In March this year, an Australian journalist won the world’s first damages claim for vicarious trauma from witnessing and reporting on police work and court cases. In an exclusive interview, LSJ speaks to the journalist at the centre of the case and asks the question: will the decision set a precedent for traumatised lawyers to claim against their employers?

Sarah* cannot remember who was standing trial on what became her last day as a court reporter. “When I finally cracked, I was sitting in a murder trial, but I couldn’t even tell you which case it was,” the former journalist from The Age recalls. “The evidence wasn’t particularly bad. I just started shaking and sweating. I walked out of the courtroom and called my editor to say get me off this round, I can’t do this anymore.”

Shortly afterwards, Sarah took a voluntary redundancy and left journalism after a 10-year career.

“I had a job that I had loved, and I felt so lucky to work for a metropolitan newspaper, but eventually I just had to throw my hands in the air and say it wasn’t worth it, the impact it was having on me. They were not listening to me and I had to take care of myself.”

That phone call, made in a hallway of the Victorian Supreme Court in 2013, was not the first time Sarah had pleaded with her editors for support.

Her pleas had fallen on deaf ears for so long that the whole traumatic experience culminated with a landmark decision in the Victorian County Court earlier this year. In a world-first, a journalist was awarded damages for their employer’s breach of duty of care to staff.

That journalist – whom we have called Sarah in this story but has been referred to as YZ in other media reports – claimed damages for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) she suffered during her years as a court reporter. The Age was found to have breached its duty of care for Sarah’s psychological wellbeing. The breach was so significant, Judge Chris O’Neill found, that it caused Sarah to develop PTSD.

Newsrooms across Australia trembled as the decision came out – awarding Sarah $180,000 in damages for pain and suffering. The blistering judgment sent a message to media organisations accustomed to blooding young reporters on a diet of early morning or late-night crime scenes, and often distressing breaking news.

Legal experts now believe the landmark case has set a precedent for those in other professions, including law. If a journalist can be found to have been traumatised by violent and distressing material heard in court cases, why not a lawyer?

Lawyers and courtroom PTSD

Sarah’s lawyer, Bree Knoester, believes the judgment “has implications for any industry that exposes their employees to trauma, particularly in law”.

“There is conflict and a lot of distressing information across a number of areas of law, including criminal work, Royal Commissions, family law and other litigation,” Knoester says.

“This was a landmark decision in determining that newsrooms have an obligation to employees who are being exposed to traumatic content, and this finding is readily transferable to law. Courtrooms can expose people to incredibly traumatic content, and organisations may not be aware that the reason someone is late for work is because they have been at home crying and distressed about what they have heard.”

Research by the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) found criminal lawyers are at higher risk of experiencing vicarious trauma – particularly those who work predominantly in sexual assault and family violence cases. A 2003 study by US academics Levin and Greisberg of lawyers working in those two areas found they experienced rates of vicarious trauma and burnout at twice the rate of the control group, consisting of social services workers and mental health professionals. The researchers believed a lack of understanding by firms of the risks of secondary exposure to trauma, coupled with often excessive caseloads, could be behind the high prevalence in the legal profession.

While in the past, recommended strategies to cope with the impact of vicarious trauma included a range of self-care remedies, the AIFS study found relying solely on those methods is not helpful, and the focus should be on providing safer workplaces rather than attempting to reduce the effects of trauma once they have set in.

Psychologist Jackie Burke is a vicarious trauma specialist who has worked for more than 10 years assisting workplaces and individuals, including lawyers, as the head of Jackie Burke Psychology in Sydney. She says the common misconception about vicarious trauma is that “people think you have to be the first responder to experience it”.

“The only reliable predictor we have of vicarious trauma is that it is brought about by exposure to traumatic content,” says Burke. “That could be cleaning up, responding to or being in the place where the trauma happened, or being in touch with people who have suffered from trauma.

“It is a major issue for those in family law, as well as the Director of Public Prosecutions and organisations where there are a number of criminal matters and there is a lot of contact with families and individuals who have experienced trauma.”

Burke says workplaces, including law firms, can do a lot more to support their employees. “Vicarious trauma itself has been overlooked. We do not even yet have a full and robust response to or awareness of vicarious trauma, even in first responders,” she says.

“When an organisation puts into place an organisation-wide approach to mitigate those risks, we know it will reduce vicarious trauma and make the effects easier to manage. There is also a reduction in workplace attrition, unplanned absences from work, and an improvement in performance.

“Implementing a vicarious trauma program saves organisations money, but I don’t think they know that.”