SURVIVOR CIRCLES

Amid Australia's epidemic of sexual violence, a new wave of peer-led support groups is changing the way victim-survivors heal

- CATHRYN MADDEN

In a small gym in inner-city Melbourne, eight women are pounding punching bags. Every hook is charged with emotion, every jab a reclamation of control. “Don’t be afraid to be angry. You have the right to be angry,” bellows the instructor. As the timer goes off, one participant breaks into tears, her body hunched over and trembling.

This isn’t your typical fitness class; rather, it’s Left Write Hook, a support group for adult survivors of child sexual abuse and trauma. Founded by academic Dr Donna Lyon, a survivor of child sex abuse herself, the eight-week program empowers women and gender-diverse people to reclaim their bodies and stories via a combination of writing and non-contact boxing. “I thought, ‘I wonder what it would be like to meet other survivors and do something with the creative arts?’” says Lyon, 44. “So we sit around in a gym, we write to a prompt, we locate our trauma, we share our writing and then we learn the art of boxing as a way to process the stored emotion onto a bag.”

It’s a unique and considered process, and also an important one. While we know the statistics around child sexual abuse are horrifying – according to the 2023 Australian Child Maltreatment Study, one in four Australian adults has experienced child sex abuse – less attention is given to what happens next. How do survivors heal? And how significant is peer-led support?

Nikki*, 33, who was abused by her grandfather as a child, stumbled on Left Write Hook after her partner picked up a flyer at a local cafe. “I’d been doing a lot of healing work and I love sport,” she says. “I’d never been in a survivor-led group before, and I felt I was ready for that. And the idea of hitting things also appealed to me.”