The panic that ensued in the organisation after Michael’s murder manifested in the CEO attempting to placate me in what I considered the most insensitive manner.

The very first day of my loss and in inconsolable grief, I received a call from the CEO that started something like this : “In incidents such as these, our company policy is to …”. I never heard the rest of that sentence as the phone left my hand in a flying skid across the floor. What an absolutely insensitive and matter of fact way to speak in this instance by a person leading an organisation purporting compassion for those with a mental health disability. I am to this day, astonished at the lack of empathy shown by this person toward myself who was freshly grieving the loss of a loved one. These attempts to contact me did not stop there but continued. I tried but could not find the genuine compassion in her requests to meet with me. They felt false. They had all the signs of a person needing to “go through the motions” to protect the name of the organisation because these actions are what WorkCover and the courts will look at. To this date, no apology has ever been offered for the loss that Michael’s family have endured.

I did eventually give into her persistence and agreed to meet with her. She shouldn’t have pushed so hard. I had a companion with me during that meeting, and we detected what we felt were evasive answers to a number of questions we had. This meeting did nothing to quell my suspicions about the motives under the guise of “assistance”, but everything to rile me into a resolve that I would expose the truth about what I had been consistently told about the organisation’s CEO and leader. It gave me the energy to ensure that the organisation would be exposed for their failure to provide a safe work environment. By pushing too hard in such a disingenuous manner, the CEO had shot herself in the foot.