Case Study 1
Zainab is a 24-year-old law student. She grew up in Lakemba in New South Wales and moved to Glebe when she was 18. Zainab began a relationship with a fellow university student, Sam, when she was 19. Zainab and Sam were together for almost 3 years. During their relationship, Zainab and Sam consensually photographed several of their sexual encounters. They considered it a fun way to express their affection for each other, and they enjoyed re-visiting the images when they were apart. Towards the end of their relationship, Sam started acting quite jealous. He threatened to distribute the photographs of Zainab to her family, friends and around the university if she left him for anyone else. Zainab was fearful of the implications of this for her future career prospects as a lawyer and the humiliation it would cause her Muslim family. For these reasons, she stayed in the relationship with Sam for another 6 months, before they eventually broke up. Sam promised Zainab that he had deleted the photos.
One day Zainab was at work when she was approached by two men with cameras who tried to take photographs of her. She had to hide out the back of the café, and her boss suggested they report it to police. She didn’t want to do this. Later that week, a student from her course approached Zainab and told her she had seen sexual images of her on a Tumblr page. She said the image was accompanied by what appeared to be her home and work address, alongside some horrific comments encouraging others to film sexual and physical assaults of her.
The student showed Zainab the site and it contained several of the photographs she had taken with Sam. Zainab was terrified and approached your community service organisation for counselling support and to find out what she can do to empower herself as she feels like this is all her fault and is not sure she can live with the shame that this will bring on her family and the broader community if more people find out. She is concerned that this may impact her employment opportunities in the future. You have been working on a respect campaign to deal with violence in the local community.
Case Study 2
Kevin is a 32 year old Australian community services worker on a project team to set up a scheme for supportive housing for recovering mentally ill people aged 18-25. Kevin and his team have worked closely with their clients and relatives in the area who supported setting up the housing scheme. A wealthy lady who had lived in the area had died and left five units to be used as a part of the scheme in her will. The local area has the majority of people owning their own homes with a small number of rentals and some existing social housing. It is located near the inner city with good public transport and is now a highly sort after location. Kevin is excited because it means his clients will be able to get to appointments easy and strengthens their job prospects.
However, many residents in the area have come together in a campaign to stop the project because they feel it will bring more difficult people to the area. Some are angry because there is currently a housing crisis in the area where good people who work and pay taxes are having trouble accessing rental properties. Your clients and their relatives are upset as the work and pay taxes too. Kevin has noticed that since the rise of the community tension the mental health of some of his clients has started to decline and some are no longer coming to the meetings about the housing project. Two of them have pulled out of the project even though it would mean they would no longer be homeless if they stayed with the project.