On Monday, a group of leading Victorian family violence organisations laid 29 red roses and eight white rosebuds on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne, as a memorial and a challenge.
They marked the number of women and children who died through family violence in the state last year. More than one death a fortnight.
This year has brought more devastating deaths. John and Wendy Thompson are still seeking answers about the death of their daughter Kelly at the hands of her ex partner in February. Just a few days later, 11 year old Luke Batty was killed by his father at cricket practice.
Last week, the father of two little girls, Savannah, 4, and Indiana, 3, pleaded guilty to their murder earlier this year. And the partner of mother-of-four Fiona Warzywoda is now facing trial after she was stabbed to death on a footpath in suburban Sunshine.
They are but a few of the names and faces behind family violence rates that almost beggar belief, with reports doubling over the past five years to more than 60,000 a year in Victoria.
These numbers are not only an indictment of the men at whose hands they suffer, but of a system that fails still to provide enough protection, enough support, enough prevention. But they have served to put family violence on the election agenda, something that we have fought for for decades. That’s a great step, an acknowledgement of the terrible cost of family violence and a reflection of the courage of women and services that have spoken up.
The risk though is that, less than 100 days out of the 29 November state election, Victoria’s parties will ramp up their rhetoric but still fail to understand what’s really needed and be tempted to promises of quick fixes, ongoing delays, or a focus on just one part of the problem.
The No More Deaths campaign launched on the steps of Parliament calls for the parties to commit to wide-ranging policies across housing, justice, police, health, education and other portfolios. Here are five big challenges.
1. Keep women and children safe and housed
I cannot say loudly enough that it’s not all about the money, but funding remains inadequate to allow all parts of the system – police, courts, legal services, and specialist family violence services – to get past crisis management. How much do we need? It’s hard to say. But it should be measured against the $3.4bn cost of violence against women to the community and to the economy each year in Victoria alone.
One of the biggest is the need to provide women and children with a refuge and a home. Victoria’s housing crisis means women and children are forced to remain in violent homes because they have nowhere else to go.
Family violence is a driver of more than 35% of Victoria’s homelessness, and is the main reason that women and children become homeless. This is not just an issue for Victoria, and will also worsen across Australia if the states and federal government fail to secure funding for the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness (NPAH) when it runs out next year.
2. Make the justice system safe and supportive
Family violence victims in Victoria are sentenced to “postcode justice”, with only small pockets where “best practice” operates. Only five out of Victoria’s 53 magistrates’ courts have employed family violence victim support workers. Only one court in Victoria has a dedicated safe waiting space for family violence victims, so they don’t have to sit near the man who used violence against them.
No court in Victoria employs a disability advocate, despite evidence that women and children with disabilities are twice as likely to suffer family violence, often at the hands of the carer on whom they depend. There are no culturally specific workers for victims at high risk, and only two courts fund an Aboriginal support worker, even though the multiple layers of discrimination faced by Aboriginal women stop them seeking protection for fear of child protection intervention.
3. Hold violent perpetrators to account
There is no single solution to reducing the risk posed by violent men. They need to receive strong and unequivocal message from the community and justice system that family violence is a crime. Police, courts, corrections, child protection and other community sector services need to work together to place a web of restraints around the behaviour of potentially dangerous men. Men’s behaviour change programs need enough funding to work for the length of time it needs with those who show potential for change.
Despite some great local initiatives, thousands of Victorian perpetrators go undetected when intervention orders are not reinforced or supported. Men who use violence can also slip off the radar, when agencies don’t understand the causes and dynamics of family violence, and blame women for rather than the men who hurt them. These are big systemic and cultural failures.
4. Break down the system silos
Victoria has come a long way on family violence in the last 10 years. But tragic deaths this year alone show how gaps and inconsistencies in the system still endanger women and children.
We don’t yet have a genuinely integrated response to family violence, meaning that different agencies and government departments do not necessarily share the same understandings and approaches. For example, a woman might risk losing her child because she can’t provide protection in a violent home, yet she has nowhere safe to go.
Crisis services, legal services, police, community services and government departments also don’t always communicate effectively or work well with each other. There are often no clear lines of accountability on family violence matters, and lack of consistent data makes it hard to assess what works. Family violence needs to be regarded as the state emergency it is, with responses led from the premier’s own department and bringing all ministers to the table.
5. Prevent violence against women and children
Victoria’s Police chief commissioner Ken Lay has said very powerfully that we need to stop the culture in our community that enables violence against women and children, “where vulgar and violent attitudes to women are common” and which is “heavy with warped and misspent masculinity”.
Preventing violence means tackling the underlying causes – misogyny, the objectification of women, gender inequality, and male entitlement and privilege – that all contribute to men who choose to use violence believing they have a right to behave this way. These causes are embedded at all levels of our society, including among our politicians.
So we are asking them to take a stand at this 2014 Victorian election. For each candidate to publicly condemn sexism and discrimination against women and for parties to commit to doing all they can, across all portfolios, to keep Victorian women and children safe from family violence.
It is not just violent men who have failed at-risk women and children in Victoria. Our systems and responses are riddled with gaps and contradictions.
It’s time to truly honour those who have died.