Celebrating the Family Violence Sexual Violence Knowledge Project

Kate Fitz-Gibbon is a Professor (Practice) with the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash University and an Honorary Professorial Fellow with the Melbourne Law School. Kate is an international research leader in violence against women and children, perpetrator interventions, and the impacts of policy and practice reform. Kate has advised on homicide law reform and family violence reviews in Australia and internationally. Her research has been cited by the High Court of Australia. In 2021 Kate was appointed Chair of Respect Victoria by the Victorian Government. In 2024, Kate was selected as part of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders 2024 Class. 

Jacqui Costello is the Project Lead for the Harmful Sexual Behaviour Project within Monash Health’s SECASA (South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault) program, bringing four years of specialist experience to the organization. With a prior 15-year career in the Victorian child protection system, Jacqui has spent nearly two decades specialising in supporting young people and families affected by sexual harm.

Jacqui holds a Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies (Australian National University), a Bachelor of Social Work (University of Melbourne), and a Master of Clinical Family Therapy (La Trobe University). Her extensive clinical practice is backed by professional memberships with the AASW, ANZATSA, AAFT (Clinical Family Therapist Member of the Australian association of Family Therapy), and EMDRAA (Full Member). Alongside her professional roles, Jacqui has maintained a strong commitment to community service, contributing her time as a volunteer for OzChild, the Brotherhood of St Laurence, and local primary school programs.

Informed by her own lived experience of intergenerational trauma, Jacqui brings deep empathy, nuance, and insight to her clinical and project work. She is deeply passionate about championing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, dedicating her career to driving best-practice outcomes, safeguarding vulnerable youth, and delivering critical support frameworks that foster systemic healing and safety for Victorian families.

Sara Nothrop is an Art Therapist and therapeutic practitioner with a background in teaching and over eight years’ experience supporting children, young people and families affected by family violence.

She has worked across a range of therapeutic and family violence services, including Pathways to Resilience and VACCA’s family violence therapeutic team, providing individual counselling and group programs to children, including those who have experienced family violence and are living in out-of-home care.

Her work has since moved into program leadership, including at FVREE, where she led the Re-Imaging pilot, exploring a model that combined concurrent case management and therapeutic support for victim survivors. She currently leads the Free to Grow program in partnership with ACF, building on the learnings from this work. The partnership emphasises intentional collaboration between therapists and case managers to ensure holistic risk management and family violence recovery needs are effectively addressed. As part of this work, Sara is also contributing to staff development FVREE, which aims to strengthen collaboration and ensure more client-centred outcomes for victim-survivors.

She is passionate about the recovery journey for victim survivors and believes in creating better futures where children and their protective parents can experience safety, peace and the opportunity to create happy memories together. She draws heavily from her practice experience and aims to cultivate a leadership style that prioritizes intersectional feminism, collaboration, inclusion, and a culture of continuous learning and growth.

Amy Tapsell is a Policy and Advocacy Advisor at Safe and Equal. She holds a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Psychology and a Master of Public Health (Health Promotion). Amy brings seven years of experience in research, project management and policy, with expertise spanning gender equality, health, mental health and the social sciences. She is a skilled mixed-methods researcher and committed to centering lived experience in her work. Prior to joining Safe and Equal, Amy was a Research Officer at the Australian Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusion @ Work at the University of Sydney. She has also worked in the health sector, working within epidemiology and public health teams to support planning for population health responses.

Starting out as a refuge worker and counsellor-advocate, and moving into research and advocacy over time, Dr Amy Webster bas been working in the feminist anti violence sector in Victoria for almost 20 years. She has been a manager at Sexual Assault Services Victoria (the peak body for specialist sexual assault and harmful sexual behaviour services in Victoria) for almost 5 years.

Dr Lisa Wheildon is the Research Lead at No to Violence (NTV), where she drives projects that translate evidence into policy and practice responses to domestic and family violence. Her current research focuses on youth intimate partner violence, building the evidence base and identifying promising practice to guide early intervention. Her PhD examined how co-producing policy with victim-survivors can drive meaningful DFV reform, and her broader work spans technology-facilitated coercive control and national standards for men’s behaviour change programs.