Kintsugi Heroes
Chris Futcher-Coles · 45 min
A man who was preyed upon as a child and told he was a sinner quietly channelled 45 years of martial arts into a mission to turn victims into survivors — until a pandemic stripped everything away and forced him to begin again.
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Chris Futcher-Coles was eight years old when a neighbour sexually abused him. He didn't understand what was happening at the time, so he buried it. Years later, sitting in a Catholic school classroom, a brother delivered a sermon about the sin of relationships between men. Chris realised the sermon was describing him. He internalised the message that he was a sinner, and his self-worth collapsed. No one at school noticed. No one at home asked. He was alone with it.
Martial arts became his structure. From age nineteen, he trained for forty-five years, finding in that discipline the mentorship and leadership he never had at home. He became a nurse, a medical representative, and eventually built a martial arts school in Sydney that grew from a handful of students to five hundred. But the real turning point came when the Wayside Chapel asked him to run a free self-defence program for women at risk. Working with those women, Chris understood his purpose: to help people move from being victims to becoming survivors.
Then the pandemic shut everything down. In 2020, he lost his entire student base and had to lay off twenty-six staff. It was one of the lowest points of his life. But Chris had learned something over decades of ups and downs: there is always something better just over the hill if you can make it to the top. He rebuilt. He still carries the scar from what happened to him as a child. On good days and bad days, he revisits it. The difference is that now he chooses to grow from it rather than let it destroy him. Your beginning is not your end, he says. That choice is yours.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses abuse & exploitation, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Blue Knot Foundation (complex trauma): 1300 657 380 · blueknot.org.au • 1800RESPECT (family, domestic & sexual violence): 1800 737 732 · 1800respect.org.au
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