Domestic Violence Law Reform and Women’s Experience in Court: Th ...

Nevertheless, my focus on court proceedings necessarily excludes some women from view. The first category excluded are those women who experience a one-time act of violence and/or low-level, occasional violence such that they either tolerate the behavior or simply leave the relationship, but do not take legal action. Women who apply for intervention orders are generally in fear for their safety; abusive behavior that does not produce this result is less likely to result in a court application. A wider range of abusive behaviors might be expected to appear in Family Court cases, but if the behavior is not considered material to the particular dispute (or not even identified as “violence”), it may not be raised in evidence. Thus, the women who appear in court (leaving aside the specter of false allegations, which is discussed in later chapters) might tend to be those who have experienced violence at the more serious end of the spectrum.

The second category of women excluded from a study focusing on court proceedings is those women who, for one reason or many, have difficulties accessing the legal system. The potential barriers are discussed more fully in chapter 2, but broadly may include lack of knowledge of the system or lack of assistance to make use of it, fear and intimidation, shame, inability to afford legal proceedings, cultural or physical barriers, racism, homophobia, or, at worst, death at the hands of the violent partner. Women excluded for these reasons may experience very severe and prolonged violence but may be practically unable to do anything about it—or at least anything involving a court of law. This is simply to acknowledge that courts are not effectively open to all and that some groups of women are systematically less likely to appear there. In Australia, Aboriginal women, lesbians, and women with a physical or intellectual disability who have been victims of domestic violence, despite their representation (and in some instances overrepresentation) in the prevalence statistics, tend to be conspicuously absent from either intervention order or family law proceedings, and hence from this study.