15 Jun 2022

Wendy Davis: Why make a fuss

From Nine To Noon, 10:07 am on 15 June 2022

When Wendy Davis was attacked at work, the incident wasn't taken seriously. Like so many women of her generation, she'd been taught never to make a fuss.

Her attacker, Bradley Robert Edwards, would go on to become a serial killer, leading to one of the longest-running and most expensive murder trials in Australia's history.

Her memoir, Don't Make a Fuss - It's Only the Claremont Serial Killer, highlights the importance of listening to women when they speak up about assault. 

Wendy Davis

Photo: Sophie_Reid

Davis tells Kathryn Ryan she never dreamed of writing a book about what happened to her, but while journaling her thoughts for therapy, an important message emerged.

“When it resurfaced and Bradley Edwards was arrested, I experienced terrible, terrible trauma including flashbacks and anxiety and incredible anger about what’d actually happened to me and I saw a victim’s of crime counsellor in Hobart who suggested that I document everything.

Wendy Davis' book cover.

Photo: Supplied

“Gradually, I started to see that there was a story here, that there was a really important message that I was part of a bigger picture and I started to write about everything that was happening and put it into some sort of order and context.

“Over that three years [of Edwards’ trial], that’s what turned into my book and the message was so strong about listening to women and women not being able to speak up that I thought it was very, very important to get it out there.”

The system had failed Davis when it dismissed an attack at her workplace in 1990 as a one-off incident from a supposedly struggling young man, despite all the signs.

That man was Bradley Robert Edwards, a Telecom worker who had popped into her office at the hospital where she was a grief counsellor, asking if he could use the toilet.

She says she didn’t think much of it at the time because the hospital was undergoing upgrades.

“I just sort of grunted and nodded and got back to writing this report … And I heard this person go behind me, and I heard the toilet flush and I was vaguely aware of him coming back behind me, but I was very busy writing.”

He went to the ward door but returned, this time asking to retrieve a pencil he said he had dropped.

“I was just thinking, ‘that doesn’t sound right’ and then I was also thinking ‘hang on, he didn’t really have time to flush the toilet’ and the next minute, a hand came around me with a cloth across my face.

“The other hand came around the other side of me, pulled me back, and it was pulling me and the chair back with a most ferocious force that I’ve never felt anything like this before.

“And because of that cloth, I thought I was going to die, I thought there was something on the cloth and I thought I was going to die.”

Davis recalls trying to get a footing on the ground after realising there was nothing on the cloth because she was able to breathe again.

“That’s when I really, really started to fight because I thought I’ve got a chance, and I struggled and struggled, but he was much bigger than me and he was very, very strong.”

As the chair fell, she remembers her neck being pulled and being crushed up against him.

“The only thing I could really move was my legs and I was being lifted off the floor but I kicked him really as hard as I could with my left leg and then all of a sudden … he just stopped and I just fell back.

“I can’t even describe the look that was in his eye, and he was saying ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ like almost mechanically.”

Although the attack lasted for what might have been 15 seconds, the trauma and scars inside were long-lasting for Davis, who went into a state of shock and quit the job which she loved dearly.

“I was never the same person again. My marriage broke up after about four or five years, and I think part of that [was because] I was less trusting, I started to suffer from insomnia, and a certain amount of anxiety as well. But I buried the incident.”

Shortly after the attack, Davis’ experience was minimised in a meeting with police and a Telstra representative, who felt “it would be a shame if he lost his career because of one thing”, she says.

“This person that proceeded to advocate for Bradley Edwards, he said he was a young man, I think he was 19 then, he said he was having relationship problems, and that’s probably why he snapped but he’d never done anything like this before, that he had agreed to get some counselling.

“I told him this is not normal behaviour for somebody to attack a total stranger just because he’s had relationship problems, but as the meeting went on and I could see that he wasn’t listening to me and I started to feel really, really, really powerless and terribly upset.”

For Davis, she instinctively knew the attack was violent and sexually motivated.

“I’m not the type of person that does become hysterical or lose it. I was taught as a woman, as a young woman, when I was growing up not to make a fuss like most women of my generation were.

“And I internalised a lot of what was going on and I think they just didn’t listen to me because I was so quiet and withdrawn but I mean I had bruising on my neck and everything.”

Throughout her memoir, Davis ponders how if she was taken more seriously, if due diligence was done, if the fingerprints in a previous attack were followed up or the details of later cases publicly revealed, the outcome for the victims might have been different.

“I don’t mention this in the book but they didn’t release details of the fact that a man had been seen – when they were investigating the crimes in the mid-1990s - in a Telecom van around the place, asking young girls if they wanted a lift.

“If they had publicised what they were investigating at that time, I might’ve even picked up that hang on, that’s a Telecom van, my ex-husband might’ve picked that up, anybody else that knew what had happened to me might’ve picked that up but they didn’t release those details until years later.”

It wasn’t until 2016 when Davis got a call from police about his arrest that the link was drawn.

For three long years, she was called on to give evidence against him in the Supreme Court, and that’s when she finally felt validated.

“It was terrifying for me to do that but at the same time, it was cathartic, it was empowering, everybody in that court room was listening to what I was saying and they were finally believing what I had to say.”

In 2020, Edwards was found guilty of the wilful murder of 23-year-old Jane Rimmer and 27-year-old Ciara Glennon, but there was insufficient evidence to convict him for the murder of a third young woman, whose remains are yet to be found.

The message Davis now wants people to take is clear: “It’s not only okay for women to make a fuss but sometimes it’s absolutely necessary, but more importantly, it’s really, really important for people around women that talk about domestic violence or any type of violence to listen to what they’re saying.”