Defining domestic and family violence

Domestic violence 

Domestic violence is violence that exists within a range of intimate or previously intimate personal relationships including de-facto, engaged, married, previously married, separated, same-sex partners, gender-diverse partners, and between custodial and non-custodial parents of a child. It can also occur in intimate relationships involving people younger than 18 years of age (Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012, section 8). 

Family violence 

The term encompasses all forms of violence across a broad range of family and other relationships of mutual obligations and support (Domestic and Family Violence Death Review and Advisory Board) and can include:

• extended family
• former family members
• people related either by blood or marriage
• unrelated individuals who are regarded as ‘family’. 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and family violence

Family violence is the preferred term (Fish et al.) to refer to violence within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities as it emphasises the impact on the family, as a whole. The term provides context to recognise the impact dispossession, breakdown of kinship networks, child removal policies, entrenched disadvantage, as well as intergenerational trauma and grief has on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities. 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children are disproportionately impacted by family violence as it occurs at higher rates in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities than in the general population. Across 2021-22 those situations where a perpetrator of violence was specified, 74% of assault hospitalisations involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were due to family violence. Specifically, 47% were due to assault by a spouse or domestic partner, 2.8% by a parent and 24% by another family member (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (c)). 

Adolescent violence in the home

While it is common for young people to challenge their parent or authority figure as they develop independence, and doing so can include displaying anger this is not the same as violent behaviours where the adolescent is asserting power and control (Howard and Friend). Adolescent violence refers to behaviours used by a young person to control, dominate, threaten, or coerce a parent, sibling, or romantic relationship. 

Many longitudinal studies have consistently linked childhood exposure of domestic and family violence with future perpetration, and some young people may become both victim-survivors of domestic and family violence and perpetrators of violence (Black et al.). Their exposure to violence, stereotypical gender roles and violence-supportive attitudes are factors contributing to future violent behaviours towards women (Campo (b)). 

Adolescent violence in the home is considered distinct from adult-perpetrated violence to account for trauma, developmental stage and the intention behind the behaviours used (Campbell et al. (c)). Most adolescents who use violence are male and their primary victims are their mothers (State of Victoria).

Coercive control

Coercive control describes the pattern of abusive behaviours men who use violence employ to hurt, humiliate, isolate, frighten, or threaten another person to control or dominate them (Queensland Government). 

These tactics instil fear in people experiencing violence, wear down their sense of identity and independence, and entrap them in a violent relationship by closing off options for accessing safety and support.

Coercive control is complex. It includes behaviour the person experiencing violence considers abusive but may be hard for others to identify (for example, body language, the click of a pen, a look or a deliberately chosen word). These actions are designed through the shared history of abuse to instil fear and dread and when considered individually do not appear problematic. 

This video by Ards and North Down Borough Council, United Kingdom explains coercive control, noting it is less of a distinct form of abuse, and is more the ’golden thread’ linking multiple other forms of behaviour and abuse together. 

Forms of abuse within domestic and family violence

Domestic and family violence very rarely happens as a single incident. Rather, it is a pattern of ongoing behaviour which includes multiple tactics to intimidate, control and abuse someone. The frequency and severity of domestic and family violence can escalate over time.

This abuse takes many different forms, none of which are mutually exclusive. While physical violence may be the most widely recognised, other forms can be equally harmful (Fish et al., Laing et al.). Further, physical, and sexual abuse may not be occurring in the relationship all the time, whereas other forms of violence such as emotional, social, and economic abuse may be much more frequent. A lack of physical violence does not suggest a lack of risk. 

Many homicides have occurred in the context of non-physical coercive control, with women murdered having reported, rather than physical abuse. ongoing coercive control, and a range of other forms of abuse.

Examples of abuse within domestic and family violence

Not all experiences or behaviours are easy to categorise and some fit into multiple categories. For example, threats to harm can also be emotional, verbal, and technology-facilitated abuse. Equally, more than one kind of abuse can be perpetrated at the same time, for example, yelling insults and slurs whilst destroying someone’s property. People experiencing violence might also see these categories as interchangeable or inseparable.

Some behaviours are criminal offences, such as stalking, physical and sexual assault while other forms of abuse listed may only be understood to be abusive within the context of domestic and family violence.

Impact on children

When a person using violence commits domestic and family violence in families with children, those children are exposed to that violence and it causes lasting harm on their wellbeing and development. This is known as exposure to domestic and family violence. Children will be assumed to have been impacted or to be at risk of harm when their parent or carer has been a victim of domestic and family violence. Children do not have to present for an ‘incident’ of physical violence to have been exposed to domestic and family violence (Haslam et al.). 

This video illustrates the lived experience for children and young people when an adult is violent and abusive in the family home. 

Exposure to domestic and family violence can have wide range of detrimental impacts on a child’s development, mental and physical health, housing situation and general wellbeing (Haslam et al., Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (a), Toivonen and Backhouse). Research has found exposure to family violence is associated with a range of outcomes, including:

• diminished educational attainment
• reduced social participation in early adulthood
• physical and psychological disorders
• suicidal distress or thoughts
• non-suicidal self-injury
• behavioural difficulties
• homelessness
• future victimisation or violent offending.

When a child is exposed to family violence along with multiple risk factors, such as socioeconomic disadvantage, parental mental ill health, and parental substance abuse, more extreme negative outcomes are likely (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (b)). 
Refer to the section, Impact of domestic violence on children. 

Power and control wheel and equality wheel

Originally developed from work with men and women through behaviour change groups, the Power, and Control Wheel (Duluth Model) represents the lived experience of people experiencing violence and the equality wheel describes the changes needing to be made by men who use violence, to move to a non-violent partnership. These wheels can be used to identify precise explanations of the tactics of abuse used by helping to identify the pattern, intent and impact of violence and the corresponding aspect to be changed or developed. 

This 2-minute Duluth model video explains how the wheel helps you understand the dynamics within domestic and family violence. 

Several variations of the wheel are available to support specific interventions and focus areas:

• Power and Control wheel 
• Equality wheel 
• Abuse of Children wheel
• Post Separation wheel
• Not Valuing Children wheel. 

Gender roles 

Domestic and family violence is a significant gendered social problem which occurs across all cultures, demographic and socio-economic groups, all ages, and within same sex and gender-diverse relationships. However, the prevalence of domestic and family violence in relationships in general, is consistently a gendered issue. 

While people of all genders may experience or perpetrate domestic and family violence, men are more likely to perpetrate domestic violence and are more likely to perpetrate repeated and more severe forms of abuse. Domestic and family violence perpetrated by men against women is rooted in harmful views towards women, including harmful stereotypes and gender inequality. Forms of masculinity and rigid gender attitudes endorse adolescent and adult men’s social dominance, entitlement and authority. 

Whilst significant gains have been made with respect to the rights of children and women; social, systemic, and economic structures still tend to reinforce masculine privilege and power and the research suggests the rigid and traditional gendered attitudes continue to create an enabling context for domestic and family violence. The following video illustrates Australia’s framework to preventing violence against women. 

Women using violence

When women use violence, the context and intent tend to differ from that of men. Men’s use of violence against women is learned and reinforced through many social, cultural, and institutional avenues, while women’s use of violence does not have this societal support.

Many women who use violence against their male partners are being abused and their violence is primarily used in response to resist the controlling violence being used against them. On the societal level, women’s violence against men has a much smaller effect on men compared to the devastating effect of men’s violence against women and their children. 

Same-sex and gender diverse intimate relationships

Domestic and family violence in same-sex intimate relationships has many overlapping characteristics to violence within heterosexual relationships and it may include unique features such as threats of ‘outing’, or homophobic/transphobic put-downs.

People from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds

People living in Australia who were born in countries where the main language is not English represent a sizable population group. Women from this population group can experience unique forms and disproportionate rates of violence, exacerbated by systemic and structural factors and face additional barriers to reporting violence, seeking support, and accessing justice and healing (Coumarelos et al.).

Characteristics of the experience of violence by this population include: 

• having significantly lower understanding of violence against women and lower rates of rejection of problematic attitudes
• violence and coercion tactics include threatening deportation to their partner who is on a temporary visa, and forcing their partner to stop practising their religion
• a higher proportion believe women lie or exaggerate abuse and sexual assault and that domestic violence is a private matter which should be handled in the family
• women are vulnerable to being misidentified as perpetrators of domestic violence, and this risk is compounded when services and agencies fail to utilise interpreting services
• women are at higher risk of technology-facilitated violence due to limited or no English-language skills to understand what has occurred or seek help from services or familial networks. 

Parenting double standards

Reducing or eliminating men’s violence against women requires more than ensuring individual men cease being violent. It requires an understanding of the underlying and deeply engrained cultural attitudes which influence what masculinity entails and the courage to change by adopting and practising new beliefs and attitudes (Flynn).

Societal norms and expectations for ‘a good mother’ are significantly different to that of ‘a good father’ (Fish et al.). It is expected ‘a good mother’ will meet her child’s physical, emotional, and psychological needs and protect her child from exposure to domestic violence. In contrast, ‘a good father’ will merely be present or involved in some way with his child. For example, it is common to expect a mother to know all information about her child’s medical status (who treating practitioners are, when the next appointment is, what vaccinations have been completed) and social and emotional needs (who are their best friends, how to contact their parents, whether they are having any difficulties), but to not expect the father to know any of this information. 

Further, this bias can influence how we assess mothers’ competence if they are unable to provide this level of information about their child, whereas it is understood to be acceptable for fathers to not know this level of information.

• challenge this double standard of parenting by engaging with the person using violence, using the Safe and Together model (Mandel) instead of only working with the person experiencing violence  
• hold fathers to the same parenting standards as mothers 
• taking care with assessments, to determine if a mother is ‘unable to protect’ rather than having ‘failed to protect’. Recording the person using violence as responsible for the impacts the violence or coercive control are having on the child (for example, which parent is responsible for missed days at school or the child’s problematic behaviours which stem from their exposure to domestic and family violence). 

Studies repeatedly show child protection work tends to focus on mothers, with fathers having only a peripheral presence in case files, child protection conferences and home visits (Hardy). This has given rise to a series of descriptions of fathers as ‘invisible’ (Strega), ‘ghosts’ (Brown et al.), or ‘shadows’ (Ewart-Boyle et al.). When fathers have perpetrated domestic violence, they may ensure they are not present during home visits, or their involvement in the family might be hidden by mothers for fear of reprisals or of having the children placed in care (Dominelli et al.).

To assess fathers’ parenting capacity to the same standard as expected of mothers, explore and document: 

• their care-giving role within the family
• the impact their choice to use coercive control and violence has on family functioning for the child (Mandel).

Give proper consideration to how mothers’ actions have created safety and stability. For example, through the provision of predictable routines, attuned caregiving, and practical household management.