The isolation of domestic violence

CHRIS HATZIS
Eavesdrop on Experts, a podcast about stories of inspiration and insights. It’s where expert types obsess, confess and profess. I’m Chris Hatzis, let’s eavesdrop on experts changing the world - one lecture, one experiment, one interview at a time.

Australia’s domestic violence statistics have been described as a “national scourge” with one in four Australian women experiencing physical violence since the age of 15. While the COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented, it’s left many victims of domestic and family abuse inside their homes with their abuser – all day, every day – as people isolate to prevent the spread of the virus. While for many of us it’s meant working from home and staying indoors, for women and children experiencing domestic violence, it can make it even harder to get help.

Cathy Humphreys is Professor of Social Work at the University of Melbourne. She’s worked as a social work practitioner in the mental health, domestic violence, and children, youth and families sector for 16 years before becoming a social work academic. Cathy Humphreys sat down for a Zoom chat with our reporter Silvi Vann-Wall to talk about domestic violence in this time of COVID-19 isolation.

SILVI VANN-WALL
So with COVID-19 forcing many couples to isolate together 24/7 what are the numbers looking like on domestic violence in Australia at the moment?



CATHY HUMPHREYS

Yes. Well, the trends in this area in the data, it's still very early days to able to see what's happening. Probably the most worrying aspect of the data thus far is that there has been a suppression of the amount of calls that women have been making to help lines and also that children are no longer visible either. So just talking to some workers in Western Australia in the department yesterday they said it has never been quieter and similarly certainly when the lockdown first started and knowing that this is a danger point for women, as you were saying, and yet there was a 30 per cent decline in the calls to the help line. So it's worrying to see that sort of picture. It's just as worrying to see a depression in the help-seeking data as it is to see a spike.

SILVI VANN-WALL
Can you explain why it's worrying to see a decline in the calls?

CATHY HUMPHREYS
Well, it basically means that women are not getting an opportunity to call for help, even though they are in a situation where they're probably potentially experiencing a lot more violence, both physical and emotional and sexual violence. But they haven't got the opportunity to be able to seek help. Now, there has been an increase, and this is an international - showing up internationally as well - increase in the use of searching on websites and chat rooms to try and gain information. So it's really women's access to phones is what we're seeing is dropping out. So there's a lesson there about expanding the provision to make sure that there are ways of being able to access women and their children at a time when you've got increased danger.

SILVI VANN-WALL

So you did mention that chat room searches are going up. How else would we be able to tell that there's an increase in domestic violence if the calls aren't coming through?



CATHY HUMPHREYS

Well, I think that it's not easy to see what's going on and I think we don't really fully understand at all what's going on. We won't know until later what the impacts have been. But what we do know is that a particular risk factor for women in a domestic violence situation is isolation. So we've got this paradoxical situation almost where when you're doing a risk assessment around domestic violence one of the key issues you look for is how isolated is this woman, have all her support networks being knocked out, is she still able to work, has she lost all her friends, have they moved to a place that is of the perpetrator's choosing rather than where she would want to live?

So you're making an assessment about her isolation because the more isolated she is the more powerful the abuser and the more powerful he is in being able to determine what the situation is and get her to try and think that the way he thinks is the only way of thinking. That means that what perpetrators like to do is to suggest that the woman is complicit or, in fact, is responsible for the abuse that she is experiencing and he has more chance of doing that the more isolated she is. So it's a long term tactic of abuse. So if you go back to the way in which concentration camps work, what you do is they are based on a certain level of tactics of control, which are all very similar, about how do you establish a regime of power and control over another person and isolation is a key factor. At the moment we've got state-supported isolation and we know that, in fact, that is dangerous for women living with domestic violence and for children living with domestic violence.

SILVI VANN-WALL
So going off of that, Cathy, do you think there was much consideration for a potential spike in domestic violence when these isolation conditions were enforced in Australia?

CATHY HUMPHREYS

Look, I think there was a level of awareness that this isolation - that isolation is bad for a lot of people, not just for domestic violence survivors and victims, that it's bad for people's mental health, it's bad for their physical health, it's bad for domestic violence, it's bad for child abuse. There's no doubt that isolation is a bad thing. But, of course, when you've got this extraordinarily virulent virus you don't have too many choices about this, and these are the trade-offs and clearly there's a massive economic trade-off that is just going to be felt for a generation at least. So there are trade-offs here. So it's not suggesting that the government shouldn't have shut down. It's just saying that it's dangerous for some people, including survivors of domestic violence.

Now, there's compensation that is being made at this point from both the state and federal governments going, we need to be aware that there's a group of women and children out there that are going to be doing very badly. So there is funding that is being made available to try and support women and children in this space and some men as well and certainly some of the funding will go to trying to house or accommodate perpetrators of domestic violence and that we would also be trying to - there is also No to Violence, which provides the men's help line. They're finding that they're actually getting quite a lot of calls themselves and there has been some support provided to the help lines as well.

SILVI VANN-WALL
So let's talk about the different forms that abuse can take and why these isolation conditions are maybe ripe for those forms of abuse. What are the main types of abuse that domestic violence can take on?

CATHY HUMPHREYS
So for the most part physical violence doesn't need to be used often to establish a regime of power and control over another person. So when you're looking at the tactics of coercive control the threat of physical violence or the use of physical violence may not be very common. But there are other forms of violence, which are the psychological forms of violence or threats of sexual abuse or threats of physical abuse or threats to children or threats to pets or actual child abuse or actual pet abuse which are ways of controlling women living with domestic violence. So there are a range of tactics that are used, of which isolation is one key one, and that means that you don't have to work so hard to establish power and control through violence.

SILVI VANN-WALL
Have we seen patterns like this before with previous disasters?

CATHY HUMPHREYS

What we know is that when you've got disasters happening that you do have a spike in domestic violence. So, say, when we looked at the bushfires and Black Saturday there has been quite a lot of really good research, particularly done by researchers at University of Melbourne, to look at the impact of Black Saturday and the bushfires. What you saw, and there's a very interesting piece of work that was done which looked at low-impact bushfire areas, medium-impact bushfire areas, high-impact bushfire areas and the domestic violence in the high impact areas was much greater. So that's an interesting and important issue about when you have disasters you may also have an increase in domestic violence for a whole range of complex issues, of which we don't understand all of them.

So in that particular state one of the protective factors for women was whether they managed to retain their work and employment. Now, what that meant, was it just about the importance of their economic contribution to the family, was it to do with the fact that they weren't so isolated, was it to do with the fact that they weren't as at risk for a range of reasons? It's a bit hard to know what the role of employment might be in these circumstances but certainly once people lose their employment, whether they're men or whether they're women, there's an increase in domestic violence.

SILVI VANN-WALL

Is that just because of the stress factor of not having enough money to keep up the household?



CATHY HUMPHREYS

I think that it's more complex than that. It is this thing about isolation, level of time spent together, pressure cooker, the stresses of domestic violence. But also it's about the gender inequality as well that can get writ large. If you're at home all day the women will expect men to be doing their share of the work and men are not used to necessarily - well, a group of men are not used to doing any domestic work. So there can be areas where the gender inequality gets played out in very pressure cooker ways when people are at home and unemployed.

SILVI VANN-WALL
Cathy, what particular pressures are workers facing at the moment?



CATHY HUMPHREYS

I think an issue for the workers is that they're in very different territory from where they have previously been. So we have always had safe ways of talking with women and when women come in saying, what's the - how can I safely contact you? At the moment not feeling as though you can safely contact women puts particularly the workers who are working with women living with domestic violence and children living with domestic violence puts them in very difficult territory where they're very worried about a lot of the women that they're seeing. Paradoxically there's a group of women who are separated who are feeling much safer because, in fact, with lockdown they're not getting harassed as much by their ex-partners and are just as easily contactable from workers in the sector.

I think we're seeing pressure on police to have to be the ones - as the only ones who can go into the home easily at the moment. I think our child protection workers are particularly worried at the moment because of the ways in which there's no one keeping eyes on children at the moment. So it's all very well having kids at home for families that are functional, but where you've got a domestic violence perpetrator in the family there are also children who are living with domestic violence who are also children who are being abused. So there's a lot of worry about those children not being in school, those children not being in child care, those children not being able to go to their sporting or extracurricular activities where other people have eyes on them and where they escape the home because homes aren't necessarily a safe place for these children. So workers are very knowledgeable about this and are very concerned about those sorts of issues.

So I think that there has also been opportunities for the workforce to be creative. So there's been lots of creativity, and we've seen that everywhere, but it also functions in this space too that there are creative ways that are very specific for contacting women and children in their particular circumstances or contacting men about the issues of violence that they may be worried about. So I think that overall there has been a lot of pulling together of the workforce in this space and trying to be creative, trying to seize opportunities, but also there's the increased worry about the way in which they are able to operate at the moment.

SILVI VANN-WALL
So you mentioned some of the initiatives that have been put in place to help the victims of domestic violence and you did talk about shelters briefly. How do shelters operate during this time considering people have to stay 1.5 metres away and they can only go out with their families if they go outside?

CATHY HUMPHREYS
My understanding is that the shelters, the refuges have had to take in only one family at a time or those are the ones where - you see, there has been a shift in the way refuges operate. There's some refuges where it's a group of families in together but there's also a different model where you have different houses that are refuges and with a hub in the middle. So they can still take in people, more than one family, because they have a distributed model. On the other hand it is really so important that women and their children, or men, have a place to go to escape the violence. So one of their initiatives that's being provided by the state is a lot of brokerage funding to try and help women into accommodation with bonds and things like that. But it's also about making sure there's provision for extra accommodation support throughout the state.

SILVI VANN-WALL
When you say accommodation, are we talking about hotels; what are the extra accommodations?

CATHY HUMPHREYS
Yeah, it could be. Hotels are very problematic in these circumstances, but also they are a roof over your head and a place to go. So making sure that some of those accommodation outlets that are available to people coming in from overseas are also available for women and children escaping domestic violence or a place to put the perpetrator of violence so that women and children can stay at home.

SILVI VANN-WALL

So how would someone who is a victim of domestic violence at the moment be able to reach out; if they're too afraid to make a phone call, say, what are the other alternatives?

CATHY HUMPHREYS
Well, the 1800-RESPECT phone number has a chat line. That is an important avenue of being able to reach out. The police are making it really clear as well that they are still open and to be really clear that they're open and can be contacted and that women should know that they can always go to the police stations. There's also women are often able to go to a range of other health organisations, like their GPs and pharmacies, and there's quite a lot of work happening to try and make sure that the health system is readily available to victim-survivors and that they know that they are available.

SILVI VANN-WALL
What about if you're on the outside; say you're a friend or family member or a concerned neighbour, what can you do if you suspect that there's domestic violence going on in your vicinity?

CATHY HUMPHREYS
Well, the first line of action is usually call the police. Quite often informal networks are the first line of action. When people can't do as much visiting and aren't as available because of the lockdown then the police are being used more and more as the frontline service under these circumstances.

SILVI VANN-WALL
What are your thoughts on continuing the new practices in response to domestic violence during the pandemic into the long term when the COVID-19 crisis is over; is there any place for continuing some of these practices?

CATHY HUMPHREYS

Look, I think so and I think that is one of the big learnings. There has been a couple of big learnings out of this. One is recognising how important chat lines could be and at the moment our key help line, Safe Steps, hasn't had a well supported chat room, chat function and so thinking about, well, that's going to be important into the future, that we now see that we need more of that service - that part of the service system developed. So I think that's important. I think that men have been reaching out to the men's help line and there has also been quite a lot of the workers in men's behaviour-change programs that have continued to contact the men individually, more in case management and support, and again, that has been important in terms of recognising that with support men are more contained and that that's helpful. So a bit more of that is also important.

I think that we're looking at the development of different apps and there has been some really good work done by Laura Tarzia and Kelsey Hegarty at the University here looking at the development of technologies in positive ways and looking at how we might deploy those more actively and that they would be used more actively at a time of crisis, like this.

SILVI VANN-WALL
So there is an app in development that is for - is it for perpetrators?

CATHY HUMPHREYS
There's a range of availability of apps. The one in development at the moment is called The Better Man app and that is one that Kelsey Hegarty is leading on. But also Laura Tarzia is leading on one from across the University and that is being in development stage at the moment.

SILVI VANN-WALL

Let's talk more about the outlets for perpetrators or potential perpetrators. What can people do if they're worried about their aggressive behaviour; what sort of outlets do they have at the moment?

CATHY HUMPHREYS
So we have what we call No to Violence, which is the peak body for the men's services in Victoria and also in Tasmania, and there's a men's help line, the Men's Referral Service, MRS, and that is a well managed and well supported help line for men and they have the full range of services at their fingertips and so recognising that and contacting the Men's Referral Service help line is probably the best avenue. Of course, with mental health problems there are other mental health services available, like Beyond Blue and also Lifeline that are well known and easily accessible.

SILVI VANN-WALL
Let's talk about remote Indigenous communities. How differently do responses to domestic violence need to be tailored to those groups?

CATHY HUMPHREYS

Well, I think that there's some things that are very similar. But tailoring a response is different insofar as it has to be driven from internally within those communities a lot of time and different communities will have different choices, different ways of being able to manage a situation of domestic violence in the remote communities. But it is where the models are somewhat different because you do need to be asking what are the specifics of this community that would make a difference? So I don't think it's for someone like myself to be going, all right, this is what Indigenous remote communities should be doing. There are issues of self-determination which need to be respected and drawn from within those communities and then supported by government to enact those different ways of working.

SILVI VANN-WALL
Are there any other gaps that you've recognised; anything that you see needs to be solved at the moment and any ideas you would have for further things that need to be implemented to deal with this crisis and the rise in domestic violence?

CATHY HUMPHREYS

How long is your wish list? You want everything. First and foremost, I would say that keeping Newstart at double the level that we're seeing at the moment is absolutely essential. One of the worst things that we've seen and I think why we haven't made any progress - where we've made less progress than we might have in the area of domestic violence, is that women are entrapped. You cannot live on Newstart, particularly when you've got children, and once your children are over a certain age, as in very young, once they're over that age you're on Newstart and if you haven't got access to direct employment, if you're no longer still employed when you're leaving, then you're thrust onto Centrelink payments that are completely inadequate.

If we want women to have the ability to leave, because a lot of people say, why don’t you leave? Well, actually women do not want to escape with their children into total homelessness, and that's what you're looking at. There's almost no private rental market housing that is available for women who are living on Newstart or Centrelink payments. So keeping Centrelink payments at a reasonable rate that you can actually survive on is a very important part of women being able to escape domestic violence.

SILVI VANN-WALL

Because the money is about autonomy, isn't it?



CATHY HUMPHREYS

It's about independence and autonomy so that if you haven't got a place to go to, you're not going to leave and if you've got only inadequate Centrelink payments they don't cover you and our social housing has been really diminished. Now, our State Government in Victoria is really working to try and up the level of accommodation that is available and certainly I don't want to criticise them about not doing enough because they are working hard in a difficult space but that's a key issue. Not having available, affordable housing is a key issue for women being able to leave situations of domestic violence. The other thing you could do, and we are doing some of, is trying to keep more women safe at home with the offender excluded. But that doesn't work for all women. That will only work for some women.

SILVI VANN-WALL

With the restrictions potentially being reduced on the horizon, do you think there will also be a decrease in domestic violence?

CATHY HUMPHREYS

I think that we might see a bit of an avalanche of people coming out of isolation and calling for help. So even in China once the isolation stopped an awful lot of people applied for divorce. So we may be seeing a different pressure on the service system and the legal system once people are able to get out of isolation.

SILVI VANN-WALL
Well, I guess only time will tell.

CATHY HUMPHREYS

Only time will tell.

SILVI VANN-WALL
Cathy Humphreys, thank you for sharing your expertise with us today.

CATHY HUMPHREYS
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to be able to speak about these very important issues.

CHRIS HATZIS
Thank you to Cathy Humphreys, Professor of Social Work at the University of Melbourne. And thanks to our reporter Silvi Vann-Wall.

If you’ve experienced, or are at risk of, family and domestic violence or sexual assault, call 1800RESPECT - 1800 737 732 - or go to 1800respect.org.au. For the Men's Referral Service, call 1300 766 491 or go to ntv.org.au. If you, a friend or a loved one is experiencing a personal crisis, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or go to lifeline.org.au. And, of course, if you feel unsafe or are concerned for someone’s safety, please call 000 or contact the police in your state or territory.

Eavesdrop on Experts - stories of inspiration and insights - was made possible by the University of Melbourne. This episode was recorded on April 17, 2020. You’ll find a full transcript on the Pursuit website. Production, audio engineering and editing by me, Chris Hatzis. Co-production - Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Eavesdrop on Experts is licensed under Creative Commons, Copyright 2020, The University of Melbourne. If you enjoyed this episode, review us on Apple Podcasts and check out the rest of the Eavesdrop episodes in our archive. I’m Chris Hatzis. Join us again next time for another Eavesdrop on Experts.