A young female sailor who reported being bullied by peers after injuring her knee, was allegedly told by her officer to "shut up" or he would break the other leg.
Teri Bailey was aged 18, and the incident so deeply traumatised her she would later make repeated attempts on her life, succeeding on her 25th birthday in December 2020, five years after leaving the navy.
The series of events has been recounted by Teri's sister, Alexandra, at Wednesday's public hearings of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide.
An emotional Ms Bailey recalled her sister's terror and distress, which started two months after she joined the navy when she dislocated her knee on a ship.
Her peers had suddenly turned on her, claiming she was faking the injury to get out of training, calling her a "sea dodger".
"If the officer or commander wasn't watching people would kick her knee from behind, or pull her hair or pinch her or things like that, very nasty bullying,' Ms Bailey said.
But it was Teri's attempts to report the bullying, she said, that would ultimately prove fatal.
"The petty officer that she saw told her to 'shut the f*** up, get out of my office or I will break your other leg and throw you overboard'," Ms Bailey said.
"She believed that. She was terrified, she took it as a death threat ... she couldn't sleep after that."
Ms Bailey said she had become increasingly alarmed by her sister's deteriorating mental state after that incident.
She said her sibling was punished by the ADF for reporting the bullying, including a failure to organise proper treatment for her knee injury, forcing her into daily marches when she should have been in a wheelchair recovering.
Within months her sister's knee was so damaged, she said, doctors told her she would never run or exercise again.
Compounding Teri's distress, she awoke from eventual knee surgery to discover the ADF had transferred her to a psychiatric ward.
The commission was told Teri was sexually assaulted by a woman in the ward at an ADF medical base, but had been too traumatised at the time to expose the experience.
She attempted suicide several times after that before finally leaving the navy, after going AWOL, having felt too frightened and too ill to return to work.
Ms Bailey said instead of offering her sister support, the ADF threatened to court martial her.
At one point the service allegedly threatened her father, Alan Bailey, with kicking down his door to get Teri, and charging him and her elderly grandparents with harbouring her.
Ms Bailey said her sister's health improved after leaving the navy in October 2015, but it wasn't until early 2020 she felt ready to seek treatment for PTSD. Nine months later she ended her life.
Ms Bailey said while she didn't "hate the ADF", she believed ADF recruiters who first seeded her sister's decision to join the navy were effectively "grooming" vulnerable young people without warning them of the terrible risks.
These included a suicide rate three times higher among women veterans under 30.
"If the ADF cannot protect their own employees, then how can those employees ... be able to protect Australia?" Ms Bailey said.
"These are human beings ... they are not lambs being led to the slaughter, they deserve respect before they sign their lives away."
Ms Bailey said in a week's time she and her family would be celebrating her sister's birthday, and the first anniversary of her death.
"To my baby sister I hope I have done you proud today."
The royal commission's public hearings continue.
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