When a royal commission into domestic, family and sexual violence declared that it was listening, more than 5000 people bravely spoke up.
Commissioner Natasha Stott Despoja's year-long inquiry elevated their voices, making them central to her finding that South Australia had failed to confront the scale and seriousness of the crisis.
As well as its main report and recommendations, the commission published Voices, which relates the experiences of victim-survivors in their own words.
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas said Voices included "some pretty harrowing stories".
"It's impossible not to be confronted by some of the stories that you read and the impacts it has on them," he said at the release of the commission's report on Tuesday.
"There are some things that you read more than once, which speaks to a real failure."
One young contributor writes: "Sometimes my Dad stays out all night, when he comes home, my parents fight.
"Dad attacks Mum after he's been boozin', and out of her arm, the blood is oozing.
"Sometimes, I have to get away, so I leave home, for maybe a day.
"When I get back, Dad would be waiting. He'd beat me up, without hesitating.
"I only wish that they could see, All I want, is a happy family."
A victim-survivor writes: "He would send me constant messages saying 'I will make sure your boys hate you one day' and 'I'll be making sure these boys know their mum was a whore who wrecked their family'.
"I was on my own, with little support, scared and threatened daily.
"All of these things are the reason I didn't seek formal custody arrangements from the beginning. I didn't want to die, I needed to be here for my boys."
Ms Stott Despoja said some of the stories "will haunt me and my team for forever".
The report found that a lack of leadership and a crisis-driven, siloed approach to domestic, family and sexual violence had failed victim-survivors.
It said significant investment was required to address the 136 recommendations of the commission, set up in 2024 after four SA women were killed in a week.
"Domestic violence can be generational. It stopped with me. But it haunts me, it will always haunt me," one woman writes.
"I will always be a woman who can overcome anything because I've done it before.
"But there is no place in my life now for the unkind, for the aggressors and the perpetrators. I'm no longer a victim, I am a survivor."
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