We are on the air for what If It is Aussie for travel Clouds remain today and pretty much all weeks. She's going to be a bit of a crappy one. You know what's great movie weather it is and the docco Unbreakable is out. It's the Jolena dockeage story. Here's a sneak peek monitored by her father. Jolena works hard, you protect her, of course, please cut.
From fairly early times, there were rumors about what was happening.
Everything they do is good for Yolanda.
Some other players had noticed bruising.
The questions were asked that they hit a pricklad.
Families, do you support you can hurt? One day after I lost, he was extremely angry.
I knew what was going to happen. It was just terrible.
It was not an inch of skin that wasn't bruels.
It is in cinemas now. Elena joins us this morning, good morning.
Morning, good morning.
Is it hard hearing his voice and watching the footage back when putting this together.
I've dealt with a lot of that kind of over the last ten years. But I think actually this documentary surprised me a little bit because I only watched it actually a couple of times. I didn't want to watch it in kind of sections and grabs and different interviews. It took about five years to make, especially with COVID, So I said to the team and everyone has it, just give me the final kind of version, almost final.
I'll only be able to watch it a couple of times because, yeah, there is some tough parts in it, there's no doubt about that. And yeah, I actually obviously remember a lot of it, remember a lot of the footage, but there is stuff that I even hadn't seen and that really shocked me and surprised me. And that's what probably makes these documentary so powerful, is that even if you were around at the time, the footage and the archive footage will probably shock you the mast.
Why did you want to make the documentary? Because I imagine opening those floodgates must have been readibly difficult.
It was, well, there's not a lot of firstly stories and books that make it to documentaries. And I actually didn't realize this up until very recently. She's good that I didn't know pressure. So we kind of went into it and Jess heller and who helped me write, actually both of my books, said look, I really believe we have something special here to actually make an even more powerful thing, which she's a documentary, And I kind of said to her, really you think so, and then she said, yeah,
let me look into it kind of thing. And yeah. From there it was wrote Show and Screen Australia. They were on board straight away, and then we kind of went, Okay, well, let's go let's see what we can do. We didn't know what was available, we didn't know what kind of even archive footage we had, what we can put together.
But what I did want to do though, I did have a belief that it would be more powerful than the book, and the reason why I do everything is for others and to share that story and to help someone and to raise awareness. So we kind of always went into a going okay, let's try and get this on screen because knew it would be probably more powerful.
Helena, congratulations. Two books and a now documentary later. Tell me if I'm digging too deep here, but when was the last time you spoke to your family, including your dad.
Ten years ago? To my father, No, you're not digging too deep. I think that that's the whole point of it. I'm very open and honest.
What was that conversation like, h nothing.
I don't think we even really fought that very last time. It was the fact that you realized that and this might sound extreme, but it is for people that either grow up with our parents or parents that are not supportive. Is the fact that you realize someone just doesn't have your back and that your.
Parents actually say that was a line in the sand. Top It was.
I had to draw a line in the sand for myself, going look, first of all, this person's very toxic. If I continue to have this person in my life over the next ten or twenty years, it's not going to do me any favors.
Was he was he angry? Sorry? Claim? Was he angry that you're opening up about this and talking about it, writing a book and doing a documentary.
I never spoke to him about it. I did hear that he wasn't too happy, but we went to everything having proof. He has admitted to everything that I talk about basically, and that's probably why you haven't heard anything else from him since, because there is footage we have it in this documentary as well.
An other family. I mean, are you strange from your family?
No?
I have a great relationship with my brother.
But that's really yeah, does that sort of has he helped?
Yes, because he's eight years younger and kind of we always kind of say things would have been different if I was eight years younger.
Brother watching that must be hard for him, though, right, because there would have been so much going on that he might have known some bits about. But he was a child. You're a child.
Yeah, well, a lot of the things. I was already going through a lot of abuse when he wasn't even born yet. Ye, because there's an eight year difference. But he actually found it even very difficult to read the book and what I went through. So if you kind of find it difficult, he's a very strong person. And then I was like, wow, I'm.
So glad you've got that relationship. Now I am too, so pleased to you. You know, when I was watching the trailer, it actually really really annoyed me, kissed me off that this was happening to you at sixteen and watching people go we knew something wasn't right that people didn't step in sooner.
Do you have anger towards that?
No, Well, this is the thing. This is why I think this documentary is so important and even in my books and everything, I've come from a place of no blame and no resentment towards anyone. And people even get shocked when I say that I don't hate my father. I don't don't necessarily like forgive him for things. No, but I think you can accept things and move on and still.
You're a special person.
And I imagine that's taken a lot of work though.
Y Look, I didn't want to. I didn't want to be that person because a lot of us that have trauma from that. It's very easy to hate and resent someone, and a lot of people do when I understand it, and I had to do a lot of soul searching and go, you know what, I want to take this different round because I didn't want to just kind of heal myself. I wanted to do something with my story.
I wanted to help others. I wanted to change the perception of domestic violence, child abuse and mental health in sport, in Tennis, but also in society. If I'm going to do something like that, I had to come from a very different place, through a place of kindness and understanding. And you guys have watched it, and you saw all of the media where it was actually made fun of, and to this day I still kind of find it a little bit.
People used to pick on your Yeah, that bad, but it's really Yeah.
I remember you see this documentary and you go, was there no concern? That's why I was angry, Yeah, and calling out bad behavior and that was not even one percent of what was going on at home. But I come from a place of going, Okay, here we are twenty years later, are we better?
Would we do better?
And my answers I definitely think we would, even though I think we have a lot of work to do. So the key messaging from me that I wanted with my books and this documentary is not to go hard at anyone is actually the opposite. I wanted to come from a place of kindness and understanding.
Because then you win. Sorry. I was just going to say, like, you know, if you're holding that burden.
You're econfidence in professional sport that this isn't happening. And if it is happening, would you and you saw it happen, would you say or do something?
Oh?
Yeah, I've been in a position this year where I've had to really do something absolutely behind really yeah, it has a comment. Yes, it happens in tennis and sport all the time. Yeah, all of a sudden you kind of get well.
Athlete A right, what do you mean you had to do something behind the scenes that a little bit.
I had to go and tell people and report it and go to the governing bodies. Yeah, and go to and.
The authorities acting the right way.
Yes, they did, absolutely, So that was great and I'm not sure whether that would have happened twenty years ago. But it's not even just in that moment. It's you will see and you will find that a lot of people, even outside of sport but in sport, will find a way to leave and escape. But what do they do then there is so much trauma? Do you have mental health help? That's what I struggled with. I was left with anxiety depression PTSD eating disorder for fifteen years after
I left, and I had no help. So that's also my question. It goes past being in that moment as a child, but it's after we have really heavy consequences, repercussions and trauma that we still have to deal with.
I mean, you're a child when you're going through all of this, but like you just said, you carry that with you for a long time, and you've obviously done an extraordinary amount of work on that. I mean, i haven't known you your whole life, but I've probably known you for seven years, I would say, and you like as a friend and a colleague. Everyone is so proud of you and the beautiful, positive, kind woman you are. When
all of that was up against you, you have. You have come out of your shell so beautifully, and in the last five years, outside of things with your dad, I know you've gone through a lot of other things as well. You must be you must look in the mirror some days and just go, gosh, what a change you've made, and you've done the work and it's paying on.
Thank you. I didn't seven eight years ago, but I do now because I think I've Yeah, look, I've had to do a lot of soul searching, but I've also kind of realized, Look, I didn't want to just be even a survivor. I wanted to thrive after that. I retired at the age of twenty nine. That's early for a professional tennis player, and I had to reinmit myself.
I had to become this new person professionally and personally and go into all of these fields that I could only dream off, from TV to being a speaker to writer because I was someone that could barely string to sentences together. I had no social skills left.
Todd Woodbridge was one.
Of my best friends, so I've now known for fifteen years and was my and toy still is. I could barely talk to him and I retired from tennis and we worked on this together. We laugh about it now, but he was as I told you so.
But take a second to be proud of yourself and appreciate it. Y, thank you. Yeah.
I just want people also, maybe just to go you know what, She's gone through a lot. She's not just survived, she's striving, but she's a success story. She's a winner. Maybe I can do it too.
Well, That's what I was going to say. There are people out there who are going through things right now, and god, we all wish no one was, but that is the world, Lauren.
You're right.
Elana is one of the kindest people I know, and she you are loved.
Right.
Do you feel comfortable in your skill?
Yes, I do.
I'm very happy and I also, yeah, I wanted people to get to know me for me. I don't think they ever did. Really, when you think about it, I think people had a wrong perception of me.
Of course, because and people looked and was like, she's a bit braddy.
Yeah, she's a brady little sixteen.
Year old tennis player who is Australia want her to represent us. But god, no one knew what was happening.
Look, I was called everything, arrogant and all of this. And I think that now I get a lot of people, and I work at Channel nine and with all different companies and everywhere, and it does come around that I'm really nice to work with and that I'm a nice person. Thank you. I thought I could have always was, but clearly people thought differently, which I knew. And this is one of the big things with my documentary. This is what I actually really wanted in there. You never know
what anyone's going through. I think the moment in two thousand and one, which we show clearly when I had to switch from playing from Australia to Yugoslavia within twenty four hours of walking on rod Labor Arena to play Linda Davenport, I was literally between two fires.
My father here.
If I didn't go and say it in a media conference that was called on. Suddenly when I came back to the hotel room, who knows, probably wouldn't have survived that beating or here I had the media, sponsors, public who were going to hammer me like they did, So what do you do? So of course I did that. Twenty four hours later you walk out and you were on Rod Labor Arena, fifteen thousand people bulling you, everyone writing that you're a trader and you're a seventeen year
old who loves so much. I loved representing this country. I come from a different culture. I was born in a different country, but I came here when I was eleven. I absolutely loved the story. This stors makes me emotional. Nothing else does. And I've said even recently people find it shocking. I will take one hundred years of abuse for him not to have taken that moment from me. With my people, with Australia, I came back a few
years later. Yes, I was accepted, but it was never the same until my book came out and until now, and people understand. Now people understand and see. So it's also a really good lesson on kindness. You never know what's going on, especially with children behind the closed doors with their with their parents.
So you say you didn't think that you would survive it the way you said that, I just and I think you've told your story so many times that you can say that in a sentence, right, But that just made my blood turn cold listening listening to you say that there were times when you really thought you weren't going to survive.
Yeah. I had to leave at nineteen because I didn't know if the next bit I was going to survive. There was one at seventeen where I was knocked out cold. I was kicked and punched in the head so hard that it left me unconscious, which we cover in the documentary. So one of these things, this is what happens the next one, you don't know if you're going to survive.
And I knew that.
I knew he was getting more violent. And that's what we go through as kind of people in the midst of partner violence, the miststice child abuse, And that's what people need to know, just how hard it is. And even that's why I said, even coming out of that, you come out as a broken person and some memory cover.
Yeah, I was just going to say, I'm sorry you didn't get that moment, but I hope you appreciate the love from this country. Absolutely.
I've always and I also always loved this country. I have so many people writing to me, but it's not even I get it. I understand it. But he put me in that position in a hotel room watching this unfold, and I'm kind of going, I still don't have hate for my father. I never will, and some of those and so hard to forgive.
Imagine that prison.
No he's not. No, should he be. It's a tough one to end. So maybe at the time he should have been. Yeah, I think also we covered this again in the documentary. He should have been banned off the tour.
He wasn't.
He should have been more than banned, but he wasn't.
For four years.
Yeah, that's that's why I got angry watching him.
He started. These incidents started when I was fourteen fifteen. Publicly, he wasn't banned until I was, you know, eighteen nineteen. And for me, I'm very kind of My mind is very black and white. You do something like this, you're bad. He would have actually helped me, yeah, because I would have continued to play on a tour. He would not have been there.
But you know, you are an extraordinary woman, and like you said, you've done the work to not waste the energy on having the anger anymore. I guess, But God, he just shouldn't be walking the same earth as someone as beautiful.
I think at the end of it, we want to come out and go, look, I have survived it. I want people to look at me as a success story and thinking, you know what, I can do it as well. Maybe she can give me some inspiration. But there are a big lessons to the bystander effect. And also let's look out for that behavior. Let's call it out. We still have so much shame and stigma in society and the perception of it, and so many victims and survivors don't want to talk about it because they feel like
they're going to be judged. Mental health is the same. So that's what I want to change with this.
This doco will save lives. It is unbreakable. It is in cinemas. Now. How long has it been since you picked up the old tennis recket? It's been a little bit, you reckon. I could take her, No, no, no, you couldn't. You couldn't you couldn't return it, not even a split second from blur, just like, no ridiculous questions, what speed are we talking? Would you be hitting the ball?
Serve still one seventy at least the same. We can give it.
A go.
And put it on social media.
You just hit it at him, but he's not going to.
I tell you what, if you're on rod Labor Arena right now, you get a standing ovation, you would and rightfully so, yeah, thank you as opposed to all those years ago.
These two talk so highly of you, and I've been lucky only enough to meet you a couple of times, but these two just just.
I love this too. We feel like I started when you guys were already there and Channel nine gave me a chance only pretty about six months into my commentating career, so we kind of started are killing it, yeah, And I was like, I think this kind of scared show.
I girl, I know, but he's such a different woman now to who you were back then, and that is a testament to you and all the.
Power of vulnerability which I found through telling my story. So that's why I want to create that kind of space and environment to save people's lives.
Because it's such a good Amazon. Who would went out of US two will never know, but the documentary is unbreakable. It's incidem is now. Thank you so much for coming.
Thank you.
It's gonna be a good Jason Lauren, Jason Lauren wake up feeling good on No.
One hundred, Jason Lauren only good on Socials