Gippsland is undergoing a domestic violence epidemic, with recurring yearly figures showing a rising trend and an absence of a zero-tolerance approach.
Joanne Law, a Wellington Shire-based family dispute resolution practitioner, and director of Mediation Institute and Australasian coordinator of the International Mediation Awareness Week, is distressed by the high rates of family violence outlined in the recent Gippsland PHN Health Needs Assessment 2022-2025.
The report highlights multiple and complex priorities for the region’s primary health system, which, for the Wellington LGA, includes a high rate of family violence.
Ms Law, who manages a national business and international presence from a home office in Loch Sport, said mediation and education were ways in which people could help drive down Gippsland’s family violence statistics.
“I am a dispute resolution practitioner and mediator, so we work with helping people sort stuff out, so they’re not stuck in a violent dynamic,” Ms Law said.
“With the family law system, there are lots of silos between the various areas, and often the family violence workers just totally exclude mediation from their thinking. But it actually can be a way of really safely working with people to understand what’s going on and help them connect with what they need to be safer and to sort out the issues.”
The Mediation Institute offers online support for families and individuals suffering from family violence through family dispute resolution, transformative relationship mediation and various coaching and training services.
Ms Law also stressed the importance of educating the community about family violence, particularly the different types of family violence.
Family violence has evolved considerably over the past 40 years; historically described as acts of physical violence with harm being measured in relation to injuries, family violence is now commonly understood to involve emotional abuse, harassment, stalking and controlling behaviours.
“There is still a misunderstanding about family violence where people think ‘They have never hit me’, and yet there may be exerting extreme financial control over them, stalking, either physically or electronically,” Ms Law said.
“We know that particularly with coercive control, where they think they own them, they are controlling what they can wear, where they can go, who they can spend time with, separating them from friends and family, it is actually a bigger indicator of partner homicide than any other form of family violence.”
Perpetrators of coercive control are described as being motivated by a desire or need to dominate and control their partners physically, economically, socially and emotionally.
Abusers may use physical or sexual violence as a means of control and non-physical behaviours.
Examples include interfering with victim-survivors’ relationships with their families, monitoring their movements, restricting their access to money. Emotionally abusive behaviours can also occur, such as calling victims names and insulting them.
Within the context of the relationship, these non-physical behaviours can provoke feelings of fear, intimidation or anxiety among victim-survivors.
“Often those really horrible, horrible things you hear, there has never been any physical violence,” Ms Law said.
“The coercive behaviour, the person knows they are being controlled, they try to go to the police or whatever, and there are no big incidents.
“But when they get to the point where they have had enough, ‘I want to separate, I can’t handle this anymore’, it can be a really high-risk time.”
A 2021 Australian Institute of Criminology report revealed the murder of Hannah Clarke and her three children in February 2020 by her former partner played a significant role in increasing awareness of coercive control in Australia.
Hannah had never disclosed any physical abuse, but Australian media reported that her former spouse had sought to control every aspect of her life.
This included what she wore and ate, her access to medical care and her social media accounts.
An analysis undertaken by the NSW Domestic Violence Death Review Team identified among 112 incidents of intimate partner homicide between June 2000 and July 2019, coercive controlling behaviour was a feature of the relationship between couples involved in all but one case.
“Another one of the biggest things we know is that parents who aren’t good together, separating isn’t bad for kids, but if they are in conflict, that is really, really bad for kids,” Ms Law said.
“Sometimes people think when exposing kids to conflict, ‘Oh, they’ll forget about it’, particularly if they are really young, but it’s actually the opposite.
“Babies and really young kids are still forming their brains, and if they are in a really angry, aggressive, shouty, violent home, they get wired for that; they get wired for living in a war zone,” she said.
“So when they get to school, these kids are reactive, they punch other kids, they do all this stuff because their brain has been wired to have a hair trigger.”
Ms Law, whose business, Mediation Institute, was recently nominated as one of Victoria’s state finalists for the 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards in the accelerating women category, encourages Gippsland to further their education about family violence.
“Education is key to preventing family violence and creating a future free from family violence,” she said.
Ms Law also encourages anyone experiencing family violence to consider family dispute resolution and transformative relationship mediation as a pathway to a life free from family violence.
For more information or online support, visit https://interact.support/.
