Assess demand and calculate the cost

To build a firm foundation for expanding Australia’s approach to prevention, governments must provide adequate funding for DFSV services. For decades, however, services have been chronically underfunded. As reporting rates have steadily increased, this underfunding has created systemic problems that hinder the ability of these services to provide their life-saving services. Faced with critical staffing shortages, many report having no choice but to turn some victim-survivors away; leave phone calls unanswered; and conduct brief risk assessments on lethality to determine who they will be able to assist.

The Review heard about sector-wide frustration, not only in relation to limited capacity to respond to immediate needs, but also missed prevention opportunities to intervene early with families and provide post-crisis support to stop escalating violence, re-victimisation and – in the most severe cases – fatalities. By inadequately funding frontline services, we are undermining a life-saving prevention opportunity.

The Review has also heard there are significant service gaps for diverse and marginalised communities. This includes, but is not limited to: the absence of refuges for LGBTIQA+ people who are excluded from or feel unsafe accessing refuges designed for heterosexual women; limited or no available services for people in remote communities, as well as for adolescents and young people not in the care of a protective parent or who are over a certain age; poor accessibility for people with mobility needs; and people being excluded from existing services as a result of substance misuse, acute mental ill-health concerns or other support needs which sees them labelled as ‘too complex’.

As the Review heard, however, requests for increased funding have only short-term value. Instead, the Review recognises that, before placing a dollar figure on how much is enough, we need to establish national data on current and future demand, and link that to the funding required for services to meet it.

As such, the Review is calling on state and territory governments, and the Commonwealth, to expedite analysis of unmet demand. Based on these findings, all governments should develop sustained funding pathways to meet need. This analysis and response should explicitly address the diverse services need of different groups of people experiencing violence – including First Nations women and communities, LGBTIQA+ people, older women, migrant and refugee women, children and adolescents (including those who are not in the care of a protective parent), women with disability and people with additional support needs (including substance misuse, acute mental ill-health concerns and behavioural needs).

More immediately, the Review also recognises that the provision of legal assistance to victim-survivors of DFSV is not only an access to justice issue, but a frontline service that can improve safety and reduce risk. Independent legal advice from publicly funded duty lawyers can help to improve and tailor conditions on protection orders and mitigate against the negotiation of dangerous parenting agreements. Legal advice is also an essential protective element for First Nations mothers whose children are the subject of child protection intervention.¹³³ Further, specialist duty lawyers can ensure that respondents are more likely to understand and comply with these orders, increasing the potential for compliance and de-escalating risk. They also play a pivotal role explaining proceedings, especially when orders are brought by police.

More broadly, access to public legal assistance can function as a protective ‘issues-spotting’ mechanism, whereby wider unmet legal needs – including those that have resulted from or developed in association with the experience of DFSV - can be identified and addressed. This is an area which evidence shows is in much greater need of recognition and which can function as a vital prevention mechanism.¹³⁴

Urgently, public legal assistance for adult and child victim-survivors in the family law context can mitigate against systems abuse, particularly where practitioners who are adequately trained and trauma-informed should help to give voice to children and young people about their experiences and preferred care arrangements, including in protracted proceedings where the protective parent may be being perceived by the court or portrayed by a perpetrator parent as untruthful. Currently, a persistent lack of funding means that fewer and fewer victim-survivors have access to support, including through legal aid grants which can resource private practitioners.¹³⁵ Investment in public legal assistance that is directed towards DFSV is therefore a clear mechanism for preventing future – and often irreparable – harm, including harm escalating to homicide. It must therefore be an area of urgent attention.

Noting Australia’s current housing crisis, the Review also recommends immediate action to facilitate crisis accommodation to ensure safety and prevent violence from continuing. This includes the urgent need for trauma-informed crisis accommodation that supports recovery and healing, rather than a “motel model”, which entrenches instability and harm. The Review suggests the Commonwealth Government consider expansion of the Safe Places Emergency Accommodation program, a capital works program funding the building, renovation or purchase of emergency accommodation for women and children experiencing DFSV. All governments should also consider increasing specialist DFSV housing options via the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement. The Review notes that investment in capital works must be considered alongside the required operational funding for services to run.

Further, the Review recognises the need for access to services in some of Australia’s most remote and underserviced communities, including the Torres Strait region, where mobility is hampered not only by distance but by water; lack of emergency infrastructure; and by the prohibitive expense of self-funding travel. The Review recommends that the Commonwealth, state and territory governments work together to establish a nationally consistent travel grant for people experiencing violence in remote and very-remote areas, to help prevent the escalation of violence.

Apply a prevention lens to crisis response and recovery

The Review acknowledges that specialist DFSV crisis response and recovery services are critical to the prevention landscape. Caseworkers, crisis line counsellors and specialist refuge workers act under enormous pressure, and during times of heightened crisis, to prevent homicide and DFSV-related suicide. These services are experts at managing safety and risk and work to extract victim-survivors from life-threatening situations, often calling in assistance from disparate systems to coordinate rescue missions across the country, including complicated extraction operations from Australia’s most remote areas. For many victim-survivors, this assistance is literally the difference between life and death.

The Review recognises that one of the most predictive factors of future victimisation is prior victimisation. A consistent crisis and recovery response that removes barriers to escaping abuse; helps victim-survivors to navigate a complex web of systems post-separation; and improves their economic security can protect them against re-victimisation, either from their current abusive partner, or a partner in the future.

The Review notes with concern that, over the past decade, there has been an increasing reliance on motels to provide crisis accommodation for women and children fleeing violence.

The Review recognises that, for victim-survivors at high risk, hotels and motels are not just inadequate, but dangerous. Unlike specialist refuges, there is no security, and with surveillance devices now commonly used by perpetrators to track their victims through their phones and cars, there is increased risk that perpetrators will be able to find and easily access victims at these insecure locations. Here the Review notes that these accommodation options are especially unsuitable for victim-survivors with disabilities or other health conditions.

To address the dangerous and counter-productive use of motels, Safe Steps created the Sanctuary model – a wraparound service that accommodates women and children for three weeks, while they wait for a space in refuge.

The benefits of this approach are immediate. What’s more, the Review has heard that this specialist accommodation service is actually more cost effective than accommodating victim-survivors in motels. The Review notes that this is low-hanging fruit for governments and recommends that state and territory governments transition from the dangerous and counter-productive reliance on motels to ensure that women and children have access to specialist DFSV accommodation when they need it.

Further, the Review notes that the circuitous route towards safety, independence and freedom requires long-term case management with specialist DFSV workers who know how to navigate these systems. Managing DFSV related processes alone can lead to debilitating stress and increased trauma and is made even more complex for victim-survivors who have limited English, or face communication impediments connected with disability.

As the Review notes in Recommendation 5 (Children and Young People), vouchsafing recovery for protective parents and their children is not only essential for immediate safety, but also vital for interrupting intergenerational violence and disadvantage, which can prevent future victimisation and perpetration in the next generation.

Essential to this recovery is safe housing. DFSV is the leading cause of homelessness for women and children in Australia, and victim-survivors accounted for 42 per cent of Specialist Homelessness Services clients in 2020-21.¹⁴² Research from Safe and Equal shows that the vast majority of family violence services in Victoria commonly see repeat clients, and a lack of affordable housing is a key reason why victim-survivors return to live with their abuser.¹⁴³ The Review heard that provision of sustainable, affordable and accessible housing in initial contact with victim-survivors is an economic imperative for governments and the most significant impediment to keeping victim-survivors safe. Without this investment, especially in regional and remote areas, prevention will be undermined and cycles of poverty, violence and disadvantage will continue or even worsen.

Activate the health system

1 in 5 women who experienced violence from a current partner sought advice or support from a GP or other health professional.¹⁴⁸

As identified by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Review similarly recognises the largely untapped prevention potential across the health system.¹⁴⁹ Health professionals have contact with patients across the life course and, in particular, engage intensively with women at key high-risk periods for abuse onset and escalation, particularly during pregnancy and following childbirth. Older people vulnerable to elder abuse also frequently attend GPs and, in the context of coercive control and isolation, those health professionals may be their only external source of support.¹⁵⁰ This is also especially relevant for communities who may not be well served by specialist DFSV services, particularly patients in same-sex and transgender relationships. Evidence indicates that people who use violence are also far more likely to engage and disclose to health services than any other service, including a specialist service.¹⁵¹

Accordingly, the Review concludes that health ministers must prioritise upskilling and resourcing the health sector to identify and respond appropriately to DFSV, so that they have the confidence to broach the subject with patients who may be experiencing or perpetrating violence, as well as the skills to respond to disclosures in a trauma- and DFSV-informed way. As the WHO recommends, this is a key step to “address violence and its consequences and prevent future violence.”¹⁵²

The Review heard that key intervention sites for DFSV are located across general practice, antenatal clinics, community child health, mental health and emergency departments. When healthcare professionals fail to identify DFSV, or respond to disclosures with victim-blaming sentiments, however, the impacts can be fatal. Coroners have repeatedly identified that healthcare professionals lack the adequate skills and capacity to respond to DFSV. Here the Review notes that Victoria’s State Coroner recently reiterated this longstanding concern, stating that “without mandated family violence training, a portion of GPs will remain unskilled and ill-equipped to respond to patients’ disclosures of family violence.”¹⁵⁵

The Review heard that child and adult safeguard training should be considered a necessary, life-saving requirement, on par with the mandatory requirement for training on CPR. The Review therefore recommends a consistent approach nationally to mandating DFSV training for two priority healthcare categories, being doctors in general practice and psychologists, developed in collaboration with the Royal College of General Practitioners.

The Review notes that opportunities for identification and intervention are especially critical for First Nations women and children in remote areas, where they are 24 times more likely to be hospitalised for domestic violence as people in major cities.¹⁵⁷ The need for a safe and culturally sensitive response is therefore especially vital and can be the difference between life and death.

To equip health professionals to respond more effectively, health ministers should consider expanding the Readiness Program, run by Safer Families: a national training program for primary care providers (including GPs, community health and Aboriginal Medical Services) to recognise, respond, refer and record DFSV using a trauma and DFSV-informed approach. This is a flexible, multifaceted training program that assists healthcare professionals to improve identification and risk assessment; respond to disclosures with active listening and non-judgment; improve understanding of how DFSV impacts children; provide more appropriate support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, migrant and refugee groups and older people; and increase the timely referral of women, men and children affected by DFSV.

Training and skills, however, are not sufficient. GPs must also be given the time to respond to the additional needs of their patients. Evidence indicates that a significant structural barrier is the frustration that practitioners felt with the lack of privacy and limited time they had with their patients.¹⁵⁸ To address this, the Review recommends that the Commonwealth Government creates a specific Medicare item number for GPs to spend extra time with patients affected by DFSV. Here the Review notes that any steps in this regard would need to be accompanied by privacy measures.

In addition to upskilling healthcare professionals more broadly, the Review recommends that particular attention and resourcing be given to developing DFSV specialisation across the alcohol and other drugs (AOD) sector, and to facilitating cross-sector collaboration. This kind of intervention is long overdue and holds enormous potential for reducing the recurrence of violence; for intervening more effectively with people using violence; and for preventing further harm to children.

The Review further recognises the potential for greater cross-sector collaboration between specialist DFSV services and the AOD sector, to enhance the AOD sector’s responsiveness to DFSV, and ensure that victim-survivors and people using violence can access specialist DFSV assistance. State and territory governments should also ensure that mental health and AOD services are represented on multi-agency risk management panels.

Activating health professionals to become first-line responders to DFSV is a national endeavour requiring substantial investment and coordination across governments and government departments. Just as important is activating a DFSV lens across health and broader equity policies, such as the Commonwealth’s Ten Year LGBTIQA+ Health and Wellbeing Action Plan, so that DSFV is recognised in health interventions relevant to diverse and intersecting communities. This includes LGBTIQA+ communities, people with disability, older Australians, people in regional and remote areas and people from migrant and refugee communities. Here the Review notes that, if Australia is to continue to draw on a public health approach as one of the multiple frameworks that can help to prevent DFSV, as discussed at Recommendation 4, it is particularly crucial that the health sector itself steps squarely into this picture.

Being smarter about responses to people using violence

Smarter interventions with people using violence can function as a vital lever for preventing escalation and future harm. The Review has highlighted the prevention potential in developing and promoting healthy masculinities, as well as in activating health sectors to identify abusive behaviour and intervene early. To prevent violence from escalating however, we must also apply a prevention lens to accountability and ensure that we are leveraging the prevention potential in every interaction along a spectrum of interaction.¹⁶⁶ In particular, evidence indicates that a window of opportunity exists in the initial stages of justice system contact which, if leveraged appropriately by police and legal practitioners, can improve understanding of court processes and reduce risk, including by addressing immediate support needs.¹⁶⁷ This is a clear opportunity to reduce risk and prevent the likelihood of further escalation and violence.

Further, people using violence may have complex needs which have contributed to or escalated their use of DFSV, such as mental ill-health, substance abuse, unemployment or insecure housing, which often go unaddressed. When perpetrators are removed from the home, a lack of stable accommodation may lead them to return to their family or they may present to a first court appearance dangerously heightened, having spent the intervening days between police contact and court attendance living in their car or in unstable accommodation.¹⁷² Alternatively, people using violence who have been excluded from the home may be living with extended family or elderly parents, which could put these family members at risk.

The Review recommends that state and territory governments look to current models that leverage early points of justice system contact as a way of preventing future violence and abuse. The Review also recommends that states and territories, with the support of the Commonwealth Government, explore specific investment in crisis and short-term accommodation for people using violence who have been removed from the home.

The Review also recognises the substantial role played by Men’s Behaviour Change Programs (MBCPs). Here the Review acknowledges that these programs were originally designed and intended to operate as a coordinated community response, but too often are forced to operate in disconnection from other services. This is despite being expected by policy and funding arrangements to carry responsibility for a man’s risk alone.¹⁷⁵

While MBCPs are a core component of Australia’s current intervention strategy and are frequently cited as equating to ‘perpetrator accountability’, the Review also acknowledges that the availability of these programs is often scarce. Further, few are specifically designed or resourced to work with people using violence from diverse communities or with intersecting needs.

The Review also heard, and evidence indicates,¹⁷⁶ that there is variable quality and capability across MBCPs, with programs and practitioners calling for further work to identify and build what constitutes best practice. Practitioners told the Review that MBCPs need to be appropriately resourced to address the wide range of issues which can contribute to or escalate violence and inhibit progress towards being a safer man. This may include mental ill-health, substance misuse, past and childhood experiences of trauma, gambling harm and housing and financial insecurity. The Review notes that, while these issues can all act as barriers to change, harm can also be compounded if these issues are addressed by practitioners who do not apply a DFSV-informed lens.

The Review also heard the need for investment in programs that are culturally safe for men from First Nations and migrant and refugee backgrounds, with an additional need for supply of programs for people from LGBTIQA+ communities, as well as for people with cognitive or intellectual disability or other complex support needs.

Importantly, the Review recognises that programs wish to be supported as part of a coordinated community response, as their design originally intended. Just as vital to acknowledge, victim-survivors remain the primary focus of these programs. Evidence indicates that partner or family safety contact can be the most powerful intervention offered by these programs, making this a component that needs to be resourced.¹⁷⁸ The Review recommends that the Commonwealth and state and territory governments undertake immediate work to improve the supply and capability of these programs across a range of settings to enable increased engagement and retention. Resourcing should take into account the need for these programs to function as part of the overall specialist response to DFSV, rather than being seen as a separate sector with different objectives, which has never been the case.

Better risk assessment, decision-making and multi-agency approaches

The Review notes that a significant inhibitor to preventing DFSV and homicide is the lack of a nationally consistent approach to assessing harm and risk, as well as to managing safety. Recent homicides have highlighted an urgent need for stronger, more comprehensive and more consistent risk-assessment and intervention models to support decision-makers to identify, assess and then manage risk more effectively. This is critical for managing victim-survivor safety needs and for preventing escalation of harm. These frameworks can also uplift capability across workforces, including police, court staff, the judiciary, child protection and corrections, wherever people are making decisions which should be determined by DFSV-informed considerations. This includes giving visibility to the fact that not all decisions are currently made by people in positions of judicial authority, as the community might otherwise expect.

The Review recommends that Commonwealth and state and territory governments work together to develop greater national consistency in risk assessment. This should be developed in relation to adult victim-survivors, adults using violence and children and young people as victim-survivors in their own right.

Any approach should be culturally-informed and responsive to how risk presents for different people and within particular communities, with a particular emphasis on preventing the potential for misidentification of victim-survivors and associated systems abuse. This is to ensure that the person most in need of protection is accurately identified at the outset, and so that the harm of misidentification is avoided. Particular focus should be given to preventing misidentification in risk assessment in relation to people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, refugee and migrant communities, LGBTIQA+ communities, and people with disability.¹⁸⁴

Risk assessments are only effective, however, when the people conducting them are able to make safe and DSFV-informed decisions. In turn, safe decisions cannot be made without access to the right information. Information sharing regimes – where properly resourced and supported – can improve risk assessment, particularly where information about the person using violence would not otherwise be available.

The Review recommends that governments improve operational information sharing across and within jurisdictions to support consistent approaches to risk assessment. The information sharing scheme could be modelled on the Victorian Family Violence Information Sharing Scheme, which the Review heard from frontline services is of particular value, or could leverage the capacity and capability of the National Crime Information System (NCIS), described below. An information sharing scheme could also enable the registering of family court orders, family violence protection orders, child protection orders and other information that is relevant to assessments of risk.

Importantly, the Review also recommends greater awareness, and use, of the NCIS, as noted above. This could include consideration around careful expansion of access to certain professional cohorts, as well as work to align state and territory systems to enable accessibility and functionality.

The Review heard, and evidence supports, that there is a pressing need for greater collaboration and cross-agency responses to DFSV, especially for policing. The benefits of this approach have been evidenced in pilots and programs in various states and territories. Co-responder models involving collaborations of DFSV specialists with police, for example, can reduce the risk of misidentifying the person in need of protection; provide more consistently safe responses to victim-survivors, including by involving other supports such as interpreters; assist in identifying evidence to support charges; support police to respond to escalating demand, and enable the sharing of expertise and skills.

As the Queensland Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce found, co-responder models enable a specialist DFSV response to accompany police intervention, as well as for ‘warm referrals’ to services and supports for both victim-survivors and people using violence.¹⁹¹ By working alongside and in consultation with different disciplines, police and other DFSV responders can provide more holistic and wrap around responses to victim-survivors, including with the support of interpreters where relevant, while also developing capability. The Review recommends that state and territory governments introduce and expand multi-agency responses, including police co-responder models, underpinned by an appropriate impact evaluation framework.

Investment in collaborative responses should prioritise workforce development and capability uplift, as well as psychological and cultural safety for practitioners working in cross-disciplinary models. It should also support ongoing risk assessment through risk review meetings across policing, specialist support, perpetrator response, child protection and, where relevant, corrections. The Review also recommends that state and territory governments adopt evidence-based focused deterrence models, ensuring that such models are not limited to a policing response, but also include the offer of community-sector support, where appropriate.¹⁹²

Supports and co-responder models should urgently be made available at access points through Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-based services, with immediate investment in collaborations such as High Risk Teams and community justice panels, particularly in remote communities such as the Torres Strait.

Further considerations include ensuring that co-responder models or co-locations account for cultural safety – avoiding co-location in police stations, noting that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, LGBTIQA+ communities, people with prior criminal justice system contact, those involved in sex work, and those with uncertain immigration status, may be hesitant reporting any experiences of violence to police, particularly sexual violence. This means that co-responder models should be made available in services which support these diverse cohorts.

In addition to expanding the development of alternative reporting options that are not reliant on contact with police, the Review recommends that the Commonwealth and state and territory Governments urgently invest in capability uplift for community-based or cohort specific services to respond appropriately to disclosures of DFSV, with a particular focus on disclosures of sexual assault.

Noting the particularly low reporting, prosecution and ultimate conviction rates of sexual offences, urgent investment should be directed at technology platforms which enable multi-disciplinary, cohort-appropriate and culturally safe forensic examinations.²⁰¹ Doing so can reduce trauma for victim-survivors, ensuring that they have the option of a forensic assessment without travelling significant distances while ‘holding evidence’.²⁰² It can also ensure that evidence is collected in a timely fashion by specialist examiners; and that local practitioners are supported and upskilled in real time.

The Review further recommends that Commonwealth and state and territory governments consider the Australian Institute of Criminology’s proposal to trial and evaluate domestic violence threat assessment centres, modelled on fixated risk assessment centres for countering violent extremism. These centres could offer a multi-agency approach to information gathering, monitoring and intervention among high-risk offenders during periods of acute risk.

Finally, the Review notes that one of the most crucial sources of prevention potential – particularly for domestic homicides – lies in police prioritising victim-survivor calls for assistance. As such, the Review supports longstanding calls – particularly from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities – for independent oversight bodies for police. Current conduct and complaints systems have been critiqued in various recent inquiries, including the Commission of Inquiry into Queensland Police (which also recommended civilian-led oversight for police).²⁰³ The need for accountability is significant, to reduce police-related harm and rebuild trust and confidence in the communities that they serve. The Review recommends that all jurisdictions implement transparent complaints mechanisms for genuinely independent oversight of police that are DFSV-informed, civilian-led and sit outside of police authorities.

Evidence examined by the Review also indicated that decisions regarding the prioritisation of sexual offence investigations also function as a barrier to preventing further offending, given that so many prosecutions do not proceed because of actions at the investigation stage.²⁰⁶

The Review therefore recommends greater public reporting on the rates and timeliness of responses to victim-survivor calls for emergency assistance, as well as the timeliness of police investigation from reporting through to decisions around whether to proceed to prosecution, particularly in sexual offence matters.

This includes decisions around when and why matters were not referred for prosecution, at a de-identified and aggregate level. Greater transparency and understanding around ‘attrition’ patterns – too often misconstrued primarily as the result of decisions of victim-survivor, which evidence shows is not the case – will improve accountability for police and prosecutorial decisions and increase the likelihood that this area will be treated as core police business.²⁰⁷

Build a firm foundation for prevention

With the national emergency that Australia currently faces, comes substantial and unsustainable impacts on the DFSV workforce. The Review heard that the burnout rate for specialist DFSV workforces is alarming, with a level of lethality across presentations which staff are not equipped to respond to, especially at such consistent and sustained regularity. In particular, the Review heard that DFSV specialist staff are being exposed to extreme levels of vicarious and direct trauma which, when coupled with chronically low wages and limited psychological supports, are resulting in rapid staff turnover and protracted vacancies. This is particularly pertinent in regional, rural and remote areas, where services are unable to compete with opportunities in metro regions and the private sector, or where community-led organisations are often staffed by community members who require additional supports and considerations not often built into funding agreements.

The Review recognises that more work is required to resource and support the DFSV specialist (including MBCP) and sexual violence sectors – including to unlock their full prevention capacity.²⁰⁸ It also recognises that other workers who frequently engage with people who experience and use violence – including those who work in the health, legal and justice, child protection and education sectors – play a considerable role in identifying and preventing violence. The approach to building the DFSV skills and capacity of these workers, however, is piecemeal across sectors, services and locations.²⁰⁹

Figure 1. Comparative size of response sectors in Australia.²¹⁰

To take a sophisticated and well-informed approach to building the specialist sector, the Review recommends that an expert body, such as Jobs and Skills Australia, the Productivity Commission or other appropriate body, undertake analysis of the current and future labour supply for these specialist sectors and provide advice to governments on how to build a sustainable and professional workforce. The Review also recommends that a DFSV National Workforce Development Strategy be developed that covers these specialist sectors, as well as the broader sectors involved in DFSV prevention. This Strategy should focus on:

• Addressing workforce needs and sustainable funding for the specialist sectors, including: workforce attraction, pipeline and retention; training and skills development, including the role of universities and vocational education and training (VET); professionalisation; wages, noting the Fair Work Commission’s gender undervaluation case that is under way; and supervision and management, noting the stressful and traumatic nature of work in these sectors.
• A systematic and coordinated way to build the DFSV skills, capability and qualifications of workers in broader sectors – for example, health, law and justice and education - including through universities, VET and on the job learning.
• DFSV specialist and broader sectors building skills to work with children and young people; First Nations people; people with disability; LGBTIQA+ people; and other culturally diverse communities. This includes supporting workforces in both mainstream and targeted services for these groups.

Bring sexual violence into focus

The Review recognises that Australia requires a stronger focus on preventing and responding to sexual violence amidst the wider attention on gender-based violence. Here the Review notes that sexual violence and domestic and family violence often co-occur.

Figure 2. Prevalence of sexual violence, based on findings from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health.²¹³

Figure 3. Child sexual abuse in Australia, based on data from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study.²¹⁴

Equally vital to acknowledge, sexual violence also occurs outside domestic and family settings and intimate partner relationships. As a result of divergent clinical, community and justice responses, however, sexual violence often receives a different response to domestic and family violence in the context of legal and support systems.

Increased reporting of sexual violence over recent years and, in particular, high levels of sexual violence experienced and reported by young women, highlight a need for urgent attention.²¹⁵ While consent laws have changed and associated education has become more widespread, the challenges of online pornography, deepfakes and other forms of generative artificial intelligence (AI) pose new and significant challenges. The Review recognises that approaches to prevent and respond to sexual violence must continue to evolve to meet the changing environment, especially online and amongst young people.

In light of increased reporting, the Review also heard that the specialist sexual violence sector is struggling with growing annual demand for their services and that, in particular, services gaps exist for diverse communities, for men and boys, as well as for children and young people. The Review also heard about a need for accountability in investigation by police as recognised in recommendation 13; about a particular lack of access to forensic examination, as also noted in recommendation 13; and about a need for a focus on the prevalence of child sexual abuse, including in the context of incest and harmful sexual behaviours by children.

To address this – and in recognition that sexual violence has not received adequate attention in the national policy landscape - the Review recommends that governments further expand and prioritise work on Action 6 in the First Action Plan (2023-2027) of the National Plan. This increased focus should:

• highlight the unique and evolving nature of sexual violence, and the need for prevention approaches and responses to meet these complexities and constant changes;
• include effective and evidence-based ways to teach consent to young people, as well as the dynamic nature of online influences and their impact on people’s experience of the world and sexual behaviour;
• examine the resources needed for the specialist sexual violence sector, and broader sectors including education and health, to respond and meet the needs of victim-survivors more comprehensively, including survivors of child sexual abuse;
• noting the Australian Law Reform Commissions current reference on justice responses to sexual violence, due to report in January 2025, outline justice responses that validate victim-survivor experiences, potentially through processes outside the criminal justice system, such as through restorative approaches, including those based in the community; and
• address the needs of diverse communities and recognise different experiences of sexual violence, including: violence against women with disabilities and older women, including in institutional and residential settings; sexual exploitation of women on precarious visas and the need for greater accessibility to services which provide support for trafficked persons; sexual violence experienced by those working in the sex industry; and sexual violence experienced by First Nations women and LGBTIQA+ people.

This Review notes that this increased focus should align with other national frameworks and plans including the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032, Working for Women: A Strategy for Gender Equality, the National Women’s Health Strategy 2020-2030, Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021-2031, the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse 2021-2030, Safe & Supported: The National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children 2021-2031 and the National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery 2020-2025. It should also align with forthcoming documents including the standalone national plan for First Nations family safety and a successor to the National Plan to Respond to the Abuse of Older Australians (Elder Abuse) 2019-2023.