout the day, I kept refreshing and scrolling for one detail: Were there children in the home? Around 7 pm, this was reported: a child had walked alone nearly half a kilometre to find help.

At the time I read this, I was sitting quietly next to my neighbour’s child, waiting for them to fall asleep while their parents enjoyed a dinner out. And I kept returning to that image: a child, moving through the dark, out of a house where something unthinkable had happened, propelled by the need to find safety. Sometimes a detail like that lingers. It keeps nudging its way back into your mind, without the neatness of knowing what comes next. Like the photos we’ve all been witnessing of children in conflict zones, hungry, grieving, and injured, with no follow-up on who held them later or where they slept that night.

This one stayed with me. What had this child seen? What did they carry in their body as they walked? How quickly did they learn that no one inside the home was safe enough to turn to? That they had to leave? There was no age given. No information about comfort or care. And it wasn’t a neighbour who helped. It was a passing driver who stopped.

What we see and what we allow ourselves to see

Reporting on domestic and family violence almost always centres adults. Even when a child is present, they are rarely named, quoted, or held in the narrative. As Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon and others have pointed out, this invisibility has real consequences. The long-term impacts of domestic and family violence on children, on their relationships, mental health, identities and schooling, are well documented but still widely underacknowledged in practice and policy.

Even when they are not physically harmed, they carry the impact in their nervous systems, in their relationships, and in the stories they begin to tell themselves about love, trust, and help. In the wake of violence, it is often a child who is left to navigate the aftermath. And yet, children’s voices are the ones most absent from media coverage, policy decisions, and our collective responses.

The power and potential of neighbours

I was reminded of the story behind Yiayia Next Door. When Daniel and Luke lost their mum to family violence, it was their neighbour, Yiayia, who showed up. Not with a system or a service, but with food passed over the fence, night after night. It was her presence and home-cooked meals that helped them to navigate their grief.

For Daniel and Luke, this was a real example of what “love thy neighbour” can look like in practice. It showed how powerful it is when communities look out for each other, and especially when they allow children and young people to be visible, not just inside the family home, but out in the world where safety, care, and connection are needed most. 

But safety doesn’t come from neighbours alone or from any single person. It grows from a network of trusted adults and peers. A teacher, coach, aunty, or friend who knows how to listen and where to go for help can make all the difference. These are the people a child can turn to for the hard things and the good things too. These everyday relationships matter, and they’re worth naming when we talk about what real community protection looks like and what we want it to look like.

What would change if we stopped writing children out of the story?

It took hours for the detail about the child who walked alone after the murder of Rhukaya Lake to appear in the news. Even then, it was only a single line. That is not new. Reporting on family violence still treats children as secondary to the events that surround them, even when they are the ones who act or seek help. This mirrors what happens in our systems. As Conor Pall has said repeatedly, we still have not built services that fully recognise children as victim-survivors in their own right. A child might reach out alone, but the pathways that follow often still assume an adult will carry the story.

Centering children is not just about offering better support. It is about understanding the true cost of family violence, and who has been carrying it in silence.

For those working alongside children and young people who have experienced trauma and family violence, we offer training designed to strengthen child-centred, trauma-informed practice. See our upcoming sessions here or contact us for more information.