SA Police reveal officers attend an average 100 domestic violence incidents every day

It is happening behind closed doors all over South Australia but now SA Police have revealed just how often they confront the scourge of domestic violence.

Police are attending an average of 100 domestic violence incidents a day and spending twice as long on scene because of the increasing complexity of cases.

A senior SA Police officer has revealed the staggering figure while giving evidence to a royal commission into domestic, family and sexual violence in South Australia.

Responding to a question from royal commissioner Natasha Stott Despoja, SA Police Chief Inspector Kellie Watkins said officers were attending an average of 100 domestic abuse-related incidents a day.

The time officers spend at each incident has increased “in the last several years” from an average of an hour and a half to three hours.

“It really demonstrates the complexity and the investment police are making in relation to these families and trying to provide that support and protection,” she said.

Natasha Stott Despoja has heard officers attend 100 DV call outs a day. Picture: Dean Martin

Chief Inspector Watkins added that police were imposing an average of nine intervention orders a day, intended to deter alleged perpetrators from harrassing, intimidating or attacking victims.

However the royal commission has received data showing there were more than 2700 breaches of those orders last financial year, including abusers continuing to stalk, threaten or use technology to track or monitor ex-partners.

Mary Leaker, who heads advocacy group Embolden, warned that non-physical abuse was not being taken seriously enough.

“Even where there are multiple and repeated and consistent breaches they’re not being responded to,” she said.

“This is a significant concern because ... where we see that escalation that really needs to be understood as a red flag.”

Catherine Coleiro, from the Legal Services Commission of SA, said women had been told to change their phone number or email address in response, without understanding that work or other crucial contacts may depend on those communication channels.

Both Ms Leaker and Ms Coleiro told the commission of women being hounded by abusive ex-partners through nasty texts and emails under the cover of discussing the welfare of their children.

This was possible because intervention orders often allow communication about shared custody.

Ms Leaker said this “opens a gate for more harmful and abusive engagement while technically meeting the requirements of the order”.

Both Ms Leaker and Ms Coleiro confirmed that it was becoming less likely that at-risk children would be named as people to be protected by an intervention order.

In some cases parents who were the victim of abuse were “under pressure to have children removed”, Ms Leaker said.

“Children have not been included on intervention orders even in circumstances where there is an assessed risk to the child’s safety or where there’s been a direct threat,” she said.