Conclusion

This final chapter affirms the importance of listening to women’s experiences when considering how legal responses to intimate partner violence might be improved to make women safe. The chapter reviews key themes identified in the book, including abusers’ use of the legal system to continue abuse and the role of child protection workers, police, lawyers, and judges in facilitating that abuse. It highlights a common and continuing failure of those who work in the legal system to recognize the significance of nonphysical abuse, to persistently misunderstand the dynamics of separation and ultimately, to fail to prioritize safety. This chapter makes recommendations for law and policy reform toward making the legal system safer.

The Study Approach and Methodology

The chapter outlines the approach and methodology of the study that underpins this book. This study draws on interviews with 65 women who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) and interacted with the legal system. The women were interviewed on three occasions over a 3-year period to understand how their experiences of law changed over time. This chapter also describes the characteristics of the women who took part in the study and the limitations of the study. It provides an overview of previous studies that have interviewed people over time and considers the choice of language used in this book.

Judges in the Protection Orders and Family Law Systems

This chapter explores women’s interactions with judges when they appeared before them in relation to protection orders and child custody orders after experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV). Commonly women identified that judges prioritized physical violence and minimized other forms of abuse and that they seemed to align with abusers, discounting the women’s experiences of abuse. Women identified that judges often lacked preparation for hearings, rubber-stamped witness subpoenas, and failed to stop irrelevant witness examination. They explained how these approaches facilitated their partner’s misuse of the legal system as a tactic of abuse. Women also discussed how judges, especially in the family courts, prioritized fathers’ rights to contact with children over safety. However, women’s stories also demonstrated resistance to their abuser’s control over them through the courts, and their efforts to ensure the safety of their children regardless of court orders.

Nonphysical Abuse and Coercive Control

This chapter explores women’s experiences of nonphysical forms of abuse. Most women reported that the most difficult form of abuse they dealt with was nonphysical abuse, especially emotional abuse. Many women stated that nonphysical abuse deeply impacted on their sense of self and freedom and that it continued to affect them years after they separated from an abusive partner. Other forms of nonphysical abuse that the women highlighted included abusive tactics targeting their role as a mother, isolation within the relationship, and financial abuse. This chapter also considers the particular impacts of nonphysical abuse, including isolation, financial abuse, and threats about their visas, for women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, especially those with insecure visa status.

Interacting With the Child Protection Service

This chapter focuses on the women’s interaction with child protection workers and he child protection system in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV). Many women who have experienced IPV have contact with child protection services (CPS); some contact CPS seeking help, and others are investigated by CPS as a result of IPV and complaints made about their mothering. Three key themes are explored in this chapter. Women felt they were held to account by CPS workers for their ex-partner’s IPV. A number of women reported that their partners made malicious allegations to CPS about them, leading to lengthy and stressful investigations that resulted in no concerns being found about their mothering. Some women’s experiences highlighted the complex experience of IPV, intergenerational trauma, and CPS involvement.

Lawyers and Legal Representation

This chapter explores women’s involvement with lawyers after experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV). While women generally had a positive experience with their own lawyers, many women reported difficulties in getting access to and retaining state-funded legal aid. Women who paid privately for legal advice and representation often faced mounting debts, causing significant anxiety. Some women found their stress and debt were amplified by their ex-partner’s abuse of legal processes and, in some cases, the unethical behavior of their ex-partner’s lawyer. For many women their circumstances in relation to legal representation and potential costs influenced their decisions about going to law. This chapter also explores the range of strategies and compromises women employed to access legal support and the stresses and challenges they faced when they were only partially represented or unrepresented.

Introduction

This introductory chapter explains the emphasis of this book, which is about how women who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) interact with the legal system over time. It explains the importance of the law to many women across the world who experience IPV. The chapter identifies the legal systems that women interact with, including civil protection orders, family law, criminal law, child protection systems, and immigration law. In talking about their experience with law, women focus on their relationships with different justice actors on their legal journey, including child protection workers, police, lawyers, and judges. This focus explains the structure of the book. This chapter also considers the importance of women’s stories in informing law reform.

The Process and Conditionality of Separation

This chapter considers women’s dynamic experiences of leaving violent relationships in the shadow of static legal understandings of separation and the ongoing dangers women face when they engage with legal systems and processes. When women are trying to separate, sometimes law is the one thing that keeps bringing them back into contact with their abuser. This chapter highlights women’s experiences of separation as a process and journey rather than a single moment in time. Drawing on the experiences of some of the women in the study, two areas of law where separation underpins the legal response are highlighted: the migration and visa system and the family law system.

Policing Intimate Partner Violence

This chapter explores women’s experiences with police responses to intimate partner violence (IPV), considering three interrelated themes that emerged from the women’s experiences. These themes were police failing to understand the dynamics of IPV, especially failing to recognize nonphysical forms of IPV; women’s sense that the police were aligning with the abuser; and police failing to intervene when there were children in the relationship. The chapter also highlights some of the positive interactions women experienced with police and some of the unexpected safety strategies, involving police, that they developed over time. The chapter concludes with suggestions about how to encourage change in the police response to IPV.

Using Law

This chapter maps women’s engagement with different aspects of law over time in response to intimate partner violence (IPV). It considers the variety of legal systems women interact with at different points on their journeys, including immigration law, the child protection system, criminal law and police, civil protection order processes, and family law. The chapter identifies differences in engagements linked to women’s intersecting identities. In particular, it considers the different legal journeys experienced by migrant women, especially those who have insecure migration status, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. The chapter explores how the law itself is sometimes used by an abusive partner as a form of nonphysical abuse to extend IPV after separation.