Note: This story discusses domestic violence and infanticide.
Despite decades of advocacy, awareness campaigns, and legal reforms, violence against women in Australia remains high. One in five women in Australia has experienced sexual violence, and on average one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner.
There’s been a recent push to criminalise coercive control — patterns of abusive behaviours that rob a person of their independence and is sometimes a precursor to more violent behaviour and murder.
But the push has highlighted deep divisions. While many frontline workers and advocates support the new law, many Indigenous experts argue it could give police more power, more reason to penalise victims, and increase incarceration among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
What’s being proposed?
Coercive control, such as limiting someone’s access to finances, isolating them from their families and friends, and using tracking devices on their phones or cars, often falls under civil law. Tasmania is the only state or territory which has introduced specific criminal offences covering elements of coercive control, though it’s rarely prosecuted as an offence.
Research has shown intimate partner murders are predictable. In the UK, a review of 372 intimate partner homicides found murders follow an eight-stage homicide timeline involving coercive control. One NSW review found that of domestic violence perpetrators who killed their partners, 99% used coercive control in the relationship.
The NSW Labor opposition has proposed a bill to criminalise coercive control, with a 10-year maximum penalty following the murders of Hannah Clarke and her three children, and of Sydney dentist Preethi Reddy. Reddy’s sister is an advocate for the law.
An inquiry into the bill is currently underway, but submissions to the inquiry are mixed. Some organisations say it would validate survivors’ experiences, have police take a pattern of abuse more seriously, and would send a message to the community that coercive control is being taken seriously. Others argue criminalising relationship behaviour could be harmful, and question the efficacy of such a law given women’s hesitancy to go to the police.
All highlight how complex defining coercive control would be, and the difficulties in drafting and enacting the legislation.
Women’s Safety NSW CEO Hayley Foster told Crikey many of the organisation’s members were pushing for the new law.
“People are calling the police to access protection and our frontline workers and survivor advocates are telling us that the laws need to be improved. [Our members] want the law to actually take into account a pattern of abuse and reflect the lived experience of survivors,” she said.
“They don’t want just a law change, they want practice change alongside it.”
How would this affect Indigenous communities?
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and their children experience violence at 3.1 times the rate of non-Indigenous women and are 35 times more likely to experience domestic and family violence.
But many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experts and advocates are against the new law. University of Queensland Indigenous health specialist Chelsea Watego told Crikey police didn’t need another reason to lock up First Nations people.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander make up 27% of the national prison population despite being only about 3.3% of the general population.
“[Indigenous women] often get misidentified as offenders instead of being seen as victims under current laws,” Watego said.
“We want to save communities and what we know is giving the police greater powers is not going to [make that happen].”
Watego pointed to a case study in SBS docuseries See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill. Aboriginal woman Tamica Mullaley was beaten and stripped naked by her partner Mervyn Bell — but when police arrived, they arrested her for abusing officers. Bell kidnapped and murdered Mullaley’s 10-month old son.
“There’s a real contradiction here,” Watego said. “The documentary that’s being used to make the public PR case for criminalising coercive control has an example of why it should not be criminalised.”
Importantly, there isn’t consensus across the Aboriginal community. One Aboriginal domestic and family violence specialist at a regional women’s domestic violence court advocacy service, who asked to remain anonymous, told Crikey Aboriginal workers agreed they wanted to see coercive control recognised as a crime.
“So many of our women are suffering from it and having it criminalised sends a message about what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour,” she said.
“[But] if this law gets created, it needs to happen alongside bigger changes to the justice systems, and serious police education, and it needs to have Aboriginal people being involved from start to finish.”
It’s not a magic wand
Watego said other alternatives that didn’t involve incarcerating people was needed.
“[We need to adress] what’s underneath all of this, around intergenerational trauma with healing centres and therapeutic approaches,” she said.
“This approach to criminalising a social problem is the problem.”
Foster agreed major structural reform is needed and stressed while much of the public debate has focused around criminalising coercive control, that’s just one small part of what many advocacy organisations are working toward.
“We’re advocating for improvements in the law, alongside significant changes to practice, and a substantial investment in primary prevention and community-led responses,” she said.
“[An annual $1 billion investment is needed] to fill those service gaps so that local communities are resourced to not only take charge of primary prevention but also to deliver culturally safe and accessible services at the local level.”
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault or violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au.
For anyone seeking help, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is 1300 22 4636.
A few aspects should be simple enough. Car trackers, financial theft, phone trackers etc should all be illegal. Some of these issues would fall within the doctrine of some religious groups, so expect ructions there. Many of the Scummo brands of religion persecute women. I recall just such a pastor in my home town, who bashed his wife, but the congregation forgave him because it must have been the devil. Houston Snr was a member of this very faith.
Criminalising abusive behaviour is vitally important. But 10 year jail terms will not help the situation. Shorter sentences are more likely to actually be imposed and provide the circuit-breaker required to educate offenders. Not to mention educating police on what constitutes abuse.
The problem with police and aboriginal communities does not, it’s true, does not need more powers for police. There needs to be a sea-change in police education. Currently police are trained to produce overwhelming force to achieve physical and psychological domination of ‘offenders’. This is too often applied with no regard for context, personal issues or cultural context.
I was in a hospital emergency room recently when a troubled young black woman, upset, crying, and becoming more frantic as her fears about her suituation and people’s access to her body were aggravated when the most senior of 4 police officers became progressively louder, more domineering and aggressive in his efforts to produce ‘calm’. It was heart-rending to hear him bellowing at her, while she was quite literally begging not to be touched or interfered with.
Meek, responsive,obedient, terrified behaviour is the hallmark of many victimised people. Police need a different set of understandings, and a different set of skills to recognise this is not what they should be trying to achieve.
Wow one instance in your view of where they got it wrong. Problem must be endemic…..
If a cop can do that in a HOSPITAL, at an obviously distressed FEMALE then yep, it will be endemic. No ‘ bad apples’ in the police force. Just ask the wife of John Edwards ( oh you can’t she is dead as are her 2 children), and how the cops believed the lying husband who already had AVOs out and a gun license and in possession of 7 guns rather than the frantic wife. It didn’t even enter their dim brains that they were getting 2 totally different stories, so “maybe we should investigate further”. Nope. Just another lying broad wanting to get her mitts on husband’s money. Sick as. I don’t think anyone lost their job over this complete and utter failure, or indeed, over ANY of the hundreds of preventable DV murders. . Deeply entrenched misogyny is a culture that produces these outcomes.
Perpetrators don’t get re-educated in jail. Perpetrators already know the difference between right and wrong. They choose to make commit this abuse. The idea that they doing it accidentally or inadvertently is simply not the case.
If there aren’t harsh penalties, then there is no harsh deterrent.
Has it really come to this?: A reluctance to criminalise patently criminal conduct, albeit outwardly subtle and persistent, because the wallopers are so lousy at dealing with domestic violence. Having said that I totally understand the reluctance of indigenous experts who quite reasonably fear that the wallopers will exploit the new laws to further oppress women. Clearly, the most urgent problem here is the police, not the law.
Been around. Not much. 107000. Not a mistake, DV orders were taken out by wallopers last year in QLD last year. The wallopers are not the ones assaulting there partners at 35 times the average. No they don’t always get it right and never will with those sort of numbers
It is estimated there are over 3 million victims of domestic violence in Australia, the police have nothing to do with that. The police are not murdering women, abusive men are
I understand and agree that coercive control is a significant problem. The question is whether legislating it as a crime will improve matters. Having a law is not enough – there has to be effective enforcement that achieves better outcomes. That could be hard. There will be significant cultural differences involved. Anyone who has worked in developing countries, particulalrly Islamic ones, will recognise that many of the behaviours described as coercive are the norm in these societies.
Trying to remove these kinds of behaviours in some migrant communities is likely to be a source of conflict – and not necessarily welcomed by all women in those communities. It is only a few generations back that there were a significant number of Australian women who did not have any say in family finances and did not have a drivers license. All this says is that cultural change takes time, and any action taken (and there does need to be action) should ensure the outcomes are positive.
So you seem to be saying Moslem men are much more likely to use coercive behaviour on their wives and thus ultimately more Moslem woman die at the hands of their partners than those of the white race. Have you any evidence of this or is this just your gut feel?
Five years working in Pakistan (most recent), and 6 years in Egypt in dribs and drabs, plus 2 years in Syria pre civil war. I can assure it is very real. In fact aspects go well beyond coercive behaviour..
No Robert. Muslim women love to wear the full burka so they can’t speak to anyone,eat comfortably or be cool in summer. They love the fact that they cannot be in the company of a male other than a relative. The love going to the mosque where they get segregated into a tiny cramped side room. They especially love in there own countries where they get married off, can’t drive, can’t go to school, get stoned if they get raped and struck with a stick if their ankles or wrists are showing. Fun.
About 6 years ago I was booked in at my hairdresser in Sydney for an evening appointment. The day before, she contacted me and asked if I objected to the appointment being locked-in. She’d been asked by a Muslim client if the salon could be shuttered and the doors and window blinds drawn down to prevent men seeing her have her hair done.
I had no objection at all but was curious.
At the appointment next evening, I was shocked at how beautifully, fashionably dressed the young woman was, underneath her head to toe veils and the amount of makeup she wore, which to me, only enhanced her natural beauty.
I stupidly expressed my feelings to her that her life must be sad, at having to hide behind these trappings every day of her life.
Her unhesitatingly, honest reply shocked me to the core and questioned my beliefs at what I thought I knew about her culture.
“Why would I be sad? That’s a westerner’s idea that we are trapped. I love my life. My husband adores me. He spends money on me to keep me happy. He gives me money to buy whatever I like for me and my children. He’s a great father and an even greater husband. He provides for us and my family…” And so on and so on.
I immediately apologised for my lack of knowledge on the subject but she merely laughed and said it didn’t bother her, but she hoped she’d clarified that not all Muslim women were/felt constrained/restrained by “their men”.
So, what I’m getting at is the usual: two sides to the argument line.
You are right that this is the view of some women. What stood out for me was the comment that her husband adores her. That is unusual in societies where marriages are normally arranged. Where Islamic law on inheritance applies the marriage is usually to a relative. Cousins is quite common in Pakistan for example. For those who wonder why, it is about avoiding the dilution of family land holdings.
Exactly. There are women in THIS country who accept violence as part of being married! There was a recent case where the woman had been subjected to terrible violence for 40 years and it wasn’t until her daughter dragged her off for counselling that she understood it was a violent marriage! Cultures manage to get people to believe any old thing. The Muslim woman is no exception. She thinks being given money is love ( it seems) and I guess if she loves spending money then she will be ‘ happy’, but there must be a lot more going on that is never allowed to be discussed. That’s what a patriarchy requires: No discussion.
So now there is discussion, surely the fundamental questions are why are men so violent to women?
What is their need, how has it been permitted to continue for so long?
Why do we call them heterosexual when they clearly despise women so much?
What pressure is put on women to ‘be married’ when it is a very dangerous place to be for far more women than is ever acknowledged? Especially as most parents try to keep their daughters as far away from males as possible, only to turn around and hassle them about when are they going to get married! To which rapist Papa? she may well ask.
There seems to be a lot of propaganda to unwrap and hold up to the light.Its 2021 and still no one is game to do it! Instead, lets talk about the victims.
We have a law for every other type of abuse and violence in a society. Why is it a consideration that this one should not be also? This behaviour is an intentional act to Harm and destroy another human being.
Criminalization of coercive behaviour. We incarcerate criminals for three reasons:
With 50 woman being murdered by their partners each year deterrence doesn’t appear to be functioning all that well.
The perpetrators don’t get a true life sentence so they end up back in the community often just as dangerous. Recidivism in Australia stands at 46%.
Justice for dead victims is of absoluttely no value to them although their families may benefit. In any event it is a pyric victory