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It is critical to provide a strong response to perpetrators that holds them to account, keeps them in view and encourages behaviour change, to enable victim survivor safety and wellbeing. Our companion report ‘Crisis Response to Recovery Model for Victim SurvivorsExternal Link ’ examines the progress in establishing an effective service system that meets the needs of victim survivors at their point(s) of crisis and supports their journey towards recovery. At the same time considerable work is being undertaken to reduce the incidences of family violence by holding perpetrators to account and actively working to change their behaviour through targeted interventions. Through this report, we have examined implementation progress in establishing an effective and joined-up service pathway for perpetrators and people using violence within the family. This included reviewing the availability and diversity of responses and interventions, and whether the necessary framework is in place to ensure their effectiveness.

These interventions are designed to encourage perpetrators to take responsibility for committing family violence, representing a significant shift away from a victim-blaming mentality of ‘why don’t they just leave?’ It was universally agreed that promoting victim survivors’ safety must always be the central goal of any work that occurs with perpetrators, as the CEO of Safe and Equal affirms:

Our services hear from survivors all the time that they don’t necessarily want the relationship to stop – they just want the violence to stop, and of course without perpetrator interventions, how’s that going to happen? We’re going to still need ongoing and sustainable victim survivor services because this issue continues to rise, as we can see, but we do need to up the game on perpetrator interventions.

As Family Safety Victoria clearly articulated to us, the reforms designed to address and respond to people who use violence within the family have sought to shift focus to the perpetrator in assessing and responding to family violence risk. The reforms have aimed to build a cohesive system in which government departments, the sector and the community work together to create shared accountability that stops perpetrators from committing further violence. Many parts of the system have a role in identifying family violence and holding perpetrators to account.

While we touch on the need for a system approach to perpetrator accountability in this report, our primary focus is on specialist responses that aim to drive behaviour change, with an emphasis on perpetrator interventions, and we accept that these aspects are part of a broader perpetrator reform program. We recognise that work occurring beyond the family violence and justice systems (including in child protection services, alcohol and drug treatment programs, mental health services and others) is not reflected in this report but is critical to establishing a true system-wide approach to perpetrator accountability.

Experts with a track record of delivering perpetrator interventions recognise that not all participants will be open to changing their behaviour, and that entrenched negative attitudes and patterns of abuse are
unlikely to disappear within a 20-week program. However, they believe that a proportion of those who use family violence can be motivated to start to change, and that supporting that process – along with concerted primary prevention efforts – is the way to get to the root cause of family violence.

The system must therefore encourage perpetrators to engage with interventions that can help them take responsibility for, and therefore change, their behaviour. Simultaneously, whether or not perpetrators take responsibility for their behaviour, the system must hold perpetrators to account for their use of violence. These concepts are captured in Box 1.

There are different pathways into perpetrator interventions (see Figure 1). The main pathways follow police attendance at a family violence incident, whereby the perpetrator is referred to The Orange Door and may also become engaged with the justice system. These pathways can lead to direct referrals into perpetrator services, although we note that engagement is not always mandatory, and even when it is, there may be access barriers. Perpetrators may also engage in help-seeking behaviour in an effort to address their use of violence. We understand that this behaviour is rare among perpetrators but acknowledge that there is an important opportunity for the range of services a perpetrator might engage with to encourage engagement with interventions.

Box 1: Internal versus external perpetrator accountability

To date, two different forms of perpetrator accountability have generally been recognised. The first is accountability that is externally imposed, so that men who use violence are held to account. The main mechanism by which this occurs is through the justice system. Perpetrators may become involved with the justice system following criminal incidents of domestic and family violence, or breaches of civil protection orders. At present, mechanisms for perpetrators to be held to account for their actions are not consistently embedded elsewhere in wider human services systems.

The second form of perpetrator accountability is one that is internally developed through men’s behaviour change programs, with the intention that men who use violence develop a sense of responsibility and commit to being accountable to their partners and children. This form of accountability involves cultivating an internal sense of responsibility for behaviour, rather than imposing external sanctions.

Accountability and responsibility do not always co-occur – in fact, they often do not. Perpetrators can be held accountable without necessarily taking personal responsibility for their behaviour.

Source: Adapted from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (2020): Improving accountability: The role of perpetrator intervention systems: Key findings and future directions (Research to policy and practice, 20/2020)External Link , p. 2.

Figure 1: Pathways into perpetrator interventions

Source: Family Violence Reform Implementation Monitor
Figure 1: Pathways into perpetrator interventions

The figure shows three pathways for perpetrators accessing interventions:

  1. Help-seeking behaviour (rare): There is an opportunity for the range of services a perpetrator might engage with (e.g. health services) to encourage engagement with interventions.
  2. The Orange Door: referral into perpetrators services and targeted interventions (voluntary engagement), usually through police, however perpetrators can also self-refer.
  3. Justice system – civil and criminal: Mandated participation in perpetrator programs through courts and the corrections system.

Source: Family Violence Reform Implementation Monitor

Download Figure 1: Pathways into perpetrator interventions

Statistics on perpetrators in Victoria

This section (and Figure 2 following) offers a snapshot of key police statistics related to perpetrators in Victoria. We note that the real prevalence of family violence in Victorian communities may be much higher because police cannot identify every incident of family violence due to reluctance to report, victims not recognising their experience as family violence and neighbours being unlikely to overhear more subtle forms of family violence.

In the year 2020–21 Victoria Police recorded 93,440 family violence incidents involving 58,118 perpetrators. Seventy-five per cent of perpetrators were recorded as male, noting that the 25 per cent of perpetrators recorded as female will include cases where victim survivors were misidentified as perpetrators (see our previous report on this issue: Accurate identification of the predominant aggressorExternal Link ) and 30 per cent were repeat offenders (recorded as the respondent in two or more family violence incidents within the year). Police observed that mental health issues were likely present in 37 per cent of family violence incidents, alcohol in 22 per cent and other drugs in 16 per cent. Although these statistics may be useful as risk indicators, it is equally important to note that many people in our community experience these challenges, but they do not use violence towards their families. Family violence affects all sectors of society in Victoria, with most incidents involving perpetrators who were neither observed to be suffering from mental health issues or visibly affected by alcohol and other drugs; and up to 70 per cent of incidents involved a perpetrator who was reportedly employed. For the first time, reported family violence incidents against former intimate partners are almost at the same level as those against current partners. A police stakeholder suggested that COVID-19 restrictions may explain this trend, with perpetrators sitting at home and dwelling on past relationships.

Language in this report

We recognise that some service providers and communities prefer the term ‘person using family violence,’ but for consistency with the Royal Commission, this report uses the term ‘perpetrator’ to describe people who use or have used family violence. Family violence is deeply gendered, with men making up the majority of perpetrators, while victim survivors are overwhelmingly women and children. Though acknowledging this reality, we employ the gender-neutral terms ‘perpetrator’ and ‘victim survivor’ throughout to be inclusive of all communities experiencing family violence.

Report scope and context

We acknowledge that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the already high level of pressure on the family violence sector due to high demand and workforce shortages. Many of the new perpetrator services – such as the specialised practice area at The Orange Door, accommodation pilots and court-mandated men’s behaviour change programs – were rolled out amid multiple restrictions. The findings and suggestions in our report must be taken in this context.
The complex issue of adolescents who use violence within their families or intimate partner relationships is not included in the scope of this report. That is not to say it is not an important area; it is critically important and deserves attention in its own right. We suggest that this issue should be the subject of a future dedicated analysis. 6

Figure 2: Family violence perpetrators in Victoria

Source: Crime Statistics Agency, Family Violence Data Portal, Victoria Police Data as at 18 July 2021.
Figure 2: Family violence perpetrators in Victoria

A dashboard based on Victoria Police data that contains six data snapshots that show trends related to family violence perpetrators in Victoria.

  1. The first box depicts the number of distinct ‘other parties’ (perpetrators) involved in police-recorded family violence incidents:
  • 2016–17: 49,960
  • 2017–18: 49,889
  • 2018–19: 53,211
  • 2019–20: 55,720
  • 2020–21: 58,118

The graph shows a 4.3 per cent increase in incidents from 2019–20 to 2020–21.

Data source: Crime Statistics Agency, Family Violence Data Portal, Victoria Police Data Table 20, as at 18 July 2021.

  1. The second box shows the number of incidents recorded by police per perpetrator. The first category is perpetrators with three or more incidents (7,776), then two or more incidents (9,469), and the last is the largest category at one incident recorded per perpetrator (40,873).

This means approximately a third of all unique perpetrators were involved in two incidents or more.

Data source: Crime Statistics Agency, Family Violence Data Portal, Victoria Police Data Table 20, as at 18 July 2021.

  1. The third box shows family violence incidents by sex of perpetrators (2020-21). This shows the proportion of male versus female perpetrators recorded by Victoria police.

In 2020–21 there were 93,440 incidents recorded by police (an increase of 5.9 per cent from 2019–20). Of this number, 75 per cent were male, and 25 per cent were female.

Data source: Crime Statistics Agency, Family Violence Data Portal, Victoria Police Data Tables 1 & 6, as at 18 July 2021

  1. The fourth box lists the proportion of family violence incidents where police have recorded the following possible or definite perpetrator risk factors (2020-21):
  • Mental health issues - 37 per cent
  • Unemployment – 31 per cent
  • Alcohol – 22 per cent
  • Drugs – 16 per cent.

Data source: Crime Statistics Agency, Family Violence Data Portal, Victoria Police Data Table 16, as at 18 July 2021

  1. The fifth box shows trends the number of Affected Family Members (AFMs) by their relationship to the family violence perpetrator from 2016–17 to 2020–21.

There are six relationship categories in this series of line graphs: current partner, former partner, parent, child, parent/child unspecified and from other familial/ familial like relationship

The ’current partner’ and ‘former partner’ categories represent the majority of AFMs recorded in family violence incidents by police. In looking at the trend over the last 5 years (from 2016–17 to 2020–21) the number of ‘former partner’ AFMs is much lower in 2016–17 (18,860) when compared to ‘current partners’ (28,653), but has risen to meet it at close to 30,000 AFMs in each category.

In order of frequency, trends in the other categories were as follows:

  • 11,419 AFMs were parents in 2016-17, growing to 15,547 in 2020-21
  • In the same period, 10,119 AFMs were in the ‘other familial’ category and this grew to 11,638
  • 6,857 AFMs were children, growing to 7,991
  • Around 500 AFMs were in the ‘parent/child – unspecified’ category from 2016-17 to 2018-19, but this dropped to zero for the remaining years in the series.

Source: Crime Statistics Agency, Family Violence Data Portal, Victoria Police Data Table 11, as at 18 July 2021.

  1. The last box is a funnel graph that states the total number of family violence offences by type (2020-21):
  • Breach of orders - 57,234 offences.
  • Assault - 24,185 offences
  • Property and deception – 12,017 offences
  • Stalking, harassment and threats 8,151 offences
  • Sexual offences 5,442 offences
  • Other 4,665 offences
  • Dangerous and negligent acts 1,494 offences
  • Abduction 423 offences
  • Robbery 64 offences
  • Blackmail 46 offences
  • Homicide 30 offences.

Data source: Crime Statistics Agency, Family Violence Data Portal, Victoria Police Data Table 21, as at 18 July 2021.

Download Figure 2: Family violence perpetrators in Victoria

Reviewed 25 January 2023

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