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Violence against women

• Violence against women – particularly intimate partner violence and sexual violence – is a major public health problem and a violation of women's human rights.
• Estimates published by WHO indicate that globally about 1 in 3 (30%) of women worldwide have been subjected to either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.
• Most of this violence is intimate partner violence. Worldwide, almost one third (27%) of women aged 15-49 years who have been in a relationship report that they have been subjected to some form of physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner.
• Violence can negatively affect women’s physical, mental, sexual, and reproductive health, and may increase the risk of acquiring HIV in some settings.
• Violence against women is preventable. The health sector has an important role to play to provide comprehensive health care to women subjected to violence, and as an entry point for referring women to other support services they may need.

The United Nations defines violence against women as "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life"  (1).

Intimate partner violence  refers to behaviour by an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviours.

Sexual violence  is "any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, or other act directed against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting. It includes rape, defined as the physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration of the vulva or anus with a penis, other body part or object, attempted rape, unwanted sexual touching and other non-contact forms."

• World report on violence and health

Scope of the problem

Population-level surveys based on reports from survivors provide the most accurate estimates of the prevalence of intimate partner violence and sexual violence. A 2018 analysis of prevalence data from 2000–2018 across 161 countries and areas, conducted by WHO on behalf of the UN Interagency working group on violence against women, found that worldwide, nearly 1 in 3, or 30%, of women have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or non-partner sexual violence or both  (2) .

• Global and regional estimates of violence against women

Over a quarter of women aged 15–49 years who have been in a relationship have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner at least once in their lifetime (since age 15). The prevalence estimates of lifetime intimate partner violence range from 20% in the Western Pacific, 22% in high-income countries and Europe and 25% in the WHO Regions of  the Americas to 33% in the WHO African region, 31% in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region, and 33% in the WHO South-East Asia region.

Globally as many as 38% of all murders of women are committed by intimate partners. In addition to intimate partner violence, globally 6% of women report having been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partner, although data for non-partner sexual violence are more limited. Intimate partner and sexual violence are mostly perpetrated by men against women.

Lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic and its social and economic impacts have increased the exposure of women to abusive partners and known risk factors, while limiting their access to services. Situations of humanitarian crises and displacement may exacerbate existing violence, such as by intimate partners, as well as non-partner sexual violence, and may also lead to new forms of violence against women.

• COVID-19 and violence against women

Factors associated with intimate partner violence and sexual violence against women

Intimate partner and sexual violence is the result of factors occurring at individual, family, community and wider society levels that interact with each other to increase or reduce risk (protective). Some are associated with being a perpetrator of violence, some are associated with experiencing violence and some are associated with both.

Risk factors for both intimate partner and sexual violence include:

• lower levels of education (perpetration of sexual violence and experience of sexual violence);
• a history of exposure to child maltreatment (perpetration and experience);
• witnessing family violence (perpetration and experience);
• antisocial personality disorder (perpetration);
• harmful use of alcohol (perpetration and experience); 
• harmful masculine behaviours, including having multiple partners or attitudes that condone violence (perpetration);
• community norms that privilege or ascribe higher status to men and lower status to women; 
• low levels of women’s access to paid employment; and
• low level of gender equality (discriminatory laws, etc.).

Factors specifically associated with intimate partner violence include:

• past history of exposure to violence;
• marital discord and dissatisfaction;
• difficulties in communicating between partners; and
• male controlling behaviours towards their partners.

Factors specifically associated with sexual violence perpetration include:

• beliefs in family honour and sexual purity;
• ideologies of male sexual entitlement; and
• weak legal sanctions for sexual violence.

Gender inequality and norms on the acceptability of violence against women are a root cause of violence against women.

Health consequences

Intimate partner (physical, sexual and psychological) and sexual violence cause serious short- and long-term physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health problems for women. They also affect their children’s health and well-being. This violence leads to high social and economic costs for women, their families and societies. Such violence can:

• Have fatal outcomes like homicide or suicide.
• Lead to injuries, with 42% of women who experience intimate partner violence reporting an injury as a consequence of this violence (3) .
• Lead to unintended pregnancies, induced abortions, gynaecological problems, and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. WHO's 2013 study on the health burden associated with violence against women found that women who had been physically or sexually abused were 1.5 times more likely to have a sexually transmitted infection and, in some regions, HIV, compared to women who had not experienced partner violence. They are also twice as likely to have an abortion (3) .
• Intimate partner violence in pregnancy also increases the likelihood of miscarriage, stillbirth, pre-term delivery and low birth weight babies. The same 2013 study showed that women who experienced intimate partner violence were 16% more likely to suffer a miscarriage and 41% more likely to have a pre-term birth (3) .
• These forms of violence can lead to depression, post-traumatic stress and other anxiety disorders, sleep difficulties, eating disorders, and suicide attempts. The 2013 analysis found that women who have experienced intimate partner violence were almost twice as likely to experience depression and problem drinking.
• Health effects can also include headaches, pain syndromes (back pain, abdominal pain, chronic pelvic pain) gastrointestinal disorders, limited mobility and poor overall health.
• Sexual violence, particularly during childhood, can lead to increased smoking, substance use, and risky sexual behaviours. It is also associated with perpetration of violence (for males) and being a victim of violence (for females).

Impact on children

• Children who grow up in families where there is violence may suffer a range of behavioural and emotional disturbances. These can also be associated with perpetrating or experiencing violence later in life.
• Intimate partner violence has also been associated with higher rates of infant and child mortality and morbidity (through, for example diarrhoeal disease or malnutrition and lower immunization rates).

Social and economic costs

The social and economic costs of intimate partner and sexual violence are enormous and have ripple effects throughout society. Women may suffer isolation, inability to work, loss of wages, lack of participation in regular activities and limited ability to care for themselves and their children.

Prevention and response

There is growing evidence on what works to prevent violence against women, based on well-designed evaluations. In 2019, WHO and UN Women with endorsement from 12 other UN and bilateral agencies published RESPECT women – a framework for preventing violence against women aimed at policy makers. 

Each letter of RESPECT stands for one of seven strategies: Relationship skills strengthening; Empowerment of women; Services ensured; Poverty reduced; Enabling environments (schools, work places, public spaces) created; Child and adolescent abuse prevented; and Transformed attitudes, beliefs and norms.

For each of these seven strategies there are a range of interventions in low and high resource settings with varying degree of evidence of effectiveness. Examples of promising interventions include psychosocial support and psychological  interventions for survivors of intimate partner violence; combined economic and social empowerment programmes; cash transfers; working with couples to improve communication and relationship skills; community mobilization interventions to change unequal gender norms; school programmes that enhance safety in schools and reduce/eliminate harsh punishment and include curricula that challenges gender stereotypes and promotes relationships based on equality and consent;  and group-based participatory education with women and men to generate critical reflections about unequal gender power relationships.

RESPECT also highlights that successful interventions are those that prioritize safety of women; whose core elements involve challenging unequal gender power relationships; that are participatory; address multiple risk factors through combined programming and that start early in the life course.

To achieve lasting change, it is important to enact and enforce legislation and develop and implement policies that promote gender equality; allocate resources to prevention and response; and invest in women’s rights organizations.

• RESPECT women: Preventing violence against women

Role of the health sector

While preventing and responding to violence against women requires a multi-sectoral approach, the health sector has an important role to play. The health sector can:

• advocate to make violence against women unacceptable and for such violence to be addressed as a public health problem;
• provide comprehensive services, sensitize and train health care providers in responding to the needs of survivors holistically and empathetically;
• prevent recurrence of violence through early identification of women and children who are experiencing violence and providing appropriate referral and support;
• promote egalitarian gender norms as part of life skills and comprehensive sexuality education curricula taught to young people; and
• generate evidence on what works and on the magnitude of the problem by carrying out population-based surveys, or including violence against women in population-based demographic and health surveys, as well as in surveillance and health information systems.

WHO response

At the World Health Assembly in May 2016, Member States endorsed a global plan of action on strengthening the role of the health systems in addressing interpersonal violence, in particular against women and girls and against children.

• Global plan of action to strengthen the role of the health system within a national multisectoral response to address interpersonal violence, in particular against women and girls, and against children

WHO, in collaboration with partners, is:

• building the evidence base on the size and nature of violence against women in different settings and supporting countries' efforts to document and measure this violence and its consequences, including improving the methods for measuring violence against women in the context of monitoring for the Sustainable Development Goals. This is central to understanding the magnitude and nature of the problem and to initiating action in countries and globally;
• strengthening research and capacity to assess interventions to prevent and respond to violence against women;
• undertaking interventions research to test and identify effective health sector interventions to address violence against women;
• developing guidelines and implementation tools for strengthening the health sector response to intimate partner and sexual violence and synthesizing evidence on what works to prevent such violence;
• supporting countries and partners to implement the global plan of action on violence and monitoring progress including through documentation of lessons learned; and
• collaborating with international agencies and organizations to reduce and eliminate violence globally through initiatives such as the Sexual Violence Research Initiative, Together for Girls, the UN Women-WHO Joint Programme on Strengthening Violence against Women measurement and data Collection and use,  the UN Joint Programme on Essential Services Package for Women Subject to Violence, and the Secretary General’s political strategy to address violence against women and COVID-19.

WHO and UN Women, along with other partners, co-lead the Action Coalition on Gender-based Violence, an innovative partnership of governments, civil society, youth leaders, private sector and philanthropies to develop a bold agenda of catalytic actions and leverage funding to eradicate violence against women.

(1) United Nations. Declaration on the elimination of violence against women. New York : UN, 1993.

(2) Violence against women Prevalence Estimates, 2018. Global, regional and national prevalence estimates for intimate partner violence against women and global and regional prevalence estimates for non-partner sexual violence against women. WHO: Geneva, 2021

(3) WHO, LSHTM, SAMRC. Global and regional estimates of violence against women: prevalence and health impacts of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. WHO: Geneva, 2013.

Related information

• Preventing Violence: A Primer

This document describes a framework that incorporates public health, law enforcement, social service, and education perspectives into preventing violence. Violence is among the most serious health threats in the nation today, jeopardizing the health and safety of the public. The health consequences for those who are victimized or exposed to violence are severe and can include serious physical injuries, trauma, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and other longer-term health problems. In addition, the social impacts of violence-- diminished academic achievement and worker productivity, the deterioration of families and communities-- are substantial and costly. For all these reasons, understanding and approaching violence as a preventive/public health issue has added value.

Recognizing that law enforcement alone cannot solve the problem of violence, practitioners have increasingly turned toward a broader, more comprehensive approach.  The approach in this document emphasizes prevention in the first place, community-wide solutions rather than one individual or family at a time, and public health practitioners as neutral facilitators of collaboration.

Download Tool File(s):

• Preventing Violence - A Primer

Prevention Institute Tools are free to use. We also provide Services to help you use our tools and to advance healthy, safe, equitable communities.

• THRIVE: Tool for Health & Resilience in Vulnerable Environments
• Health Equity and Prevention Resources
• A Practitioner's Guide for Advancing Health Equity
• Communities Taking Action
• The Spectrum of Prevention
• Collaboration Multiplier
• Making the Case through Media Advocacy
• The Evolution to Effective Prevention Diagnostic Scale
• Developing Effective Coalitions: An Eight Step Guide
• Collaboration Assessment Tool
• The Tension of Turf: Making it Work for the Coalition
• The Community-Centered Health Homes Model: Updates & Learnings
• UNITY Roadmap
• Multi-Sector Partnerships for Preventing Violence

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• About Child Abuse and Neglect This page defines child abuse and neglect, presents the latest data, and describes associated outcom... Feb. 14, 2024
• About Community Violence This page defines community violence, the scope of the problem, and what CDC is doing to prevent it. Apr. 24, 2024
• About Firearm Injury and Death This pages defines firearm injuries and explains what CDC does to help prevent them.  Mar. 8, 2024
• About Intimate Partner Violence This page defines intimate partner violence, presents the latest data and describes outcomes.  Feb. 8, 2024
• About Sexual Violence This page defines sexual violence, presents the latest data, and describes associated outcomes.  Jan. 23, 2024
• About Youth Violence This page defines youth violence, presents the latest data, and describes associated outcomes.  Feb. 15, 2024
• About Abuse of Older Persons This page defines elder abuse, presents the latest data, and describes outcomes and prevention strat... Apr. 24, 2024
• About Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys This page describes the Violence Against Children and Youth surveys and provides the latest data. Mar. 14, 2024
• About The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) Information about CDC's National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS). Feb. 13, 2024
• About The National Violent Death Reporting System To describe the National Violent Death Reporting System and highlight the data uses.  Mar. 14, 2024

Featured Resources

• Cardiff Violence Prevention Model Toolkit The Cardiff Violence Prevention Model is a toolkit for communities to track violence patterns. Apr. 9, 2024
• Essentials for Parenting Teens A free online resource for parents and caregivers of 11 to 17-year-olds. Apr. 17, 2024
• Essentials for Parenting Toddlers and Preschoolers Oct. 13, 2021
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Psychology of Violence

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Journal scope statement

Psychology of Violence is a multidisciplinary research journal devoted to violence and extreme aggression, including identifying the causes of violence from a psychological framework, finding ways to prevent or reduce violence, and developing practical interventions and treatments.

As a multidisciplinary forum, Psychology of Violence recognizes that all forms of violence and aggression are interconnected and require cross-cutting work that incorporates research from psychology, public health, neuroscience, sociology, medicine, and other related behavioral and social sciences.

Research areas of interest include:

• child maltreatment
• children's exposure to violence
• community violence
• intimate partner violence
• international violence
• sexual violence
• systematic violence against marginalized populations
• workplace violence
• youth violence

Disclaimer: APA and the editors of Psychology of Violence assume no responsibility for statements and opinions advanced by the authors of its articles.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion

Psychology of Violence supports equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in its practices. More information on these initiatives is available under EDI Efforts .

Editor's Choice

One article from each issue of Psychology of Violence will be highlighted as an “ Editor’s Choice ” article. Selection is based on the recommendations of the associate editors, the paper’s potential impact to the field, the distinction of expanding the contributors to, or the focus of, the science, or its discussion of an important future direction for science. Editor's Choice articles are featured alongside articles from other APA published journals in a bi-weekly newsletter and are temporarily made freely available to newsletter subscribers.

Author and editor spotlights

Explore journal highlights : free article summaries, editor interviews and editorials, journal awards, mentorship opportunities, and more.

Prior to submission, please carefully read and follow the submission guidelines detailed below. Manuscripts that do not conform to the submission guidelines may be returned without review.

To submit to the editorial office of Brad J. Bushman, PhD, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Microsoft Word format (.doc or .docx) or LaTex (.tex) as a zip file with an accompanied Portable Document Format (.pdf) of the manuscript file.

Prepare manuscripts according to the guidelines stated below, following the 7 th  edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association  and the  Psychology of Violence journal requirements.

Submit Manuscript

General correspondence may be directed to the editor’s office .

In addition to addresses and phone numbers, please supply email addresses for use by the editorial office and later by the production office. Most correspondence between the editorial office and authors is handled by email, so a valid email address is important to the timely flow of communication during the editorial process.

Also, please be sure to provide names and contact information for each of your co-authors in the cover letter.

Keep a copy of the manuscript to guard against loss.

If you encounter difficulties with submission, please email the peer review coordinator, Davia Tanelus .

Submission policies

Authors should verify in their cover letter that manuscripts submitted to Psychology of Violence have not been published previously and are not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. The cover letter should also list any other publications from the same dataset and describe how the manuscript overlaps with and is different from other publications, if any, based on the same dataset. See the APA Publication Manual for a detailed discussion of this issue. The cover letter is not shared with reviewers so this information should not be masked.

Authors of accepted articles will be required to complete APA's Publication Rights form and Full Disclosure of Interests form. All studies involving human participants or animal subjects must also adhere to the Ethical Principles of APA. Authors must disclose any potential conflicts of interest with their research or certify that they have none. All publication forms are available on the Forms for Journals Publication page.

Masked review policy

This journal uses a masked reviewing system for all submissions. The first page of the manuscript should omit the authors’ names and affiliations but should include the title of the manuscript and the date it is submitted. Footnotes containing information pertaining to the authors' identities or affiliations should not be included in the manuscript but may be provided after a manuscript is accepted. Make every effort to see that the manuscript itself contains no clues to the authors’ identities.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion statement

Psychology of Violence recognizes that members of marginalized and minoritized groups experience extremely high levels of violence due to a host of legal, social, cultural, economic, and other structural factors. These marginalized and minoritized groups include (but are not limited to) women, individuals who are LGBTQIA2S+, individuals who are members of marginalized ethnic/racial groups, individuals who are low income, individuals with disabilities, individuals from religious minority groups, and individuals who are impacted by privilege and oppression at the intersection of their identities.  We are committed to reducing biases within violence research and ourselves. Psychology of Violence is also committed to recruiting a diverse editorial team and publishing articles authored by individuals from marginalized and minoritized groups. Psychology of Violence encourages scholarship that uses theoretical perspectives, study designs, study samples, and analytical methods that promote equity by representing diversity and inclusion of marginalized and minoritized groups in the United States and internationally. Authors are encouraged to consider system-level factors that influence individuals’ behavior.

Journal Article Reporting Standards

Authors should review the updated APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research before submitting. These standards offer ways to improve transparency in reporting to ensure that readers have the information necessary to evaluate the quality of the research and to facilitate collaboration and replication. Further resources, including flowcharts, are available on the APA Style Journal Article Reports Standards  page.

Sharing of data and stimulus materials

Psychology of Violence encourages authors of accepted manuscripts to make their materials and data publicly available on a third-party repository, including (but not limited to) APA's data-sharing repository . APA's data sharing policy does not require public posting, so you are free to decide what is best for your project in terms of public data, materials, and conditions on their use. Maintaining participants' anonymity is an important concern that may preclude public sharing of a dataset. However, APA policy does require authors to make their data available to other researchers upon request.

Manuscript types

Psychology of Violence  publishes three types of articles:

• Full-length articles (10,000-word limit)
• Research reports (2,500-word limit)
• Short reports (1,000-word limit)

The word limits exclude the abstract, references, tables, and figures. Psychology of Violence publishes both quantitative and qualitative research. The journal also publishes review articles, including meta-analyses, and theoretical pieces.

Commentaries

Commentaries are considered for publication in Psychology of Violence . There are two types. The first type is when a reader submits an unsolicited comment on an article published in Psychology of Violence . The primary purpose of the commentary would be to provide a meaningful insight, concern, alternative interpretation, clarification, or critical analysis of the original article. It is not intended to simply be a critique of the literature review or basic methodology or statistics (e.g., suggesting articles that should have been included in the literature review, suggesting a different type of data analysis, noting that a study is statistically underpowered). Instead, the commentary should provide a richer and more comprehensive context for understanding the article that significantly adds to the literature by focusing on conceptual issues, methodological issues, and/or the policy implications of the findings. If a commentary is accepted, then the original author is invited to write a reply to the comment.

Commentaries should be submitted no later than 12 months after publication of the original article. If the editor determines that the commentary meets the criteria described above, then it will be subject to the same process of peer review and the same editorial criteria and standards as any other manuscript. Commentaries may be no more than half the length of the original article, and replies may be no more than half the length of the commentary. A commentary and reply will be published together. Except under rare circumstances, there will be only one round of comment and reply. The title of a commentary should include a subtitle reflecting the actual title and year of publication of the article that is the focus of the comment.

The second type of commentary is initiated by the editor, who identifies an accepted article as one for which a commentary might be useful (e.g., controversial theoretical perspective or empirical findings; groundbreaking topic). The editor will invite one or more individuals to comment on the accepted article; and the author of the original piece is then invited to submit a reply or rebuttal to the comment. Comments and rebuttals go through the peer review and editorial process as described above. The original article is then published along with the comments and reply in chronological order.

Manuscript preparation guidelines

Manuscripts must be prepared according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association using the 7th edition.

All APA requirements are important; the ones listed below are particularly noteworthy:

• Disclose all prior publications with this dataset in the cover letter (which is only seen by editors). 
• Use bias-free language.
• Double space the entire text and references, putting only one table or figure on a page at the end of the manuscript, using one-inch margins all around, and including a header and page numbers.  
• Minimize the use of acronyms so your manuscript is accessible to a wide audience.

All manuscripts that remain under consideration at Psychology of Violence will be asked to include the following:

• A structured abstract divided into four sections with the headings: Objective, method, results, and conclusions. The objective should clearly communicate the novel contribution of the manuscript. Do not, however, claim that "this is the first study ever to..." Such a claim cannot be substantiated. In the conclusion, please identify at least one specific implication and avoid boilerplate language such as "Implications will be discussed." Target length is no more than 250 words.
• 4 to 5 keywords for all manuscripts.
• A statement that clearly describes the study's purpose must be provided in the first 3 paragraphs of the paper.
• The introduction needs to end with numbered statements of hypotheses or research questions, and these need to be explicitly revisited in the results and discussion.
• Authors are expected to review the APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) and verify that they have included all relevant methodological information for the type of study they conducted, including effect sizes when they can be calculated.
• Number of items, response categories, alpha, and scoring need to be presented for all measures. Validity should be addressed.
• Sample size: Qualitative studies need to provide a rationale for the sample size based on their specific methodology. Quantitative studies need to include a formal power analysis that corresponds to the hypotheses and data analytic approach whenever possible; alternative methods used to determine the precision of parameter estimates should be used when power analyses are not appropriate for the data analytic technique. For both qualitative and quantitative studies, methodological citations should be provided to justify the technique used.
• The discussion needs separate subsections (in this order) for limitations, future research directions, and prevention, clinical, and policy implications. Regarding the implications subsection, at least one of the three types of implications listed above must be addressed and the heading should be modified to indicate those included (e.g., "Prevention and policy implications" or "Clinical implications").
• An honest assessment of the study's limitations is essential in the limitations subsection of the discussion. This section needs to describe the study's major methodological limitations and include a statement regarding the generalizability to other populations and contexts. The need to replicate exploratory or unexpected findings should be explicitly stated.

Per APA policy, authors presenting the results of randomized trials should rely on CONSORT guidelines .

Prospective authors are welcome to direct inquiries regarding these instructions, potential paper topics, journal policy, or manuscript preparation to the editor, Brad J. Bushman .

Additional instructions for all authors

Review APA's Journal Manuscript Preparation Guidelines before submitting your article.

If your manuscript was mask reviewed, please ensure that the final version for production includes a byline and full author note for typesetting.

Double-space all copy. Other formatting instructions, as well as instructions on preparing tables, figures, references, metrics, and abstracts, appear in the Manual . Additional guidance on APA Style is available on the APA Style website .

Below are additional instructions regarding the preparation of display equations, computer code, and tables.

Display equations

We strongly encourage you to use MathType (third-party software) or Equation Editor 3.0 (built into pre-2007 versions of Word) to construct your equations, rather than the equation support that is built into Word 2007 and Word 2010. Equations composed with the built-in Word 2007/Word 2010 equation support are converted to low-resolution graphics when they enter the production process and must be rekeyed by the typesetter, which may introduce errors.

To construct your equations with MathType or Equation Editor 3.0:

• Go to the Text section of the Insert tab and select Object.
• Select MathType or Equation Editor 3.0 in the drop-down menu.

If you have an equation that has already been produced using Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 and you have access to the full version of MathType 6.5 or later, you can convert this equation to MathType by clicking on MathType Insert Equation. Copy the equation from Microsoft Word and paste it into the MathType box. Verify that your equation is correct, click File, and then click Update. Your equation has now been inserted into your Word file as a MathType Equation.

Use Equation Editor 3.0 or MathType only for equations or for formulas that cannot be produced as Word text using the Times or Symbol font.

Computer code

Because altering computer code in any way (e.g., indents, line spacing, line breaks, page breaks) during the typesetting process could alter its meaning, we treat computer code differently from the rest of your article in our production process. To that end, we request separate files for computer code.

In online supplemental material

We request that runnable source code be included as supplemental material to the article. For more information, visit Supplementing Your Article With Online Material .

In the text of the article

If you would like to include code in the text of your published manuscript, please submit a separate file with your code exactly as you want it to appear, using Courier New font with a type size of 8 points. We will make an image of each segment of code in your article that exceeds 40 characters in length. (Shorter snippets of code that appear in text will be typeset in Courier New and run in with the rest of the text.) If an appendix contains a mix of code and explanatory text, please submit a file that contains the entire appendix, with the code keyed in 8-point Courier New.

Use Word's insert table function when you create tables. Using spaces or tabs in your table will create problems when the table is typeset and may result in errors.

Academic writing and English language editing services

Authors who feel that their manuscript may benefit from additional academic writing or language editing support prior to submission are encouraged to seek out such services at their host institutions, engage with colleagues and subject matter experts, and/or consider several vendors that offer discounts to APA authors .

Please note that APA does not endorse or take responsibility for the service providers listed. It is strictly a referral service.

Use of such service is not mandatory for publication in an APA journal. Use of one or more of these services does not guarantee selection for peer review, manuscript acceptance, or preference for publication in any APA journal.

Submitting supplemental materials

APA can place supplemental materials online, available via the published article in the PsycArticles ® database. Please see Supplementing Your Article With Online Material for more details.

Abstract and keywords

Psychology of Violence uses structured abstracts divided into the following sections, with headings: objective, method, results, and conclusions. The objective should clearly communicate the novel contribution of this manuscript. The conclusions should identify at least one specific implication and avoid boilerplate language such as "Implications will be discussed." Target length is no more than 250 words.

Each manuscript needs five keywords for indexing. Please consider keywords that are common synonyms for the forms of violence addressed in your manuscript. For example, if your study is on "intimate partner violence," it may help some readers find your work if you list "domestic violence" as a keyword.

Public significance statements

Authors submitting manuscripts to Psychology of Violence are required to provide two to three brief sentences regarding the relevance or public health significance of their manuscript. This description should be included within the manuscript on the abstract/keywords page. It should be written in easy-to-understand language for members of the lay public.

To be maximally useful, these statements of public significance should not simply be sentences lifted directly from the manuscript. This statement supports efforts to increase the dissemination and usage of research findings by larger and more diverse audiences. In addition, they should be able to be translated into media-appropriate statements for use in press releases and on social media.

Authors may refer to the Guidance for Translational Abstracts and Public Significance Statements page for help writing their statement.

List references in alphabetical order. Each listed reference should be cited in text, and each text citation should be listed in the references section.

Examples of basic reference formats:

Journal article

McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development. Psychological Review , 126 (1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000126

Authored book

Brown, L. S. (2018). Feminist therapy (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000092-000

Chapter in an edited book

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Incoming (2025) editor

Brad J. Bushman, PhD The Ohio State University, United States of America

Incoming (2025) associate editors

Matt DeLisi, PhD Iowa State University, United States of America  

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Incoming (2025) senior consulting editors

Edward Alessi, PhD Rutgers University, United States of America

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Laurent Bègue, PhD Université Grenoble Alpes, France

Massil Benbouriche, PhD Université de Lille, France

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Enrique Chaux, PhD Universidad de los Andes, Colombia

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Ilse Derluyn, PhD Ghent University, Belgium

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Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Violence, Vol. 12, No. 4, July 2022. The goal of this special issue is to spotlight and encourage research that informs the development of effective policies and practices to reduce systemic violence and improve relationships between the police and the communities they serve.

Special issue of APA’s journal Psychology of Violence, Vol. 11, No. 5, September 2021. This special issue consists of seven empirical and review articles that address sexual violence among marginalized populations including LGBQ+ individuals and Arab Americans; the role of factors at the macro/meso/exosystem levels in affecting sexual violence risk and recovery, including attitudes, laws, and environmental stressors; research assessing the prevalence of sexual violence in different global regions.

Special issue of APA’s Psychology of Violence, Vol. 11, No. 4, July 2021. This special issue is intended to spark greater interest in working to mitigate firearm violence and encourage researchers across scientific disciplines to collaboratively apply their theoretical perspectives and methodologies to reduce the devastating, but understudied, U.S. gun violence epidemic.

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Violence, Vol. 8, No. 6, November 2018. Includes articles about violence and discrimination against racial, sexual, and religious minorities, as well as stigma, bullying, and mental illness.

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Violence, Vol. 8, No. 3, May 2018. The articles highlight innovative research using a range of methods and approaches that are designed to get closer to several forms of violence as objects of analysis.

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Violence, Vol. 7, No. 3, July 2017. The articles illustrate the range of European research reflecting the very different levels of gender equality, violence awareness, and policy and service development across the continent.

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Violence, Vol. 6, No. 3, July 2016. The articles focus on the generalized effects of violence prevention and intervention, the processes whereby intervention exerts behavioral change, and the challenges of conducting rigorous research in violence-exposed populations.

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Violence, Vol. 5, No. 4, October 2015. The articles showcase new ways of measuring aspects of resilient outcomes and protective factors, explore resilience in relation to a variety of forms of violence across the life span, and illustrate prevention and intervention efforts that promote resilience and may lead both to violence prevention as well as to effective intervention to promote recovery among victims.

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Violence, Vol. 4, No. 4, October 2014. The articles include both conceptual and empirical studies and examine a range of methodological issues in researching violence, organized around three key challenges: defining constructs precisely, accurately capturing disclosures of violence, and diversifying measurement strategies.

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Violence, Vol. 3, No. 4, October 2013. In helping to fill gaps in knowledge about the nature and processes by which violence develops, and how violence experiences affect adolescents, these articles as a group also offer direction for future research.

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Violence, Vol. 3, No. 1, January 2013. Includes articles about cyber-aggression, victimization, and social information processing; perceived distress; differentiating cyberbullying from non-physical bullying; intimate partner violence; and stereotypes.

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Violence, Vol. 2, No. 2, April 2012. Articles examine links between sexual and physical abuse, intimate partner violence, teen dating violence, community violence, and violent media.

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Violence, Vol. 1, No. 3, July 2011. Articles discuss interpersonal violence conceptualization, theoretical integration, modeling, and prevention and intervention.

Journal equity, diversity, and inclusion statement

Psychology of Violence recognizes that members of marginalized and minoritized groups experience extremely high levels of violence due to a host of legal, social, cultural, economic, and other structural factors. These marginalized and minoritized groups include (but are not limited to) women, individuals who are LGBTQIA2S+, individuals who are members of marginalized ethnic/racial groups, individuals who are low income, individuals with disabilities, individuals from religious minority groups, and individuals who are impacted by privilege and oppression at the intersection of their identities.

We are committed to reducing biases within violence research and ourselves. Psychology of Violence is also committed to recruiting a diverse editorial team and publishing articles authored by individuals from marginalized and minoritized groups. Psychology of Violence encourages scholarship that uses theoretical perspectives, study designs, study samples, and analytical methods that promote equity by representing diversity and inclusion of marginalized and minoritized groups in the United States and internationally. Authors are encouraged to consider system-level factors that influence individuals' behavior.

Inclusive study designs

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Definitions and further details on inclusive study designs are available on the Journals EDI homepage .

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• Bias-free language and community-driven language guidelines (required)
• Data sharing and data availability statements (recommended)
• Sample justifications (required)

More information on this journal’s reporting standards is listed under the submission guidelines tab .

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Reviewer mentorship program.

This journal encourages reviewers to submit co-reviews with their students and trainees. The journal likewise offers a formal reviewer mentorship program where graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from historically excluded groups are matched with a senior reviewer to produce an integrated review.

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Psychology of Violence ensures that guest editors for special issues are mentored by an associate editor.

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Open Research and Contributor ID (ORCID) Reviewer Recognition provides a visible and verifiable way for journals to publicly credit reviewers without compromising the confidentiality of the peer-review process. This journal has implemented the ORCID Reviewer Recognition feature in Editorial Manager, meaning that reviewers can be recognized for their contributions to the peer-review process.

Masked peer review

This journal offers masked peer review (where both the authors’ and reviewers’ identities are not known to the other). Research has shown that masked peer review can help reduce implicit bias against traditionally female names or early-career scientists with smaller publication records (Budden et al., 2008; Darling, 2015).

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Recorded versions of our webinars hosted to educate domestic violence professionals. To request a certificate of attendance, please email [email protected] .

Hidden in Plain Sight: Traumatic Brain Injury, Strangulation and Domestic Violence Webinar

Domestic violence victims experience terrible and traumatic physical violence—often directed at the head, neck and face—through blows to the head or strangulation. We are just discovering how that violence impacts the brain. Brain injury caused by domestic violence is rarely identified and almost never immediately treated, and results in short and long-term physical, emotional, and cognitive consequences that can impact every area of a person’s life--including their ability to successfully access and participate in your agency's services. This session will provide an overview of what we learned in Ohio and how we developed CARE, is an evidence-based framework that supports trauma-informed practices and survivor empowerment developed by the Ohio Domestic Violence Network in partnership with The Ohio State University. You will also be provided with links to ODVN’s free CARE brain injury tools to provide education and help you address brain injury with survivors of violence. Workshop objectives: -Participants will learn at least three tactics of control used in abusive relationships. -Participants will identify at least three ways in which domestic violence victims can acquire a head injury. -Participants will identify at least two unique characteristics of head injury caused by domestic violence. -Participants will learn different ways to implement the CARE framework and use CARE materials in their agencies. Presented by Rachel Ramirez, MA, MSW, LISW-S, RA Director of Health and Disability Programs, Ohio Domestic Violence Network Rachel Ramirez, LISW-S, RASS, is the Director of Health and Disability Programs and the Founder of The Center on Partner-Inflicted Brain Injury at The Ohio Domestic Violence Network (ODVN). Her focus is on equipping professionals who work with domestic violence to better understand traumatic stress and the impact of brain injury, resulting in more effective survivor-centered services. At ODVN, Rachel oversees several projects on the intersection of domestic violence, disability, behavioral health and health access. She also provides extensive statewide, national, and international training, consultation, technical assistance, and program support. Rachel has been with ODVN for 16 years and has co-authored several peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as been featured on National Public Radio, The New York Times Magazine, and The Washington Post discussing brain injury and domestic violence. Sponsored by CAP60 #1 Data Management Software Designed for Victim Services Agencies email: [email protected] phone: 818-386-1081 website: www.cap60.com

Surviving Post-Separation Abuse: Supporting Survivors After Escaping Domestic Violence

"Just leave and you'll be safe." This widely held misconception that abuse ends after a victim leaves a domestic violence situation places these survivors and their families at risk. The desire to maintain power and control of an intimate partner does not end when the relationship ends for an abusive partner. Thus, the abuse continues in ways that we know of as post-separation abuse. Many of my clients and community members have called the abuse after they left a relationship "a new kind of hell," as there are limited resources or knowledge in our greater systems to help mitigate this new form of abuse. In this webinar, you will learn: -The signs and behaviors used by abusive ex-partners to continue to gain and maintain control of their target partner -The ways in which our larger systems support post-separation abuse to continue -Strategies that you can use to support survivors and mitigate these behaviors of post-separation abuse to improve the likelihood of safety for themselves and their children. Transcript: Sponsored by ThreadTalk: ThreadTalk.com

Using Technology to Improve the Journey to Support

This webinar will focus on how technology can be used to improve the journey to support for those enduring domestic violence and explore how it can enable friends family members, and colleagues to feel equipped enough to respond. We will hear about the evolution of Bright Sky, an app that provides practical support and advice around domestic violence, from a discussion in a refuge in London to a partnership with Women's Centre & Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh and a tech development company, who donated their time and expertise to help design and trial a product that is now available in 13 markets including the US, thanks to a partnership with Vodafone Foundation. The discussion will touch on the barriers to support that many may experience, how initiatives like the (UK-based) Safe Spaces program enable high street locations such as pharmacies and banks to become a place where people can access discreet support, and how these initiative are powered by technology and in this instance, Bright Sky.

When Domestic Violence Goes Digital

Abuse has gone digital. Today, we spend more time online and on our devices than ever before, creating new safety risks for victims of gender-based and family violence. As such, it has become increasingly important to develop skills that prioritize the digital safety of victims and survivors. In this 90-minute interactive session, Adam Dodge will discuss practical ways anyone can address and prevent tech-facilitated domestic violence and will cover: - How to Center Digital Safety in Our work - Why We Don't Have to Be Tech Experts to Keep People Safe - Digital Safety Planning - Tech-Enabled Trauma - Nonconsensual Tracking - Online Harassment - Image-Based Abuse - Engaging Youth and more. Presented by Adam Dodge at EndTAB (endtab.org) Transcript: Sponsored by CAP60 #1 Data Management Software Designed for Victim Services Agencies email: [email protected] phone: 818-386-1081 website: www.cap60.com

Full Humanity: Centering Intersectionality in All DV Services

Tonya Lovelace was quoted in the domesticshelters.org article, The Ways Racism Fuels the Fire of Domestic Violence, stating, “Any brand of justice that does not take the full humanity of people into consideration causes harm.” In this webinar, Tonya Lovelace will explore the importance of supporting the full humanity of survivors by centering intersectionality in all aspects of domestic violence services and within those organizations providing the services. Sponsored by CAP60 #1 Data Management Software Designed for Victim Services Agencies email: [email protected] phone: 818-386-1081 website: www.cap60.com Transcript:

WEBINAR: Understanding Women Who Unsilence Domestic Non-State Torture-Trafficking Victimizations

This presentation shares the grassroots science development of the definition of non-State torture and sexualized human trafficking perpetrated within domestic or intimate family relationships. We share the reality of several women—Lynn and Sara—explaining that these relationships include organized connections to informal criminal networks. We illustrate how using our developed non-State torture assessment questionnaire provides assistance in understanding the acts of non-State torture a woman has survived. Intervention models include explaining why we developed our non-State torture (NST) victimization-traumatization informed care framework, including de-pathologizing language by replacing PTSD with PTSR—“R” representing “responses” versus labeling a woman “disordered.” What we mean by visible captivity is addressed. We provide insights into cellular “body talk” memories, include examples of interventions to cope with verbal and drugging torture intrusive memories and discuss forms of suicide-femicide. Several polls will be introduced during the presentation. Our book, Women Unsilenced Our Refusal To Let Torturer-Traffickers Win, is referenced as a valuable resource as it details our 30 years of work supporting women recover who survived non-State torture-human trafficking ordeals perpetrated by a spouse and within families. Three learning considerations you may want to take away with you: 1. Learning to be comfortable when women name non-State torture as the form of violence they survived as adults and or as children; 2. Intervention models and ideas about caring, and 3. Utilizing our book as a reference resource so a woman so victimized may be inspired to realize that other women broke their silence, they were heard, listened to with care, and believed, and that recovery, although hard work, is possible.

Solutions To Common Hotline Challenges: Phone, Chat, Text, Scheduling, Reporting and Burnout

Do survivors reaching out to your agency experience difficulty reaching your advocates due to bad call quality, dropped calls, or long hold times? Do you have to fix mistakes by your answering service? Do they sometimes send calls to the wrong volunteer or staff member? Would you like to offer chat and text, but can't find a good option that prioritizes privacy and is easy to use? There are solutions! We'll go over common challenges that DV hotlines face, and share what we've seen work at agencies across the country.

Building Bridges with Prosecution

Domestic violence situations are among the most complicated and difficult cases that prosecutors must handle. The history and relationship of the people involved can be quite complex. These types of cases are often he said / she said issues. Prosecutors rely on 911 and law enforcement to provide all their discovery and evidence required for the case. They must determine how to charge the accused based on the laws of their jurisdiction, and the amount and validity of evidence that is provided to them, as well as what they can collect during the investigation. The means and methods for prosecutors to collect viable, useful evidence can enable swift due process, and improve outcomes for victims. The panelists will discuss the perspectives of: -Prosecution -Law enforcement -PSAP/911 -Victims and victim advocacy The law enforcement, PSAP/911 and victim advocates will provide insights on how they interact with prosecution and their roles before a trial, during a trial, and how they support victims. The panelists will discuss their roles and their challenges in discovery and evidence collection for a domestic violence case. This education will provide advocates and survivors further understanding of why the criminal justice system needs to be transformed so discovery and evidence collection at the very origination of the crime can support the victims of domestic violence. With this education, we can possibly achieve better outcomes for criminal justice and the advocacy world. This webinar is presented in partnership with e-BodyGuard. Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CdnNuGoHpPAYR0vR4aXJ9BLJGPRiB9XAzwuA6ZZZQWc/edit?usp=sharing © 2022 by eBodyGuard. All rights reserved. Copyright protection claimed includes all forms and matters of copyrightable material and information now allowed by statutory or judicial law or hereinafter granted. eBodyGuard© and all eBodyGuard products mentioned in this publication are trademarks of eBodyGuard Corp.

Technology Abuse: Framing the Issue & Solutions for Non-Tech People

Technology abuse isn’t always easy to identify, even if you know what you’re looking for. As an advocate trying to help people escape abuse, it can feel overwhelming and complicated trying to keep up with the latest tech jargon and platforms, let alone the manipulative and cunning ways abusers use technology to exert power and control over their partner. This panel discussion will include experts from a cross-section of specialties and backgrounds to help demystify technology abuse and give you the tools and knowledge to make a difference for the people you serve. Panelists: Sheri Kurdakul, Founder & CEO EBinRA, Inc., dba, VictimsVoice https://victimsvoice.app/ Kara Wasser, CEO OhanaLink Technologies https://www.ohanalink.com/ Adam Dodge, Founder EndTAB https://endtab.org/ Hilary Donnell, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility and Public Affairs Aura https://www.aura.com/ This presentation was made possible by support from OhanaLink Purple https://www.ohanalink.com/purple

The Past, Present and Future of the Domestic Violence Movement

Join us for an important conversation with some of the pioneers in the domestic violence movement. You'll hear insights from longtime advocates and leaders sharing their insights on how far we've come as a movement, their perspectives on where we are currently and their hopes for the future. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions of our panel of experts during a Q&A session at the end of the panel discussion. Panelists: Suzanne Pharr Dr. Beth Richie Ruth Slaughter Rita Smith This webinar is made possible with support from Ohanalink Technologies. This video can not be shared or edited without the expressed written permission of Theresa's Fund (the 501c3 organization that operates DomesticShelters.org).

Purple Ribbon Awards INSPIRE Webinar

Get INSPIRED by other domestic violence professionals who have developed creative and innovative ways to help survivors in their communities. This webinar-style conference features panel discussions with Purple Ribbon Award winners who will share ideas and insight to help you do your best work and make an impact. Inspire Webinar Agenda: Session #1 Culturally Specific Programming Conversations surrounding supporting underserved communities. Panelists: Chaplain Asma Inge Hanif, Executive Director and Founder Inge Benevolent Ministries Muslimat Al Nisaa Shelter Nneka MacGregor, Executive Director WomenatthecentrE, Women's Centre For Social Justice Samantha M. Salamon, Manager of the Ahimsa Department Asian Services in Action Inc Session #2 Domestic Violence Youth Initiatives Creating successful youth initiatives. Panelists: Carol Dvoor, President/Director Safe Harbor Child Access Centers Erica Yamaguchi, Training and Education Manager Camp HOPE America, Alliance for HOPE International Kandice Louis, Senior Director, Programs District Alliance for Safe Housing Session #3 Longevity in the Domestic Violence Field How to build a long, fulfilling career in the domestic violence field. Panelists: Kimberly Harris, CEO/Co-Founder Women's HQ Shari A Kastein, Executive Director Family Crisis Centers, Inc. Nancy Murphy, Therapist, Supervisor, Educator, Executive Director Emeritus Northwest Family Life Learning and Counseling Center Maria Acuna, Residential Coordinator Rainbow Services Chair Yoga with Amy Stephens

The Intersectionality of Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking

This presentation highlights the intersectionality of domestic violence and human trafficking. Participants will learn to recognize important similarities, differences, and intersections between domestic violence, sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Unique challenges facing this field are discussed including homelessness, economic insecurity, individuals of diverse backgrounds, cultural differences, and much more. Learn about how 3Strands Global Foundation has built a program using trauma-informed and culturally aware practices that not only assist survivors and at-risk populations in crisis but address long-term gaps in education and employment to assist survivors in living lives of self-determination. Presented by: Kaitlyn DiCicco Jenny Davidson Hira Zahir About 3Strands Global Foundation 3Strands Global Foundation (3SGF) envisions a world free from human trafficking. We work to accomplish this vision by mobilizing communities to combat human trafficking through prevention education and reintegration programs. 3SGF is the co-creator of PROTECT, a human trafficking prevention education curriculum which has been implemented in schools throughout the state of California, Utah, Texas, Michigan, Ohio and Georgia. After a decade of working in the human trafficking prevention space, we have educated over 700,000 students and almost 100,000 adults in the six states. Pre-and post-analysis indicates that individuals who have completed PROTECT demonstrate an increase in awareness, understanding, and knowledge of human trafficking of as much as 60% and behavioral changes in our students of as much as 50%. PROTECT participants understand how to be more conscious and safer when it comes to protecting themselves and others from exploitation, including how to respond if they are confronted with potentially dangerous situations.

Understanding Outputs vs. Outcomes and How They Can Transform Your Annual Report

Sharity is partnering with DomesticShelters.org to help you get ready for the busiest fundraising time of year. During this webinar, you will learn how to communicate the impact of your work so donors will know exactly how important their philanthropic investment is. Don't miss this opportunity to get ready for year-end including a free calendar and hints on how to make this year the most successful yet.

Children Caught in Invisible Chains: Coercive Control Domestic Abuse & Children

This webinar explores how coercive control domestic abuse harms children, and what to do about it. We will discuss various ways this dynamic plays out, including direct physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of the children, economic abuse, “legal abuse” involving the courts and/or child protection systems, and obligating the spousal victim to harm the children. Some abusers deliberately harm children to control and punish their partners and ex-partners.

Building Bridges with Law Enforcement Webinar

Presented in partnership with e-BodyGuard (ebodyguard.org) Domestic violence situations are among the most complicated and at times dangerous 911 calls that law enforcement officers answer. The history and relationship of the people involved can be quite complex. These types of cases are often he said / she said issues. Beyond ensuring the safety of everyone on the scene, and helping those in need, they must first assess the situation and determine if a crime has been committed. Was a crime committed or not? Do they make an arrest on the scene or not? Is there enough evidence to prove probable cause for an arrest? Law Enforcement officers enforce the law and use their training, their skills, and any technology available to securely collect and transmit evidence to support probable cause for arrest on criminal charges, at the time of the occurrence. The ability for the law enforcement to collect viable, useful evidence can enable swift due process, and improved safety for everyone involved. The panelists will discuss the perspectives of: • Law enforcement • Prosecution • PSAP/911 • Victims and victim advocacy Each person involved in the criminal justice workflow, from the community to the courts, will benefit from hearing each branch’s perspective. As they discuss their workflow once a domestic violence case is processed from the moment law enforcement is engaged, the required elements will be unveiled, helping move the case forward through the investigation process. Each will discuss the challenges of evidence collection and lack of evidence/discovery, transmission, and storage, the complexities, and where they see opportunities to enable swift due process in the event of a crime. This education will provide advocates and survivors further understanding why the criminal justice system needs to be transformed so discovery and evidence collection at the very origination of the crime can support the victims of domestic violence. © 2022 by eBodyGuard. All rights reserved. Copyright protection claimed includes all forms and matters of copyrightable material and information now allowed by statutory or judicial law or hereinafter granted. eBodyGuard© and all eBodyGuard products mentioned in this publication are trademarks of eBodyGuard Corp.

Lundy Bancroft Webinar: Two Informative Sessions

Session #1 (90 minutes) Why Does He Do That?: The Profile and Tactics of Men Who Abuse Women Session #2 (90 minutes) Healing and Recovery in Children Exposed to Domestic Violence Session #1 Description: We can't stop domestic violence if we don't stop the perpetrators and hold them accountable. This workshop draws from both research and clinical experience to reveal the underlying tactics, behaviors, and attitudes of men who batter women. We will look at the complexity of the battering pattern, with a particular eye to understanding how the abuser manages to be a tyrant at home while escaping detection by the outside world. We will then review research and case illustrations to show best practices for safe and effective interventions with batterers to promote family safety and hold the offender accountable. Session #2 Description: This presentation guides professionals and other community members in best approaches for supporting recovery in children who have been exposed to violence at home. Initial topics include building safety, assessing the impact on the child, assessing the impact on the mother-child relationship, and assessing the impact on family functioning. Next, we examine ways to help children heal emotionally through processing their experiences verbally, using expressive therapies, and using group counseling. The importance of empowerment work with children is examined, with an emphasis on values education, development of critical-thinking skills, and children’s participation in safety planning. Register here and attend both or only one of the sessions. (Session #2 will begin at 2:30pm ET) A huge thank you to Cap60 for making this event possible CAP60.com CAP60 is the #1 software solution for Victim Services agencies. By using their fully-encrypted system, you can easily input and access each client's sensitive information. When it comes to reporting, seamlessly export all client demographics, services, unduplicated client counts, and other key metrics to satisfy funder requirements. Some of the additional perks of the CAP60 Solution include victim & offender tracking, a centralized intake process, shelter & transitional housing automation, outreach & volunteer management, hotline call tracking, counseling & legal silos, and all funder reports including- VAWA, VOCA, FVPSA and the Caper report. Stick around after the webinar if you’d like to see a demonstration of their software and learn more.

From Barrier to Benefit: Overcoming Challenges of Creating Pet-Friendly Domestic Violence Shelters

When a domestic violence shelter becomes pet-friendly, it not only removes a significant barrier for survivors seeking safety, it also provides an additional tool to promote healing and build morale. In this dynamic discussion, you’ll learn how to overcome barriers to creating an onsite pet housing program, including: space limitations, staff and board buy-in, and funding. We’ll focus on the power of building partnerships and how you can turn your pet housing program into a fundraising tool. This interactive workshop will get attendees engaged and leave them energized and ready to take on the next steps to becoming pet-friendly! Presented by Katie Campbell of RedRover

Why Family Courts Fail Protective Mothers & Children: 20 Common Mistakes in Evaluations Judges Miss

Most people including court professionals are unaware that family courts are getting most domestic violence custody cases wrong. There is now a specialized body and knowledge of research (ACEs & Saunders Study) that can help judges recognize and respond to domestic violence and child abuse. This knowledge was unavailable when courts developed their response to domestic violence. Family courts have been unwilling or unable to create needed reforms based on the highly credible scientific research now available. The courts turn to mental health professionals as if they were the experts in domestic violence. Barry and Veronica will discuss 20 common mistakes in evaluations that lead to harmful and tragic outcomes. In discussing evaluators' mistakes, the webinar will explain how the courts get these cases so painfully wrong.

911: The Gateway to the Criminal Justice System

A call to 911 is the gateway to the entire workflow of the criminal justice system; not the arrival of first responders on the scene. How much information, and how well it is gathered and recorded at the time the call is made, can impact the rest of a victim’s life, and indeed even if they survive. Just as importantly, the first five minutes after the call can have an enormous impact on the telecommunicator’s ability to send the appropriate resources and the first responder’s ability to address the emergency at hand. Law enforcement officers called to the scene risk their safety to help those in need. The more information they have prior to arriving on the scene, the better response they can provide. Greater preparation can help ensure their own safety, which is paramount. In the event of homicide, the prosecuting attorney arrives on the scene to assess the situation and gather crucial evidence. The more background information the prosecuting attorney has available, the more focused the investigation. Family members and friends of the victim may be crucial to gathering this evidence. The trauma they may have experienced may make evidence collection more difficult. Each person involved needs a better understanding of the 911 call response and how it impacts each part of the criminal justice workflow. Each will discuss the challenges in their area and where they see opportunities to improve the outcomes, starting with the 911 call. The panelists will discuss the perspectives of: PSAP/911 First responders Law enforcement Prosecutor Victims Emergency response technology automation and processes should enable public safety for all members of the community: people in distress, victims of a crime, suspects, first responders, law enforcement, prosecutors and defense counsel. The panelists will discuss their personal and professional experiences with the criminal justice workflow, particularly regarding the technology and processes used in the 911 call response. © 2022 by eBodyGuard. All rights reserved. Copyright protection claimed includes all forms and matters of copyrightable material and information now allowed by statutory or judicial law or hereinafter granted. eBodyGuard© and all eBodyGuard products mentioned in this publication are trademarks of eBodyGuard Corp.

Lobbying 101: Influencing Your Government Leaders for Positive Change

This webinar will provide you with practical applications of how to lobby elected officials locally and federally and explain why you matter in the legislative process 1) How to find who is your elected official(s) 2) How to contact your elected official(s) 3) What information to provide Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hiDH4C_wIx9GfRDEfnIl8zffxZco6pbV/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114029201993870941390&rtpof=true&sd=true CarolAnn Peterson, PhD Domestic Violence Consultant Dr. Peterson is a former full-time Lecturer at the University of Southern California and joined the School of Social Work in January 2004, where she teaches courses on domestic violence; leadership; diversity; policy and advocacy; and global violence against women. Her recently published book is Interpersonal Aggression: Complexities of Domestic and Intimate Partner Abuse. She spent 10 years as a registered lobbyist in California for the California Federation of Business & Professional Women which included an unofficial advisory role for the original drafting of the Violence Against Women Act. She is also a certified national expert witness on strangulation prevention. Dr. Peterson has done training for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and also does training for domestic violence shelter staff, corporate America and non-profit organizations.

Building Bridges for Safe Communities: From the Incident Through the Court System [Webinar]

Public safety technologies, processes and people don’t necessarily mesh perfectly; they use many disparate processes and systems. Each person’s function has its own goals and objectives, and its own unique challenges. The technology and processes are generally designed and built for specific roles or purposes within the criminal justice workflow. In fact, in many situations, there can be conflict or misunderstanding between the goals of these organizations. We all have a better understanding of the criminal justice system by learning from the individuals who are involved and work to support an aspect of its daily function. Each person involved in the criminal justice workflow needs better insights into the technology challenges, the emotions, and the level of trust of others, outside of any particular heat-of-the-moment situation. You are going to hear each of them talk about the challenges in their area and where they see opportunities to improve the outcomes. The empathy gained through this open conversation can lead to better decisions on the use of technology, processes, and behavior, and ultimately better outcomes, for public safety and criminal justice. The panelists will discuss the perspectives of: • Victims • PSAP/911 • First responders • Law enforcement • District Attorney To build trust, technology automation and processes should respect the rights of community members as well as the rights of law enforcement. The panelists will discuss their personal and professional experiences with the criminal justice workflow, particularly regarding domestic violence situations and the ethical considerations for the application of technology. Primal safety is a universal and God-given right. If we work together to understand how to create bridges of safety, we as a nation will indeed be safer. Full Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17V9WdFjb3E59YYbjHHbFeiyYsUjPLE6YWPzGkRINKHI/edit Panelist: Rita Smith, [email protected] Rita Smith began working as a crisis line advocate in a shelter for battered women and their children in Colorado in 1981. She has held numerous positions in Colorado and Florida in several local domestic violence and sexual assault programs, including Program Supervisor and Director. She was the Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence for nearly 22 years. Heather Joyner, [email protected] Heather serves as the full-time Assistant Director with Franklin County Emergency Communications in Louisburg, NC. Heather oversees and coordinates all activities of the Public Safety Answering Point including research and implementation of new technologies that provide citizens with the best means for contacting 911 in rural areas. Prior to joining Franklin County, Heather served as the 911 Director for Halifax County E-911 Central Communications from 1998-2019. John Jackson, [email protected] John Jackson has 30 years of police service, including multiple rural and urban municipal police departments in positions and ranks up to and including Chief of Police in Colorado. Matthew Durkin, [email protected] Matthew Durkin joined the law firm Fuicelli and Lee, P.C. in January 2021. Matthew helps clients who have been injured build their case and litigate if necessary. © 2022 by eBodyGuard. All rights reserved. Copyright protection claimed includes all forms and matters of copyrightable material and information now allowed by statutory or judicial law or hereinafter granted. eBodyGuard© and all eBodyGuard products mentioned in this publication are trademarks of eBodyGuard Corp.

Hope Rising: How the Science of HOPE Can Change Your Life

Hope Rising is a clarion call to apply the science of hope in daily life and overcome the trauma, adversity, and struggles everyone must face. Hope is the most predictive indicator of well-being in a person’s life in all the research done on trauma, illness, and resiliency. Based on nearly 2,000 published studies about hope, including original research, Casey Gwinn from Alliance for Hope calls for rising hope to be the focus not only in personal lives, but in public policy in education, business, social services, and every other part of society. Hope is measurable. Hope is malleable. Hope changes lives. Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1te5-mslWT-0CP91wLIiZR1hw-CzCzsW50HU_s91Jyjg/edit

Panel Discussion: Hiring, Managing and Retaining Frontline Staff

This panel of experienced DV organization leaders shares their advice on how to build an amazing team of people and keep them happy. We’ll discuss best practices, successful initiatives and how they are approaching hiring in 2022. The webinar will include a discussion as well as Q&A session. Panelists: Carla Washington, Vice President of Programs & Chief Partnership Officer Sojourner, Milwaukee, WI Monica Kearney, MSW, Executive Director Safe Space, Louisburg, NC Linda C. Perez, Chief Executive Officer The Shade Tree, Las Vegas, NV

When Abusers Drug an Intimate Partner

Domestic abusers slip drugs to their intimate partners to control, sexually assault, disable and discredit them. Sometimes they use street drugs and sometimes they use pharmaceuticals. In this webinar you’ll learn: How this drugging happens and its effects Why this powerful form of abuse is so hidden from sight How to ask about intimate partner drugging What kinds of help are available How we can prevent further abuse of this kind Download the transcript https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wlmw94yH5mQaJtKwi1Dr2C5Kk-uYurQqT7ZABlyhUJ4/edit For questions or to receive a certificate of attendance, please email [email protected]

Accelerate Your Wish List Donations

In this webinar, you'll learn how to turn your Wish List into an interactive online shopping experience where donors from anywhere in the world can purchase the items you need. Purchases are then automatically delivered to your preferred address in 2 - 3 days. The best part: it's completely free to U.S.-based domestic violence programs and shelters listed in our searchable database and it's easy to set up and manage. Whether you still need to set up your Wish List or you're just looking for ways to renew donor support, this webinar will point you in the right direction. Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/178W9_SO7cqL5XmCrH5yikFD0ky22IIM2bFyARYTehos/edit?usp=sharing

Recognizing and Responding to Stalking

Stalking is a prevalent, dangerous, and often misunderstood crime. This session explores the dynamics of stalking, focusing on the highly contextual nature of the crime by discussing common tactics used by perpetrators, stalking’s co-occurrence with domestic and sexual violence, as well as tools to plan for victim safety and hold offenders accountable. Presented by Dana Michelle Fleitman, M.A.Ed.H.D. Training & Awareness Specialist @Stalking Prevention Awareness and Resource Center Dana Fleitman (M.A.Ed.H.D) has been with SPARC since 2018. In this role, she provides in-person workshops, online training and technical assistance to multidisciplinary professionals across the country on recognizing and responding to stalking. Dana develops resources, curriculum, and publications on stalking and leads SPARC’s National Stalking Awareness Month efforts each January. Prior to joining SPARC, Dana was the Senior Manager of Prevention and Training Programs at Jewish Women International (JWI), the leading Jewish organization working to end violence against all women and girls. Her work at JWI included creating, delivering and managing multiple educational programs on interpersonal and sexual violence for audiences ranging from teens to campuses to professionals in the field. She also wrote and supported federal and foundation grants and coordinated a monthly webinar training program for domestic violence service providers. View the complete transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KnGPYPS6d2rw3N6dvw5o_AvYKCxIbjcvu81f-sM-QTo/edit

Leadership 101: Practical Strategies for Inspiring and Empowering Others

Do you ever wonder what makes a leader? How did someone get to be a leader? This 90-minute webinar will provide you with information about who leaders are, the different types of leadership and what makes an effective leader. You'll learn how to test your skills, determine what kind of leader you are and how to improve your skills or change your leadership style. This webinar will be interactive, and we encourage you to ask questions throughout! Objectives: · Learn leadership skills · Learn the types of leaders · Learn how to determine what kind of leader you are

911 DV Safety Protocols: Standard Procedures and New Technology

What happens when you dial 9-1-1? Learn first-hand from a dispatcher what happens when you or your clients call for Emergency help. Heather Joyner from Franklin County Emergency Communications in North Carolina will give a play-by-play of what her day looks like, the challenges she faces and share tips on how to make sure help arrives as quickly as possible. Melissa Hart of eBodyGuard will introduce you to the eBodyGuard technology that is creating a revolutionary approach to personal safety that puts the right information in the hands of 9-1-1 operators, law enforcement and attorneys. View the complete transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13FvVYbwkiP81w0BqqWW05xmMo_Q287frZG6W653gQW0/edit

Social Media Strategies to Build and Grow Community Support Webinar

COVID-19 abruptly forced the world to adapt to a more digital presence. The new look of community building has drastically burdened businesses, nonprofits, and academic institutions. This workshop will share tangible tips and tools to effectively engage your community online while boosting impact and morale. Learning Objective: 1. Attendees will learn industry tips to enhance their social media presence through proven best practices. 2. Attendees will gain insight to engage new followers and inspire consistent growth through strategic content creation. 3. Attendees will have the opportunity to "troubleshoot the challenges they are currently facing online whether its engagement, monetary decline, stagnation in online growth, or community building. Audience: This presentation is best suited for community leaders, professionals, and activists who are eager to maximize their online presence.

Estimating the Local Impact of Intimate Partner Violence

Without sufficient funds, domestic violence shelters and programs will be increasingly forced to close their doors just when they are needed the most. For these reasons, Sharity set out to develop an easy way to communicate the impact of domestic violence and the value of services of domestic violence programming. This webinar gives step-by-step tips and tools to help any agency that serves survivors the ability to calculate local impact so stakeholders — and especially funders and government officials — to see how funding programs for survivors at this critical time provide an incredible return on investment.

Unleashed: How to Cultivate, Clarify and Connect Your Resilience Story

It's time to help your clients unleash their stories, their power and their purpose! Resilience and Life Storytelling Expert Stacy Brookman takes us through the process of understanding our own stories and helping our clients understand theirs. Leveraging our tough stories helps all of us to live more resiliently. You'll get started on your stories in the workshop and come away with tools to easily help clients begin writing their stories. Download Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZH7KZnm_0rEMues6wcmmPSBWnrMTOCbnx9eETQigc5g/edit?usp=sharing

What Every Advocate Needs to Know About Strangulation

Victims of one episode of strangulation are 750% more likely of becoming a victim of homicide at the hands of the same partner than a woman who is assaulted but not strangled. In this webinar, Gael Strack of the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention will share insights and research on the intersection of non-fatal strangulation and domestic violence. Download transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16Vgrfnx1LBgMEU0fgVxjUvFUWzWpzHSI5la0Mse53aE/edit?usp=sharing

Invisible Chains: From Domestic Violence to Coercive Control

Presented by Lisa Aronson Fontes, PhD We can better address and eliminate intimate partner violence if we see the problem as an ongoing crime of control—more like a long-term hostage situation than a series of domestic violence assaults. With original drawings and compelling stories, this presentation explains the tactics of coercive control including isolation, intimidation, monitoring, gaslighting, stalking and physical violence. Some abusers use coercive control without physical violence—which can be especially confusing for victims and survivors. Learning Objectives: 1) Learn the tactics of coercive control in intimate relationships. 2) Understand how coercive control shapes a victim's behavior. 3) Improve your ability to detect and intervene in situations of coercive control and intimate partner violence. Download Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/139E8olRrDfLz1uylUswYLh_KM7DoZ36KTjetHGvyytQ/edit?usp=sharing

What Do PACEs Have to Do With DV? Everything.

Do you want to eradicate and prevent domestic violence? Integrate the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs) in everything. This webinar will address how the science of PACEs is being integrated into the family court system, domestic violence shelters, batterer intervention courses and community PACEs initiatives. Transcript Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ryw3zcJowMkjqiYS9rPRz0wEntZGPPZOpGEwb4LTjYM/edit?usp=sharing

"Just Record It!" The Rights and Wrongs of Stalking and Domestic Violence Documentation

8 OUT OF 10 DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CASES ARE DISMISSED DUE TO A LACK OF EVIDENCE AND VICTIMS BEING TOO SCARED TO TESTIFY According to a 2017 Prosecutor's Report, Attorneys and well-intending people tell victims to “DOCUMENT EVERYTHING” but not everything is admissible as evidence. In fact, most of what is collected and documented does not meet the criteria as evidence and won’t be allowed in court. With a deluge of advice, apps, and resources, how do you take advantage of industry advancements to best guide someone experiencing harm without inadvertently or unknowingly harming them further by the very tools you’ve recommended? How do you wade through the onslaught of options to guide them to safely arm themselves with the information they need to get the appropriate protection and be able to seek legal justice if that’s their path? Sheri Kurdakul of VictimsVoice will give you the questions to ask and the why behind them to make sure you are properly and thoroughly vetting your options so YOU can make informed decisions for the safety of those most in need of your advice and direction, and provide answers that satisfy the needs of your organization and the legal process.

Tools and Tips to Address Partner-Inflicted Brain Injury in your Organization

As a follow up to What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us, this training will focus on taking what Ohio has learned about the intersection of domestic violence, strangulation, and traumatic brain injury and how to take the frameworks, knowledge, and tools developed in Ohio to use in your work at your agency. This webinar will introduce you to the CARE framework of delivering services, using accommodations to make services more effective and responsive, and free, downloadable educational materials and practice-based tools for service providers and survivors of violence. It is strongly recommended that participants watch the recording for the first session prior to the webinar, as basic information on the intersection of DV and brain injury will not be covered. This training will focus on taking what Ohio has learned about the intersection of domestic violence, strangulation, and traumatic brain injury and how to take the frameworks, knowledge, and tools developed in Ohio to use in your work at your agency. This webinar will introduce you to the CARE framework of delivering services, using accommodations to make services more effective and responsive, and free, downloadable educational materials and practice-based tools for service providers and survivors of violence. It is strongly recommended that participants watch the recording for the first session "What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us" prior to the webinar, as basic information on the intersection of DV and brain injury will not be covered. Download a transcript below: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13-Zhe1wiFnlAGJLbT-7B9bhWb6d-_ES9x4YaXRhmsGU/edit?usp=sharing

Crossroads: The Intersection of Victims and Law Enforcement Advocacy

The Newport News Police Department Domestic Violence Team (NNPD DV Team) is a newly implemented program in Newport News, Virginia, created under the vision of Chief Steve Drew. Located in NNPD Headquarters, and based out of the Special Victims Unit, the NNPD DV Team utilizes a multi-pronged approach to domestic violence: victim advocacy, law enforcement training, community partnerships, data analysis, domestic violence education and awareness saturation. This approach allows the DV Team, as civilian advocates within the department, to develop and implement effective strategies to address the issue of domestic violence within the city of Newport News. This presentation will provide an overview of the unique perspectives that civilian advocates bring to law enforcement in their engagement with victims of domestic violence. You will also learn of the innovative strategies deployed by the NNPD Domestic Violence Team in their efforts to engage the community in the fight against this public health epidemic. Download the transcript here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rYsm88fX2GXKOGfHioxFqqTLjXyQ-eAG/view?usp=sharing

5 Steps to Empower Survivors to Succeed Financially

In this webinar, Kim Scouller will help you to become a better financial advocate for victims and survivors of abuse. She will cover these topics: 1) Learn How Money Works 2) Be Involved with Your Finances 3) Look for Red Flags 4) Talk About the Problem 5) Put a Personal Financial Safety Plan in Place About Kim Scouller Kim Scouller has been an attorney for over 30 years, having served as an adjunct professor at the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville and as an in-house attorney for one of the largest financial services companies in the world. During her last four years at Transamerica, Kim served as the president of World Group Securities, Inc., the Transamerica broker-dealer with the largest number of registered representatives. As one of the few women broker-dealer presidents, she traveled around the country talking with people, especially women, about investments and financial goals. Currently, Kim manages her law firm, Jade Law Offices, and continues her work helping to educate others on preparing for their financial future as a Senior Marketing Director of WealthWave and a registered representative and investment advisor representative of Transamerica Financial Advisors, Inc., Transamerica Financial Group Division. In 2014, Kim co-founded and launched Only Blue Skies, a Women’s Business Platform focused on making financial education and the financial profession more accessible to women. With Only Blue Skies, we envision transforming the largest industry in our country from one that talks about women’s financial needs to one that is actually doing something about it – helping women address their own financial needs through education.

What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us: Domestic Violence, Partner-Inflicted Brain Injury and a Way Forward

Those of us who work with domestic violence have known for decades that abusers intentionally target a victim’s head, neck and face with terrifying and painful repeated assaults and strangulation. The Center on Partner-Inflicted Brain Injury's groundbreaking research revealed that over 8 out of 10 people accessing domestic violence services had experienced head trauma, often repeatedly and concurrently. These invisible injuries impact the brain, are almost never immediately treated, and rarely identified. But they cause a host of physical, emotional and cognitive consequences that can impact every area of a person’s life--including their ability to access and participate in dv services. This webinar will introduce you to partner-inflicted brain injury -- its signs, symptoms, and consequences. It will also discuss the CARE (Connect, Acknowledge, Respond, Evaluate) service provision framework and will share Ohio's practical, free, trauma-informed tools and materials developed for you to raise awareness with those you serve and the agencies you work in. About Rachel Ramirez, MA, MSW, LISW-S, RA Rachel Ramirez is the Founder and Director of The Center on Partner-Inflicted Brain Injury, a project of the Ohio Domestic Violence Network (ODVN). Rachel is currently directing the Center’s first federal grant from the Office on Violence Against Women to increase collaboration and develop training and services for the brain injury, domestic violence, and sexual assault fields. Over the past 13 years at ODVN, Rachel has led multiple statewide initiatives on trauma-informed approaches as well as other topics. She has trained hundreds of audiences and co-authored Trauma-Informed Approaches, as well as peer-reviewed journal articles. Rachel is a bilingual licensed independent social worker and a registered advocate.

Domestic Violence Shelters and Pets: Creating a Pet-Friendly Program that Works for You

This presentation will discuss the link between domestic violence and animal abuse, the importance of the human-animal bond and how to create pet-friendly housing programs. Participants will learn about different models for pet-friendly housing, the importance of working with their communities and about RedRover’s domestic violence grants. RedRover is a national animal welfare nonprofit focused on bringing animals out of crisis and strengthening the human-animal bond through emergency sheltering, disaster relief services, financial assistance and humane education. Their domestic violence assistance program allows domestic violence survivors and their pets to escape abuse together so they can begin the healing process together. RedRover’s Safe Housing program provides financial assistance, guidance and support to enable domestic violence shelters to create on- and off-site space to house beloved pets of survivors. When pet-friendly spaces are not available at a shelter, their Safe Escape program provides grants for safely boarding a survivor’s pet up to 90 days, while a survivor is in shelter. DomesticShelters.org makes finding the right shelter and information about domestic violence easier. Instead of searching the Internet, it is all right here. We’ve painstakingly verified information on shelters in LA to shelters in NY, and every domestic violence program in between. If you or a friend is suffering from physical abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse or verbal abuse, this free service can help. Select domestic violence programs based on location, service and language needs. Find 24-hour hotlines in your area, service listings, and helpful articles on domestic violence statistics, signs and cycles of abuse, housing services, emergency services, legal and financial services, support groups for women, children and families, and more. For questions regarding this presentation, email [email protected]

Moving Forward: Finding Our Strength and Resilience During COVID-19 // Q&A Session

This presentation is a Q&A session with DV shelter professionals. Dr. Lewis-O’Connor is a board-certified pediatric and OB-GYN nurse practitioner and a sexual assault nurse examiner. For eight years she has served as Co-Chairs of the Partners Healthcare Trauma-informed Care Initiative. She is the Principal Investigator on a Department of Justice Grant- exploring interventions for victims of crime in hospital-based programs. Annie has numerous peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. She holds a faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School.

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Understanding the Impact and Consequences of Domestic Violence

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How to Identify and Prevent School Violence

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Recognizing the Signs of School Violence

School violence refers to violence that takes place in a school setting. This includes violence on school property, on the way to or from school, and at school trips and events. It may be committed by students, teachers, or other members of the school staff; however, violence by fellow students is the most common.

An estimated 246 million children experience school violence every year; however, girls and gender non-conforming people are disproportionately affected.

"School violence can be anything that involves a real or implied threat—it can be verbal, sexual, or physical, and perpetrated with or without weapons. If someone is deliberately harming someone or acting in a way that leaves someone feeling threatened, that‘s school violence,” says Aimee Daramus , PsyD, a licensed clinical psychologist.

This article explores the types, causes, and impact of school violence and suggests some steps that can help prevent it.

Types of School Violence

School violence can take many forms. These are some of the types of school violence:

• Physical violence , which includes any kind of physical aggression, the use of weapons, as well as criminal acts like theft or arson.
• Psychological violence , which includes emotional and verbal abuse . This may involve insulting, threatening, ignoring, isolating, rejecting, name-calling, humiliating, ridiculing, rumor-mongering, lying, or punishing another person.
• Sexual violence , which includes sexual harrassment, sexual intimidation, unwanted touching, sexual coercion, and rape .
• Bullying , which can take physical, psychological, or sexual forms and is characterized by repeated and intentional aggression toward another person.
• Cyberbullying , which includes sexual or psychological abuse by people connected through school on social media or other online platforms. This may involve posting false information, hurtful comments, malicious rumors, or embarrassing photos or videos online. Cyberbullying can also take the form of excluding someone from online groups or networks.

Causes of School Violence

There often isn’t a simple, straightforward reason why someone engages in school violence. A child may have been bullied or rejected by a peer, may be under a lot of academic pressure, or may be enacting something they’ve seen at home, in their neighborhood, on television, or in a video game.

These are some of the risk factors that can make a child more likely to commit school violence:

• Poor academic performance
• Prior history of violence
• Hyperactive or impulsive personality
• Mental health conditions
• Witnessing or being a victim of violence
• Alcohol, drug, or tobacco use
• Dysfunctional family dynamic
• Domestic violence or abuse
• Access to weapons
• Delinquent peers
• Poverty or high crime rates in the community

It’s important to note that the presence of these factors doesn’t necessarily mean that the child will engage in violent behavior.

Impact of School Violence

Below, Dr. Daramus explains how school violence can affect children who commit, experience, and witness it, as well as their parents.

Impact on Children Committing Violence

Children who have been victims of violence or exposed to it in some capacity sometimes believe that becoming violent is the only way they‘ll ever be safe.

When they commit violence, they may experience a sense of satisfaction when their emotional need for strength or safety is satisfied. That‘s short-lived however, because they start to fear punishment or retribution, which triggers anger that can sometimes lead to more violence if they’re scared of what might happen to them if they don’t protect themselves. 

Children need help to try and break the cycle; they need to understand that violence can be temporarily satisfying but that it leads to more problems.

Impact on Children Victimized by School Violence

Victims of school violence may get physically injured and experience cuts, scrapes, bruises, broken bones, gunshot wounds, concussions, physical disability, or death.

Emotionally speaking, the child might experience depression , anxiety, or rage. Their academic performance may suffer because it can be hard to focus in school when all you can think about is how to avoid being hurt again.

School violence is traumatic and can cause considerable psychological distress. Traumatic experiences can be difficult for adults too; however, when someone whose brain is not fully developed yet experiences trauma, especially if it’s over a long time, their brain can switch to survival mode, which can affect their attention, concentration, emotional control, and long-term health. 

According to a 2019 study, children who have experienced school violence are at risk for long-term mental and physical health conditions, including attachment disorders, substance abuse, obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and respiratory conditions.

The more adverse childhood experiences someone has, the greater the risk to their physical and mental health as an adult.

Impact on Children Who Witness School Violence

Children who witness school violence may feel guilty about seeing it and being too afraid to stop it. They may also feel threatened, and their brain may react in a similar way to a child who has faced school violence.

Additionally, when children experience or witness trauma , their basic beliefs about life and other people are often changed. They no longer believe that the world is safe, which can be damaging to their mental health.

For a child to be able to take care of themselves as they get older, they need to first feel safe and cared for. Learning to cope with threats is an advanced lesson that has to be built on a foundation of feeling safe and self-confident.

Children who have experienced or witnessed school violence can benefit from therapy, which can help them process the trauma, regulate their emotions, and learn coping skills to help them heal.

Impact on Parents

Parents react to school violence in all kinds of ways. Some parents encourage their children to bully others, believing that violence is strength. Some try to teach their children how to act in a way that won’t attract bullying or other violence, but that never works and it may teach the child to blame themselves for being bullied. 

Others are proactive and try to work with the school or challenge the school if necessary, to try and keep their child safe. 

It can be helpful to look out for warning signs of violence, which can include:

• Talking about or playing with weapons of any kind
• Harming pets or other animals
• Threatening or bullying others
• Talking about violence, violent movies, or violent games
• Speaking or acting aggressively

It’s important to report these signs to parents, teachers, or school authorities. The child may need help and support, and benefit from intervention .

Preventing School Violence

Dr. Daramus shares some steps that can help prevent school violence:

• Report it to the school: Report any hint of violent behavior to school authorities. Tips can be a huge help in fighting school violence. Many schools allow students to report tips anonymously.
• Inform adults: Children who witness or experience violence should keep telling adults (parents, teachers, and counselors) until someone does something. If an adult hears complaints about a specific child from multiple people, they may be able to protect other students and possibly help the child engaging in violence to learn different ways.
• Reach out to people: Reach out to children or other people at the school who seem to be angry or upset, or appear fascinated with violence. Reach out to any child, whether bullied, bullying, or neither, who seems to have anxiety, depression, or trouble managing emotions. Most of the time the child won’t be violent, but you’ll have helped them anyway by being supportive.

A Word From Verywell

School violence can be traumatic for everyone involved, particularly children. It’s important to take steps to prevent it because children who witness or experience school violence may suffer physical and mental health consequences that can persist well into adulthood.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Preventing school violence .

UNESCO. What you need to know about school violence and bullying .

UNESCO. School violence and bullying .

Nemours Foundation. School violence: what students can do .

Ehiri JE, Hitchcock LI, Ejere HO, Mytton JA. Primary prevention interventions for reducing school violence . Cochrane Database Syst Rev . 2017;2017(3):CD006347. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD006347.pub2

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Understanding school violence .

Ferrara P, Franceschini G, Villani A, Corsello G. Physical, psychological and social impact of school violence on children . Italian Journal of Pediatrics . 2019;45(1):76. doi:10.1186/s13052-019-0669-z

By Sanjana Gupta Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

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Presentations of family violence in different relationships and communities

How perpetrators use family violence behaviours across the community.

Understanding presentations of how perpetrators use family violence behaviours across the community starts with the recognition of the high prevalence experiences and the impact of family violence for:

• women and women as mothers (and carers) in an intimate partner relationship with the person using violence
• children and young people from the perpetrator (usually a father/parent or other carer).

This section is then structured to describe particular experiences of victim survivors in relationships with perpetrators within and outside of each community, including:

• victim survivors from Aboriginal community who experience family violence from both non-Aboriginal perpetrators and Aboriginal people who use violence
• victim survivors from diverse communities who experience family violence from people who may or may not identify with the same diverse community
• where victim survivors and/or the person using violence may each have specific complex health and mental health or compounding risk issues, of the same or other presentations.

Aboriginal people are recognised as our nation’s First Peoples. Aboriginal people are described throughout this document separately from ‘diverse’ communities.

Both Aboriginal people and people from diverse communities experience structural inequality, barriers and discrimination, and these are described in the following sections.

It is important to consider the victim survivor as a whole person when assessing how the perpetrator is targeting their family violence behaviours, as well as their access to your service.

For example, consider the experiences and barriers for people with disabilities and recognise this may be only one aspect of their identity .

The perpetrator may target the person’s other identities and experiences, which you also need to consider to ensure safe, accessible responses.

The information in the following sections will inform your understanding of how victim survivors from all communities can experience any combination of family violence risk factors, including and in addition to the specific common presentations of risk outlined in the victim survivor–focused Responsibility 7 .

Note: Use of gendered language

The prevalence of family violence against women and children, and against women as mothers and carers, is well established and recognised across the service system.

Acknowledging this, when specifically talking about this predominant experience, this section uses gendered language, particularly in relation to:

• the predominant presentation of cisgender male perpetrators in intimate partner relationships with cisgender female victim survivors
• the experience of mothers, including damage to the mother–child bond caused by the perpetrator’s (predominantly the father’s) behaviours.

The term ‘mother/carer’ refers to any parent/carer who is not using violence (not a perpetrator).

Gendered language is not used when describing experiences of family violence towards and across LGBTIQ communities.

Further, there is a continually evolving evidence base suggesting similar rates and forms of family violence occur across LGBTIQ communities. [70]

Any shifts in use of gendered language are not intended to diminish any experiences of family violence, which can occur across all communities, gender identities and relationship types.

Men’s experience as victim survivors

Men can experience family violence. The prevalence of men experiencing family violence is a smaller proportion of all victim survivors, and is largely due to violence from other men. [71]

The experience of male victims is outlined in each section providing guidance on the experience and impact of risk across relationships, including against Aboriginal men, men from diverse communities and older men experiencing elder abuse.

Developing your knowledge

Continue to reflect on and develop your own knowledge about identities, barriers and experiences of family violence across the community.

If you lack confidence or feel ill-equipped to respond, you can engage in secondary consultation and referral with organisations that specialise in working with particular community groups (Refer to Table 2 , and the victim survivor and perpetrator-focused Responsibilities 5 and 6 ).

12.1.1 Intimate partner family violence perpetrated against women

Family violence and sexual assault are the most common and pervasive forms of violence against women. Family violence is the greatest contributor to ill health and premature death in women under the age of 45 years. [72]

Key statistics [73]

• On average, one woman a week is murdered in Australia by her current or former partner. [74]
• Aboriginal women are 32 times more likely than other women to be hospitalised and 10 times more likely to die from violent assault. [75]
• Women and girls with disabilities are estimated to be twice as likely to experience violence as those without disabilities. [76]

Common perpetrator behaviours towards women

Common tactics perpetrators use towards women (usually by current or former male intimate partners) include:

• constant monitoring and regulation of her everyday activities such as phone calls, social interactions and dress
• evaluating her every move against an unpredictable, ever-changing and unknowable ‘rule book’ [77]
• constant put downs about anything and everything she does
• having no control or say about the household finances
• criticism of her parenting skills
• disrespectful behaviour towards her in front of their children and others
• threats and actual physical violence against her, their children and pets
• being blamed for the violence
• surveillance using smartphones and other technology. [78]

Impacts of perpetrator behaviours

A perpetrator’s use of family violence can cause physical injuries, disability, miscarriage, sexually transmitted diseases and homicide of victims.

It can also result in indirect health or mental health-related symptoms for victim survivors, such as headaches, irritable bowel syndrome and self-harming behaviour.

As a result of a perpetrator’s use of family violence, victim survivors might also experience depression, fear, anxiety, low self-esteem, social isolation, financial debt, loss of freedom, and feelings of degradation and loss of dignity, and pre-existing disabilities and mental illnesses may be exacerbated.

Women who experience a perpetrator’s pattern of coercive and controlling behaviours over time are also likely to have trauma responses or to be diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Symptoms include nightmares, flashbacks, emotional detachment, insomnia, avoidance of reminders (‘triggers’) and extreme distress when exposed to these, irritability, hypervigilance (watching for anger or signs of violence), memory loss, excessive startle response, clinical depression and anxiety, and loss of appetite.

Women with family violence experiences are up to six times more likely to use substances. This ‘self-medication’ can be understood as a way of coping with and managing the impact of trauma.

While every woman’s experience of family violence is unique, for many, the perpetrator’s abuse increases in frequency over time, rather than being a one-off incident.

Family violence often starts with an intimate partner’s apparent love transforming into family violence through use of controlling and intimidating behaviour. Over time, the perpetrator will increasingly isolate the woman from friends and family.

A perpetrator’s use of physical or sexual violence may not occur until the relationship is well established, or it may not occur at all. The perpetrator’s abusive, violent, threatening and controlling behaviours create an environment of fear and constant anxiety in their home and relationship where women and children should feel safe and secure.

Recognising common perpetrator presentations and narratives

Men’s use of violence against a female intimate partner is the most common and pervasive form of violence against women. [79]

Key statistics:

• Men perpetrate 90% of all violent crime in Australia. [80]
• Of the 2.2 million women who have experienced male intimate partner violence since the age of 15, 1.8million experienced physical violence and 0.9 million experienced sexual violence. [81]
• Nearly 1 million women had experienced multiple incidents of physical violence by the same man. [82]
• Women with a disability were more likely to experience multiple incidents of violence by a male perpetrator. [83]

Many men minimise their use of violence or abuse and seek ways to justify or avoid responsibility for their actions and their impacts.

In early conversations, men who use violence will describe the family violence as a ‘one-off incident’, related to being tired, stressed or pressured. This may shift over time to narratives that disclose patterns of violent and coercive behaviour.

This change may occur in response to managing or dismissing an internal narrative that they are inherently bad or problematic, which can relieve or minimise feelings of shame, guilt or taking responsibility for their behaviour.

Perpetrators rarely disclose physical or sexual violence in their interactions with the service or justice systems. It is more likely they will present a story about their life, relationship or family, or a specific and sometimes repetitive negative narrative about their current or former partner.

This can often take the form of criticisms and judgements of their partner, which may be subtle or overt.

Examples include:

• the lack of cleanliness or orderliness within the family home
• the use of finances, which the perpetrator may feel justified to direct due to their ‘breadwinner’ status
• complaining about or indicating non-support of their partner’s decisions or goals
• taking sides with those their partner might be in conflict with, for example, other family members
• always pointing out their partner’s shortcomings or failings
• complaining about their partner not understanding their position and the stresses they are under – from work, family life, finances or friends – nor supporting their coping mechanisms, such as excessive alcohol use.

During your engagement with men, you should develop a picture of the victim survivor’s identity.

In particular, take note of perceived ‘vulnerabilities’ the perpetrator may exploit to create isolation or control.

Some men, particularly those who have had multiple relationships where they have used violent and controlling behaviours, exhibit a pattern of choosing intimate relationships with partners they perceive to be ‘vulnerable’. In these situations, power dynamics are commonly exploited for control and domination, for example:

• non-Aboriginal men towards Aboriginal women
• Australian citizens towards non-visa holders
• able-bodied men to women with disability.

Service access and engagement barriers for perpetrators

The lack of help-seeking among men is a serious issue in the Victorian community.

Men’s help-seeking for emotional distress is consistently lower than that of women. This directly contributes to mental illness and maladaptive coping.

For example, men are almost three times as likely as women to have a substance abuse disorder [84] and are at greater risk of suicide. [85]

These issues can be linked to gender socialisation and gendered values associated with masculinity, such as stoicism and invulnerability. [86]

Research has explored the extent to which constructs of masculinity are either protective buffers or risk factors to men’s health. It finds that conformity to masculine norms are risks to men’s overall health outcomes, principally due to less help-seeking and negative attitudes towards psychological treatment. [87]

Although initial presentation to services is an important indicator, help-seeking should be understood as broader than the act of asking for help or seeking out a service.

Once a man has entered a service or begun a course of treatment, masculine norms related to self-sufficiency may interfere with treatment processes and lead to deficits in the therapeutic alliance. [88]

Fundamentally, service users engaging in services must believe that they cannot fix their problem alone. For men who hold ideals of invulnerability, the treatment process poses very particular challenges and threats to identity and self-concept.

Men who use or are at risk of using family violence are often able to identify a need for early intervention before their behaviour reaches the point of police and court-based intervention. [89]

However, this does not always translate to help-seeking, with a common barrier shown to be a lack of knowledge about the specific points, places, and contexts in which opportunities to engage with help might exist.

A proportion of men are willing to access professional help, but the ways that such help is presented to them is of particular importance.

12.1.2 Family violence against parents/carers (usually mothers/women) [90]

Perpetrators’ use of family violence impacts on non-violent parents who are usually women, other caregivers, kin or guardians. [91] [92]

Perpetrators often use various harmful tactics to deliberately undermine, manipulate and damage the mother/carer–child relationship.

This may be based on social norms and gender stereotypes about women as primary carers who are responsible for children’s health, wellbeing and development.

This will be affected further if the perpetrator has control over financial resources required for parenting.

Professionals need to be aware of these tactics to avoid making judgements about women’s parenting.

The way a woman may resist the violence can be misinterpreted by professionals and others as ‘poor parenting’.

Tactics perpetrators use to damage the mother–child relationship can include:

• threatening to use the family law and child protection system to attack and undermine the mother–child bond
• creating an environment of instability and harsh discipline in the home
• conditioning children to misinterpret their use of coercive and controlling tactics and its impact on the family in a way that leads children to blame their mother, minimise the abuse and distance themselves from her (this is sometimes called ‘maternal alienation’)
• actively belittling women in front of their children through emotional abuse, name-calling, intimidation and humiliation (such as expressing sexual jealousy)
• isolating women from their friends and family and preventing them from accessing services to support their parenting.

These perpetrator tactics have significant emotional, social, health and financial impacts on women and their mothering, causing women to lose confidence in their parenting; and affecting their ability to be as engaged with their children as they want to be.

The experience of family violence is exhausting, distressing and isolating. As a result, women may be less attuned to their children’s needs.

The perpetrator’s tactics of coercion and control may affect a woman’s ability to parent in a number of ways.

Several studies have found that perpetrators’ use of family violence results in women having a reduced sense of control over their parenting.

This is often made worse because of a perpetrator’s control of financial and material resources, leaving women with few resources to look after their children, such as paying for nutritious food or school excursions.

In this environment, the woman may find it difficult to be an available, energetic, patient parent, to focus attention on her children’s needs, and to keep track of all the various tasks that parenting requires.

Also, if a woman’s parenting is being heavily criticised by her partner, she may lose confidence and develop an indecisive parenting style.

She may also overcompensate for the perpetrator’s abusive or controlling behaviour towards children by not creating or maintaining healthy boundaries for them.

The constant stress and pressure experienced by women who are struggling to care for and protect their children while being targets of violence may manifest as depression, anxiety or substance abuse. This can further affect their parenting and relationships with their children.

Children experiencing family violence may also display behavioural issues and have complex emotional needs that present further parenting challenges. Sometimes this results in further criticism of her parenting by the perpetrator, professionals or others.

Identifying and responding to situations where these behaviours present as adolescent family violence is described in the victim survivor–focused MARAM Practice Guides.

Practice considerations

Practice considerations for responding to parent/carers experiencing family violence include, but are not limited to the following:

Increased risk of harm

• The perpetrator’s violence often escalates when the woman/partner is planning to leave or has left the relationship, with an increased risk of assault, stalking and murder for both women and their children.
• Many family violence homicides occur during the separation period.

Decreased availability to children

• The perpetrator is jealous of her time/attention given to her children.
• The perpetrator interrupts breast-feeding, meal-time, story-time, sleeping routines.
• The perpetrator actively draws her attention to him when her attention is being given to the children.
• The perpetrator expects her to do all the care of children and household tasks without assistance from him.

Financial pressures

• The perpetrator withholds money and other resources.
• Loans and other debts or credit contracts may be taken out in her name.
• She may have to leave her job if she needs to be relocated for safety.
• This affects children because of the lack of material resources to support them.

Conflicting concerns and priorities

• Not wanting to disrupt her children’s lives, education, and links to family and community.
• Believing it is in her children’s best interests to be close to their father.
• Believing she is protecting her children from the violence by ‘hiding’ it from them.
• Continuing to care for her partner and hoping he will change (many women do not want to leave the relationship – they just want the violence to stop).
• For some Aboriginal women, the fear of risking their connections to extended kinship and family networks and to land or country.
• For some women with disabilities, reliance on, or the fear of losing a family member from whom they receive disability support.
• For some immigrant and refugee women, the fear of losing their visa status or residency entitlements.
• Wanting to avoid the stigma associated with being a single parent.

Social isolation and its effects

• The perpetrator prevents her from leaving the house, engaging socially or with family, or accessing support to parent.
• Feelings of shame and guilt about the violence and its impacts on her children, or believing it is her fault.
• Fear of being isolated or ostracised by her community or culture.
• Fear of being judged by others, particularly about her parenting.
• Difficulty making decisions because she has been cut off from friends and family, is exhausted, and/or lacks confidence in her own judgement.

Barriers to accessing the system

• The perpetrator attends all appointments with her or does not allow her to access services.
• Women experiencing family violence may not know there are support services that can help them.
• Women may not know about the kinds of support available to them; they may feel that services will not be able to help with their situation.
• Women may be concerned that services or professionals will judge their parenting negatively.
• Women may not have access to money and may not know where financial support is available.
• A lack of safe, accessible and affordable housing means women may have limited options or may not be aware of their available options.

Family violence often commences or increases in frequency and severity during pregnancy. At this time, perpetrators can feel that their position or role in their partner’s life is threatened and that their partner is emotionally detaching from them.

They may also feel fearful of decreased connection and/or intimacy and create unhelpful thoughts about rejection.

Lack of intimacy and emotional connection, including during sex, can feel threatening to some men and the loss of this can leave them feeling abandoned. Increased controlling behaviours can commence or escalate quickly at this time.

Some men will openly disclose deep resentment about their partner, stemming from the time of pregnancy. They may express this with statements like: ‘she’s been cold’, or ‘everything changed when she got pregnant’.

Following the birth of a child, men may disclose feeling that they are not ‘needed’ or are ‘superfluous’ to the emotional sphere in the family home.

They may feel that their ‘expectations’ or feeling of entitlement to sexual connection and intimacy are no longer being met by their partner.

Perpetrators often take the role of parental expert, pointing out the other caregiver’s shortcomings. They may present these narratives through criticism, including:

• how the mother or other caregiver is failing the children and them in their parenting
• blaming the mother/caregiver’s parents for their partner’s parenting approaches and learned skills
• dismissing the other caregiver’s parenting and ridiculing them in front of the children or others
• presenting as the expert in a very logical way in public that further humiliates the other caregiver, including making complaints to schools and child protection
• focusing on children’s medications and health issues and the perceived inability of the mother or other caregiver to manage the issue
• removing or reducing the mother’s ability to breastfeed by destroying stored breast milk or forced weaning
• disappointment or anger at the lack of physical intimacy since having children or increased pressure for sexual intercourse
• blaming adolescent children’s challenging behaviours on the mother/other caregiver, claiming they are responsible for ‘not bringing the children up in the right way’ and being ‘too soft on them’, and that this is the reason for current behaviour.

People using family violence can often feel resentful towards their partner or other caregiver if pushed to engage with services.

These narratives serve to block the process of responsibility-taking, inviting collusion from professionals.

Men’s Behaviour Change Program participants have been found to hold varied attitudes towards their current or former partner, ranging from wanting to restore their relationships to verbalising significant anger and resentment. [93]

People using family violence have varied levels of motivation to take steps towards safety and change for the benefit of their partner or other caregiver. For professionals who have a role to work with parents who use violence, the focus of intervention is creating a safe and appropriate co-parenting relationship, for the promotion of children’s safety and wellbeing.

Acknowledging pregnancy and new father/parenthood is a useful opportunity for the person using violence to discuss how they are feeling, thinking or responding to their new situation, and for professionals to hear the narrative they are constructing about their partner and about themselves in this new role.

12.1.3 Family violence against children and young people

Children are victim survivors of family violence in their own right, whether they are directly targeted by a perpetrator, or they are exposed to or witness violence or its impacts on parent/carer and/or other family members.

Exposure to family violence is a significant risk factor that impedes the development, safety and wellbeing (including education) of children and young people.

Children and young people do not have to be physically present during violence to be negatively affected by it, or to be considered victim survivors.

Exposure to violence can include:

• hearing violence
• being aware of violence or its impacts
• being used or blamed as a trigger for family violence
• seeing or experiencing the consequences of family violence, including impacts on availability of the primary caregiver and on the parent–child relationship.

Essentially, where a child is part of a family in which a perpetrator is using family violence, they must be considered a victim survivor of that violence in their own right, even if they are physically removed from the situation (such as staying with friends or another family member).

It is important to note that children have historically not been understood as victim survivors in their own right, and their specific wellbeing and safety needs have not been adequately identified or addressed.

For example, a disciplinary approach may be taken by professionals to children or young people displaying challenging behaviours, without considering that this behaviour may be the result of exposure to family violence or other abuse.

Infants are especially vulnerable due to their reliance on adult caregivers, yet they are least likely to receive a service response.

This has reduced the evidence and data available, and it means outcomes for children are not well understood and therefore only limited specific practice responses have been developed.

Siblings are likely to be affected differently by the experience of family violence, and it is important to understand the different developmental impacts of family violence across the life span.

For example, a toddler may not be able to speak about their experience of family violence but may display cognitive or behavioural changes or issues.

Younger children are also likely to have different risks and needs to an older child or young person, given their stage of cognitive, social and emotional development.

Guidance on observable signs of trauma that may indicate family violence are outlined further in victim survivor–focused Responsibility 2 .

In the MARAM Framework, ‘unborn children’ refers to those in-utero during pregnancy, ‘children’ are considered to be those under the age of 18, and ‘young people’ specifically refers to older children, typically adolescents and pre-adolescents 10 years of age and older.

Because children and young people are dependent on adults, and as they are still developing physically, cognitively, emotionally and socially, they are especially vulnerable to the long-term impacts of family violence.

While this section specifically refers to people younger than the age of 18, the characteristics, impacts and barriers discussed in this section may apply to other age groups.

For example, the term ‘young person’ is commonly used to refer to people aged up to 21, or sometimes 25, noting that many young people older than 18 years of age remain in the care of their parents and are not living independently, and that brain development continues at least up until age 25.

There is now a strong evidence base that shows:

• the effects of physical and emotional violence and abuse experienced by women during pregnancy can affect the unborn child and their brain development at a very early stage
• negative experiences in the first three years of life have long-lasting effects on brain development, especially where a child’s primary attachments (that is, their relationships with their primary caregivers, usually parents) are undermined or compromised
• because early childhood attachment, safety and wellbeing provide the foundation for physical, social and emotional development, learning, behaviour and health through school years and into adult life, trauma during this period can have significant lifelong effects. For example, later in life, they are more likely to abuse substances, be involved in crime, lack skills in maintaining respectful relationships with others including partners, and have poor parenting practices
• multiple negative and traumatic experiences can have a compounding effect where the impact of each trauma is multiplied, which is sometimes referred to as ‘cumulative harm’
• young people who experience family violence (or other forms of abuse) have a higher risk of either experiencing further violence in their future relationships, or perpetrating violence themselves.

Impacts of perpetrator behaviour and use of family violence on children’s familial relationships

The attachment of children and young people to parents and caregivers is key to their development, safety and wellbeing, and can be significantly impaired by family violence.

The relationship between a caregiver, who is a victim survivor, and their child is often affected by the perpetrator’s pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour.

For example:

• children might feel unable to trust that their mother will protect them, particularly as perpetrators often undermine her parenting or manipulate the children’s perception of their mother. This may be compounded if the impact of the violence on children has not yet been acknowledged
• women may believe they are protecting their children from violence by ‘hiding’ it from them. Conversely, older children and young people may also try to hide these impacts from their mother, seeking to protect her from further distress
• professionals may interpret children’s behaviour as ‘difficult’ or ‘defiant’ without realising that children and young people are experiencing significant psychological, emotional and behavioural consequences of family violence, including anger, fear, trauma, sadness, shame, guilt, confusion, helplessness and despair. Additionally, older children and young people may withhold information from professionals because of a sense of shame or guilt
• children and young people may also feel a sense of loyalty towards the perpetrator, especially when the perpetrator is their father, which can create significant stress and tension for them. Sometimes perpetrators can appear caring and loving to their children, while manipulating the children’s attitudes towards their mother, or may be alternately loving and abusive to the children.

As children and young people’s emotional maturity is still developing, they may be less equipped to understand and cope with the complexity of a situation where one parent is using violence against another (or against the child themselves). This poor modelling can affect their understanding of healthy and unhealthy relationships.

This can contribute to an intergenerational cycle of violence, with children and young people who have experienced abuse or violence at higher risk of experiencing victimisation (women) and perpetration (men) in their own intimate relationships. [94]

Trauma-informed approaches to children experiencing family violence

Where young people have experienced family violence, abuse and/or neglect, it is important to use a trauma-informed approach that is appropriate to their age and developmental stage.

This means considering how past experiences may affect their behaviour and wellbeing, and what kind of support is required to assist them effectively. Indicators of trauma for children and young people are outlined in victim survivor–focused MARAM Practice Guide for Responsibility 2 .

Young people who use violence in the home or with an intimate partner must be provided with responses that prioritise the safety of victim survivors and ensure the young person takes responsibility for their harmful behaviours, while providing developmentally appropriate wellbeing supports to that young person.

Young people using violence may also be victim survivors at the same time.

Family violence is a key cause of stress in children and young people and can significantly disrupt healthy brain and personality development.

Recent evidence indicates that ongoing exposure to traumatic events as a child, such as witnessing or being the victim of family violence, results in chronic overactivity of the body’s stress response and changes to the brain’s architecture.

This can lead to behaviours such as hypervigilance and hyperactivity, affecting them throughout their lives. In serious cases, this can lead to deficits in learning, behaviour and physical and mental health and wellbeing.

Service access and engagement barriers for victim survivors

• Children and young people are often not considered to be victim survivors in their own right, instead being considered primarily or solely through their relationship to an adult victim survivor, leading to inappropriate or inadequate responses.
• Children and young people are often not directly engaged by services, due to professionals lacking confidence, or holding a view that children’s safety and wellbeing is not directly their responsibility (for example, the responsibility of the parents, or another service such as child protection).
• Responses to children and young people who use violence in the home may not be developed to respond to their specific and potentially ongoing therapeutic needs.
• Children and young people may continue to experience significant impacts of family violence after the violence has ended, because they often must continue to navigate a relationship with the perpetrating parent in shared custody arrangements.
• Often the parents’ desire for contact with their children — or the child’s expressed wishes to see their father, for example — are prioritised by families and courts over the safety of the child, even where there are intervention orders in place. This decision may assume that continued contact with their father is beneficial for the child . [95]
• Those under the age of 18 years face particular difficulties in accessing services in their own right and are more or less reliant upon an adult parent or guardian’s decision-making.
• Children and young people may legally have their will and preference overruled by adult consent, even where their response to the family violence differs.
• Children and young people have limited means to deal with their exposure to violence or express that they are experiencing violence. This may be compounded if they do not understand perpetrator behaviours as being ‘family violence’, especially if this behaviour has been normalised for them.
• Perpetrators may actively prevent children or young people from accessing services (or prevent their mother from taking them) or threaten or coerce them into not disclosing to professionals.

When responding to children and young people experiencing family violence, practice considerations include but are not limited to the following:

• Children and young people must be considered victim survivors in their own right, with their own experiences of family violence. This includes having specific threats, risks, protective factors and risk management approaches. All interventions must be considered for their impacts on every victim survivor, including children and young people.
• Responses to children and young people should take into account their age and developmental stage, as risk is likely to present quite differently depending on the age and maturity of the child.
• Where it is safe, appropriate and reasonable, a child or young person should be directly engaged with to ascertain their assessment of their risk, their identification of risk factors and their consideration of risk management strategies.
• Where it is not safe, appropriate and reasonable to engage directly with a child or young person, services should seek to collaborate with the parent who is not using violence or other professionals who interact with that child (such as schools) to ensure accurate and detailed information about the child or young person’s experience is collected and assessed.
• The child or young person’s relationships with other family members must be a core consideration of their risk assessment and management plan. This should include prioritising their safety in the context of any relationship with the perpetrator and promoting and supporting positive relationships with other family members, particularly the parent who is a victim survivor.

The wellbeing and safety needs of all children should be considered a core element of any response to family violence, and services should collaborate as appropriate to address these needs.

Men/parents who use family violence often have significant, ongoing parenting roles with children in their care. [96]

In your engagement with parents who use violence, it is important to identify whether there are children in their care, and the nature of the relationship, including contact and parenting arrangements.

While some parents/fathers disengage completely from the family following family violence and separation, there is higher risk associated with those who continue to have relationships with their children, or a strong desire to, despite parenting or intervention orders preventing or limiting this.

This is due to the proximity and opportunity to continue to use violence against children in their care, and/or use the parenting role as a continuation of violence against an adult victim survivor/parent.

When working with fathers/parents who use violence, you should focus the intervention on the expectation of high parenting standards to increase children’s safety and wellbeing.

When working with parents/fathers, you may hear or observe attitudes and narratives that indicate potential risks of them perpetrating family violence, including:

• a sense of entitlement or self-centred attitudes relating to children/parenting role
• overcontrolling or harmful parenting behaviours
• overuse of physical forms of discipline (hitting, smacking)
• anger demonstrated towards their children
• holding unrealistic expectations and poor understanding of child development
• denying any problems in their relationships with their children
• considering themselves to be good fathers
• acknowledging ‘mistakes’ in their parenting, often explaining this as a one-off (or minimising, justifying or blame-shifting to the other parent/carer)
• believing that their use of family violence had little impact on their children
• strong gender roles and expectations that differ between male and female children
• negative beliefs or attitudes in the value of non-biological, particularly male, children.

Some men also present as trying to ‘rescue’ their female partners from her single-parenting duties or previously violent relationships.

This may indicate a level of precursor controlling behaviour from entitlement and role as ‘protector’.

For example, a perpetrator may threaten a partner’s capacity or ‘right’ to children.

This may take the form of attacking the mother/parent–child bond, undermining their ability to parent, and by exacerbating fears linked to negative experiences of government service interventions.

This is particularly acute among Aboriginal communities who have experienced current and historic discriminatory government policies removing children from their families and communities.

In working with fathers/parents who use violence, it is important to understand the different behaviours or parenting approaches that are directed towards each child within the family unit.

At times, there will be particularly stark differences between the type of violence or control directed at:

• biological children versus stepchildren or other children in their care
• male compared with female children
• children with identities that are different to one or both parents. [97]

The perpetrator’s role as a parent can be a significant motivator for behavioural change. [98]

The Royal Commission noted that ‘for men new parenthood is a time that they may be more open to receiving information and skills development, as well as to considering alternative models of masculinity as they move into a new parental role’. [99]

Engaging and intervening with people who use family violence who are birth parents or have an ongoing parenting role is an important component of promoting children’s safety, wellbeing and development and supporting the non-violent parent to keep children safe.

However, interventions designed for working with parents/fathers may at times be misused by the perpetrator.

This may present as an opportunity to continue using controlling and abusive behaviour, in particular when they attempt to use attendance at a program as ‘proof of their competence as a father/parent’. [100]

Despite this challenge, when services do not proactively engage parents/carers who are using violence, a greater burden and unwarranted focus is placed on non-violent parents/carers and children who are engaging with the service.

This can result in non-violent parents/carers, often mothers, being blamed for ‘failing to protect’ their children and provided inappropriate interventions, rather than holding the parent/carer using violence responsible for exposing children to harm or directly using violence against their children.

If parenting is identified as a potential motivator, you should consider if it is safe, appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances to use this motivator, given the risk level for adult and child victim survivors, and the wellbeing and needs of the child or young person.

You should also be aware if there are system interventions, such as court-ordered parenting arrangements in place or intervention orders preventing contact.

Refer to the perpetrator-focused Responsibilities 3, 4, 7 and 8 for further guidance on using parenting as a motivator for engagement and change.

12.1.4 Family violence against Aboriginal people and communities

Aboriginal definitions of the nature and forms of family violence are broader than those used in the mainstream and reflect that Aboriginal families include extended family, kin and other community members who may not be directly related.

Family violence contributes to overall levels of violence reported by Aboriginal people and the trauma experienced within families and across family and community networks.

The use of family violence is not part of Aboriginal culture. The assumption that family violence is part of Aboriginal culture is an oppressive statement that creates barriers to people accessing services and taking accountability for changing behaviour.

This can also be internalised by young Aboriginal men, who may have grown up experiencing or witnessing family violence.

Since colonisation, Aboriginal people have experienced high levels of family violence, largely perpetrated by non-Aboriginal people against Aboriginal women and children at significantly higher levels than that experienced by non-Aboriginal women. [101]

Aboriginal women are 32 times more likely than other women to be hospitalised and 10 times more likely to die from violent assault. [102] Aboriginal men can also experience family violence.

Higher prevalence of family violence against Aboriginal people, particularly Aboriginal women, is due to a number of factors, many of which relate to the generational impact of colonisation, invasion and dispossession on Aboriginal culture and communities.

Aboriginal people experience multiple and intersecting forms of inequality and discrimination relating to culture, gender identity, sexuality, ability, spirituality and age which can compound barriers to accessing services and increase disengagement with formal supports.

There are many barriers to seeking help for Aboriginal people experiencing family violence.

These can include past and recent experiences of systemic, individual and collective racism, judgement, unconscious bias or privilege or a lack of cultural competency from services.

Systemic discrimination in the form of current and historical policies continue to affect Aboriginal people, families and communities. This creates mistrust and uncertainty in what to expect from services and their cultural relevance.

When working with Aboriginal people, families and communities, it is also important to recognise the impact of current and historical forcible child-removal policies, including family separation and disconnection from culture and country.

This presents a barrier for Aboriginal people to engage with or trust mainstream community services, as well as statutory services and justice agencies. It is important to also recognise the ongoing impact of institutionalised abuse and neglect suffered by many removed children that continues to affect Aboriginal people, families and communities.

This is reinforced with experiences of discrimination, oppression and racism within and across the community from the predominantly white dominant culture/community.

You will need to consider what this means in the context of risk and impact to the person experiencing family violence, or the person using violence.

You should also proactively remove barriers by considering and applying the principles outlined in this guide and victim survivor and perpetrator-focused Responsibility 1 .

Practice considerations for responding to family violence used against Aboriginal people include the following:

• Use a strengths-based, self-determination approach that values the strengths of Aboriginal people and the collective strengths of Aboriginal knowledge, systems and expertise — and refer to and apply the Dhelk Dja principles for addressing family violence.
• Be aware that the person using family violence or the person experiencing family violence may not be Aboriginal. The majority of family violence against Aboriginal adults and children is perpetrated by non-Aboriginal family members.
• Family violence against Aboriginal people can include perpetrators denying or disconnecting victim survivors from cultural identity and connection to family, community and culture, including denial of Traditional Owner rights. This might include people using violence exploiting lack of connection to or contact with families, culture and supports for members of the Stolen Generations who have lost contact with families of origin. Isolation from community and culture are significant concerns and are highly impactful for Aboriginal people.
• Aboriginal people may be reluctant to seek help that involves leaving their families and communities, given previous policies of dispossession and removal, including the Stolen Generations, and current high rates of child removal.
• Aboriginal children are overrepresented in child protection matters, particularly in the context of family violence. Professionals should support parents/carers seeking assistance and acknowledge and respond to fears about child protection and the possibility of children being removed from their care.
• Aboriginal people may be concerned that seeking help will create conflict in the community. For example, given the high rates of Aboriginal deaths in custody, some community members may negatively view a victim survivor’s engagement with the police and justice system. When assessing risk to Aboriginal people, you should keep in mind the context of violence and potential repercussions from other Aboriginal family members if action is taken.
• Professionals should support both Aboriginal adults’ and children’s cultural safety when undertaking family violence risk assessment and management. This means recognising inherent rights to family, community, cultural practices and identity, including when working with Aboriginal children with non-Aboriginal parents and family members. Responsibility 1 provides further guidance on cultural safety.
• Many Aboriginal people may prefer to use Aboriginal services. It is important to provide choice and service options for Aboriginal people experiencing family violence. If a family member is Aboriginal, whether they are a victim survivor or another family member, professionals can offer to connect with Aboriginal community-controlled organisations for family violence support (also refer to victim survivor–focused Responsibilities 4 and 5 ).

Recognising common presentations and narratives of people using violence

If the person using violence is non-Aboriginal, read this section in conjunction with the previous sections on the gendered drivers of family violence.

White men and men from dominant cultures and positions of power or privilege may seek to collude with professionals to exploit systemic discrimination and bias of systems and professionals against Aboriginal victim survivors.

All people using violence use common narratives including denial, minimisation, blaming the victim survivor for their use of violence, claiming to be the ‘real’ victim and justifying their use of violence.

These narratives may focus on the person’s own experience of family violence or trauma, to minimise or reduce responsibility for their violence against adult and child victim survivors.

Non-Aboriginal people using violence towards Aboriginal family members may present with narratives that attempt to use systems abuse by seeking collusion from services.

They may do this by presenting as charming or attempting to draw parallels between their own (often) white, dominant-culture male privilege and capacity and that of the professional or service. Their aim may be to exacerbate discrimination, avoid responsibility and undermine victim survivors’ access to services.

They may use negative language or make inaccurate reports to police or child protection, to misidentify an Aboriginal victim survivor as using violence as a tactic of coercive control.

People using violence towards Aboriginal victim survivors may seek to prevent them from accessing their family, community or culture for support.

They may use derogatory language about the victim survivor’s Aboriginal identity as a tactic to belittle and isolate the Aboriginal victim survivor.

The person using violence may use coercive control to force an Aboriginal victim survivor into illegal activities, exacerbating and compounding ramifications for Aboriginal victim survivors who are overrepresented in justice systems.

Violence may also be occurring beyond intimate partner relationships, within the broader family or community.

Professionals must consider these extended family relationships and unique dynamics, to identify any other coercive and controlling behaviour.

Stereotypes of Aboriginal women’s use of violence

Some services and professionals may hold biases about Aboriginal women being violent.

In this context, it is important to consider the realities of violent resistance.

Women may use force in response to patterns of violence from a predominant aggressor or person using violence. This results in many women being misidentified as a perpetrator.

Supporting women who use force requires a different risk management approach than responding to predominant aggressors/people who use family violence, due to intersecting structural inequalities, including those based on gender.

This approach must prioritise their risk management as victim survivors of family violence, and it can be supplemented with information on safety planning for self and their families.

Services must be aware that non-Aboriginal men using family violence may be more likely to exploit service stereotypes about Aboriginal women being violent.

By employing this stereotype, they can position themselves as the ‘victim’ (adopt a victim stance) and invite systems to collude with this narrative, leading to a misidentification of the (real) victim survivor.

Non-Aboriginal men who use family violence often use their position of privilege and confidence in using the service system to seek collusion from services and professionals to represent their own position or to further perpetrate systems abuse.

This may exacerbate barriers for Aboriginal victim survivors in receiving services, such as through increased fear of child removal for adult victim survivor parent/carers.

Service access and engagement barriers for perpetrators and people using violence

If working with a non-Aboriginal man using violence against an intimate partner, refer to guidance about service access and engagement barriers in previous sections. These include help-seeking and attitudes and feelings towards victim survivors including parenting responsibilities.

In addition to these barriers to engagement, non-Aboriginal people who use violence towards Aboriginal family and community may present with specific tactics that invite collusion from professionals and exploit their privilege to ‘make invisible’ their own violence.

Where services and professionals recognise these tactics and behaviours, it is important to respond using a balanced approach to keep the person engaged with the service system (refer to Responsibility 3 ). Identify opportunities to work collaboratively with other professionals to minimise further systems abuse and exploitation.

Aboriginal people who use violence also experience similar service access barriers that Aboriginal victim survivors experience. This is due to systemic inequality, barriers and discriminatory policies, practices and systems.

Aboriginal people using violence also live within the context of historical and current dynamics in which family violence occurs. This includes the impacts of colonisation, loss of culture, trauma accumulated across generations, access to employment, connection to Country and kinship relations, and the historical and current impacts of forced child removal.

Services and professionals must avoid stereotypes and biases related to family violence in Aboriginal communities to prevent additional barriers for Aboriginal people to access services.

Aboriginal-led programs have an essential role to play in modelling healthy, respectful relationships to support Aboriginal men to reconnect to culture and Country, and to maintain and preserve safe and respectful behaviours in their relationships.

Practice considerations for responding to Aboriginal victim survivors will also assist you to engage with an Aboriginal person using violence. Some additional things to consider include the following:

• Apply Dhelk Dja principles, culturally safe, trauma and violence–informed practices, led by a self-determination approach and empowering individuals and community in all engagement to actively address service access barriers.
• Focus on safety for self and safety for family and community, being aware of and supporting the need for Aboriginal-led holistic healing and therapeutic services for people who use violence, while holding and promoting accountability from the beginning of engagement. [103]
• Use a person-centred, ‘person in their context’ approach, to consider the meaning and significance of connections to family, community and culture for the person using family violence. Seek cultural consultation to provide a culturally safe trauma-informed approach.
• Reflect on the potential consequences of your engagement and actions to the safety and wellbeing of adult and child victim survivors and community.
• Understand that Aboriginal people may choose to use mainstream services at times, for example to maintain anonymity, and all services must be prepared to provide a culturally responsive and safe response.

12.1.5 Family violence against older people (elder abuse)

Elder abuse is a form of family violence. In the Victorian family violence context, this is defined as any behaviour of a perpetrator as defined in the FVPA where it has occurred within any family or family-like (including unpaid carer) relationship where there is an implication of trust, and which results in harm to an older person. [104] This includes any family violence risk factor that applies to an adult victim survivor from a perpetrator’s behaviour.

There is growing recognition of elder abuse as a form of family violence, and greater attention on how the family violence service system responds to older people. This is enhancing the evidence base of prevalence and best-practice responses.

It is important to recognise that older people are a diverse cohort. All older people can experience family violence.

Most older people live independently and do not require care or support; however, they can still experience violence from adult children and other family members.

Given the prevalence and impact of family violence from adult children, this guidance has a particular focus on older people who do require care and support – as well as where an adult child is themselves in a period of transition and is relying on an older person for care and support.

As with all family violence, some forms of abuse may constitute criminal acts, such as financial [105] , physical, sexual abuse and neglect. [106]

An adult child who misappropriates their parent's finances may have committed a crime such as theft if they have not sought permission to take the funds and have no intention of returning them.

Elder abuse may be the continued experience of family violence from intimate partners which may have occurred over a number of years. It may have commenced or escalated more recently. For older people experiencing intimate partner violence, the perpetrator profile is generally the same as if they were a younger person experiencing intimate partner violence.

The use of power and control by a perpetrator of elder abuse is similar to that used by perpetrators of intimate partner violence. However, some forms of elder abuse can have a different perpetrator profile.

Older people can also experience forms of elder abuse from other family members, such as intergenerational abuse (for example, from an adult child to parent/s or grandchild/ren to grandparent/s).

Women remain over-represented as victim survivors of elder abuse generally, however, more men experience abuse as an older person than in other contexts. The perpetrator profile can also differ, where for example, women are more likely to be perpetrators in situations of intergenerational abuse than in other contexts.

In addition to gender, the drivers of elder abuse can also include ageism. When not perpetrated by an intimate partner or carer of the person experiencing family violence, elder abuse is most commonly recognised as perpetrated by adult children.

It commonly manifests as financial abuse from adult children or other family members arising from ageist attitudes of entitlement to a parent or relative’s assets. [107]

Older people are recognised as an at-risk age group as they may be in a period of transition, which can increase dependence on family/carers.

This transition may create real and/or perceived ‘vulnerabilities’ that are targeted by perpetrators of elder abuse. This may also lead to discrimination from services or by society at large due to broader ageist attitudes.

Perceived vulnerabilities can include:

• recent loss of a spouse
• declining or diminished mental capacity or physical health from age-related diseases
• becoming marginalised and devalued due to ageism
• social and community connections diminishing over time, leading to isolation which increases susceptibility to mistreatment and abuse
• loss of economic power, or the accumulation of substantial assets
• language or financial literacy barriers reducing access to information, services and resources
• dependence on others
• poor or limited housing options.

Dependence is not a defining characteristic of family violence. In some situations, the older person may be independent but is supporting the person using family violence, particularly in providing housing or financial support.

For example, adult children with a history of perpetration or who are currently using family violence towards their partner or another family member, may return home and perpetrate violence against their parents.

Adult children may be receiving support from their parents in relation to use of alcohol and drugs, gambling and/or criminal activity.

Older people may feel obligated to support their children in these situations.

Older people sometimes want to protect their family relationships and will put the needs of other family members before their own.

They may be more likely to seek alternatives to legal pathways when reaching out for assistance, as they simply want the perpetrator’s behaviour to stop.

Older people may try to avoid any further justice or legal consequences for the perpetrator in the hope of preserving the relationship, reducing further abuse or not wanting the perpetrator to ‘get into trouble’ from police and justice interventions.

How older people are considered within family and community relationships can be deeply bound to culture or faith.

Violence against older people must be informed by a recognition and understanding of their family structure, cultural or faith background.

There may also be gendered and normative expectations of women to remain in abusive relationships, or that family violence matters should be dealt with privately or within the family.

Some older people may believe abusive behaviour is a normal part of relationships or of ageing or hold fears that if an abusive caregiver is removed, they will lose access to care, or will face an unchosen change in living circumstances.

Violence against older Aboriginal people must be informed by an understanding of the context of Aboriginal family violence. This includes their many-layered experiences, the importance of familial and community roles that Aboriginal people and Elders hold, and the relationships of Aboriginal families and communities. You can work collaboratively with other services with expertise in this area to improve your understanding and response, if needed.

Other family members may also notice controlling or abusive behaviours but may feel unclear about who to turn to for support. They may also not want to exacerbate family tensions or other relationship issues.

This may signify unconscious biases and ageism, leading to a perception that elder abuse warrants less attention or need for intervention than equivalent forms of family violence occurring in other relationships and community contexts. This can be particularly true for intimate partner violence between older people. Family members or services may have an assumption that:

• intimate partner violence does not exist in older relationships
• violence from an older intimate partner is less severe than that perpetrated by younger intimate partners
• that ageing limits a person’s sexual expression or the likelihood of sexual abuse. [108]

These incorrect assumptions can be blind spots that affect the way services provide access, and assess and respond to risk, as professionals may not recognise behaviour as controlling or abusive.

Seek secondary consultation with specialist services to provide safe responses to older people, including Aboriginal Elders or older people from diverse communities, and refer to victim survivor–focused Responsibilities 5 and 6 .

Specific practice considerations relating to all MARAM Framework risk factors for older people are outlined in victim survivor–focused Responsibility 7 .

Practice considerations for responding to older people experiencing family violence (elder abuse) include, but are not limited, to the following:

• Be aware of ageism from services and your own potential for unconscious bias and ageism. This can include not recognising their experience as family violence or undermining the person’s agency, such as by not engaging with them directly but instead engaging and potentially colluding with adult children who might be perpetrators.
• A person should be presumed to have capacity unless there is evidence to suggest otherwise.
• Capacity can fluctuate — a person may have decision-making capacity for some decisions and not others, and this may be temporary or permanent.
• A person has decision-making capacity if appropriate supports and adjustments can overcome any capacity issues.
• Professionals should not make assumptions based on the person’s appearance or the perceived merits of decisions they make. [109]
• For older people with cognitive disability, capability to engage with services, including self-assessed levels of risk may be affected. Ensure appropriate supports and adjustments are provided for older people with disabilities or whose cognition is affected to address any issues with capacity. [110] This may include communication supports (for example, speech pathologists), formal or informal advocacy, and different communication strategies (written, Easy English, and verbal reiteration).
• Be careful not to assume someone is incompetent or has dementia based on how they present when they may be experiencing trauma, such as how this is expressed as grief.
• There are few specialist services working with older people experiencing family violence. Universal services might not be aware of relevant services and how to connect service users to them. Professionals can connect and collaborate with different services in relation to issues arising from family violence, such as financial and legal services to put in place financial counselling, enduring powers of attorney, wills and advance care directives.
• Victoria Police can conduct welfare checks at the request of service providers. They can also provide support relating to financial abuse.

Any behaviour that is recognised as a family violence risk factor can be perpetrated against an older person.

The most commonly identified and visible form of elder abuse is the perpetration of financial abuse.

This may stem from the perpetrator’s ageist beliefs or attitudes (linked to the devaluing of older people in society). The perpetrator may also have a self-perceived entitlement to the older person’s resources, placing their own needs or desires above the needs of the older person.

Perpetrators often use psychological or emotional abuse to enact the financial abuse.

Some perpetrators use family violence in the form of neglect, such as intentional acts or omissions of care from family members who are responsible for care, including under guardianship arrangements.

People who perpetrate elder abuse may exhibit some of the following behaviours or narratives:

• Perpetrators may exploit or exacerbate actual or perceived ‘vulnerabilities’ to isolate and control the older person. This may include an adult child perpetrator leveraging a stereotype about older women and their capacity to manage finances in order to take control of decision-making, which is presented as ‘helping out’.
• Perpetrators may use community perceptions about their own virtue as a ‘carer’, their competence and worthiness, to present themselves to services as trustworthy, and to undermine a victim survivor’s confidence. They may undermine the victim survivor’s efforts to access system supports, such as health and aged care services, or not support or prevent them from independently accessing services. Sometimes, a perpetrator will purport to be a carer (and claim associated payments and/or accommodation) but not undertake any caring responsibilities.
• People who have caring responsibilities may seek to justify or attribute their use of family violence to ‘carer stress’, feeling that their caring work means they are entitled to additional control over the person they are caring for. [111] They may also seek to justify the violence because of perceptions of ‘sacrifice’ due to taking on caring responsibilities. Some people who use justifications of ‘carer stress’ may also resent their responsibilities and the older person, which can influence their self-perceptions about their use of violence (minimising their violence or blaming the person they are caring for). Ageism and perceptions about providing care and support for older people can contribute to the perception that certain behaviours are 'helpful' or inherent to the caring role, which in other contexts would be considered 'controlling'.
• A perpetrator might exploit stereotypes of older people being less competent than younger people and less able to make decisions for themselves as a way to justify controlling an older person’s access to communication, mobility or medical needs.
• A perpetrator may undermine the victim survivor’s cognitive functioning and play upon community perceptions of perceived vulnerability to justify control.
• A perpetrator may exclude the victim survivor from being present in hearings or major decisions about their lives by saying ‘they would be upset’ if they were involved.

Perpetrators of elder abuse who are adult children or carers will have varying types of contact or engagement with the service system overall. They present with different circumstances and psychosocial needs – which may relate to their use of family violence.

These issues can introduce barriers to help-seeking or access to services that would enhance their motivation or capacity for behaviour change.

This may include circumstances and psychosocial needs of the perpetrator, including:

• mental health or wellbeing
• drug and alcohol use
• financial instability and gambling
• unemployment
• housing instability
• social isolation.

Points of contact might be through the health advocacy service supporting the older person victim survivor. These might include general practitioners, nurses and other health professionals, NDIS or other disability supports, pharmacists, social clubs, and banking and financial institutions.

Older people who use family violence may experience difficulties in accessing and maintaining engagement with services due to feelings of shame or other health issues, for example, dementia and other behavioural or cognitive issues, and mobility restrictions.

Practice considerations enabling access for older people who are experiencing violence should be considered to enable access to services for older people who are using violence.

In addition to above engagement of adult children and carers, refer to the practice considerations for responding to older people experiencing family violence (elder abuse), as to how they may also assist you with engaging an older person using violence.

12.1.6 Family violence against people from culturally, linguistically and faith-diverse communities

There are some commonly experienced risk factors for people from culturally and linguistically diverse and faith communities.

These can include:

• perpetrators' use of threats relating to immigration, visa status and sponsorship as forms of isolation, controlling behaviours and forced dependence on the perpetrator. This can occur across all relationships and identities. For people from LGBTIQ communities, this may include perpetrators exploiting fears about persecution, discrimination or rejection from family for the victim survivor if they were forced to return to their country of origin. A person’s culture and immigration status might also affect their experiences of family violence and willingness to disclose the violence
• family networks supporting the perpetrator's use of violence or feeling it is justified. This might include those family networks also perpetrating violence towards the victim survivor (multiple or proxy perpetrators) or socially isolating them from community and culture for choosing to address it
• service access barriers relating to a lack of services’ understanding of the complexities of family violence for particular communities and faiths
• victim survivors sympathising with perpetrators because of difficulties they are facing, such as experiences of racism.

People from culturally, linguistically and faith-diverse communities can experience systemic barriers to seeking support including those relating to the following:

• speaking no or limited English or having limited access to interpreters (which may be more pronounced in rural and regional areas)
• limited access to information about family violence and support services, particularly in their preferred language
• limited information about Australian laws and services
• reservations about engaging with authorities or services due to past experiences or current fears and misconceptions. You can address these fears by providing support to understand why questions are being asked about their personal life and about their children’s safety, stability and development. You should spend time explaining how the system works in ways that are relevant to the person
• lack of cultural awareness and safety from service providers.

Practice considerations for responding to people experiencing family violence from diverse cultural, linguistic or faith backgrounds, including people from migrant or refugee backgrounds, include, but are not limited to the following:

• face cultural stigma, taboos and social and community pressures
• be isolated from social or family networks as a result of family violence, particularly where they are newly arrived migrants, and may be dependent on partners or family members for financial support and transport
• have cultural or faith-based beliefs that discourage separation or divorce
• hold parenting norms and practices that are influenced by many factors, including culture and faith-based beliefs.
• Consider the effects of recent experiences of racism and discrimination in Australia (this extends to their children and other family members).
• Consider experiences of significant trauma prior to migrating to Australia, particularly where they are from refugee or asylum seeker backgrounds.
• Be aware of how visa or immigration status can impact on access to services. For example, they may be living in Australia on a temporary or provisional visa and fear the implications of visas being cancelled if family violence is disclosed. This fear can also extend to access to their children, where their children are Australian citizens, or where the perpetrator makes threats to take the children overseas. They may also fear facing punishment or being killed if they return to their country of origin. Perpetrators may exploit these fears.
• Be aware of fears about engaging the legal system or police. This may be due to lack of trust based on experience in their country of origin (if applicable), or because they have experienced or heard about others in their community experiencing racism from Australian police or legal systems. Some may also have particular fears and misconceptions about engaging with legal systems in Australia relating to residency and citizenship status.

While there are common narratives and presentations across all cohorts of people who use family violence, some nuances around beliefs and attitudes exist for people who use family violence from culturally, linguistically and faith-diverse communities.

These can relate to gender and family roles, relationships to extended family, responsibility for financial control and entitlement, dowry entitlement, parenting, visa access and stability, and age-related expectations.

Culture or religion should never be accepted as justifications for a person’s violence towards family members.

Perpetrators can feel protected by the community and community leaders, including at times where they feel their beliefs or attitudes about gender and family roles and acceptable behaviours are shared or colluded with, or pressure is placed on victim survivors not to report violence.

When working with people who use family violence from culturally, linguistically and faith-diverse communities, you should seek to understand the varying and diverse cultural and spiritual dynamics in which family violence occurs.

Factors that may compound a perpetrator’s risk of using violence include:

• beliefs and expectations around family, family life and roles
• dynamics of perpetration by multiple family members, including extended family and in-laws in Australia or overseas
• the experiences of trauma associated with migration and asylum seeking
• experiences of racism, social isolation and distress related to immigration
• lack of access to formal and structural supports due to lack of culturally response services and visa status.

Some people experience increased barriers to accessing support around the use of violence.

As for all people who use family violence, the experience of shame impairs decisions for help-seeking, particularly from leaders within their own community.

Consider ways to enable access to services for victim survivors from culturally, linguistically and faith-diverse communities. Enabling service access by reducing barriers and structural inequality is also essential when working with people using violence from the community.

If working with a person using violence who is not from a culturally, linguistically or faith-diverse community, refer to guidance about service access barriers, as appropriate to the person’s identity, throughout this section.

People using violence who are from white, dominant culture backgrounds may present with specific tactics that invite collusion from professionals and exploit their privilege to ‘make invisible’ their own violence.

Where you recognise these tactics and behaviours, it is important to respond using a balanced approach to keep the person engaged with the service system (refer to perpetrator-focused Responsibility 3 ).

Identify opportunities to work collaboratively with other professionals to minimise further systems abuse and exploitation.

12.1.7 Family violence in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) communities

The majority of experiences of family violence among LGBTIQ communities mirror those within heterosexual and cisgendered relationships.

The impact of biphobia, homophobia, transphobia, heterosexism and heteronormativity on the experience and response to intimate partner violence in LGBTIQ relationships is pronounced. [112]

Heteronormativity is the internalisation of heterosexism at the individual, cultural and institutional level, as well as expectations about gender and sexuality, and their presentation in LGBTIQ relationships.

These forms of discrimination can also be used by LGBTIQ people to exercise power and control in their relationships.

Additionally, some LGBTIQ people may not recognise their experience as family violence. This is because it is primarily recognised across the community as experienced by cisgender women and children from cisgender men, and LGBTIQ people’s experiences fall outside of this traditionally recognised power dynamic.

While awareness of family violence in LGBTIQ relationships and communities is mixed, evidence suggests higher identification and self-reporting when presented with specific forms of violence experienced from an intimate partner or a family member rather than in general terms. [113]

A 2018 Our Watch literature review found that: [114]

• rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) against LGBTIQ people are as high as the rates experienced by cisgender women in intimate heterosexual relationships. However, rates of IPV may be higher for bisexual, transgender and gender-diverse people
• lesbians are more likely than gay men to report having been in an abusive relationship
• it is unknown how rates of IPV and/or family violence against people with intersex variations compare due to a lack of research
• violence from other family members may also be higher. Some examples are:
• young people subject to homo/bi/transphobia being kicked out of the home after coming out about their sexuality or gender identity
• gender diverse LGBTIQ people who rely on others for care and support because of age or disability having their means of gender affirmation denied, such as through the withholding of hormones by their children
• older, dependent transgender people being denied access to hormone treatment by their children.

The 2020 Private Lives 3 survey further indicates that, among participants: [115]

• more than 4 in 10 people identified ever being in an intimate relationship where they felt they were abused in some way, with emotional abuse, verbal abuse, physical violence and sexual assault commonly reported experiences
• almost 4 in 10 people identified ever feeling abused by a family member (either birth or chosen family), with verbal abuse, LGBTIQ-related abuse, emotional abuse and physical violence commonly reported experiences
• non-binary participants and trans men experienced higher rates of intimate partner violence and violence from a family member than cisgender women, cisgender men and trans women
• more than half reported the perpetrator of intimate partner violence to be ‘cisgender man’, and in reports of family violence almost three-quarters identified the perpetrator as ‘parent’
• while only 1 in 10 people reported LGBTIQ-related abuse from an intimate partner (e.g., threatening to ‘out’ the victim survivor, withholding hormones or medication), experiences of violence from family members was reported by survey participants as significantly linked to sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression or intersex variation/s.

There are a number of family violence risk behaviours that are unique to intimate partner violence in LGBTIQ relationships. These include:

• threats to out, or actual outing of the partner, when they have not disclosed their sexuality, gender, intersex or HIV status, as a method of control
• threats to a partner’s capacity or right to children. This may be undermining or exacerbating fears about the legal status of children in same-gender relationships
• threats to limit or refuse a relationship with their children if they leave the relationship, when the other person is a non-birth or non-biological parent
• isolating the partner from contact with the LGBTIQ community and organisations, making it difficult for the abused partner to seek help, including using the victim’s intersex status, sexuality, transgender, gender expression or HIV status to threaten, undermine or isolate them from their family or community
• abusive and undermining gendering or misgendering in relationships, such as those relating to binaries of masculinity/femininity ‘butch’/’femme’
• exploiting deep feelings of unworthiness or shame the victim survivor might hold about being ‘deserving’ of the violence linked to experiences of discrimination, violence, and internalised biphobia, homophobia and transphobia
• controlling their partner’s access to health treatments and medications (such as access to hormone therapy for people transitioning to affirm their gender identity)
• if the perpetrator has a chronic illness, using guilt to manipulate or keep the partner in the relationship; threatening to, or actually infecting their partner where the illness is one that can be transmitted; deliberately placing their partner of significant risk by not taking reasonable precautions to prevent transmission
• using technology to facilitate sexual violence and harassment.

LGBTIQ people may mistrust the service system due to previous experiences of historical institutional or interpersonal abuse, discrimination or uneducated responses.

There are a range of ways barriers to access and engagement present, including:

• avoiding services or only seeking them out during times of crisis for fear of further stigmatisation
• not reporting violence to police
• preferring to access LGBTIQ services rather than mainstream services
• seeking support through the community rather than the service system
• fear of revealing sexual orientation, intersex status, sex or gender identity to a service, leading to inappropriate responses
• poor levels of understanding by mainstream service providers of key issues including common patterns of violence against LGBTIQ people, and how to respond/refer. Examples of myths include:
• that the more masculine partner is the more violent
• that women cannot be violent
• that biological parents have a more significant connection with children. This can lead to risk being underestimated, violence minimised and/or the victim not being believed or responded to
• the lack of crisis services for male, transgender and non-binary victim survivors (particularly crisis accommodation), and programs for female and non-binary perpetrators
• a limited understanding of homo/bi/transphobia from family of origin as being recognised as family violence and appropriate referral pathways.

The number of LGBTIQ family violence services is limited.

However, it has expanded since the Royal Commission, and the family violence sector as a whole is building knowledge and capacity around LGBTIQ family violence inclusion in mainstream services.

Practice considerations for responding to LGBTIQ people experiencing family violence include, but are not limited to the following:

• Recognise how the dominant understanding of family violence as only involving heterosexual cisgendered male perpetrators and their cisgendered female partners contributes to low levels of identification and reporting and is a key factor in the ‘invisibility’ of family violence against LGBTIQ people.
• Be mindful of the diversity of identities and experiences across ‘LGBTIQ’ to consider the individual’s specific identity and what this means for risk assessment and management.
• LGBTIQ people may fear isolation or losing community support or connections by reporting family violence, particularly as they may have less support from their family of origin.
• There may be pressure not to identify violence or abuse within LGBTIQ relationships for fear it may fuel homo/bi/transphobia — particularly following the high levels of homo/bi/transphobia against LGBTIQ people during the 2017 Marriage Equality debate.
• Consider current and historical discriminatory laws against people on the basis of sex, sexuality and gender identity (among other attributes), such as where they conflict with religious beliefs, contributing to fears of discrimination from services.
• Be mindful of failing to recognise LGBTIQ victim survivors’ identity or relationships, for example providing personal safety intervention orders instead of family violence intervention orders.
• Children and young people who experience family violence are more likely to suicide at all points along the journey from seeking safety to recovery and health. The risks of suicide are extremely high in young LGBTIQ people, particularly trans and gender-diverse young people. For LGBTIQ young people, this additional high risk is compounded by an increased risk if they have experienced family violence. [116]

Many stereotypes exist about LGBTIQ intimate partner violence. These can both influence professionals’ responses and form the basis of narratives provided by perpetrators to minimise or justify their behaviour.

In the context of relationships across LGBTIQ communities, cisnormativity, heteronormativity, and social norms and understandings around gender and sexuality can be internalised and imported into LGBTIQ relationships, leading to particular forms of coercive and controlling behaviours.

While similar patterns of coercive and controlling behaviour occur, heterosexist attitudes can also play out within LGBTIQ relationships along masculine and feminine relationship dynamics.

The general tolerance of violent expressions between heterosexual cisgender men within society has provided the foundation for normalising abuse, as well as making invisible the real prevalence, seriousness and impact of risk associated with family violence in relationships between male-identifying people, which is often not ‘seen’ or is downplayed.

There may be an assumption that only straight, cisgendered men are violent. Similarly, where there is violence between cisgender women or female-identifying people, this may not be visible or may be downplayed as ‘less serious’ or perceived as less likely/believed than violence between cisgender men.

Common presentations of behaviours and narratives among perpetrators include:

• the violence is a result of ‘mutual violence’
• the violence is ok because ‘men fight equally’, ‘boys are being boys’ and have comparable strength
• violence doesn’t occur in female-identifying same-gender relationships, presenting the belief or narrative that violence is only perpetrated by cis-men
• avoiding responsibility for violence through using chronic illness and ‘weakness’ to deflect the possibility that they could be abusive or controlling
• claiming the other person is a perpetrator of violence based on their physical stature or physical conformity to heteronormative expressions of gender and sexuality
• expressing previous experiences of trauma as anxiety to justify control over a current partner
• outing them to family, community networks, employers etc.

Guidance on responding to narratives of ‘mutual violence’ is outlined under guidance on identifying predominant aggressors in Section 12.2.1 , and in the victim and perpetrator-focused Responsibilities 3, 5, 6 and 7.

The same practice considerations for enabling access to services for LGBTIQ victim survivors apply for perpetrators.

In engaging or working with people from LGBTIQ communities who are using family violence, you should understand how multiple layers of discrimination, stigma, marginalisation and oppression are experienced and perpetuated through systems and services. In your practice, you should seek to work against these factors.

Key considerations for working with people using family violence include the following:

• Remove barriers leading to stress and the reduction of help-seeking (e.g., housing).
• Understand the dual nature of victimisation and perpetration of violence experienced by this community.
• Use inclusive language
• Understand the broader issues faced by LGBTIQ people, without affirming stereotypes.

12.1.8 Family violence against LGBTIQ people by families of origin

Family violence against LGBTIQ people by family members is widely unrecognised across the service system.

Recognising common family of origin perpetrator presentations and narratives

This form of family violence may present in a range of ways, including:

• undermining sexual orientation or gender identity and the value of intimate relationships, calling it a ‘phase’ or not a real relationship
• refusing to acknowledge the status of the relationship or the partner by ignoring them
• refusal to use or correcting their pronouns (including the pronouns of their partner)
• using beliefs about faith or religion, gender, sexuality, family and relationships to de-legitimise or undermine identity of an LGBTIQ person, particularly young people. This could lead to relationship breakdown, housing and financial distress and parental/family abandonment
• minimising or justifying violence and harm under the guise of ‘protective parenting’ or ‘rights’ to parental control and discipline, rather than as family violence and targeted harm that is based on their child’s sexual orientation or gender identity (also refer to perpetrator-focused Responsibility 2 – observable narratives and behaviours).

Note that coercive and controlling behaviours including pressure to participate in conversion practices and services. These are recognised examples of family violence under the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 and of harassment under the Personal Safety Intervention Orders Act 2010.

In engaging or working with family of origin who are using violence, it is important to keep the following in mind:

• Often violence from family members related to identity and relationship recognition is not seen as family violence, making it harder to raise awareness and link to behaviour change supports.
• Some barriers to service engagement are related to minimising and justifying in relation to beliefs in ‘rights’ of parental control and discipline. These narratives may legitimise biphobia, homophobia or transphobia based on personal and faith-based beliefs not held by the victim survivor. For example, this includes a parent’s belief in their ‘legitimate’ right to object to their child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

People using violence who are not from LGBTIQ community may present with specific tactics that invite collusion from professionals and exploit their privilege to ‘make invisible’ their own violence.

Where you recognise these tactics and behaviours, it is important to respond using a balanced approach to keep the person/family engaged with the service system (refer to perpetrator-focused Responsibility 3 ). This includes identifying opportunities to work collaboratively with other professionals to minimise systems abuse, exploitation and further violence.

12.1.9 Family violence against people with disabilities

There are more than one million people with a disability living in Victoria. [117] This includes a wide range of disabilities that can affect how people access and participate in services, family and community in different ways.

Disabilities can be cognitive, physical, sensory, result from acquired brain injury, be neurological, or related to mental illness.

Further information about the relationship between family violence and acquired brain injury can be found in the ‘Acquired brain injury as a result of family violence’ section below . Section 12.1.10 discusses family violence and mental illness. Section 12.1.17 discusses perpetrators with complex needs, including cognitive disability and acquired brain injury.

Family violence is the leading cause of death, disability and ill health in women aged 18–44. [118] People of all genders with disabilities are also at higher risk of experiencing family violence.

The intersection of gender and disability increases the risk of violence against women and girls with disabilities. [119] International and Australian evidence shows that women with a disability experience violence more intensely and frequently than other women. [120]

The Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence acknowledged women with disabilities experience all forms of violence at higher rates than women without disabilities.

People with disabilities are also affected by current and historical practices of institutionalisation, and trauma stemming from this needs to be considered, along with any barriers they may present to future services engagement.

The social model of disability can help you respond to marginalisation and discrimination. This model recognises that disability is not only a person’s condition, but the result of disabling social structures, attitudes and environments. [121]

You should have a general awareness of different types of disability and ask people with disability about any support requirements or adjustments they need. [122]

Service access and barriers for victim survivors

People with disabilities may face several barriers affecting their ability to seek support including:

• lack of economic resources and/or sufficient income
• lack of support options (or lack of awareness regarding support options)
• lack of access to refuges and other suitable long-term housing alternatives
• lack of access to interpreters, communication devices, assistance to communicate and information in an appropriate format
• bias of professionals in their recognition or engagement with people with disabilities.

Specific barriers to receiving appropriate and effective services include services lacking knowledge and confidence in working with people with disabilities, and professionals believing they are ill-equipped to respond.

Professionals can address this by working in a proactive and collaborative way, including through secondary consultation and referral with organisations specialising in working with people with disabilities (refer to victim survivor–focused Responsibilities 5 and 6 ).

People with disabilities experience barriers that arise from particular dynamics and forms of family violence, which among other things can affect a willingness to disclose family violence. These can include the following:

• People with disabilities may be reluctant to report the violence because the perpetrator may be controlling or isolating them through their assistance with essential activities, such as personal care, communication, mobility, parenting or transport.
• Perpetrators might use particular tactics towards victim survivors with a disability to exploit and exacerbate general fears relating to experiences of discrimination in the community. This might include threatening victim survivors with being sent to institutions or support services as a way of undermining both the victim survivor and their relationships with children.
• Some people with disabilities may normalise the experience of being controlled and abused, especially if this has been accepted by service providers. For example, where a carer is asked or encouraged to ‘speak for’ the person with the disability.
• People with disabilities can experience social isolation stemming from the marginalised position of people with disability in society.
• Professionals should be aware of issues relating to failure to address family violence perpetrated in a community residential or other care settings (for example, where a resident uses violence against another, or a long-standing carer in a ‘family-like’ relationship uses violence against a person with disability).
• perceptions of their capability as parents
• perceptions of the likelihood of the person lying or misunderstanding situations as violent
• perceptions of their capacity to provide evidence, including competent testimony in court
• increased risk of having their child removed from their care for parents with a disability, or experiencing a mental health issue, homelessness or who live in a regional area. [123]
• Women with disabilities are often undermined about their parenting skills and abilities as a common tactic used by perpetrators, which can be reinforced through conscious or unconscious bias by professionals.
• Women with children with disabilities can experience additional barriers to service or risk management responses where there is lack of ‘responsibility’ taken by services in providing coordinated responses.
• Children with disabilities may not have their experience of risk from a perpetrator’s behaviour adequately identified or assessed, including behaviours that are targeted directly to them or indirectly by witnessing or being exposed to its impacts, particularly on their caregivers.
• Women with disabilities have commonly experienced discrimination, structural inequality (including in the form of physical and communication barriers) and bias when seeking to access services.
• Women with disabilities may experience lifetimes of discrimination and violence, preventing them from opportunities to experience safety and make free choices.

Practice considerations for responding toand attempting to overcome these barriers for people with disabilities experiencing family violence include, but are not limited to the following:

• Use a respectful, strengths-based approach. Believe the person and take their experiences seriously. While this is important for all victim survivors, it can be particularly important for people with disabilities in the context of these barriers, fears, assumptions and stereotypes.
• Recognise how experiences of marginalisation and discrimination might affect the person’s engagement. Address any physical or communication access barriers. Person-centred responses that adjust the environment to fit the needs of a person with intellectual or other cognitive disabilities will improve the person’s capacities to respond to the demands of the context. [124] This includes providing access to communication supports and adjustments if needed, such as Auslan interpreters for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, communication aids and accessible formats.
• Ensure responses are guided by principles and obligations under the Medical Treatment Planning and Decisions Act 2006 (Vic) and Guardianship and Administration Act 1986 (Vic) when working with people with a disability or whose cognitive capacity is affected.
• Some people with disabilities may have a guardian or administrator. The guardian must act as an advocate for the person, act in their best interests, take into account their views and wishes and make decisions that are the least restrictive of the person’s freedom of decision and action. [125]
• Design interventions to provide support to enable people with cognitive disability to participate in services. Such interventions and supports include issues pertaining to Universal Design for Learning, multi-tiered systems of supports, and promoting the self-determination of people with disabilities. [126]

Acquired brain injury as a result of family violence

Acquired brain injury (ABI) can result from a perpetrator’s use of external force applied to the head (including with weapons, striking the head, shaking or being pushed into an object or to the ground) and from stroke, lack of oxygen (including from choking or strangulation) and poisoning.

ABI can result in a range of physical, cognitive and behavioural disabilities that can impact adults, children and young people in a variety of ways, including their capacity to engage in safety planning and risk management.

Recent Victorian research found that the association between family violence and ABI in Victoria is significant. [127]

It is likely to be more significant even than this research suggests, as this data is unlikely to reflect all cases of ABI.

Most victim survivors will not seek medical attention or attend a hospital when they have sustained a brain injury as a result of a perpetrator’s actions. Even if they do, their brain injury may not be detected.

This includes childhood head injuries that may never have been attended to, resulting in long-term impacts.

Aboriginal women are at very high risk of traumatic brain injury, with research suggesting they are 69 times more likely to be hospitalised for head injury due to assault. [128]

Children are more vulnerable to brain injury from physical assault because of their smaller size and rapidly developing brains. Inflicted brain injury (which includes ‘shaken baby syndrome’) is the leading cause of death and disability in children who have been abused. Infants are at the greatest risk.

It is important to remember that victim survivors may be concerned about the stigma of disclosing ABI concerns. In particular, they may fear that this could lead to questions about their personal agency or autonomy, decision-making and parenting capacity.

You should also be sensitive to the concerns that victim survivors may have if they had not previously understood the impacts of violence on the brain, for themselves and their children.

Victim survivors may also find the possibility of being diagnosed with an ABI confronting, especially if they have not previously identified as a person with disabilities.

Perpetrators may also have ABIs, as a result of experiences of violence, including family violence.

This can affect their response to interventions or risk management strategies, so it is important to consider this possibility during risk assessment.

An intimate partner, carer, adult child or other family member may be using family violence against a victim survivor with disability.

They may target perceived ‘vulnerabilities’ or use ableist beliefs to weaponise the structural inequality, barriers or discrimination experienced by the victim survivor.

A person using violence may use these tactics as a way to methodically gain power and control over the victim survivor and avoid taking responsibility for their use of violence.

Stereotypes about disability can form the basis of narratives provided by perpetrators to minimise or justify their family violence behaviour.

These ableist stereotypes and beliefs can also affect professionals’ responses to people with disability, through colluding with the narrative of the person using violence.

Common presentations of family violence behaviours and narratives among people who use violence against people with disability include:

• exploiting community attitudes of carers being ‘virtuous’ and ‘helpful’ as a tactic of system collusion, undermining the victim survivor’s involvement in the service. They may present to the service in a way that the professional believes the victim survivor is ‘lucky’ to have them in their life. Similarly, the perpetrator may blame ‘carer stress’ as a way to avoid taking responsibility for their actions or behaviours, or minimise their violence or its impacts on the victim survivor
• undermining or pathologising a person’s cognitive capacity, for example, through statements such as, ‘They’re crazy, you need to speak with me because they don’t understand things.’
• weaponising community assumptions about people with disabilities as parents and threatening to institutionalise the victim survivor, and/or to have the victim survivors’ children removed
• withholding food, water, medication or personal care, or threatening to do so, to coerce and/or control the victim survivor
• tampering with the victim survivor’s support devices (e.g., removing parts of a wheelchair) to further exert control.

It is important to be aware that people using violence will target a victim survivor’s specific disabilities.

People who use violence who are carers may also exploit confusion around navigating support systems such as the NDIS or Centrelink to maintain control as ‘gatekeepers’ to service access.

This type of behaviour can manifest in a variety of ways.

For example, the person using violence might:

• be the NDIS nominee and exploit this to make decisions for the person with disability, isolating them from support and misuse their finances
• reinforce or exploit the victim survivor’s fear of using disability services, perpetuating a narrative that interventions will subject them to discrimination and harmful stereotyping
• present to services with the victim survivor and answer on their behalf and not allow the victim survivor to respond
• constantly express dissatisfaction with services or carers who are sent to provide in-home care. This constant dismissal of services could be another tactic of isolating the victim survivor and maintaining control.

This ‘gatekeeping’ of service access can lead to system collusion. You should be aware of the presentations and narratives you observe and respond to them as family violence risk to the victim survivor with disability.

Service access and barriers for perpetrators

People who use family violence towards people with disabilities are most likely to be identified through their engagement with the service system on behalf of a person with disability.

When you recognise narratives and invitations to collude, you can seek to engage with the person/carer using violence by drawing out information about their perception of their carer role.

A person using violence who is in a caring role may have additional ‘barriers’ to engagement, such as stoicism, inability or reluctance to accept alternative options for care, and beliefs about the role of family in the person’s care (rather than services).

Opportunities to reduce barriers to service access for both themselves and the person with disability may present through processes of reframing caring responsibilities to include other supports available.

Practice considerations enabling access for victim survivors with disabilities should be considered to enable access to services for people using violence with disabilities.

If working with a person using violence against a person with disability, refer to guidance about service access barriers, as appropriate to the person’s identity and relationship to the victim survivor, described throughout Section 12.1.9 .

People without disabilities who are using violence may present with specific tactics that invite collusion from professionals and exploit their privilege to ‘make invisible’ their own violence.

Where you recognise these tactics and behaviours, respond using a balanced approach to keep the person engaged with the service system (refer to perpetrator-focused Responsibility 3 ). Identify opportunities to work collaboratively with other professionals to minimise opportunities for systems abuse, exploitation and further violence.

Section 12.1.17 outlines recognition of perpetrators of family violence with cognitive disabilities, including ABI.

12.1.10 Family violence against people with mental health issues and mental illness

People with mental health issues and mental illness and psychological distress experience particular barriers and forms of family violence.

A perpetrator’s use of family violence can exacerbate existing mental illness, cause mental disorder and mental illness, and impact negatively on recovery.

Perpetrators may be carers who are intimate partners, parents, children or other family members or carers who have a family-like relationship to the victim survivor.

The main mental health impacts of family violence are anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation.

Eating disorders, problematic alcohol and drug use as a coping mechanism, postnatal depression, self-harm, post-traumatic stress or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and suicide are also associated with family violence.

High rates of mental health issues and mental illness following family violence demonstrate the need for support that takes these mental health impacts into account.

Many victim survivors, especially women, experience family violence following a mental illness diagnosis.

Perpetrators can use this perceived vulnerability to target women with mental illness, resulting in their experience of multiple forms of violence that lead to greater mental health impacts.

The more recent and the longer the violence has occurred, the greater the mental health impacts. The same has been found for childhood (sexual) abuse and its short to long-term impact.

Prevalence rates of any form of abuse for people who access psychiatric services are high — between 30–60 per cent of people have a history of family violence and 50–60 per cent have experienced childhood sexual or physical abuse. [129]

Some studies have found that up to 92 per cent of female psychiatric inpatients have histories of childhood abuse, family violence or both. [130]

People, especially women, experiencing psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder have experienced high levels of abuse. [131]

Many people with a diagnosed mental illness have experienced both childhood abuse and family violence as an adult.

Women who have also experienced childhood trauma are more likely to experience depression for a longer time, pointing to the cumulative effect of multiple traumas.

Women who have experienced severe abuse are more likely to be diagnosed with one or more mental illnesses in their lifetime. Levels and severity of depression tend to decline over time as women feel safer.

Women accessing family violence support services, especially crisis services, experience high levels of mental health issues, including anxiety (at rates three times higher than the general population) and depression (twice that of the general population).

In Victoria, one-third of people who die by suicide had a history of family violence.

Family violence had been present for half of the women (identified as likely victim survivors) and one-third of men who died by suicide (identified as likely perpetrators).

Further, as noted in Section 12.1.15 , threats or attempts to self-harm or commit suicide are a risk factor for homicide–suicide. [132] This factor is an extreme extension of controlling behaviours.

Practice consideration for responding to people experiencing family violence who have mental health issues or mental illness include, but are not limited to:

• Experiences of significant stigma and discrimination can have a worse impact than the mental illness itself.
• People with mental health issues and mental illness, particularly women, and their family members are at greater risk of being isolated from support networks and lack of adequate support by organisations, including mental health and family violence services.
• People with mental health issues and mental illness, particularly women, are more likely to disclose family violence to a healthcare professional than the police, and they are unlikely to do so unless they are asked. At the same time, many people with mental illness or mental health issues, particularly women, report problematic responses by professionals following disclosure. Inadequate support can increase distress and leave people with mental illness or mental health issues in unsafe situations.
• People with mental health issues may be at higher risk of sexual assault and may not be believed if they report abuse.

Barriers to accessing support from the service system include:

• People with a mental illness may not be believed by professionals, especially if they experience psychosis or psychotic illnesses, or professionals might judge them as untrustworthy in their account or narrative of their experience.
• Perpetrators may use a mental health diagnosis to ‘gaslight’ a victim survivor, meaning that they may not easily recognise the violence they have experienced, or may struggle to feel entitled to accessing services.
• Service providers who are not mental health services lack confidence and consider themselves poorly equipped to work with a person with a mental health issue or mental illness.
• Organisations having a narrow understanding of their role. For example, mental health services have historically not embraced their role working with victims of family violence.
• A lack of understanding of the links between trauma and mental illness by the service system. The dominance of the bio-medical model means that trauma and mental illness are frequently separated, and distress is pathologised as mental illness, rather than a normal reaction to trauma.
• Service providers may not understand how trauma manifests, for example, through anxiety or depression, and may be influenced by stigmatised views of mental illness.
• Service providers may misunderstand a victim survivor’s distress and pathologise a normal reaction to violence as mental illness.
• People with multiple presenting needs, such as a mental illness and alcohol or drug issues, are more likely to experience barriers to service responses unless professionals are well linked and understand the interrelated nature of their presenting needs.

Section 12.1.17 provides guidance on perpetrators with complex needs, including mental illness.

12.1.11 Adolescents who use family violence

This section provides guidance on the presentation of and high-level response to adolescent family violence.

The victim survivor–focused MARAM Practice Guides emphasise that adolescents who use violence are also likely victim survivors who should be assessed and supported with risk management responses.

Adolescents who are using violence should have a different response from adult perpetrators.

The adolescents using violence MARAM Practice Guides provide more information. These also address adolescents who use violence who have disability or cognitive impairment.

Most incidents of violence are committed by male adolescents against mothers, which may progress to using violence against women as adults. [133]

Violence in the home from an adolescent towards a sibling is a specific form of violence.

There is evidence that sexually abusive behaviours by adolescents is more often directed towards younger siblings.

The most common type of sibling sexual abuse is between a brother and a sister, with the brother as the abusing sibling, and brother towards brother sexual abuse is the second most common form.

Children who display problematic sexual behaviours towards their siblings may be acting out trauma as a result of having been sexually abused themselves. [134]

Responses to children and young people should consider their age and developmental status, attachment and relational history, their strengths and protective factors, their care situation and their overall context. This includes whether they have experienced or are currently experiencing family violence.

Responses to sexually abusive behaviours requires a specific and targeted response that should include sexually abusive behaviours treatment services.

When working with adolescents who use violence, avoid labelling them as ‘violent’ or ‘perpetrators’. This can lead to them internalising these labels, and it can also make it harder for you to recognise their behaviour as part of a trauma response or to use a relational trauma lens supporting behaviour change.

At the same time, you should provide clear and consistent messaging that violence is not acceptable and support them to take responsibility for and change their behaviour.

When assessing a victim survivor’s level of risk, guidance outlined here relating to working with perpetrators may also be applicable to considering the impacts of violence by an adolescent on a victim survivor.

Violence by an adolescent against a parent/carer may result from an impact of trauma, for example the inability to process emotions, self-soothe and deal with conflict.

Nevertheless, an important learning for an adolescent recovering from the impact of trauma is to be accountable for the use of violence and to learn skills and abilities to move away from the use of violence.

Having a trauma-informed approach can be held at the same time as working with an adolescent to be accountable. This is important for the adolescent’s own development and to ensure others who are in close relationships with the adolescent are safe. This work is done with respect, and in a sensitive non-blaming manner.

Professionals working with adolescents need to be mindful of collusion.

This is particularly relevant if a professional is working with an adolescent without the presence or input of a parent/carer.

Adolescents, like adults who use family violence, may minimise their use of violence and its impacts, justify and deny their use of violence and blame others, particularly parents/carers for ‘causing’ them to use violence.

You need to be able to challenge these constraints to taking responsibility and making change.

Collusion occurs when a professional sides with the adolescent against other family members or gives a message (even inadvertently) that the use of violence is understandable.

Collusion can occur where a professional over-identifies with an adolescent or their experience.

The adolescent may describe a picture of being the victim and provide convincing reasons for why they are unfairly being blamed for the violence. Professionals need to carefully assess the family dynamics and patterns so as not to over identify or collude with the adolescent.

Collusion can also occur with a parent/carer where the parent/carer has been abusive or violent to the adolescent.

A parent/carer may describe an adolescent’s behaviour in a way that does not account for family history, experience and dynamics.

Careful assessment to fully understand the family patterns and dynamics is important so as not to collude with any family members using abuse or violence.

Working with adolescent family violence needs to be a ‘both/and’ approach. This means the adolescent may be living in a family context where parenting is abusive, they may have experienced family violence, or they may be dealing with complex and distressing life events and issues.

The professional needs to address these contexts as well as hold the line that violence is not acceptable.

In this context, professionals need to work with the adolescent to take responsibility for their use of violence, and to also work with other issues of concern.

Further guidance on working with adolescents as victim survivors is provided in the victim survivor–focused MARAM Practice Guides.

Young people aged 18 to 25 years should also be considered with a developmental lens and to ensure any therapeutic needs relevant to their age and developmental stage are met.

The adult perpetrator-focused MARAM Practice Guides include relevant information for working with young people aged 18 to 25 years who are using family violence to assess and manage their risk.

12.1.12 Family violence against men [135]

Family violence against male victims is significantly gendered . Most men experience family violence from other men, including across age groups, relationship types and communities.

In Australia, approximately 94 per cent of female victims of violence and 95 per cent of all male victims of violence report a male perpetrator. [136]

The gendered nature of family violence stems from the dominant gendered culture, which reflects structures of power and privilege as created and perpetuated by cisgender, white ‘masculine’ men.

Many men are influenced by dominant norms and expectations about masculinity, or ‘ways to be a man’.

They may measure themselves and others against stereotyped characteristics, such as suppression of emotion or, expression of aggression, dominance and control.

Dominant gendered culture plays out in various and complex ways across communities and relationships.

It drives norms and expectations in relationships and can shape the use of family violence by men towards other men in the family, or in same-gender relationships.

A smaller number of heterosexual, cisgender men do experience violence from cisgender female intimate partners.

Professionals should exercise caution when responding to family violence where this relationship dynamic is reported.

There may be potential for perpetrators and victim survivors to be misidentified where male perpetrators report or present as a victim survivor, adopting a victim stance.

Male perpetrators may adopt a victim stance generally, or in relation to their experience of violent resistance from a victim survivor.

Men who experience violent resistance from victim survivors (violence that responds to their own ongoing use of family violence risk behaviours, such as coercive and controlling behaviours) are not victim survivors.

Refer to Section 12.1.13 for further guidance on women who use force, and Section 12.2.1 on determining the perpetrator/predominant aggressor.

Non-specialist professionals should have some understanding that these issues might present and refer to specialist family violence services for comprehensive assessment where there is uncertainty about how to determine who is the victim survivor or the perpetrator/predominant aggressor.

For men who are determined through MARAM risk assessment to be a victim survivor, the victim survivor–focused MARAM Practice Guides are appropriate for use.

If they are determined to be the predominant aggressor/perpetrator, the perpetrator-focused MARAM Practice Guide is appropriate for use.

12.1.13 Women [137] who use force in heterosexual intimate partner relationships

There is no consistent prevalence data for cisgender women who use force in intimate relationships, either in Australia or internationally. [138]

Research suggests women who use force in heterosexual intimate partner relationships often have a history of experiencing family violence from their male partners. [139]

They tend to use force to gain short-term control over threatening situations, rather than using already held power to dominate or control their partner.

This motivation is distinctly different from men’s use of violence, which is characterised by a pattern of coercive, controlling and violent behaviour.

Women use force for a range of reasons, including to protect themselves and their children or in self-defence or violent resistance.

Where ‘mutual violence’ has been identified (that is, a woman has used force and their male partner is using family violence), violence is often asymmetrical, with men demonstrating stronger patterns of coercive controlling and violent family violence risk behaviours than women. [140]

In this context, women are often misidentified as a perpetrator/predominant aggressor.

This occurrence is reflected in the high rate of misidentification of women as perpetrators. For example, emerging evidence suggests that approximately 1 in 10 women named as respondents to police applications for family violence intervention orders are subsequently assessed to be victim survivors. [141]

Because of this, caution is required when working with cisgender women who are identified, at any point in the system, as perpetrators of family violence, particularly if:

• there are cross-accusations of violence between heterosexual cisgender people, and/or if a cisgender woman is identified as the person using violence towards a cisgender man
• a woman is identified as a respondent to a family violence incident.

Guidance on identifying the predominant aggressor is outlined in Section 12.2.1 , and in the victim survivor and perpetrator-focused MARAM Practice Guides for Responsibilities 3, 5, 6 and 7 .

You should use the victim survivor–focused MARAM Practice Guide when working with women who are determined through MARAM risk assessment to be a victim survivor.

12.1.14 Perpetrators’ experience of shame and use of externalised violence

Shame, as both an emotion and a process, occupies a challenging space for responding to people who use family violence.

Although Victoria’s system-wide response depends on holding perpetrators to account for their behaviour, confronting a perpetrator about their use of violence through ‘shaming’ processes can increase risk for victim survivors and result in further denial of responsibility. [142]

Studies have found that shame is often associated with increases in aggression and a tendency to hide away and externalise responsibility for socially unacceptable behaviours. [143]

While a perpetrator’s feelings of shame can maintain violent and coercive controlling behaviours and work as a barrier to help-seeking, addressing shame is a central aspect of specialist perpetrator intervention work towards change and personal accountability.

Not all professionals working with people using violence will address shame, however, it is important to be aware of its experience and consequences, and what it may mean for engagement and increased risk.

Shame may be compounded by gendered drivers, dominant culture and social norms such as masculinity. This may reinforce tendencies to externalise distress and blame and reduce the person’s capacity to take responsibility for their behaviour, to express themselves honestly and to seek help. [144]

When shame becomes toxic, people who use violence may experience reduced self-esteem and worth (for example, at the loss of a relationship with a partner or children).

A sense of hopelessness and worthlessness may become exacerbated, increasing the risk of harm towards self and violence towards others.

This can be identified as depression or reduced mental wellbeing for people at risk of suicide, which may also present as aggression/anger and violence towards adult (usually intimate partners) and child victim survivors.

Understanding the context and outcomes of shame assists in identifying the connections between the risk of self-harm and suicide with the risk of homicide or homicide-suicide.

Stigma associated with perpetrating violence is a barrier to help-seeking and engaging in services.

Feeling ‘judged’, ‘attacked’ or ‘threatened’ by services or programs is common, and so forming trusting and positive professional relationships is essential.

12.1.15 Suicide risk of adult perpetrators and adolescents using violence

Some risk factors for family violence are largely ‘in common’, or the same as those for risk of suicide for adult perpetrators and adolescents using violence.

The risk factors that are ‘in common’ are understood through the correlation of increased risk of suicide for adult perpetrators and young people using violence. [145]

Recognising increased risk of suicide of people who use violence

Between 2009 and 2012, around one-third of all suicide deaths of men in Victoria involved men with a history of interpersonal violence, of which more than half had been identified as perpetrators of violence. Some were also victim survivors of violence, usually as children. [146]

The National Homicide Monitoring Program has found that 80 per cent of homicide–suicides in Australia since 1989 occurred in the context of family violence. [147]

Homicide–suicides are most likely to be perpetrated by men who:

• exhibit paranoid thinking and depression
• use alcohol to harmful levels
• have histories of impulsivity and violence
• have prior suicide attempts
• extreme minimisation and/or denial of family violence perpetration history
• obsessive behaviour, including stalking
• prior forced physical confinement and restriction of movement
• experience despair and hopelessness. [148]

Despair and hopelessness are key indicators of escalated risk and the need for immediate risk management.

Responsibilities 3 and 4 have further guidance on identifying and responding to suicide risk.

There are many ‘in common’ risk factors for suicide and family violence, which reflects the high rates of family violence perpetrators in cohorts of people who die by suicide. These include alcohol or drug abuse, anger, reckless behaviour, and talking about death (threatening suicide).

Risk factors for suicide are outlined below, with factors in common with family violence indicated with the + symbol:

• previous suicide attempts
• history of substance abuse +
• history of mental health conditions + –depression, anxiety, bipolar, PTSD
• relationship problems + –often described as ‘conflict’ with parents and/or romantic partners, or separation
• legal or disciplinary problems
• access to harmful means, such as medication or weapons +
• recent death or suicide of a family member or a close friend
• ongoing exposure to bullying behaviour
• physical illness or disability.

Further guidance on identifying and understanding common risk factors between suicide and family violence risk is outlined in the perpetrator-focused MARAM Practice Guides for Responsibilities 3 and 7 .

Indicators of serious and escalating risk among this cohort that must be acted upon immediately include:

• expressing feelings of losing control of the relationship, in particular, observing obsessive and desperate behaviours and victim-stance narratives
• losing connection with protective factors, such as employment, connections with social and other supports
• declining mental wellbeing and statements about inability to cope, expressions of feeling hopeless
• perpetrator narratives that empathise with other men who have killed partners or children, for example ‘I now understand what they went through when they killed their partner/child’.

Each of these indicators is linked to suicide and homicide–suicide risk.

Suicide risk among adolescents who use family violence

Adolescents who use family violence have unique suicide risk factors in addition to those experienced by adult perpetrators. This is compounded by increased risk of suicide for young people who have experienced family violence as victim survivors.

The 2019 Commissioner for Children and Young People report Lost, not forgotten identified that:

… as children grow older and their trauma starts to manifest in challenging behaviour, disengagement from school, risk taking, violence or mental ill health, professionals lose empathy. The children become seen as the problem and referred to as ‘difficult’, ‘needy’, ‘angry’ and ‘bad.’ [149]

This report found that between 2007 and 2019:

• 94 per cent of children who were known to child protection (particularly repeat reports) and who died by suicide had experienced family violence, and most had parents with mental illness and/or substance use issues [150]
• 84 per cent were either diagnosed or suspected to have mental illness [151]
• 83 per cent were recorded as having engaged in deliberate self-harm [152]
• 51 per cent of the children who died by suicide in this period had contact with police in the 12 months before their deaths, 43 per cent within six weeks of death [153]
• of those who had police contact, 44 per cent were alleged to have used family violence against a family member. [154]

Practice considerations when identifying suicide risk

To date, assessment tools for assessing proximal suicide risk have been considered both ‘imperfect’ and ‘one of the most stressful tasks for clinicians’. [155]

Therefore, emerging suicide prevention research and practice places less emphasis on ‘risk assessment’, and more on identifying the drivers of suicidality and an individual’s intent. [156]

Professionals working with people who use violence are well placed to consider the ‘in common’ risk factors.

In family violence risk management practice with adult perpetrators and young people who are using violence, suicide safety planning, or a mental health referral response where the common risk factors are identified, is a standard minimum response across the service system and particularly for specialist practitioners.

Also consider referrals to manage social distresses that increase suicide risk, such as employment, financial and housing issues and drug and alcohol addition/use.

Common family violence and suicide risk factors, and protective factors, are considered under Responsibilities 3 and 7 .

12.1.16 Family violence perpetration at the time of or following natural disasters and community-wide events

Emerging research highlights the links between prevalence of gendered violence and emergencies. This is because traditional norms associated with masculinities are reinforced or strengthened in times of crisis.

At these times, where family violence has previously occurred, it is likely to increase. Where family violence has not previously occurred, it is likely to commence.

Key considerations for understanding the context of family violence at times of crisis include: [157]

• the real and felt pressure experienced by men to fulfil the ‘protector and provider’ role within community, and feelings of failure and loss of control arising from a perceived failure to fulfil this role
• increased stress on people and relationships due to grief, loss, displacement, social isolation and financial instability
• within the community, unwillingness to hear about family violence and tendencies to discourage reporting and/or excuse the behaviour of perpetrators due to the stress or trauma they have experienced or because they are ‘heroes’
• community monitoring and judgement of roles performed by those within and interacting with the community
• the belief that anger is more acceptable than tears
• increased reluctance to seek help, which is commonly linked to reverting to rigid and traditional notions of masculinity, heightened sexist environments, with increased behaviours associated with hypermasculinity including erratic driving, excessive drinking and jokes
• potential increased control and isolation from the person using violence, which means it may be more difficult for services to keep risk ‘in view’
• increased unemployment and suicidality.

It is critical for anyone working in areas impacted by disaster to be aware of family violence risks for victim survivors and wellbeing and suicide risks for perpetrators.

Particular narratives or behaviours that may indicate the presence or increased risk associated with family violence include: [158]

• increased anger and quickness to anger
• increased drinking
• using behaviours that are not part of their ‘normal’ behaviours
• attempts to regain a sense of masculinity and disclosure of ’failing’ as a man
• desire to be part of a hero narrative created through perceptions of bravery.

12.1.17 Perpetrators with complex needs

People using family violence can present with and experience a multitude of complexities in their health, wellbeing and cognition. These can influence and exacerbate family violence attitudes and behaviours.

These complexities will inform your understanding, assessment and management of risk. However, they are not a reason, excuse or cause of a perpetrators’ choice to use violence.

Complex needs can include drug and alcohol use, mental illness or mental health condition, or cognitive impairment. People may have more than one complex need.

The EACPI Final report notes that not all perpetrators who present a serious risk have complex needs, and not all perpetrators with complex needs necessarily present a serious risk of family violence reoffending.

However, ‘complex needs can increase the risk of family violence (re)offending, as well as affect a perpetrator’s ability to respond to treatment for family violence offending (responsivity)’. [159]

The report also notes that ‘interventions for this cohort should address violent behaviour as well as other contributing or reinforcing factors’. [160]

You should assess and respond to people using violence using the ‘person in their context’ approach. This will support you to consider their co-occurring presenting needs and circumstances and how these impact on serious family violence risk behaviours.

Some complex needs are recognised as MARAM evidence-based risk factors, including mental illness or depression, and drug and/or alcohol misuse/abuse.

In and of themselves, these are not risk behaviours; however, they may influence the likelihood and severity of a perpetrator’s family violence behaviours.

Responding to complex needs is a key aspect of risk management.

It can support the person’s individual capacity to engage in interventions and increase the likelihood of eligibility for further interventions required to address their use of violence.

Victoria Police data cited in the EACPI Final report reveals alcohol use is involved in around 40 per cent of family violence incidents, and mental health issues as present in approximately 1 in 5 family violence incidents, with a strong association between mental illness and recidivist perpetrators. [161]

It is important to note that the reliability of this data depends on the ability of the attending police to identify it as such.

While most people with a mental illness are not violent, poor mental health and wellbeing can have a significant influence on family violence risk and suicidality. Refer to Section 12.1.15 for further information on suicide and homicide–suicide risk in the context of family violence.

Unless it is your role to diagnose a mental illness, you should not attempt to do so.

In your engagement with a person using violence, you may be able to recognise presentations of mental ill health which can inform your assessment of risk and where appropriate, may prompt you to refer the person using violence to a mental health professional.

It is important to remember that for people with mental illness who use violence, the risk presented is impacted by fluctuations in mental state.

Disturbances in mental state may be linked with likelihood, escalation, frequency and severity of violence. 138

If the person is also using substances, this will further impact or cause fluctuations in mental state.

Service access and engagement barriers

The overlapping nature of these complex needs may mean it is difficult for the person to receive available treatment and support from services.

If they are referred to services that are unable address their multiple presenting needs, they may disengage and fall out of ‘view’ of the system.

In this case, carers/families can be left with the responsibility of supporting the person, which can increase risk if the person is using violence towards people who are providing care for them.

People using family violence are less likely to engage with services or follow up on referrals when they:

• present with escalating or unpredictable behaviours as a result of inconsistent or increased use of illicit drugs, alcohol, prescription drugs or inhalants
• have complex and multi-layered presentations that are difficult to discern from one another and respond to
• are moving in and out of potential psychosis
• have had traumatic experiences of institutions where violence was normalised and may have presentations of PTSD that may limit their willingness to engage with further service interventions.

Responding to perpetrators with complex needs

Professionals responding to people using violence with complex needs should be aware of appropriate referral pathways to address specific needs.

Risk management plans should include interventions that reinforce each other and are appropriately sequenced, to avoid overwhelming the person.

This can include:

• identifying any care/treatment plans that are in place and understanding the person’s engagement/compliance/adherence with the plan
• reinforcing these plans through family violence risk management plans and safety planning conversations
• exploring prior engagement with systems or services (such as justice or mental health institutions)
• considering narratives that may indicate systems manipulation or traumatic experiences that create a barrier for future engagement
• addressing these experiences/narratives when planning your risk management response
• identifying patterns or fluctuations in mental state that may be linked with escalation, frequency and severity of use of violence and may require a specific response, and any specific planning that may be required at these times.

Recognising family violence use by people with cognitive disabilities

People with cognitive disabilities have impaired cognitive functioning.

Cognitive disabilities may include acquired brain injury (ABI), neurological impairment, developmental delay, intellectual disability, mental illness or psychosocial disability and dementia, as well as cognitive impairments because of stroke or alcohol and drug use. [162]

Cognitive disabilities can affect a person’s thought processes, interpersonal skills, behaviour regulation, movement, emotions, judgement and communication. This can adversely affect the person’s independence, self-management or capacity for social, economic, cultural and educational participation.

People with cognitive disabilities may not readily present or be identified as having a disability. They might not know they have a disability, and they might not identify as having a disability.

Further, presentation and experiences can differ greatly across different types of cognitive disabilities and age groups.

For example, the developmental, life experience and necessary adjustments for a person born with an intellectual disability will differ greatly from those for a person who acquires a cognitive disability later in life.

Some cognitive disabilities may not be visible, so it is important to be aware of indicators you might observe through your engagement.

Indicators are not determinative without professional assessment, as they may indicate a range of things, including intoxication, sleep deprivation, or mental ill health.

Indicators may prompt you to ask a question or seek an assessment of cognitive disability.

These indicators of cognitive disability may include:

• distractibility and difficulty understanding concepts
• trouble with speaking and memory
• difficulty understanding or engaging with complex systems, legal information and the consequences of interventions
• unacknowledged or unrecognised delayed learning
• indications that the person is pretending to understand but does not.

If you suspect a person has a cognitive disability based on your observations or available information, you can ask some general questions about the person’s history and circumstances. This may indicate whether it is possible the person has a cognitive disability and whether they require supports or adjustments.

There is a wide range of types of cognitive disabilities, associated life experiences, and adjustments and practice considerations that may be needed.

Seek secondary consultation with disability organisations with expertise in understanding different types of disability to inform your response (refer to victim-focused Responsibility 5 and 6 ).

As described in Section 12.1.9 , you should be guided by a social model of disability, focusing on the effects of disabling social structures, attitudes and environments and making adjustments to address these.

People with acquired brain injury who use violence

Some of the most common forms of ABI include traumatic brain injury, stroke, hypoxic brain damage, infection, tumours, and alcohol related brain damage.

ABI can result in physical, behavioural and cognitive disabilities.

People with ABI are overrepresented among both victim survivors and perpetrators of family violence. [163]

Brain Injury Australia reports that there are few studies of the prevalence of brain injury among perpetrators of family violence.

However, the evidence available indicates that rates of ABI are disproportionately high among perpetrators of family violence, compared with matched non-violent community samples and the general population. [164]

The rate of ABI among samples of male perpetrators of intimate partner violence is around 60 per cent, double the rate found in matched community samples.

Additionally, ABI is a risk factor for violent crime generally due to damage to the parts of the brain that control emotions and regulate behaviour – the behavioural outcomes of this is sometimes referred to as ‘challenging behaviours’. [165]

Due to this high prevalence, it is particularly important to ensure responses to people with ABI who use violence include necessary supports and adjustments.

ABI is characterised as damage to the brain after birth and throughout the lifespan. [166]

A person with an intellectual disability might also acquire a brain injury later in life, impacting their life in different ways.

Acquired brain injury can have a range of physical, cognitive and behavioural effects including issues with involuntary movements, balance, physical functioning and mobility, cognition (such as concentration, memory, attention), and emotional/behavioural dysregulation/impulsivity. Refer to perpetrator-focused Responsibility 3 for more detail.

Despite the strong association of challenging behaviours with ABI, the same behaviours can be equally present in those without ABI (for example, behaviours associated with poor regulation of emotions).

This highlights the importance of identifying whether there are underlying causes that contribute to the behaviours, which may inform your approach to risk assessment and management.

People with cognitive disabilities can experience barriers to service access and engagement, requiring alternative strategies to ensure participation on an equal basis with others.

In the context of working with people who use family violence, people with cognitive disabilities may face particular challenges when engaging with interventions such as behaviour change groups, accommodation services or in understanding information such as conditions of intervention orders. [167]

Some people with cognitive disabilities may also feel unsafe talking to police or other services, as these services might not have the training or knowledge to understand cognitive disabilities, sensitive engagement and making adjustments.

It is important to use practice techniques, such as asking the person to repeat back information in their own words. This ensures people with cognitive disability understand statements or conditions and are not just agreeing to be compliant or to ‘help’ the professional.

Having this understanding is important to inform the type and approach to interventions, and to ensure people using violence can participate, understand what is occurring and stay engaged with the service system.

As a starting point, you should always ask the person about their preferred communication method.

Adjustments might include using plain English materials, allowing the person to use any communication aids, using clear, concise language and short sentences, repeating information to confirm understanding, avoiding jargon including around medical and legal information, and providing breaks.

You may also need to conduct risk assessment conversations over time/a series of appointments, to ensure you can work with the person at their pace.

Refer to perpetrator-focused Responsibility 3 for more information on identifying cognitive disability.

Balancing practice approaches and understanding

Professionals should practice in a way that balances accountability for the use of violence with an awareness of the person’s experiences of structural inequality, which includes lack of access to resources and opportunities, ableism, ageism and disabling environments. [168]

Recognising and responding to people with cognitive disabilities who use violence requires sensitivity to the ‘lack of able-bodied privilege that these perpetrators experience in many aspects of their lives’. [169]

While experiences of marginalisation and discrimination do not excuse a person's use of violence, it is important to recognise how individuals can be both using violence and experiencing barriers of systemic ableism at the same time.

Where a person has capacity, the choice to use violence still rests with them.

The EACPI Final report outlines that complex needs, including cognitive disability, are not usually the cause of the person using violence, but require adequate identification and management to reduce the risk of the person using violence. [170]

As such, you should understand that people with cognitive disabilities can use violence while also requiring care and adjustments to increase capacity for behaviour change.

You can provide support to address both needs and behaviour concurrently.

People with cognitive disabilities may perpetrate violence towards another person with a disability or person without a disability, including intimate partners, children, carers and other family members.

You must be aware to not align with the myth that people with cognitive disabilities cannot perpetrate family violence due to their disability and are not more likely to be violent because of their cognitive disability.

People with cognitive disability need to be assessed on an individual basis without preconceptions. People with cognitive disabilities can still have capacity, and therefore responsibility, for their family violence behaviour.

The level of capacity can be conceptualised as a continuum – the severity of a person’s impairment is linked to the degree of decreased capacity.

Recognising common perpetrator presentations and narratives in relation to cognitive disability

Some common presentations that may indicate the presence of a cognitive disability or family violence behaviours [171] include:

• obsessive and controlling styles of behaviour and increased high dependence being expressed as ‘not being able to distance themselves from their partner or carer’, which relates to trying to keep partner in the relationship
• anxiety and controlling behaviours, thinking their partner will leave them due to their disability
• non-recognition of own behaviours or their impact, and to what extent they are linked to diagnosed/ undiagnosed conditions
• antisocial or risk-taking behaviours
• inability to empathise or understand the other person's perspective
• abusive behaviours that are linked to poor impulse control or reduced self-regulation
• lack of awareness or care of the consequences of actions due to inability to connect actions to reactions.

A person with a cognitive disability may use violence towards another person and minimise their responsibility by stating that the victim survivor ‘upset’ them and ‘made them use violence’.

For example, a person with ABI may avoid taking responsibility for their violence with statements like, ‘I can’t help it, I have a brain injury.’

In this case, it is important to also address their use of violence in a way that recognises their cognitive capacity and provides tailored support to them to change their behaviour.

Further guidance and approach to risk assessment and management

The perpetrator-focused MARAM Practice Guides for Responsibility 3 and 7 provide further guidance on recognising and responding to people using violence who have a cognitive disability. These focus particularly on the high prevalence of ABI and links to higher likelihood of violent crime.

Responsibility 7 provides specific guidance on strategies and adjustments in risk assessment, such as providing breaks and clear, structured questioning.

Any person using violence with suspected cognitive disability, including ABI, should be referred to a general practitioner to coordinate a referral to a rehabilitation professional for further neuropsychological or other relevant assessment (e.g., a neuropsychologist, occupational therapist, clinical psychologist).

Other referrals and supports could include linking to an occupational therapist, as well direct service and advocacy organisations that can assist with providing information on different disabilities and necessary supports and adjustments. [172]

You can seek secondary consultation for support on adjustments to service environments and interventions that meet their needs, refer to perpetrator-focused Responsibility 5 .

12.1.18 Recognising high-risk perpetrators’ use of family violence

The EACPI Final report notes that some perpetrators who commit acts of family violence that cause severe physical injury or even death do not have any previous history of family violence offending. [173]

However, EACPI also cites Crime Statistics Agency data showing that most high-risk perpetrators have known histories of family violence perpetration against intimate partners.

Around 40 per cent of high-risk perpetrators are also identified as using violence against other family members and have a history of non–family violence offending. [174]

This means that many family violence perpetrators are already known to the system.

In these cases, the ongoing challenge for services is how to intervene effectively to reduce repeat violence and prevent the escalation of violence.

Recognising common high-risk perpetrator presentations

High-risk perpetrators will present to the service system with a range of co-occurring high-risk factors and behaviours. These include: [175]

• if they are younger perpetrators, displaying high risk–taking behaviours
• if they are older, having entrenched violent behaviours
• expressing strong victim stance, overwhelming sense of hopelessness and blaming of other party for their behaviour or its impacts
• persistent breaches to legal sanctions, including intervention, corrections and family law (parenting) orders
• long criminal history, with frequent periods of imprisonment
• connections to criminal groups and gangs.
• exhibiting extreme gendered expectations and attitudes
• showing little to no capacity for empathy, present with psychopathy or sociopathy, or personality disorder
• stalking and predatory behaviours, indicated by an intense control of movement or surveillance of the victim survivor
• using sexual violence through coercion and manipulation, including attempting to ensure the victim survivor is continuously pregnant as a form of control
• having multiple victims now or over a long period of time, and/or targeting victims with actual or perceived vulnerabilities related to their needs or identity.

Some of the common presentations above are consistent with the evidence base on homicide and/or homicide–suicide in the context of family violence. Refer to Section 12.1.15 and perpetrator-focused Responsibility 3 for further information.

There are very few needs-based responses available to serious risk offenders. Their contact with the service system mainly occurs through justice settings.

People operating at this level of violence often have very low voluntary engagement with services and may actively avoid contact.

Men in this cohort commonly experience feelings of system injustice and discrimination.

Responding to high-risk perpetrators with proactive and coordinated intervention

Professionals’ responsibilities to undertake active and coordinated interventions are outlined in the perpetrator-focused Responsibilities 4, 8, 9 and 10 .

While opportunities for change among high-risk perpetrators are low, you should still actively manage risk through coordinated interventions.

You should identify points of potential conversation and engagement that are outside of ‘usual’ service delivery, and work collaboratively with professionals across the service system to leverage opportunities.

Any opportunity to have contact with and engage a perpetrator should be maximised. Give priority to assessing and addressing criminogenic needs.

This includes developing exit planning strategies for those leaving correctional facilities.

Perpetrators in positions of authority and impact on victim survivors

Any person in a position of power in a community or professional setting, or any role that directly relates to authority, can use that position to target their use of violence, use systems abuse or reduce access to support for victim survivors. In a community setting, these roles may include cultural, religious leaders or community social group leaders. In small metropolitan, rural or regional communities, perpetrators may be well respected and have social standing that imbues them with power, such as a school principal, local counsellor, firefighter or community sports leader.

In professional settings, perpetrators who are in significant positions of power within society, including those working in the justice system such as policing, armed and correctional services, or other recognised positions of authority or standing in the community, can present specific risks to victim survivors.

Perpetrators in these positions of authority and power may:

• have control over their family due to the nature of their employment, such as frequent redeployment, causing the victim survivor to be socially isolated and economically dependent on the person using violence [176]
• operate within a workplace culture where rigid social norms around hypermasculinity may be elevated. Workplaces where dominating and controlling behaviours are considered as leadership traits and held in high regard (i.e. military services),may diminish or discourage traits that are deemed feminine such as empathy, fear or sadness [177]
• have capacity due to their position to access information that increases risk to the victim survivor and impact on the victim survivor’s willingness to seek help(such as state-owned record management systems)
• with their narratives and behaviours to minimise or justify their use of violence [178] and/or
• limiting the service response options available to the victim survivor
• use their access to weapons to control the victim survivor.

As part of the narrative, perpetrators in positions of power may minimise, justify or shift responsibility fort heir behaviours due to the impact of their work on their health or wellbeing, or experience of trauma.They may be less likely to accept responsibility for family violence behaviours or support for related needs (such as mental illness)due to associated stigma and potential consequences such as being discharged or deemed unfit to deploy. [179]

As a result of these types of controlling behaviours and the position of authority the perpetrator is in, the victim survivor is likely to feel isolated or particularly fearful of reporting their experiences to authorities and services due to: [180]

• Fear that they will not be believed if they seek help in the community, or that as a consequence of seeking help for experiencing violence they will be ostracised from their community
• Minimisation or normalisation of the person’s use of violence due to the high level of stress they endure in their workplace. Societal acceptance that a range of occupations involving exposure to traumatic situations with often life-threatening and violent outcomes, has previously made family violence less visible and ‘normalised’ within some relationships
• Being reliant on support including housing, compensation and resources to meet basic needs (for example from ADF).Access to these may be contingent on maintaining a relationship with the person using violence, which can include accepting the role of carer to support the person using violence in their military duties, such as where the person using violence may have experiences of PTSD [181]
• Fear that the person using violence will be able to use their occupational knowledge and expertise to locate them if they leave, avoid prosecution, or manipulate the system into not believing them. People using violence in positions of power may exacerbate fears of victim survivors that system intervention cannot guarantee their safety and confidentiality
• Fear of retaliation from the perpetrator for disclosing violence where there are impacts on their employment, such as the perpetrator’s behaviour becoming known to their workplace and facing disciplinary actions or losing their job. There may be fear of increased severity of violence if the person has access and licence to use firearms
• Capacity for people in positions of power to intimidate and seek collusion from colleagues to further perpetrate, threaten or coerce a victim survivor to drop charges or withdraw family violence intervention or other orders.

Stronger positions of power and systems awareness enables perpetrators to exploit their position and standing in the method, narrative and behaviour they use to seek collusion from other professionals and services. People using violence in positions of power may have more knowledge, skill and capacity to use systems abuse behaviours to reduce victim survivors’ access to services, and navigate or weaponise systems as a method of coercive control.

People using violence in positions of power may have more knowledge, skill and capacity to use systems abuse behaviours to reduce victim survivors’ access to services.

Stronger systems awareness enables perpetrators in positions of power to understand how to seek collusion from other professionals and services with their narrative and behaviour, exploiting their position and capacity to navigate and weaponise systems as methods of coercive control.

12.2 Informing our practice

12.2.1 perpetrator/predominant aggressor and misidentification [182].

Family violence risk assessment and management practice includes identifying:

• the person experiencing family violence (the victim survivor)
• the person using violence (the perpetrator)
• the ongoing risk of victimisation and perpetration of violence.

Correctly identifying each party is critical. This informs all immediate and ongoing strategies to reduce the risk of harm.

Harm includes the perpetrator’s use of violence and coercive control, the impact of family violence on victim survivors, and the unintentional harm or trauma created through system responses.

Identifying the person who has used a pattern of coercive, controlling and violent behaviour over time is key to identifying the perpetrator.

Where there is cross-disclosure, cross-accusations or observations of ‘mutual’ or ‘bi-directional’ violence (for further information, refer to below), the person who exhibits this pattern would be identified as the ‘predominant aggressor’ in the family relationship.

The predominant aggressor is the person causing the greatest family violence harm to a partner or family member.

Failure to identify the predominant aggressor may result in the misidentification of the victim survivor as the perpetrator.

Misidentification can lead to a number of system responses such as civil or criminal orders.

This can have long-lasting negative consequences on the victim survivor. It can lead to mistrust of police and the intervention system, resulting in reluctance to report subsequent violence. [183]

Misidentification can be due to a number of different factors. These factors include perpetrator behaviours, such as using vexatious claims or systems abuse as part of a pattern of coercive control, as well as system failures, for example, low levels of understanding about LGBTIQ relationships in parts of the service system. [184]

Perpetrators may be misidentified as victim survivors for a range of reasons.

They may use the criminal justice system to control the victim survivor by contacting the police and making false accusations.

They may also believe that they have a right to control the victim survivor by whatever means they choose, and they may express their dissatisfaction in losing control by misrepresenting themselves as a victim survivor.

Some perpetrators of family violence report being victim survivors.

A perpetrator can overtly present themselves as the victim of the violence to manipulate services, including police, and get them ‘on side’ with their narrative, resulting in the ‘real’ victim being misidentified as a perpetrator.

This tactic is a form of systems abuse and has significant impact on victim survivors.

Presenting in this way is consistent with the victim stance that many perpetrators adopt to justify and excuse their behaviour.

Perpetrators may also aim to convince service providers that they are the victim survivor or use a range of behaviours to avoid or deflect their responsibility for using family violence.

Perpetrators may also present with narratives of injustice from system interventions, which may be related to their own experiences of violence, marginalisation and discrimination.

Research evidence suggests that misidentification of victim survivors is more likely in some circumstances than others.

Those at higher risk of being misidentified include victim survivors:

• from Aboriginal communities
• from culturally, linguistically and faith-diverse communities (especially where there is a language barrier)
• with a disability
• identifying as trans and/or gender diverse
• with a mental illness
• in same-gender relationships. [185]

Some victim survivors may be misidentified as a perpetrator where they have used self-defence or violent resistance in response to their experience of the perpetrator’s pattern of violence and coercive control, or for actions taken to defend another family member.

Victim survivors are also misidentified as a perpetrator based on misinterpretation of their presentation or behaviour.

This can be due to direct and deliberate misrepresentation by the perpetrator, or due to bias on behalf of professionals and services, such as gender norms and stereotyped expectations of, for example, women’s behaviour.

Women’s behaviour is often misinterpreted in relation to:

• their response to the impact of violence on them (such as trauma responses)
• having mental health issues
• the influence of alcohol or other drugs
• perceived or actual aggression towards police or at initiation of police contact.

You should be mindful of your own biases and how these might contribute to their understandings of what a victim is ‘supposed’ to look like.

Evidence suggests notions of the ‘perfect victim’ can be highly racialised, gendered and classed, with beliefs held that a victim survivor is not supposed to fight back and be submissive to authority. [186]

There is significant evidence, however, that victim survivors are rarely passive victims of the abuse to which they are subjected. [187]

Misidentification may also occur when a perpetrator:

• falsely accuses a victim survivor of using violence or misrepresents their self-defence as evidence of violence
• cites substance misuse by the victim survivor as evidence to support their claim they are a perpetrator
• undermines a victim survivor’s presentation or behaviour as resulting from mental illness or misrepresents a victim survivor’s disability as drunkenness or being drug affected. For example, the victim survivor may be in shock or distraught as a result of the violence, they may be calm and assertive, or they may fear reprisals from showing their reaction to the violence. The perpetrator may seek to deliberately leverage commonly held discriminatory attitudes to misrepresent the victim survivor’s true state and minimise the victim survivor’s opportunity to have their voice heard.

Misidentification can also occur where a victim survivor is experiencing barriers to communication with the police or a service provider (due to trauma responses, injury or from pre-existing communication barriers).

Key indicators for identifying a predominant aggressor include: [188]

• the respective injuries of the parties
• whether either party has defensive injuries
• whether it is likely one party has acted in self-defence
• in predicting or anticipating violence, whether it is likely one party acted with violent resistance
• the likelihood or capacity of each party to inflict further injury
• self-assessment of fear and safety of each party, or, if not able to be ascertained, which party appears more fearful
• patterns of coercion, intimidation and/or violence by either party.

Other indicators include:

• prior perpetration/histories of violence (from a range of services, including specialist family violence services, health services, etc.)
• accounts from other household members or witnesses, if available
• the size, weight and strength of the parties. [189]

Where the identity of the predominant aggressor or perpetrator is unclear or not yet determined, you should record your reasoning in organisational data collecting systems so that the information can be made available to other services through information sharing.

In these situations, seek assistance from a professional with specialist skills in family violence risk assessment.

Guidance on identifying the predominant aggressor (perpetrator) is outlined in victim survivor–focused Responsibility 7 and perpetrator-focused Responsibilities 2, 3 and 7 .

Challenging narratives about ‘mutual violence’ or ‘bi-directional violence’

Professionals should not use mutualising language to describe family violence, including using the terms ‘mutual violence’ and ‘bi-directional violence’ to name or describe the situation.

Mutualising language in the context of family violence can occur when:

• there are cross-accusations by parties of the other/multiple parties using violence in a family context
• professionals accept an immediate presentation of violence without further assessment and analysis of the situation
• situations are complex and the process of correctly identifying a predominant aggressor is elongated, challenging and uncertain.

Using mutualising language risks colluding with a perpetrator/predominant aggressor and undermining the safety of victim survivors.

Understanding who is causing the greatest harm can be complex in circumstances where both, or multiple, parties report they are the victim of the other.

Where there are cross-accusations, presentations or narratives that the violence is ‘mutual’ or ‘bi-directional’, take care you are not colluding with a predominant aggressor/perpetrator’s narrative to position a ‘real’ victim survivor as a perpetrator.

If a perpetrator’s victim stance is not recognised and they are provided with opportunities to collude, they may intentionally seek to manipulate professionals and services and use systems abuse to further their use of violence against the victim survivor.

Using mutualising language also risks decontextualising the experience and use of family violence from the broader situation or pattern of events.

It is important to account for the complexity and crucial distinction between violence driven by ongoing, patterned, coercive and controlling behaviours versus self-defence and violent resistance.

The perpetrator may exploit the latter through gaslighting and confusing the victim survivor, so that they view themselves as a perpetrator.

You should listen carefully to the service user’s narrative to identify situations where:

• a person reports they are using violence within a relationship, however, their disclosures indicate they experience the other person’s pattern of violence and coercive control
• a person suggests they are a victim survivor; however, their narratives indicate their use of family violence behaviours.

Presentations can be complex, and allegations of ‘mutual violence’ can occur across age groups, intimate partner and family relationships and communities, including within a family of origin context.

Responding to disclosures or cross-accusations requires specialist family violence service support.

You can seek secondary consultation and share information with specialist services for further assessment (refer to the perpetrator-focused MARAM Practice Guides – Responsibilities 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 in particular).

12.2.2 Accountability to victim survivors’ lived experience

Accountability to victim survivors is the collective responsibility of a whole service system response to family violence.

Everyone has a role to play.

A system that is accountable to victim survivors is also accountable to perpetrators, other professionals and the community more broadly.

This underpins the model of Structured Professional Judgement discussed in Section 10 , which is premised on understanding the ‘expertise’ victim survivors have in the assessment of their level of safety.

It centralises victim survivors’ expertise in identifying the perpetrator’s pattern of behaviour. It builds on strategies they have already used to keep themselves safe to enhance immediate safety.

Perpetrators have an individual responsibility to be accountable for their user of violence. Specialist family violence services work with them to first acknowledge that they are using family violence before they can consider the need to stop.

Perpetrators must be personally ready to change their behaviour, and they must be stable enough in life to benefit from intervention. [190]

Perpetrators may demonstrate their readiness to change by making a personal commitment to their family’s safety and:

• acknowledging that they are using violence
• recognising their patterns of violence, rather than focusing on a few ‘signature’ examples
• developing an internal motivation to change and understanding what aspects of their behaviour and attitudes they should change
• demonstrating a capacity to change (for example, professionals can respond to needs-based issues such as homelessness and criminogenic needs that can otherwise act as significant barriers and limits to capacity for a perpetrator to change their behaviour)
• demonstrating shifts in deep-seated attitudes, starting to think differently, and applying these new attitudes in behaviour towards family members
• discarding influences that might work against these revised attitudes
• making amends for some of the damage caused
• demonstrating maintenance of any change in attitudes and behaviour achieved. [191]

Contributing to perpetrator accountability across the system

All points of the service system must take responsibility for the way in which interactions with the perpetrator can potentially make families safer, while ensuring they do not inadvertently increase risk. [192]

In aligning to the MARAM Framework, you are committing to working with a shared understanding of family violence, family violence risk, and collaborative approach to risk management.

When working with people using family violence, accountability to victim survivors’ lived experience at a systems level means:

• provide consistent information and messages that family violence is not tolerated or accepted, and that support is available
• working with others to situate the responsibility for the violence with the perpetrator
• contributing to collaborative risk management strategies that do not undermine other parts of the system response to work directly with victim survivors
• monitoring a perpetrator’s use of violence by keeping them ‘in view’
• understanding when you should seek secondary consultation or share information with specialist family violence services for comprehensive risk assessment and management, including services that work with perpetrators of violence
• reporting criminal offences or collaborating on risk management approaches before reporting
• reporting concerns about any children to Child Protection or other relevant authorities to enhance partnering with non-violent parents/adult victim survivors and increasing perpetrator accountability.

Concepts of consistent messaging, consequences and ‘in view’ are further described below.

Keeping perpetrators engaged and ‘in view’ can provide current information about the level of risk presented by individual perpetrators and how this can fluctuate over time.

With this information, the service system can intervene in a timely way to identify, assess and manage dynamic and real-time risks presented by perpetrators to their family members in the short term and over time.

Perpetrators may held be ‘in view’ of the service system from many different perspectives.

Coordination and collaboration among service providers and sharing perspectives and expertise about the risk individuals present to their family members will support a comprehensive and timely ‘view’ of a perpetrator’s likelihood to use or escalate their use of violence.

Perpetrators (whether identified as such or not) will have varying motivations to engage with the service system.

These may include:

• in the normal course of using universal services, such as accessing therapeutic supports health care, education, housing or other community programs that are not related to family violence occurring within their family. These services are most likely to have more regular engagement with perpetrators, and so have an ongoing role in identification, risk assessment and management
• taking out an intervention order against the person they are perpetrating violence against
• reporting a family member to Child Protection
• destruction of property or incurring fines on behalf of the victim survivor in order to gain additional control of their resources and living requirements
• changing or making threats related to child parenting arrangements
• reaching out to community networks such as religious or community groups
• accessing therapeutic supports such as phone counselling services to assist with parenting, mental health or housing support
• men’s sheds or specialist perpetrator’s family violence services
• calling emergency services
• taking a victim survivor to a hospital emergency department or health service following physical or sexual violence.

The way in which you learn of a service user’s perpetration of family violence will influence the way you engage safely with the person to:

• hold them ‘in view’
• provide consistent messages that the behaviour is unacceptable
• avoid collusion.

Consistent messaging and consequences

At a systems level, all professionals should provide consistent and reinforcing messages that violence is unacceptable in ways that are clear and respectful.

As a service system, there is a shared responsibility and aim to support and enable a perpetrator to assume personal responsibility for the use of violence and its impacts and desist from using violence.

However, the use of violence in family relationships is based on deeply held attitudes and is an intentional pattern of behaviour. [193]

Where a perpetrator comes to the attention of service providers or authorities, it is likely that they will experience external forms of accountability before (and if) they assume personal responsibility for their use of violence.

External consequences for using family violence can take a range of forms, including:

• criminal charges and sanctions
• civil remedies such as the imposition of intervention orders or family violence safety notices
• court-mandated participation in perpetrator behaviour change programs or other programs that provide case management
• a Children’s Court order for contact with their children to be supervised.

Outside the justice and statutory systems, perpetrators may feel held to account by:

• service system interventions that reinforce their accountability such as case work or opportunities to participate in culturally informed perpetrator behaviour change programs
• formal and informal community support and interventions that encourage people using violence to assume responsibility for and cease their use of violence.

Updated 21 July 2021

Understanding the Dynamics of Domestic Violence

Jan 02, 2020

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Understanding the Dynamics of Domestic Violence. Defining Domestic Violence. Domestic violence is a pattern of assaultive and coercive behaviors that one partner uses against a current or former intimate partner.

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Presentation Transcript

Understanding the Dynamics ofDomestic Violence

DefiningDomesticViolence Domestic violence is a pattern of assaultive and coercive behaviors that one partner uses against a current or former intimate partner. Domestic violence occurs in intimate relationships where the perpetrator and the victim are currently or previously have been dating, living together, married or divorced. They may or may not have children in common

DomesticViolenceStatistics • Department of Justice statistics show that 85% of victims of domestic violence are female. • An estimated 52.3 million women are physically assaulted and 17.7 million women are raped or sexually assaulted at least once in their lifetimes. • Three U.S. women die every day at the hands of an intimate partner. • 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence at one point in their lifetime.

DomesticViolenceStatistics • A woman’s risk of getting killed goes up 75% when she leaves the relationship or has left. • 99% of victims report having experienced some form of economic abuse and victims often cite finances as a barrier to escaping abuse.

TheCostsofDomesticViolence • For women, homicide was the second leading cause of death on the job in 2003. • Employers absorb a large portion of the health care costs related to domestic violence, which total nearly $4.1 billion each year. • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the annual cost of lost productivity due to domestic violence equals $727.8 million, with more than 7.9 million paid workdays lost each year.

PowerandControl Domestic violence is purposeful behavior. The batterer’s pattern of abusive acts are directed at achieving compliance and control over the victim. Tactics that work to control the victim are selectively chosen by the batterer. This power permeates every aspect of the victim’s life.

MethodsofPower&Control • Isolation • Verbal abuse & threats • Destruction of property • Physical battering • Sexual abuse and coercion • Stalking • Financial control

The Cycle of Violence • This early theory was developed by Lenore Walker to explain and phenomenon of a “honeymoon” phase that followed a battering incident. • NNEDV no longer uses this model as it does not fit the experience of many battered women. • What is helpful to explain is that the batterer may revert to his initial charming tactics to keep the partner entrapped in the relationship and to create confusion.

PerpetratorsofDomesticViolence • Come from all walks of life. • Extremely jealous and possessive. • Have the capacity to be very charming. • Move quickly into relationships. • Has a need for power and control. Uses both charm and assault behaviors to gain control.

VictimsofDomesticViolence • Come from all walks of life. • Predominantly female. • Develop low self esteem as a result of the battering relationship. • Are often somehow vulnerable when meeting the batterer • Are likely to take the blame for the battering or feel responsible.

TheBatteringRelationship • Does not start out violent • There are “red flags” but they are often disregarded or mistaken for love. • Isolation: He doesn’t want me to hang out with other people = he loves me so much he wants me all to himself • The early charming behavior of the batterer is a control tactic to get the victim into the relationship and under control.

Red Flags Someone who: • Seems too good to be true • Wants the relationship to move too quickly • Uses frequent criticisms and put downs • Blames past failed relationships entirely on former partner “my ex was a total bitch” • Says one thing and does another • Is extremely jealous and possessive • Has history of violence in relationships

HowBatterersUseChildren • Direct mistreatment/endangerment • Require children to monitor and report • Create an atmosphere in which they directly witness violence or the aftermath of an attack • Threats: harm, take children, hotline • Win custody • Vehicles for communication • Sow divisions within the family

Exercise • Think of a time in your life when you needed to make a change • Why didn’t you make the change right away? • What did you need to make the change?

External Factors Lack of housing Lack of money Religion Family Community Lack of support Police Courts Clergy Internal Factors Maintain household Children’s relationship Feeling responsible for partner’s welfare Love Fear Leavingisn’teasy

Leavingishighrisk! • Batterers escalate in their assaultive and coercive behaviors when the victim is trying to separate • The majority of homicides occur when the victim has left the abuser or is attempting to leave. • The risk of being assaulted or stalked at the workplace increases as this may be the one place the batterer knows where to find the victim.

TheEffectsofDomesticViolence • Last long after the bruises have healed. • The average divorce involving domestic violence takes 2-4 years. • The financial impact can go on for 10-20 years. • The emotional impact and long-term health complications can last a lifetime.

What Helps • Honor the woman as the “expert” on her own life • Let her know the abuse is not her fault and she doesn’t deserve to be abused • Stay in contact to break isolation • Offer support, resources and help identify options • Facilitate safety planning • Let her know her feelings are normal • Listen

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“Not how much, but how.” Contextualizing the presentation of violence broadcast on television: Normativity and narrative genres

The analysis of TV violence cannot be limited to the quantification of its incidence, but should also take into account the type of violence broadcast and its context (what is depicted and how). Thus, normative models of violence (legitimized violence with positive consequences for the aggressor, or vice versa) could be understood as positive, while contra-normative models of violence (rewarding illegitimate violence and punishing legitimate violence) should be of far greater concern. This paper analyzes the normative contexts of TV violence through a content analysis of randomly selected fragments of TV programming (147 recorded hours). The results show that news programs and TV series/soaps delegitimized violence to a higher extent, while films tend to show legitimized or ambivalent violence. Positive consequences of violence predominate in fictional programs, except for TV series/soaps. Normative presentation of violence is more frequent, especially in nonfiction genres, as fiction has more freedom to depict the socially undesirable.

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§ 1049i. enforcement of canadian domestic-violence protection order by law-enforcement officer.

• § 148. Time for appeal from final judgment of the Superior Court in civil actions
• § 512. Jurisdiction and powers of Commissioners of the Superior Court
• § 901. Definitions
• § 902. Purpose; construction
• § 903. Court of record; name; subtitles
• § 921. Exclusive original civil jurisdiction
• § 922. Exclusive and concurrent original criminal jurisdiction
• § 924. Concurrent original civil jurisdiction
• § 925. General jurisdiction
• § 1031. Disposition
• § 1041. Definitions
• § 1042. Commencement of action; procedure
• § 1043. Ex parte orders and emergency hearings
• § 1044. Nonemergency hearings
• § 1045. Relief available; duration of orders, modification and termination
• § 1046. Enforcement; sanctions for violation of order
• § 1047. Nonpreclusion of remedies
• § 1048. Jurisdiction
• § 1049. Title
• § 1049A. Definitions
• § 1049B. Judicial enforcement of order
• § 1049C. Nonjudicial enforcement of order
• § 1049D. Registration of order
• § 1049E. Immunity
• § 1049F. Other remedies
• § 1049H. Definitions
• § 1049J. Enforcement of Canadian domestic-violence protection order by the Court
• § 1049K. Registration of Canadian domestic-violence protection order
• § 7201. Purpose
• § 7202. Definitions
• § 7203. Commencement of action; procedure
• § 7204. Emergency proceedings
• § 7205. Nonemergency proceedings
• § 7206. Termination and renewal
• § 7207. Return and disposal of firearms
• § 7209. Sanctions
• § 7701. Definitions
• § 7702. Commencement of action; procedure
• § 7703. Emergency hearings
• § 7704. Nonemergency hearings
• § 7705. Termination and renewal
• § 7706. Return and disposal of firearms
• § 7707. Limitation on liability
• § 7708. Sanctions
• § 7802. Definitions
• § 7803. Civil action
• § 7806. Remedies
• § 7807. Statute of Limitations
• § 9301. Civil jurisdiction; amount in controversy
• § 222. General definitions
• § 601. Offensive touching; unclassified misdemeanor; class A misdemeanor
• § 602. Menacing; unclassified misdemeanor
• § 603. Reckless endangering in the second degree; class A misdemeanor
• § 604. Reckless endangering in the first degree; class E felony
• § 605. Abuse of a pregnant female in the second degree; class C felony
• § 606. Abuse of a pregnant female in the first degree; class B felony
• § 607. Strangulation or suffocation; penalty; affirmative defense
• § 607A. Aggravated Strangulation; penalty; defenses
• § 611. Assault in the third degree; class A misdemeanor
• § 612. Assault in the second degree; class D felony
• § 613. Assault in the first degree; class B felony
• § 614. Abuse of a sports official; class G felony; class A misdemeanor
• § 621. Terroristic threatening
• § 625. Unlawfully administering drugs; class A misdemeanor
• § 628. Vehicular assault in the second degree; class B misdemeanor
• § 761. Definitions generally applicable to sexual offenses
• § 762. Provisions generally applicable to sexual offenses
• § 763. Sexual harassment; unclassified misdemeanor
• § 764. Indecent exposure in the second degree; unclassified misdemeanor
• § 765. Indecent exposure in the first degree; class A misdemeanor
• § 767. Unlawful sexual contact in the third degree; class A misdemeanor
• § 768. Unlawful sexual contact in the second degree; class F felony
• § 769. Unlawful sexual contact in the first degree; class D felony
• § 770. Rape in the fourth degree; class C felony
• § 771. Rape in the third degree; class B felony
• § 772. Rape in the second degree; class B felony
• § 773. Rape in the first degree; class A felony
• § 774. Sexual extortion; class E felony
• § 781. Unlawful imprisonment in the second degree; class A misdemeanor
• § 782. Unlawful imprisonment in the first degree; class G felony
• § 783. Kidnapping in the second degree; class C felony
• § 783A. Kidnapping in the first degree; class B felony
• § 785. Interference with custody; class G felony; class A misdemeanor
• § 791. Acts constituting coercion; class A misdemeanor
• § 804. Reckless burning or exploding; class A misdemeanor
• § 820. Trespassing with intent to peer or peep into a window or door of another; class B misdemeanor
• § 821. Criminal trespass in the third degree; a violation
• § 822. Criminal trespass in the second degree; unclassified misdemeanor
• § 823. Criminal trespass in the first degree; class A misdemeanor
• § 824. Burglary in the third degree; class F felony
• § 825. Burglary in the second degree; class D felony
• § 826. Burglary in the first degree; class C felony
• § 854. Identity theft; class D felony
• § 854A. Identity theft passport; application; issuance
• § 907. Criminal impersonation; class A misdemeanor
• § 1103. Child abuse in the third degree; class A misdemeanor
• § 1103A. Child abuse in the second degree; class G felony
• § 1103B. Child abuse in the first degree; class B felony
• § 1105. Crime against a vulnerable adult
• § 1271A. Criminal contempt of a domestic violence protective order, lethal violence protective order, or sexual violence protective order; class A misdemeanor; class F felony
• § 1311. Harassment; class A misdemeanor
• § 1312. Stalking; class G felony, class F felony, class C felony
• § 1335. Violation of privacy; class A misdemeanor; class G felony
• § 1325. Cruelty to animals; class A misdemeanor; class F felony
• § 1448. Possession and purchase of deadly weapons by persons prohibited; penalties
• § 1448C. Civil procedures to relinquish firearms or ammunition
• § 2402. Interception of communications generally; divulging contents of communications, violations of chapter
• § 4121. Community notification of sex offenders on probation, parole, conditional release or release from confinement
• § 4206. Sentence for misdemeanors
• § 4205. Sentence for felonies
• § 101. Void and voidable marriages
• § 501. Duty to support minor child; duty to support child over 18 years of age
• § 701. Rights and responsibilities of parents; guardian appointment
• § 721. Commencement of proceedings; venue; notice; pleadings; attorney for child; removal from jurisdiction; considerations
• § 722. Best interests of child
• § 723. Temporary orders
• § 724. Interviews
• § 726. Hearings
• § 727. Custody
• § 728. Residence; visitation; sanctions
• § 729. Modification of prior orders
• § 730. Petition to modify custody
• § 731. Attorney's fees
• § 732. Procedural rights
• § 733. Stepparent custody in certain circumstances
• § 734. Relocation
• § 701A. Title
• § 702A. Purpose
• § 703A. Definitions
• § 704A. Fleeing from domestic violence
• § 705A. Rebuttable presumption against custody or residence of minor child to perpetrator of domestic violence
• § 706A. Evidence of domestic violence
• § 707A. Counseling
• § 708A. Visitation
• § 709A. Modification of orders
• § 711A. Ordered mediation prohibited
• § 8-201. Establishment of parent-child relationship
• § 1502. Purpose; construction
• § 1503. Definitions
• § 1504. Jurisdiction; residence; procedure
• § 1505. Divorce; marriage irretrievably broken and reconciliation improbable; defenses; efforts at reconciliation
• § 1506. Annulment
• § 1507. Petition for divorce or annulment
• § 1509. Preliminary injunction; interim orders pending final hearing
• § 1511. Response; counterclaim; prayers; reply to counterclaim
• § 1512. Alimony in divorce and annulment actions; award; limitations
• § 1513. Disposition of marital property; imposition of lien; insurance policies
• § 1514. Resumption of maiden or former name
• § 1515. Attorneys’ fees
• § 1519. Modification or termination of decree or order; termination of alimony; enforcement of alimony order
• § 1520. Independence of provisions of decree or temporary order
• § 1920. Initial child custody jurisdiction
• § 1923. Temporary emergency jurisdiction
• § 2302. Definitions
• § 2320. Persons eligible to petition for guardianship
• § 2321. Consent by parent
• § 2330. Grounds for guardianship of the child
• § 2331. Duties and rights of parents
• § 2353. Standard for permanent guardianship
• § 2401. Intent and purpose
• § 2402. Definitions
• § 2403. Jurisdiction and venue
• § 2404. Hearing procedure and notice requirements
• § 2405. Sanctions
• § 2406. Confidentiality of proceedings
• § 2407. Appeals
• § 2410. Persons eligible to petition for third party visitation
• § 2411. Contents of third party visitation petition
• § 2412. Grounds for persons obtaining third party visitation with a child
• § 2413. Modification of orders granting third party visitation
• § 2512. Grounds for DSCYF custody; preliminary injunction
• § 5402. Duty of mental health services providers to take precautions against threatened patient violence; duty to warn
• § 5403. Discretionary disclosures to law enforcement

(a) If a law-enforcement officer determines under subsection (b) or (c) of this section that there is probable cause to believe a valid Canadian domestic-violence protection order exists and the order has been violated, the officer shall enforce the terms of the Canadian domestic-violence protection order as if the terms were in an order of the Court. Presentation to a law-enforcement officer of a certified copy of a Canadian domestic-violence protection order is not required for enforcement.

(b) Presentation to a law-enforcement officer of a record of a Canadian domestic-violence protection order that identifies both a protected individual and a respondent and on its face is in effect constitutes probable cause to believe that a valid order exists.

(c) If a record of a Canadian domestic-violence protection order is not presented as provided in subsection (b) of this section, a law-enforcement officer may consider other information in determining whether there is probable cause to believe that a valid Canadian domestic-violence protection order exists.

(d) If a law-enforcement officer determines that an otherwise valid Canadian domestic-violence protection order cannot be enforced because the respondent has not been notified of or served with the order, the officer shall notify the protected individual that the officer will make reasonable efforts to contact the respondent, consistent with the safety of the protected individual. After notice to the protected individual and consistent with the safety of the individual, the officer shall make a reasonable effort to inform the respondent of the order, notify the respondent of the terms of the order, provide a record of the order, if available, to the respondent, and allow the respondent a reasonable opportunity to comply with the order before the officer enforces the order.

(e) If a law-enforcement officer determines that an individual is a protected individual, the officer shall inform the individual of available local victim services.

• State vs. Federal Law
• Restraining Orders
• Parental Kidnapping
• State Gun Laws
• Suing an Abuser for Money
• Selected Delaware Statutes
• Immigration
• VAWA Housing Protections
• Federal Gun Laws
• Domestic Violence in the Military
• Quick Guides

Plain-language legal information for victims of abuse

• TechSafety.org
• 1-800-799-7233 (National Domestic Violence Hotline)

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