We have a duty to work harder to stop family violence, Victoria Police Family Violence Command assistant commissioner
The assistant commissioner of Victoria Police’s Family Violence Command is plagued by a key worry after every shift and grapples with one question — what drives men to commit such terrible acts of violence against women?
Opinion
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I will never forget the first family violence incident I attended as a constable for Victoria Police.
I was stationed at Ballarat and as the junior officer it was my job to stand back and observe my partner, the more senior constable, to sort out what had happened.
We had been called to a report of a fight between a couple, overheard by the neighbours and reported to police as yelling and screaming.
Nothing out of the ordinary for a typical afternoon shift on the road in the police van.
When we arrived, my partner knocked on the door and a woman answered.
He asked her a few questions about whether she was OK, that the neighbours had heard noises and if she wanted to talk to us outside.
She stayed within the threshold of the doorway and kept the screen door only halfway open, while I concentrated on listening to her story and wondering whether we would be taking a report.
I suddenly felt something beside my leg.
When I looked down I could see that this little child, probably under the age of five and in their pyjamas, had snuck out from behind the woman and stood next to me.
The child rested a hand on my leg and looked up at me, and all I could think was: What has happened in this house for such a young child to know to come and stand beside a police officer because we might make things better?
Suffice to say we left that night and called in the job as a verbal dispute only and I will never know what happened to that little child.
Fast forward to today and the tragedy of family violence is growing instead of diminishing, reminding us that some things have not changed enough since the 1970s when Australia started to challenge attitudes to what we called unhappy marriages and the very private aspect of men who hit women.
In Victoria police now arrest a perpetrator every 18 minutes for family violence – a telling statistic from attending more than 94,000 family violence incidents a year, or roughly one every six minutes.
This is a clear sign our proactive arrest and charge model is working.
Our civil protection measures, where we apply for intervention orders to protect family members, is on the rise with more than 35,500 family violence intervention orders made last year.
Conversely, the number of charges we issue for people who breach those intervention orders is rising too because they do not respect the conditions of the order.
In essence they do not respect a person’s right to live free from violence.
On the eve of this year’s candlelight vigil for the women who have been murdered in the past 12 months at the hands of men, the most pressing question many people in the community are asking themselves is why?
What is driving men to commit such terrible acts of violence against women?
What is going on in our society that makes women not feel safe to live their lives in the community or even to feel safe in their own homes?
As the head of Family Violence Command for Victoria Police I ask myself the same questions.
And I believe the answers lie in the knowledge and work of activists, family violence specialists, academics, my police colleagues and most importantly victim-survivors themselves who talk to the underlying drivers of inequality, where men choose to exert power and control over women.
These experiences will point to what and who needs to change in order to stop the tragic outcomes of family violence being an intolerable feature of how we treat one another.
The other question that has been asked this week is: “How do you keep doing this work?”.
It’s a question everyone in the family violence sector knows well as we experience these tragic events almost daily, knowing intimately the names and the personal stories behind the headlines.
Irrespective of the different role we all play from crisis through to rehabilitation and prevention, those of us who choose to tackle family violence all share a deep worry that we take home after every shift.
That worry is whether they have done enough today to make sure the family will be safe.
We will have had to make difficult decisions, potentially made repeated phone calls that were never answered, or at best devised a safety plan to help a family just get through the next 48 hours.
Sometimes we may even have had to close a case because it is not the right time to seek help.
But I speak for the collective when I say we stay in this work because crimes that harm people in situations where they should feel safest matter the most.
And when those crimes are disproportionately impacting women and children we have a duty to work even harder to challenge our responses to be better.
Lauren Callaway is the Assistant Commissioner of Victoria Police’s Family Violence Command.
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