Hayley Gleeson

Hayley Gleeson reports long-form features and investigations for ABC News, tracking how institutions, culture and intimate relationships shape the lives of people already on the margins. Her work concentrates on domestic and family violence, police accountability and gender, often following a single case in detail to expose broader systemic failings. Within the entertainment and culture patch, she gravitates to stories where media, public events and creative work intersect with questions of justice, safety and power.

Domestic and family violence in policing

Much of Gleeson's reporting examines how police respond when their own officers are accused of domestic and family violence. In Queensland, she has used freedom-of-information documents to reveal how few officers facing domestic violence applications are charged or dismissed, despite dozens of orders being sought against them.

She sets those numbers against the experiences of victim-survivors and advocates, showing how internal cultures and disciplinary systems can leave families exposed to ongoing harm. In Tasmania, she has told the story of a woman who walked into a station expecting help, only to find a police family violence order issued against her after her ex-partner, himself an officer, reframed the abuse. Across her coverage, she returns to the problem of misidentification - cases where police mistake victims for perpetrators and use intervention orders or criminal charges against them - drawing on years of warnings from domestic violence workers.

These pieces are constructed around detailed timelines of incidents, court and complaint processes, and the voices of frontline practitioners who explain how policy on paper diverges from practice on the ground.

Religion, faith and abuse

Gleeson has also spent extended periods examining domestic violence in religious communities and the role of churches in responding to abuse. In collaboration with colleagues, she has investigated how faith and doctrine can shape the behaviour of perpetrators and constrain victims, producing a series on religion and domestic violence that has been recognised within the sector. Her work in this area includes archival research that brought to light earlier reports on sexual violence against women and children in church settings, highlighting how long-standing findings about clergy abuse failed to translate into effective protection.

These stories focus on women navigating the choice between faith and safety, and on the institutional responses that either support or abandon them.

Gender, masculinity and public debate

Beyond case-driven investigations, Gleeson writes about masculinity, gender norms and the public conversations around them.

In a recent interview feature, she explores the ideas of a youth-sector leader whose book on being a “better man” argues for moving away from rigid, punitive concepts of masculinity towards more expansive, emotionally literate models. She connects those arguments to broader concerns about violence, mental health and the pressures on boys and men, grounding abstract concepts in specific programs and lived experience.

Her commentary on events such as the Women’s March 4 Justice examines what mass protests reveal about anger, frustration and political engagement, while keeping the focus on the structural issues that brought people into the streets. Across these pieces, she uses accessible language, careful framing and a clear-eyed tone to hold together personal narratives and policy detail without losing sight of the stakes for those affected.

Long-form human stories on health, work and creative lives

Gleeson brings the same investigative discipline to long-form human-interest features, often following a single person through a major life change.

Her reporting on a woman whose chronic illness forced her out of work and into an eight-year break traces the shift from professional burnout to rebuilding a life and business, weaving survey data about ME/CFS and Long COVID into a reflective narrative about productivity and self-worth. She situates individual stories within wider trends in health, employment and social support, making abstract policy debates legible through the details of daily life.

In coverage of media and creative figures, including a profile of Virginia Trioli’s decision to leave the ABC after nearly three decades to pursue new work, she treats career pivots as moments that illuminate how audiences, institutions and performers relate to each other. In pieces tied to books and cultural projects, she tends to highlight how creative work grapples with themes already present in her reporting - violence, accountability, gender and the possibilities of change.

Across beats, Gleeson’s distinguishing feature is the way she threads survivors’ voices, documentary evidence and institutional responses into cohesive narratives that move between the micro and the macro.

She favours formats that allow space for context - long reads, investigative features and deep-dive interviews - and she repeatedly returns to the question of what justice looks like for people failed by systems designed to protect them. The result is coverage that treats domestic violence, policing, religion, health and masculinity not as siloed topics but as connected parts of the same story about power, accountability and the possibility of repair.