coerce control – Michmutters
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Australia

Work on national approach to coercive control to begin at attorneys-general meeting in Melbourne

State and territory attorneys-general are to meet with federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus on Friday to debate whether to criminalize coercive control across the nation.

Coercive control — a form of domestic and family violence — refers to patterns of abusive behaviors used by one person to dominate and control another in a relationship, which can leave victims feeling powerless, isolated and a hostage in their own home.

Families of those victims and case workers have welcomed the federal government’s push for a national understanding of the term.

States and territories are at different stages of considering whether to criminalize coercive control in their own jurisdictions.

Mr Dreyfus said Friday’s meeting of the nation’s first law officers in Melbourne would see the first steps towards a nationally consistent approach.

“We know from early research that coercive control is an extremely common feature of abusive relationships, but it is not always well understood across the community,” Mr Dreyfus told the ABC.

“There are some differences [between jurisdictions]which is why reaching agreement — at least at a draft level — on what are national principles to address coercive control, is a really good step forward.”

Queensland and New South Wales have already moved to criminalize coercive control, while Victoria and Tasmania say existing laws cover the offences.

Other states have expressed in-principle support for new laws or a nationally consistent approach.

Mr Dreyfus said having a national consensus would lead to a higher level of understanding and the possibility of remaining jurisdictions criminalizing the behaviours.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus speaks to the media.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus wants a national consistency approach. (AAP: Lukas Coch/File)

“We are hoping that, at [Friday’s] meeting, we are going to be able to approve for release national principles to address coercive control and we think that will help get to a coordinated national approach,” he said.

“It won’t necessarily be that every state will get to criminalizing this behaviour, but if we can get to a much wider understanding in the community of what this is, that will help our ultimate aim of keeping women and children safe.”

National push welcomed by father of domestic violence victim

The move towards a national framework has been welcomed by the father of Hannah Clarke, who was murdered, along with her three children, by her estranged husband.

Lloyd Clarke said he always knew something was wrong, but wasn’t familiar with the term coercive control at the time.

“There were no physical marks but we knew there were mental marks,” Mr Clarke said.

Hannah Clarke with Aaliyah and Laianah at the beach
Hannah Clarke and her children were murdered by her estranged husband in 2020. (Supplied: Lloyd Clarke)

“He was trying to control her mentally. Wanting to know where she was, even asking the children.”

When he was subsequently told this amounted to coercive control, Mr Clarke and his wife, Sue, launched a campaign for Queensland to criminalize the behaviour.

“We thought, ‘Well, we didn’t know about it so there must be a lot of people out there who don’t know about coercive control and we need to educate people on that’,” Mr Clarke told the ABC.

After the Clarke family’s campaign, Queensland committed to criminalizing coercive behavior with a pledge to have laws in place by 2023.

Mr Clarke said he was “ecstatic” to hear that state and territory attorneys-general were willing to work together on the issue.

“It’s another step ahead of our [state-based] campaign and that’s great,” Mr Clarke said.

Coercive control often hard to provide to authorities, counselor says

Kirrilly Salvestro — a domestic violence counselor working in western New South Wales — said a national approach would improve clarity between states.

However, she said, providing evidence of coercive behavior was notoriously difficult, particularly in states that are looking to criminalize and punish the behaviour.

“For example, isolation from friends and family: How do you prove that to authorities?” Ms Salvestro said.

“How do you prove that your partner may have been monitoring your activity unless you have a way to prove that they have been bugging your phone or putting trackers on your vehicles?”

Ms Salvestro — who is deputy chief executive officer of the Linking Communities Network — said it was important for any national definition to reflect the scale of the damage caused.

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“In any discussion, we need to make sure that we get it right the first time,” Ms Salvestro said.

“[We need] to include everything that needs to be encompassed and the recognition that children are involved in coercive control as well, all that needs to be included.”

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Categories
Business

Horror rise in Queensland men threatening to burn their partners alive revealed

Domestic and family violence perpetrators in Queensland are increasingly threatening to set their current and former partners alight, a new study has found, with cases spiking after the horrific 2020 murders of Hannah Clarke and her children.

The report, co-authored by UQ TC Beirne School of Law senior lecturer Joseph Lelliott and associate lecturer Rebecca Wallis, details testimonies from seven non-government domestic and family violence service providers in the state’s southeast.

Direct and implicit threats of dousing are a form of coercive control that has not been formally studied before.

But they are on the rise: one participant told the survey of 17 workers last year that abusers sent the stories of Clarke – whose three children were burned alive in their car in February 2020 by her estranged husband – and Kelly Wilkinson – who was set alight in her Gold Coast backyard last April – to their partners as a means of telling them, “That’s what I’ll do to you”.

“Anecdotally, there have been cases where perpetrators have directly referenced the cases of Hannah Clarke or Kelly Wilkinson when they make threats, saying, ‘You’re going to end up just like her’, or saying something along the lines of, ‘That’s what you’ll get’ if news about them comes on,” Dr Lelliott told news.com.au.

“It appears that media reports about these cases, and ones like them, may lead to ‘copycat’-like behaviour, but may also be used as a tool of abuse themselves.

“Some interview respondents noted that perpetrators may also, for example, leave print outs of news stories concerning Hannah Clarke and the children around the house, or send them to ex-partners.”

The majority of participants in the study reported that cases of dousing threats within their services had become more prevalent over the past two or so years. And while no empirical measures exist yet, reasons may include an increased awareness among workers, and an increased fear among victims that such threats could be part of a pattern of escalating violence leading to murder.

“People are far more aware of it and that’s why there are so many more women, I think, talking about it,” one worker noted.

“Because now they’re really fearful and they’ve seen the consequences of that kind of threat being carried out.”

Another stated that they “see a really high prevalence of these kinds of threats, absolutely”.

“Different kinds of levels, different kinds of threats, but we do,” they added.

“So what we see most commonly are threats to burn the house down, threats to burn family and friend’s houses down, that sort of thing.”

“I actually have supported a woman whose respondent actually doused himself in petrol and threatened to burn himself at their family home where their children slept. Basically, yeah, well, it scared the hell out of her anyway,” one worker said.

“So, he did not actually burn himself because she managed to call triple-zero straight away. [But] the impact on her was really profound, because the smell of the petrol lingered for months.

“The location where he didused himself was actually close to the gas tank. So, he could have just killed everyone.”

What makes these threats – both implied and explicit – particularly “insidious”, Dr Lelliott and Dr Wallis noted in their findings, is that these “behaviours could be perceived as innocuous without an understanding of the broader context of the relationship”, but “almost always” occur in the context of an escalating pattern of “serious” domestic and family violence.

“I’m finding that it’s one of many elements. It’s not ever a stand-alone,” one worker said.

“Like they don’t just threaten to burn the house down or burn somebody – most of the time it’s because there is a domestic violence order (DVO), the client has left the relationship so there’s an escalation in the violence, and therefore it does escalate to the threats of burning either the house down, themselves or the client and the children.

“But usually there’s a lot that’s happened before it actually escalates to that point.”

Another, echoing the sentiment, noted the threats are “almost always just after separation”.

“So it’s about that not accepting that the relationship is over, and going into revenge and retaliation mode,” they added.

Their severity is also amplified by the accessibility of accelerants like petrol which, unlike the purchase of a firearm, are seen as “normal” household items.

Dr Lelliott told news.com.au that the prevalence of the study’s findings indicate “that there does need to be greater awareness of dousing threats – and indeed the use of fire generally – as a form of domestic and family violence and as a pattern of coercive control”.

“Some of our findings indicate that the severity of these threats is not always recognised, particularly by police,” he said.

“This work is, of course, preliminary at this point. We will release further papers in the future.”

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