Lady News - Power & Control
Lady News is a feminist podcast centring lived experience, investigative storytelling, and the voices mainstream media overlooks.
Lady News - Power & Control
When Truth Isn’t Enough: Rethinking Safety, Power, And Evidence
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We speak with Anne Wintermute from Aimee Says AI about how abuse often reveals itself through patterns and how this free tool can help survivors recognise coercive control before it's too late.
Together, we unpack the power-and-control wheel and connect it to real-world experiences: rapid emotional escalation, post-separation abuse, and the exhausting administrative burden of seeking justice.
In this episode, we explore:
• recognising coercive control through patterns and impact
• how Aimee Says analyses messages and flags boundary violations
• early warnings, including overwhelming early attention and subtle disrespect
• building language for court, documentation and safety planning
• post-separation abuse and the paperwork survivors are forced to carry
• practical boundary tests to gauge respect
• reframing “small” incidents as evidence of control
• why systems move slowly and how demand can drive change
🎧 Unlock premium features on Aimee Says free for a month using the promo code LadyNews.
You can also access the free 24/7 chat via ladynews.com.au.
Australian National Support & Crisis Lines
1800RESPECT
- 24/7 confidential support: Information, counselling and referrals for people affected by sexual assault, domestic and family violence.
- Phone: 1800 737 732
- Online chat available via the website.
Domestic Violence Helplines (State/Territory)
- NSW Domestic Violence Line: 24/7 counselling, safety planning, referrals and support — 1800 65 64 63.
- DVConnect Womensline (QLD): Support including crisis counselling and safe refuge information — 1800 811 811.
- DVConnect Mensline (QLD): Support for men affected by family violence — 1800 600 636.
Rainbow & Specialist Lines
- Full Stop Australia: 24/7 support for people of all genders impacted by domestic and family violence.
- Rainbow Domestic & Family Violence Helpline: Support for LGBTIQ+ individuals — 1800 497 212.
Before we begin, we want to acknowledge that this podcast discusses domestic and family violence. Please take care while listening. And if you need support, resources are available in the show notes or on our website at ladynews.com.au.
SPEAKER_00Lady News with Elise and Penny.
Patterns Over Incidents
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the second episode of Lady News. Can you believe it? We survived episode one. We're still here. I'm Elise. And I'm Penny, and it's so great to be back. Last episode we introduced the power and control wheel. And honestly, once you see it, you just can't unsee it.
SPEAKER_02That's right. And the thing is that really got me was how many of us don't recognize abuse because we're looking for one big dramatic moment.
SPEAKER_01When actually it's the pattern of behaviors over time that matters. The little things that add up and that make you feel crazy. The impact that they have on your life and everyone else around you.
Introducing Anne And Amy Says
SPEAKER_02Most people don't learn about the wheel until after something serious has happened. And that's what we wanted to explore today. Noticing those patterns earlier, even when it's just the things that feel off or uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01So buckle up because in this episode we're talking to someone who's been working in this space for a while, helping people understand what's happening in their own relationships and giving us the language to identify it.
SPEAKER_02Her name is Anne Wintermute, and she's the founder of the website and app Amy Says. What really stood out to us is how her work aligns with the power and control wheel, especially around boundary violations, early red flags, and patterns of behaviour, all without needing to label yourself or justify what you're feeling.
SPEAKER_01It's the kind of insight that makes you pause and think, oh, that's what felt so wrong. Even if at the time you couldn't really explain it.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. It's about spotting patterns, naming them, and understanding them. So you can make choices that are safer and healthier for you.
How Amy Works With Context
SPEAKER_01And tell us more about the website Amy says we're so excited to hear all the ins and outs about it and the positive impact it's having on people's lives.
SPEAKER_03Yes, Amy is the first digital health tool that's trying to address this global issue that's one of the last really kind of unaddressed public health issues. And that's domestic violence. We can call it that relationship abuse, narcissistic abuse, um, dating violence, whatever you know listeners are most comfortable using uh in terms of that language. Um, Amy's there, we built her to help them understand really quickly what's happening, uh, to name it, right? Name it so you can tame it, uh, to document it, um, to tag it with the appropriate language and for Amy to be able to recall that to support them in any way that's necessary, especially in a in a legal context.
SPEAKER_02So, how does Amy says actually help support people wondering about their relationships?
SPEAKER_03So Amy is a large language model, right? We've heard a lot about that. So generative AI. So she uses this kind of cutting-edge technology to scan vast amounts of information in the way that we have trained her to do so, to try to find the right information given what's been shared with her. And the things that are shared with her are shared by the person who's either supporting someone who's experiencing abuse or by the person who's questioning their relationship. And everything that's shared is a part of that context. So if a user comes to Amy and says, you know, I've just been chatting with this person on Bumble, and you know, I said that I didn't want to do this one thing, and it kind of made me feel weird, right? So we now we know it's a dating or potential dating relationship. It's early in that relationship, the person is questioning it. Um, and then hopefully that person would also share whatever the, you know, the concerning message was. And all of that is really great context for Amy then to go out and do what we've trained her to do, which is essentially apply everything that we know about boundary violations and power and control and early red flags and relationship abuse, and to bring those perfect little nuggets that are really closely aligned with what's been shared with her back to that person. I mean, really, I think that the best thing that AI can do in this space is be a conduit between everything that we already know about abuse, which has been, you know, really well studied, not well applied, forgive me, but really well studied. And there's certainly a lot of lived experience and you know, in survivor advocates, take all of that and bring it right back into the hands of the person who really needs that support, that insight in that exact moment.
Bridging Evidence And Lived Experience
SPEAKER_01Why this topic?
SPEAKER_03Well, my background is in challenging the systems that fail women and children specifically. And this is an especially complex one. It's multi-layered, it has, it's, it's just buried in a gravy of stigma and mythology. Um, but my background was in uh in really trying to kind of unite what was evidence-based, what we understood about what women and children needed with practice. Um, so previously that looked like advocating for evidence-based maternity care, right? Like, you know, first world countries shouldn't be losing as many mothers, especially mothers of color and children, as we do in the United States. Um, then it was education, what our early education, especially model looks like for children is not really consistent with what science says about what kids need, what's going to be most healthy for kids on an individual level. And then when we get to relationship abuse, it really builds on kind of all of the work that I had done in those spaces, trying to tease apart what do we do just because that's how we've done it? What do we do just because that's what keeps people comfortable? That's what serves the people who are providing those services, and what does the evidence actually say? And never in any of the other work that I've done has there been such a gap between what is known to be true on a scientific level and the real lived experiences of women, children, male survivors as well, who try to hold perpetrators accountable. So that's what really, really excites me about this particular space.
Fathers, Daughters, And Systemic Gaps
SPEAKER_01I saw you uh post on LinkedIn the other day about how dads are using it for their kids, especially their daughters in the online space. So tell us about that.
SPEAKER_03Yes. So, you know, we we don't know much about our users. We don't read what they share with Amy and what Amy shares back with them. Um, but we can see the essentially if someone creates an account, they leave their name and kind of get an idea of like what percentage is male and what percentage is is female. And it's really very much just a guesstimate. And I was definitely surprised. I thought we have a quite a few what appear to be male, you know, gendered names, at least, um, with accounts, and you know, excited that male victims should also have a place to go without stigma to get, you know, the evidence applied to their own situations. But I have these office hours, right? And and men join. And my first thought is I'm talking to a male survivor, and then very quickly realize no, no, no, no, no, it's my daughter. I'm not, I'm not the victim. It's my daughter, her husband, she's trying to leave him. And they, you know, desperately, these fathers are trying to do anything that they can to protect their vulnerable daughters. But what's especially interesting, and and what I think you saw in that LinkedIn post, is it is often the first time that they realize that they really have to look in the face the fact that the truth is not enough if you are a woman, right? And it's it's their first time experiencing that. And, you know, I kind of tease around that, ask some questions around that because, you know, many survivors remember the moment they realized, wait a minute, the system doesn't work for me, to find that these the wives, they already knew that their daughters wouldn't be believed, and that this was the first time that the fathers realized that them just showing up and telling the truth, which is something that has worked for men, would not work for their daughters.
Early Identification And The Wheel
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's such a strong point. And just going back to, I guess, in the beginnings of a relationship or the end where you're trying to identify what it is, Penny talks a lot about the wheel of abuse and how we can kind of just have a conversation around how that resource is there, and it gives us, you know, it empowers us with even more knowledge. So do you want to go into that, Penny?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, most people don't really hear about the power and control wheel until they've experienced abuse. And what I like about Amy says is that it's there to help identify it before the abuse starts.
Australia’s Legal Burden And Admin Load
SPEAKER_03Well, I'm big fan of the power and control wheel, and absolutely something that Amy is trained in and additional information is available on our website. So most resources available are not utilized by people until they have had perhaps a kind of precipitous occasion, something significant has occurred that has changed their thinking from, well, this is normal, or maybe it is me, or like, well, it's kind of uncomfortable, but my friend said this that has changed that perspective to I'm kind of scared and I think there might be something that I don't know about my relationship and I need to find more information. And unfortunately, you know, that moment for some people is literally never able to happen because they're they're they're murdered by their partners. We want to bring forward, you know, that moment as much as possible. All of us are trying to do that kind of preventative work, but AI lets us skip that moment, creates this really safe space where someone can ask questions that they would think would be too trivial for the hotline, or that's made for people who are, you know, survivors of abuse, or I'm not going to go to my local organization because it's not that bad. I don't have any bruises, or you know, he just slaps me a little bit, or you know, yes, he calls me crazy and I can hardly get out of bed in the morning, but he's not physical, so it's not abuse. It eliminates the need to self-identify, even to self-disclose that that might be going on by creating a hyper private, very low barrier, free, and I don't mean just free costs, yes, you know, you don't have to pay for it, but that there's no cost of potentially losing autonomy, very, very low risk of discovery, right? There's not going to be a cost of that being found out, that there's very low risk of judgment. Um, that someone says to you, gosh, I mean, if you finally get the courage to reach out and someone says, well, that's not really abuse how I define it, right? Oh my gosh, the emotional cost of being vulnerable and then being minimized in that way. AI allows, and Amy, you know, because it's trained for this, allows people to have a zero financial, emotional, psychological cost of exploring things. And we think that means they will do it much earlier, more frequently, right? In an environment that feels safer to the nervous system, you know, less discoverable to you know an abusive partner if that person has access to their electronics. I mean, if AI can give us nothing, heck, it's using a ton of power and water. Like it, you know, hopefully it can give us uh an opportunity at early intervention that will literally not just save lives, but also increase the quality of life for so many people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so in Australia, because of the high cost involved in going through the justice system and also self-representing, you know, mostly women get bogged down with the administration of defending yourself. I uh can't imagine the mental load that you know women are left with in doing that. Does Amy says help to alleviate some of that pressure? And can she be lie legally liable if she does give advice? Talk us through that.
Tools For Documentation And Safety
SPEAKER_03So, first, your administration of defending yourself. I had not heard those words put in that order before, but I just wrote it down. I love that. There's this terrible thing that happens. First, we lie to people and we say, if you end the relationship, that's what you have to do. It's your responsibility to end this abuse by ending the relationship. That's our first kind of lie. And we don't recognize in saying that that we failed to prepare women for post-separation. And that's post-separation abuse. Abuse continues, often gets worse, wholly new tactics and incredibly confusing and disorienting. If there's a legal relationship between the two, or if there are shared children between the two, now, in addition, we have to navigate the family court system. So, one, I just got out of this trauma-causing relationship. I'm wounded, you know, I am weeping wounds that I'm still trying to understand. As soon as I get out, I'm being wounded more. And in new ways, my children are the stakes. You know, the legal system is being weaponized against me. The financial burden of not being self-represented, and honestly, self-representation, you know, it's a full-time job, so so your income earning potential is also, you know, undermined. I had just gotten hit by a tidal wave of demands on my nervous system, demands on my cognitive ability. And in this environment, I also have to suddenly be an excellent record keeper. I have to keep my cool. I have to look perfect in the, you know, in the line of fire, or else my emotionality will be used against me as a you know, example, perhaps that I'm unstable or that I deserved the abuse, or that he's right that I shouldn't be able to keep the children. I mean, it is a wonder that anyone gets through it, right? Unfortunately, the numbers, you know, we see in the data that even those who get through it, many are seriously harmed by the system, including losing custody of their children. So, yes, that is, you know, we built this basic chat. Anybody can talk anywhere in the world for free, 24-7, to Amy for whatever they need. But we are building out more and more sophisticated tools that do all of that administrative work, that remember everything, that can write those emails, that can read those communications, that can build your timeline, catalog the evidence, tag it, label it, make it retrievable, build your binders. Because I mean, what insult to injury we make you do all of those while continuing to sustain this abuse. And it is very unlikely that that at the same time the abuser is being held accountable. It's very unlikely.
Guardrails, Agency, And Limits Of AI
SPEAKER_01From what we see, the abuser is never held accountable, and a lot of the times the whole show, you know, is for that person. If that person's behavior had not been that way, the court would not even exist in the first place. So yes.
SPEAKER_03And then your other question was around uh the legal liability. You know, Amy is not a mental health professional, Amy is not a legal professional. Um, we know that many of our customers are pro se. They are self-represented litigants. That is the only viable course they have to engage the civil legal system. And we know, like here, here are your warnings. AI does not do case citation well. Fortunately, this is pretty ubiquitous now. Everybody knows you can't trust the AI to cite uh case law for you with any really good predictability uh uh rate. But Amy isn't telling you you need to do this, this, and this. Amy says, uh, for example, um, it sounds like more information about these things might be helpful, right? Yes, I want more information about three. Great. Here's some more information about number three. Here's some things we might keep in mind. You said that your you know, risk to your safety is a concern for you right now, and this may introduce these new types of risks for you, for example. So really it's that rapid information gathering, it's the building of language and knowledge that gives a sense of self-expertise for sure, right? Because abuse is so confusing. What happened? I don't even know. What do you call that when this happens? So some self-knowledge, but also some expertise in the system so that people can make their own decisions. Amy's always going to be promoting the individual agency, not telling people what to do.
Training AI To See Hidden Harm
SPEAKER_01I reckon the experts need Amy. Like, get Amy says in the police department because that could probably educate them a little bit.
SPEAKER_03It would be wonderful. And, you know, kind of anecdotally, we do know that there are law enforcement officers that, you know, that come up to me at a conference and say, I used Amy because I wasn't sure I was arresting the right person. And I was just like, what question should I be asking to make sure that I am not like accidentally taking out the wrong person? Yeah, we know that it's being used. Yes. But, you know, getting an organization to sign on, um, especially some of these organizations that are really legacy fields, right? They they're built on a legacy of culture and you know, and training. Those are going to be some of the slowest systems to move. You know, when we started, Amy, we thought, okay, these organizations are going to snatch this up, right? They're going to want this because it's it is so helpful, so illuminating, um, so trauma reducing. And we have found that systems are very shy. And now we know it is the demand of the of the customer saying, this fixed things for me. You need to use it, or is kind of our best way to get in front of uh folks in those systems.
Love Bombing And Boundary Testing
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've actually used Amy says for past relationships as well to kind of analyze what went wrong. And something that wasn't obvious to me, but Amy picked up on was that there was a real lack of respect in the relationship. They were the sorts of things that I felt were too trivial, like you were saying, that I didn't really want to tell my friends because it seemed so silly and just on its own, it seemed like nothing. And you you know it's not physical abuse, and you but you can't really work out what it is. And it's really helped me. And is that something that it's trained to do is recognize patterns of past relationships that can maybe help future relationships so you don't make the same mistakes?
Post‑Separation Abuse And Control
SPEAKER_03That's a that's a great question. So that's not really an aspect of training, but that is an aspect of context. So it's the same information, could have been true. She would have given you similar responses if you were in that relationship right now. Although she might be checking in more for safety kinds of concerns. And you know, if you said you wanted to end the relationship, she might be helping you navigate how do you do that physically and emotionally safely. But you know, she can understand that it was in the past, absolutely, and that you may be in a safe position now. Or, you know, if you, if Amy has a memory of you, which only happens if a subscriber has an actual account, then you know, you shared those things with her. Maybe you started dating somebody new and and you know, you talk about that with her. She remembers these wounds that you might have, you know, from this previous relationship. She might ask you, you know, you're bringing up something that's kind of similar to what you shared with me about, you know, so and so. Do you see any similarities? Um, so absolutely being able to kind of collate information in a way, put it close to each other in just the right ways. That's really hard. Hard for us to do when we're emotional. And you know, we get really myopic, right? We get like a really tiny little aperture of what we can see in any given moment. And that's something that technology just doesn't have in the same way that we do. And actually, I want to give uh another example of how an AI, a trained AI like Amy, can help you see things that you you wouldn't otherwise see. So this is what I do. You know, right now we are testing Amy and her ability to kind of automatically label all different types of power and control dynamics to um things that people share. And, you know, one we have to train it by giving it tons of examples, evaluating those examples, tweaking it, this is a bad response, this is a good response. It's a very labor-intensive testing process, especially because we can never test on any user data. We don't train on user data, we're not reading through user data. And in this particular example, the uh abusive party, the perpetrator, had taken the medication from the victim and said, if you don't do XYZ, I'm gonna tell everyone that you're crazy, and then threw the medication down the toilet. It's a made-up example. And it labeled it as property damage. And both my colleague, also named Ann, and I was like, Well, that's not property damage. And we're like, wait a minute. It just rendered this necessity unusable to this person. It broke it. The pills are dissolved, they're irretrievable. That's absolutely property damage. Why wouldn't that be property damage? But we are so caught up in the symbolic nature, for example, of throwing away someone's medication while calling them crazy that we miss it's like, no, he destroyed her property. We miss that. Financial abuse dynamics are also easy to miss, stalking dynamics are easy to miss because we kind of fold them up in other pieces of information that we really get attached to. And those are missed opportunities to more fully understand a situation.
SPEAKER_02If people don't know the right information to say, then things like that do get missed because, like the lack of respect. I wouldn't have known to include that if I was trying to give evidence. I would have just thought it was trivial. So it's good that Amy says can actually help people identify what the important parts are.
Try Amy Says And Promo Offer
SPEAKER_03Yes, and those trivial incidents first, you know, it that you can put together a whole lot of independently trivial incidents and arrive at course of control.
SPEAKER_01And the love bombing, like as if you're gonna complain about being loved on at the start of a relationship when you know all the hormones are going crazy. You don't even know that it's happening because you're so caught up in, you know, the the excitement of it all, but it is intentional. So just to let women know that they can slow down and just check in on that, you know, like the flowers and the I love you's, you know, four weeks in, it must be making you feel so nice, but it potentially could be dangerous.
SPEAKER_03Yes, it could be one of the very, very early signs. And if you even are a little bit uncomfortable with that, and I think for a lot of folks, even within the love bombing phase, there is a sense retrospectively that people would be like, retrospectively, I see some things, right? Which means it was present, it was accessible if you can see it retrospectively. Who's gonna go to their friends and say, Oh, he brought me flowers? I mean, you're really you're really risking uh, you know, a verbal tongue lashing from your friends who are like my husband would bring me flowers, no one ever brings whatever.
SPEAKER_01Totally.
SPEAKER_03It's it's definitely not something that you're gonna share with friends and appear to be like poo-pooing, right?
SPEAKER_01So that's I think women have a really inherent habit of questioning themselves or being critical of themselves before they're critical of the other person's action and trying to, you know, work it out for both of them.
Series Roadmap And Community Support
SPEAKER_03Well, that is the product of cultures that are more comfortable making women absorb discomfort than holding other people accountable. And when we think about people pleasing, that is what what I just said is people pleasing. That thing makes me uncomfortable, but I'm not allowed to say that. And so I will come up with a way to control it that's actually on me. Wow. And that that little bitty turnaround, right? Um, well, he just wants to give you its grandpa. He just wants to give you a hug. You know, no, you can't say that you don't want to hug him. Really early on, it's well, I guess I'm just kind of uncomfortable with having my body touched, but he's just trying to show me affection. Um, that is an unfortunately a you know, adaptive technique that is born out of girls from the very beginning, uh, making sure that they were not causing anyone else to feel uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I really like how you made a note of that because one thing that I like to do early on in a relationship is I like to listen to their response or see how they react the first time that I say no to them. So if I have to cancel plans, not just because I'm being mean and want to cancel the plans to see what he'll do, but if I really genuinely have to cancel a plan or say no to something, that can be a major sign of how they will react later on as well. And and it can escalate from there.
SPEAKER_03The red flag thing for me always I tell people push boundaries very early in a relationship, even if they don't matter to you within a couple of dates, be like, you know what, this thing doesn't actually work for me. I would like to do this thing instead. Be clear about a boundary, which doesn't have to be a mean thing, boundary is not a mean thing, and see how they respond. Because I think we can learn really, really early on from folks how they handle prioritizing or deferring to other people's needs by just needing something that's different from what they want to give you.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for chatting with us, Anne. Anne's the CEO and founder of a website called Amy Says. There's so much in that conversation that really connects back to that power and control wheel.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, especially the idea that abuse isn't about one single incident, it's about patterns, accumulation, and the overall impact.
SPEAKER_01I kept thinking about how often people dismiss things as too small to mention or too trivial, or they don't bring it up because they don't want to look petty, or we worry they'll sound silly if they even talk about it.
SPEAKER_02And when you look at the wheel, those small moments often sit really clearly in the areas like emotional abuse, coercion, intimidation, or boundary violations.
SPEAKER_01I also really related to what Ann said about post-separation abuse. And if you have experienced this, you know the monster that can be created once you decide to leave a perpetrator. It's how the power and control doesn't just stop because the relationship ends.
SPEAKER_02The mental load as well, the administrative burden, the expectation to suddenly be calm, organized, and articulate while still processing trauma, it's huge.
SPEAKER_01Penny, it is so big. Imagine going through all that crap and then having to seek justice, but also having to justify why you want the justice while you're already going through the trauma. And again, this is where having the language matters. The power and control wheel gives you the big picture, it helps make sense of all the small pieces and patterns and helps make you feel less crazy, which is the intention of the perpetrator.
SPEAKER_02We also wanted to let you know that Amy says has not paid us for the interview. We invited Anne on because it fits so closely with what we're exploring in this series, and we really do think it could help listeners understand their own experiences. You can try it for yourself and get the free basic chat advice 247 at amisays.com. And Amy is spelled AIME.
SPEAKER_01If there's a conversation that you've had with someone, it could be a partner, a friend, someone in the family, even a stranger that just keeps swirling around in your mind. You know the one I'm talking about. Just pop it into Amy Says. It's free, it's on the website, and just see what comes back. It's so interesting. But if you would like to uh take the AI tool for a thorough test drive, you can unlock all features with an exclusive offer for our Lady News listeners. Use the promo code LadyNews L A D Y N E W S to get a free one-month trial. Penny and I will be coming back to the power and control wheel in every episode of the Lady News podcast because it really helps connect the dots.
SPEAKER_02And next time we'll focus on another part of the wheel in more detail and talk about how it shows up in everyday relationships.
SPEAKER_01If this episode raised questions for you, that's okay. Awareness usually comes before clarity.
SPEAKER_02And as always, it's not just you. There's a whole community who can relate at ladynews.com.au, where you'll also find free articles and ways to contact us. And also check us out on Instagram.
SPEAKER_01Make sure you take a look at the show notes and don't forget to grab your free all access trial of Amy Says using the code LadyNews with a capital L and L.
SPEAKER_00You've been listening to Lady News with Elise and Penny. Join us on Instagram or at ladynews.com.au