One in Three's submission to the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Family Law System
The One in Three Campaign's submission to the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Family Law System (#383) has been published on the inquiry's website.
You can download a PDF copy from here.
The submission makes the following points:
The evidence demonstrates that the process of family separation has negative impacts upon the health, safety and wellbeing of children and families. This is evidenced by the increase in experiences of emotional abuse post-separation, with fathers experiencing the most severe impacts in terms of control and coercion. Men and women in the demographic in contact with the Family Law system experience similar levels of family violence and abuse overall, in contrast to the general population.
Children are just as likely to report seeing Mum hit Dad as Dad hitting Mum, and the most common and damaging scenario is mutual (or reciprocal) couple violence (Mum and Dad hitting each other).
The evidence is clear that women’s use of relationship violence is not primarily in self-defence, and that male and female perpetrators alike can use the claim of self-defence to excuse their use of violence. Most male victims of family violence experience it from female perpetrators. The most severe form of family violence - coercive control - is not exclusively a male domain, but is also used by female perpetrators.
Male victims face many barriers to disclosing their abuse, and the policies of many government agencies including the family court can re-victimise male victims by presuming they are actually perpetrators. There is little appropriate support available for male victims in Australia.
We urge the Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Family Law System to consider the needs of ALL victims of family violence and abuse equally, no matter their gender, geography, socio-economic status, age, ability, sexual preference, culture, race or religion, when undertaking this important inquiry.