Dr Jeni Haynes Created 2681 Personalities To Survive Her Abusive Father
5/31/20261 hr 11 min
Dr Jeni Haynes survived years of horrific abuse by creating what she describes as 2,682 personalities — voices and protectors who helped carry trauma, fear, and survival.
In 2019, she became the first person in Australian legal history to have those personalities accepted as evidence in a criminal trial against her father.
Now the subject of the documentary We Are Jeni, Jeni joins Kate Langbroek for an extraordinary conversation about trauma, memory, resilience, and survival.
We Are Jeni premieres on Sunday 7 June 2026 at 7:30 PM on SBS.
Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of child abuse
If you or anyone you know needs expert help, please contact Bravehearts — an organisation providing support to victims of child abuse. If you are concerned about the welfare of a child, you can get advice from the Child Abuse Protection Hotline (1800 688 009) or the 24-Hour Child Abuse Report Line (131 478).
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CREDITS:
Guest: Dr Jeni Haynes
Host: Kate Langbroek
Group Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Executive Producer: Bree Player
Assistant Producer: Coco Lavigne
Audio and Video Producer: Josh Green
Social Media Producer: Olivia Colman
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsKate Langbroek· Host0:00
[gentle music] Hello, I'm Kate Langbroek, host of No Filter. Today's guest is Jenny Haines. Jenny has lived through things that are almost impossible to comprehend. As a child, she survived years of horrific sexual abuse at the hands of her father by creating what she describes as multiple personalities, thousands of distinct voices and protectors who emerged to carry memories, fear, pain, and meant that she could survive. In 2019, Jenny became the first person in Australian legal history to have those personalities accepted as evidence in a criminal trial against her father, testimony that helped convict him and sentence him to 45 years in prison. There's now a documentary about Jenny's life called We Are Jenny. But sitting across from her, what struck me wasn't just the enormity of what she's survived, it was her warmth, her humor, her intelligence, and the extraordinary tenderness she has for the people she created inside herself in order to survive it. In this conversation, Jenny talks openly about trauma, memory, survival, and the internal system she built to protect herself. She explains how those personalities came to exist, what they