On Thursday, Acting Magistrate Janelle Boegheim refused bail to Sam Wood. The 46-year-old fitness entrepreneur and former Bachelor star was arrested after police were called to a Noosa hotel on Saturday night, and he has been charged with assault occasioning bodily harm and strangulation in a domestic setting. He has not been convicted of anything, and Wood’s lawyer says he will defend the charges.
The details the court heard are horrifying.
Snezana Wood told police she feared her husband would kill her. According to police documents, the argument started over something almost unbearably ordinary. She wanted to pack for the family’s departure the next day. He wanted to sleep.
Her daughter, Eve Markoski-Wood, allegedly told him to stop yelling, and he allegedly approached Eve aggressively. Snezana stood between them. Boegheim told the court he then allegedly grabbed Snezana by the throat with one hand and threw her against a wall, hitting her head. It is alleged this happened twice. Then came the floor, where he allegedly banged her head and “held her throat tighter, restricting her airway and preventing her from breathing.” At this point Eve called triple zero.
The court also heard that Wood was prone to bursts of anger, and that Snezana felt she had to walk on eggshells around him. He denies strangling his wife or causing her bodily harm. Boegheim found he would be an unacceptable risk if released, pointing to a previous alleged domestic violence incident in Victoria. His lawyers will appeal to the Supreme Court, and his lawyer has said self-defence may be open to him.
What I keep coming back to is the reaction in the media and amongst people, whether it be online or standing in line to buy a coffee. Shock, mostly. Disbelief that a man with that smile, that business, that tidy family feed, could be accused of this.
We should not be shocked. We just keep agreeing to be.
Somewhere along the way we built a ‘picture’ or a ‘perception’ of who does this. He is poorer, angrier, less educated, and he lives somewhere we do not. The picture is wrong, and it has been wrong for decades. Family, domestic and sexual violence happens across all ages and socioeconomic groups. The man who looks like a good bloke at the school gate can be a different man at home. Charm is not evidence of safety. Sometimes it is the cover.
The numbers should have cured us of this myth by now. Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows about 2.7 million women, roughly one in five, have experienced partner violence or abuse.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports one in six women have experienced physical or sexual violence from a cohabiting partner since the age of 15. Depending on the year and the measure, a woman is killed by a current or former partner somewhere between every nine and every fourteen days. Researchers also treat non-fatal strangulation as a serious warning sign for later homicide. Those figures are not a poor suburb problem. They are across all suburbs.
Then there is how we tell these stories when the accused is famous. The language softens. We get “fall from grace” and “shock arrest” and photos from happier days, a couple laughing on a beach, a perfect kitchen, a perfect caption.
The coverage often turns on what he has lost: the brand, the deals, the social media following. DBG Health, the parent company of 28 by Sam Wood, has put him on indefinite leave. That’s worth reporting. But when the focus is on his career, the story becomes about what he stands to lose instead of what Snezana says happened to her.
Fame is not an alibi. If anything, it gives people more cover. A polished public image makes a woman’s account harder to believe, and it makes the people around a man more willing to look away. Reporters must be careful in these cases, and they should be. Caution about the law is not the same as gentleness with the accused, and it should not mean pushing the alleged victim to the margins of her own story.
Which brings me to the lawyer’s comment about trying to “salvage something” from Wood’s professional reputation, which he said had “taken a hell of a beating.” It was a clumsy thing to say. A reputation is not something that happens to a man, like weather. If these allegations are proven, no one beat his reputation up. It would be his own doing, and it was his wife who paid first.
Wood has reportedly pointed to mental health issues. Mental health matters, and anyone struggling should seek help. But mental illness does not explain violence on its own, and most people who live with it never harm anyone. Treating it as a ready-made excuse does harm to them too.
The case will play out in court, as it should. In the meantime, we can stop pretending we know what a perpetrator looks like. We do not, and we never did.
If you or someone you know is affected by family violence, 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is available 24/7. In an emergency, call triple zero.