By Anonymous
for the 2025 Risky Women Writing Competition, presented in partnership with Ocorian
This article highlights a deeply personal account of survival against an abusive partner and the shocking reality of being marginalized at work. It reveals the urgent need for reform in whistleblower protections and the importance of fostering a culture where individuals can confidently speak up without fear.
“I am going to die”, I thought as I watched my husband’s face, contorted with fury, running towards me with an axe in his hands. This time I managed to outmanoeuvre him and de-escalate the situation. After years of abuse, I decided I had to leave, no matter the risks. He had said to me he would kill me if I tried to leave. However, I knew staying was no longer an option.
Little did I know that this battle would only be the beginning and another, even bigger battle lay ahead.
After years of hiding blackeyes and the truth, I finally found my voice and spoke up, communicating my situation to my team and HR at work.
I believed the laws in place to protect against discrimination would protect me. Yet during my most vulnerable time of need, the worst thing imaginable happened; my situation was weaponised against me.
I will never forget the day I was called into a meeting with the CEO and HR and my CEO muttered the words: “we are very sorry that this is happening to you, but your DV situation is causing us brand and reputation damage” and I was stood down. Unable to even speak to my team or finalise matters I was working on. Following three weeks of this treatment, I was then summoned to a meeting where I was forced to sign a document that fully gagged me and saw me signing away all of my rights and protections under workplace and discrimination laws.
I am fully aware that as this was signed under duress and there are legal avenues available for me to pursue the matter. However, I know that should I do this, whilst completely innocent, I would be the one left wearing the cloak of shame and distrust. Nobody likes a tattletale.
This experience has made me examine how we as risk & compliance professionals can do better at encouraging people to speak up and how effective our current whistleblowing laws are.
For any risk & compliance professional, encouraging people to report remains a priority to enable early detection of wrongdoing and mitigating the potential damage and impact. To achieve this, we need to instil the right culture, both in terms of psychological safety and embedding an incident reporting culture which must be set as tone from the top.
Current whistleblowing laws prohibit retaliation against whistleblowers. Yet if you look at history, the sheer volume of large-scale breaches of the law and you extrapolate out how many people must have known against how many came forward, you get an understanding of how lacking our whistleblowing protections are in encouraging whistleblowers to come forward.
I have since been following the story of whistleblowers like Everett Stern, the HSBC whistleblower. These are his words: “The bill is financial—lost income, legal fees, careers that vanish like a file dragged to the trash. It is relational—friends stop calling, colleagues step away, mentors go silent. It is psychological—insomnia, dread, the hum of adrenaline that never quite fades. It is reputational—an entire machine of narratives starts to grind, looking for a way to recast truth as vendetta and evidence as misunderstanding. This is not accidental. It is what systems do to protect themselves when challenged from within.”
Laws need to be amended to better protect whistleblowers. It is not enough to prohibit retaliation. We require proper protections, that will protect incomes, reputations and careers and even encourage whistleblowing. The very fact that whistleblowing support networks are popping up in the UK and US are evidence that the laws are inadequate to protect whistleblowers.
The proposed reforms in Australia including the proposed broadening of the definition of “detriment” to include non-employment-related harm, such as psychological harm, reputational damage, and other financial harm is a very positive step.
Other protections could vary from allowing full anonymity which would help protect reputations and careers, to much heavier penalties for companies that retaliate to help prevent firms from acting against whistleblowers. Currently the penalties for the non-compliance being hidden far outweighs any penalty for retaliation against whistleblowers. This balance needs to be shifted if we wish to see any change.
Aside from protections, to positively encourage whistleblowing, initiatives such as the US’s financial incentive could be considered by other countries. US whistleblowers are offered financial incentives, typically as a percentage of recovered funds, under various federal programs to report violations of securities and anti-money laundering laws, as well as for information leading to discoveries of corporate and financial misconduct.
Changes in legislation, whilst slow, is the easy part. The hardest will be the cultural shift. Embedded deep within many cultures is the idea that anyone dobbing, tattle telling or whistleblowing is a snitch or rat. There is an ingrained negative perception, portraying it as a betrayal or a cowardly act. This is going to take a concerted effort from media, governments and leaders to change. Whilst daunting, as risk & compliance professionals we can all start taking small and proactive steps to begin this cultural shift, whilst working collaboratively towards bigger change.