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

Of the 4 barristers, 3 practiced only in family law while 1 practiced only in intervention orders. The 3 support workers had experience in assisting women to obtain intervention orders. One worked for a domestic violence outreach service, 1 worked in a community legal center, and the third worked in a specialist service for immigrant women who had entered a battered women’s shelter (in Australia known as a “women’s refuge”). Interviewees were asked as part of the informed consent process whether their identity could be revealed in reports of the study. Most interviewees agreed to be identified, but some wished to remain anonymous. In these cases, I have assigned those interviewees a code name, such as “S.1” (solicitor), “B.2” (barrister), or “S.W.3” (support worker).

I gained direct accounts of women’s experiences in intervention order and family law proceedings from a small group of women litigants who had been subjected to domestic violence and who had been through these proceedings, sometimes repeatedly. These litigants were recruited via legal services and domestic violence support services. This was not an easy process, as services were often very protective of their clients and were wary about passing on material inviting participation in research projects, and also because survivors of violence understandably had other priorities and were often reluctant to revisit painful experiences. In total, I interviewed 13 women litigants, 5 individually and 8 in two separate focus groups. Of the 5 women interviewed individually, 2 were interviewed face-to-face and 3 by telephone, according to their preference. One focus group, involving 3 women, was organized and attended by one of the support workers interviewed. The other focus group involved 5 women from non-English speaking backgrounds, organized by the Immigrant Women’s Domestic Violence Service. This focus group also included several support workers, who acted as interpreters for the women and interpolated their own experience on occasions.

As with the interviews with lawyers and support workers, I conducted the interviews with women litigants according to a preprepared, semistructured interview schedule (see appendix C). Again, I did not tape the individual interviews, but recorded them by means of handwritten notes.