Category Archives: Domestic violence

Albanese calls for debate on blocking online misogynistic content at snap national cabinet meeting

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Labor to focus on online harms at national cabinet meeting on women’s safety as others call for further needs-based funding and bail reform

Anthony Albanese has called for a debate on the blocking of misogynistic content online ahead of a snap national cabinet focused on women’s safety.

In addition to information sharing on high-risk perpetrators and serial offenders, the federal government has signalled strengthening violence prevention through a focus on online harms will be a priority at Wednesday’s meeting, the first national cabinet of 2024.

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National Legal Aid calls for $300m funding increase to keep Australian women safe

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Exclusive: Peak body unable to meet increased demand for family services as nation grapples with a crisis of murdered women

More than $300m additional annual government funding is needed to meet demand for legal aid services related to family violence, the national peak body has warned, as Australia grapples with a crisis of murdered women.

The National Legal Aid chair, Louise Glanville, said that national rallies against gendered violence held over the weekend demonstrated that the community expected more to be done.

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Albanese heckled at Canberra rally to end violence against women – as it happened

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Dai Le says funding for domestic violence prevention more important than a royal commission

Asked about social media platform Twitter and Elon Musk’s claims that efforts to ensure a video of a stabbing of an Assyrian priest be taken down globally would constitute a threat to “free speech”, Dai Le says supports the government’s effort but has concerns about potential overreach:

Honestly, how can we not stop images of violence?

What I think government needs to do is to get the funding and target that to communities. Communities are experiencing high domestic violence. Getting it implemented … ,making sure that we don’t alienate one group from another [is important].

It’s just not something people can take. It is very emotional for people and me as a person who escaped Vietnam and being a child who ran from the war, it’s very traumatic for me and very traumatic for people in my community.

I think that everybody, from my understanding, would like a two-state solution.

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Violence against women rallies: thousands attend protests as Mark Dreyfus rules out royal commission

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More rallies to be held across the country on Sunday with attorney general claiming state and federal governments need to cooperate on plan of action

Thousands of people have rallied in Sydney calling for an end to violence against women amid growing anger at the number of those being killed in violent attacks across the country.

No More: National rallies against gender based violence were held in Sydney, Hobart and Adelaide on Saturday, with more due to be held across the country on Sunday, calling for greater action, including calls for a royal commission, to address the epidemic of women killed in violent attacks.

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Man charged with domestic murder of Forbes woman Molly Ticehurst was on bail for other offences

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Queenslander Daniel Billings was on bail for earlier charges including stalking and cruelty before arrest for alleged murder, NSW court hears

A man accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend in regional New South Wales while on bail for rape and stalking charges against her will remain behind bars.

Daniel Billings has been charged with the domestic violence murder of Molly Ticehurst, 28, whose body was found in a Forbes homes in the early hours of Monday.

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‘Epidemic’ of violence against Aboriginal women in NT is getting worse, exasperated experts warn

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Despite having Australia’s highest rates of domestic violence, particularly against Indigenous women, the NT only receives about 1% of federal funding, senators hear

She was a domestic and family violence advocate; a leader in her community and the country. But in 2021 Kumarn Rubuntja was murdered by her partner, Malcolm Abbott.

“We lost one of our own,” the Tangentyere family violence prevention manager, Dr Chay Brown, told the murdered and missing First Nations women and children parliamentary inquiry.

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Suicide toll prompts call for more support for UK domestic abuse victims

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Project finds police recorded 93 suspected domestic abuse-related suicides in a year – one every four days

Campaigners for women’s rights in the UK are calling for more mental health support for domestic abuse victims after police recorded 93 suspected abuse-related suicides in a year.

A report found 242 domestic abuse-related deaths were recorded between April 2022 and March 2023, of which 93 were suspected suicides, 80 were intimate partner homicides, 31 were adult family homicides, 23 were unexpected deaths, 11 were child deaths, and four others were deaths involving individuals living together who were not family members or intimate partners.

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Labor admits just 17 of 500 domestic violence staff promised have been hired

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Social services minister Amanda Rishworth says government ‘needed to work hard’ to fulfil election promise

Only a handful of the 500 domestic violence support workers promised by the Albanese government have been hired, the social services minister, Amanda Rishworth, has admitted, saying Labor “needed to work hard” to fulfil its election commitment.

“We put the money in our budget and we’re working with the states and territories through paying them to employ these workers and get these workers on the ground,” Rishworth told the ABC on Friday, confirming just 17 of the 500 domestic violence staff had started work.

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Domestic violence perpetrators ‘weaponising’ insurance policies in Australia to exert control, report finds

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Centre for Women’s Economic Safety calls on insurance companies to redesign their products to protect victim-survivors

Domestic violence perpetrators are “weaponising” insurance policies to exert financial control over their partners, according to a new report that urges insurance companies to redesign their products to protect victim-survivors.

The report from the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety found that victim-survivors of domestic violence were being denied insurance payouts when their property was damaged – including having their home burned down or car destroyed – because the damage had been done by their partner, who was also a policyholder, thereby voiding the insurance claim.

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Kelly Wilkinson’s estranged husband pleads guilty to murdering her in Gold Coast home

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Prosecutors previously alleged Brian Earl Johnston, 37, tied up the mother-of-three before dousing her with petrol and setting her alight

The estranged husband of Kelly Wilkinson, who was doused in petrol and set alight, has pleaded guilty to her murder less than a month before his scheduled trial.

Brian Earl Johnston, 37, appeared before Brisbane supreme court on Wednesday via video link for arraignment on one count of murdering 27-year-old Wilkinson on 20 April 2021 in a Gold Coast backyard as a domestic violence offence.

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Killing of three women in a week sparks femicide protests in Somalia

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Police name husbands as suspects in separate deaths of women, two of whom were pregnant

The deaths of three women in one week, all allegedly murdered by their husbands, has caused outrage in Somalia and sparked days of protests over the country’s femicide rates.

Police have named the suspects in all three killings, which took place in the first week of February, as the dead women’s husbands. Two of the victims were pregnant. Even in a country where – after more than three decades of conflict – death and violence are part of everyday life, there have been demonstrations in the capital, Mogadishu, with protesters holding up placards showing photos of Lul Abdi Aziz Jazirain her hospital bed. The 28-year-old had been doused with petrol and set alight. She suffered severe burns and survived in agony for seven days after being attacked.

Naima Said Salah is a writer with all-female media team Bilan in Somalia. It is funded by the European Union through the UN Development Programme and hosted by Dalsan Media Group in Mogadishu

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Teachers in England left to support at-risk children after social services cuts

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Safeguarding staff say they can’t get referrals for serious cases and don’t have the expertise to give pupils the help they need

Increasing numbers of children suffering from domestic abuse, serious neglect and homelessness are being refused help from over-stretched social services, schools across England have told the Observer.

Child protection cases that would automatically have prompted intervention from social workers a few years ago are now routinely being passed back to schools to deal with themselves. The inability to obtain help for children whom schools think are in urgent need is taking such an emotional toll on education staff, who say they have neither the expertise nor the resources to cope, that some schools are bringing in counsellors to prevent their safeguarding teams becoming traumatised.

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More than half of those applying for domestic violence payment are rejected, data shows

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The escaping violence payment is not getting to people when they need it, say advocates who want the eligibility criteria broadened

More than half of people trying to access emergency financial support for domestic and family violence are having their claims rejected, new data has revealed.

Between July and September last year 57,041 applications were made for the escaping violence payment (EVP) but only 29,437 were found eligible, according to data released in response to a question on notice during Senate estimates.

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Man with black belt argues chokehold is not strangulation under Queensland domestic violence laws

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Potential ‘loophole’ in state’s non-lethal strangulation laws could be closed by a statutory definition similar to that used in Western Australia, experts say

Domestic violence experts have raised concerns about a potential “loophole” in Queensland’s non-lethal strangulation laws, after a man argued in court he had not restricted a woman’s breathing when he executed a chokehold designed to cut off the blood flow to her brain.

The state made choking and strangulation a standalone offence in 2016, saying at the time that the act was “a pivotal moment that reveals an escalation in the seriousness of the violence committed against a person”. Research shows that domestic victims of non-lethal strangulation are seven times more likely to be subsequently killed.

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Rape survivor who joined the Met: ‘Domestic abuse is very different to any other form of crime’

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Trainee detective constable says her ordeal helps her to empathise with victims and help other officers on her team

A Metropolitan police officer who was assaulted and raped by an ex-partner has channelled her ordeal into targeting domestic abusers.

The trainee detective constable, who works in a safeguarding unit in east London, was a student when the abusive relationship left her feeling suicidal. The woman, 24, who is not being named for legal reasons, hopes that speaking out about her experience will give victims the confidence to report abusers to the police.

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Victims of domestic abuse have lost trust in Met police, says senior officer

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Det Supt Andrew Wadey says force has ‘let women and girls down badly’ and service must be improved to restore faith

Victims of domestic abuse have lost confidence in Britain’s biggest police force after a series of scandals, a senior officer has admitted.

Det Supt Andrew Wadey, the Metropolitan police’s lead for domestic abuse and stalking, acknowledged the force had “let women and girls down badly in the past” but insisted they were committed to rebuilding trust.

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Domestic violence worst at Christmas and New Year in Australia, with more than 60 women killed in violent attacks this year

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Statistics reveal over 2,000 intimate partner homicides from 1989 to 2021, with three in four victims female

More than 60 women have been violently killed this year, many by intimate partners, and experts warn that the holidays are a particularly dangerous time.

Counting Dead Women Australia – which is run by Destroy the Joint researchers – tracks “every known death due to violence against women” and says the number this week reached 62.

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Intimate partner homicide data-tracker unveiled after four SA women killed in one week

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Statistical dashboard with up-to-date figures on victims is ‘crucial’ in helping police and policymakers tackle domestic violence, minister for women says

A new intimate partner homicide dashboard offering more up-to-date figures will soon be available after the deaths of four South Australian women in one week.

The government will introduce the federal statistical dashboard by mid-2024 to provide more timely reporting on intimate partner homicide. The new dashboard will enable police, governments, policymakers and all those who are working to end violence against women and children, to better understand what is happening and when. It will initially provide quarterly updates but is expected to provide more up-to-date figures as the initiative develops.

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John Setka: union boss’s estranged wife said she had ‘to kill my children’s father to survive’, court hears

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Emma Walters told police she did not want to kill ex John Setka but was ‘in distress’ and had used ‘florid language’

The union leader John Setka’s estranged wife told a private investigator “I have to kill my children’s father to survive, you’re going to help me work out how I do it”, a court has been told.

The comments were revealed in a secret video played to court on Tuesday, when Emma Walters had a firearm charge against her dismissed.

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Northern Territory coroner brought to tears by testimony as she adjourns domestic violence inquest

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After eight weeks of evidence that heard of ‘chronic and shocking’ underfunding, Elisabeth Armitage wraps up landmark inquiry into killings of four women at hands of their partner

The words of a grieving family have brought a coroner to tears in the final day of an inquest examining the killing of four Aboriginal women in the Northern Territory.

“It cannot be normal that men hurt us women. Everyone must do more from the start, not just after women get hurt or killed,” wrote Ngeygo Ragurrk’s sister, Edna.

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