Family Violence

Family violence is common.

 

In Australia, 1 in 3 women have experienced physical violence since the age of 15, and 1 in 4 women have experienced emotional abuse from a current or former partner.

 

Unfortunately, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander women are at greater risk of family violence. Crime statistics in Victoria tell us that Aboriginal women are 6.6 times more likely to experience family violence than non-Aboriginal women. 

​

Family violence is an ongoing pattern of threatening, intimidating or coercive behaviour, in which one person seeks to gain power & control over another person. It includes:

• Physical violence

• Emotional & psychological abuse

• Social abuse 

• Sexual violence

• Spiritual abuse

• Cultural abuse

• Financial abuse 

​

Family violence is serious

• Aboriginal women are 5x more likely to be victims of homicide 

• 35 times more likely to be hospitalized 

• And nearly ten times more likely to die due to assault as non-Aboriginal females

 

Family violence is lifelong

• 83% of victims say the perpetrator blamed them for the violence.

• 35% of Aboriginal women had experienced a lifetime of abuse including child abuse, sexual abuse and intimate partner violence. 

​

Family violence is misunderstood by the community

• 41% of survey respondents believed family violence is committed equally by men and women (it isn’t)

• 58% of family violence orders are said to list the victim as the perpetrator incorrectly as perpetrators can often act cool and calm by the time police arrive while women are distressed.

• Community attitudes that blame victims compound the trauma of the incidence.  Victims said the lack of support felt ‘more hurtful than the wound of the crime itself.’

​

​