Current Issues
Measuring domestic violence and sexual assault against
women: a review of the literature and statistics
E-Brief: Online Only issued 6 December 2004, updated 12
December 2006
Janet Phillips, Information/E-links,
Social Policy Section
Malcolm Park, Analysis and Policy
Statistics Section
Introduction
It is very difficult to measure the true
extent of violence against women as most incidences of domestic
violence and sexual assault go unreported. In 2005, the Australian
Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
Personal Safety Survey estimated that only 36 per cent of
female victims of physical assault and 19 per cent of female
victims of sexual assault in Australia reported the incident to
police. In a briefing by the Australian Centre for the Study of
Sexual Assault, What
lies behind the hidden figure of sexual assault, Neame and
Heenan discuss issues of prevalence and barriers to disclosure.
Another report by Denise Lievore and published by the Commonwealth
Office of the Status of Women (OSW) in 2003, Non-reporting
and hidden recording of sexual assault: an international literature
review, discusses the low level of international and Australian
reporting rates and analyses the reasons behind the
under-reporting.
In recent years there have been many other studies and surveys
on violence against women both in Australia and internationally.
This electronic brief aims to draw together major resources,
research and studies on violence against women and sexual assault
in Australia and a selection of the major international surveys. It
complements a previous brief, Domestic
Violence in Australia, issued by the Parliamentary Library in
August 2003 (and updated in September 2006), which includes links
to interest groups and an overview of Commonwealth government
violence against women initiatives and perpetrator programs.
For some of the information in this paper, older versions of
reports are still referred to even though new editions have been
published. Generally this is because the newer version of the
report does not include the same information as published in the
older report. Some examples of this are:
- ABS, Recorded Crime Victims: The 2003 publication is
the last in which national data is reported on sexual assaults.
State level data is reported for 2004 and 2005 but it is not
advisable to aggregate this to the national level.
- ABS, Crime and Safety: This survey was run in 2002 and
2005 but detailed data on sexual assaults is not published from the
2005 survey due to lower response rates and thus a higher
uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data.
- ABS, Personal Safety Survey 2005: This publication
does not include all of the level of detail published in the 1996
Women s Safety Survey, so it has not been possible to
update some of the 1996 data. The ABS currently has no plans to
publish more data from this survey, but it is possible to request
specific pieces of information from the ABS on a consultancy
basis.
|
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How much do we know about violence against
women?
The best indicators available are from the ABS
Personal Safety Survey 2005 which updates information about
women s experiences of violence collected in the 1996 ABS
Women s Safety Survey. The 2005 survey also includes
information on men s experience of violence but unfortunately does
not include all the level of detail on women as published in
1996.
From the 2005 survey the ABS estimated that in the previous 12
months:
- 363 000 women (4.7 per cent of all women) experienced
physical violence; and
- 126 100 women (1.6 per cent) experienced sexual
violence.
The ABS further estimated that:
- 2.56 million (33 per cent of all women)
have experienced physical violence since the age of 15; and
- 1.47 million (19 per cent) have experienced
sexual violence since the age of 15.
From this it is possible to estimate that approximately
one in five women (19 per cent) have experienced
sexual violence at some stage in their lives since
the age of 15 and one in three women (33 per cent)
have experienced physical violence at some stage
in their lives since the age of 15.
In 2004, the ABS released
Sexual Assault in Australia: a statistical overview, which
provides a broad overview of sexual assault in Australia, using
data from the ABS and other sources. It includes commentary to
describe the prevalence and incidence of sexual assault, individual
experiences, responses and outcomes and draws attention to the gaps
in the data currently available. Also released in 2004 is Jenny
Mouzos and Toni Makkai s Women s
experiences of male violence: findings from the Australian
Component of the International Violence against Women Survey
(IVAWS). More information on this survey can be found in the
International section of this paper.
Most sexual assault victims are female (82 per cent in 2003)
and, according to the latest Australian Institute of Criminology
(AIC) report, Australian
Crime: Facts and Figures 2005, most sexual assaults occur at
home. Of all recorded sexual assaults in Australia in 2003, 65 per
cent occurred in private dwellings. These statistics, taken
from ABS
Recorded Crime Victims 2003 data, show that females
consistently recorded higher rates of sexual assault than males
irrespective of age. For females, the highest sexual assault
victimisation rates are for the 10 14 and 15 19 year age groups
(475 and 520 per 100 000 population); over three times the rate for
the general female population and fifteen times the rate for the
general male population.
For a summary and overview of other Australian research, see
Judy Putt and Karl Higgins, Violence
against women in Australia: key research and data issues,
Australian Institute of Criminology, 1997. This report summarised
the findings from the 1995 Violence Against Women Indicators
Project (VAWIP), and, although it pre-dates the 1996
Women s Safety Survey, it gives a good overview of the
issues.
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Is violence against women growing in
Australia?
The release of data from the ABS
Personal Safety Survey 2005 has given us the opportunity for
the first time in Australia to compare national rates of violence
against women with comparable data from the 1996
Women s Safety Survey. Overall the survey indicated that there
have been small falls in the rates of violence experienced by women
in the 12 months prior to the 2005 survey when compared with the
1996 survey:
- 5.8 per cent (443 800) of women
experienced violence in 2005 compared to 7.1 per cent
(490 400) in 1996.
- 4.7 per cent (363 000) of women
experienced physical violence in 2005, compared with 5.9 per cent
(404 400) in 1996.
- The proportion of women who experienced
physical assault in 2005 was 3.1 per cent (242 000) compared
to 5.0 per cent (346 900) in 1996.
- Other falls were also recorded, such as
small fall in the rate of sexual assaults of women, but the small
numbers in the surveys on which these estimates are based mean that
this fall is not statistically significant.
These small decreases have not been uniform across all groups of
women though. While women under 35 experienced falls in the rate of
violence they experienced in the previous 12 months, the rates for
women aged 35 and over remained about the same or even
increased.
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Do victims know the perpetrators?
In the ABS publication,
Recorded Crime Victims 2003, 78 per cent of female victims of
sexual assault knew the offender (in cases where there was
sufficient data to identify the relationship of the offender to the
victim). There is also a marked difference when comparing the rates
of male and female victims of assault who knew their offender.
Looking only at cases with sufficient data to identify the
relationship, only 47 per cent of male victims of assault knew the
offender while 81 per cent of female victims knew their offender in
2003.
A 2005 report released by the Australian Institute of
Criminology (AIC), Homicide in Australia:
2003 2004 National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP) Annual
Report found that:
- 36 per cent of homicide victims were female
and;
- 49 per cent of female victims were killed
as a result of a domestic altercation (as compared to 15 per cent
of male victims).
Another AIC report released in 2003, Family
Homicide in Australia, found that three-quarters of intimate
partner homicides involve males killing their female partners and
that the most common type of family homicide over the 13-year
period was intimate partner homicide (60 per cent).
Women s
experiences of male violence: findings from the Australian
Component of the International Violence against Women Survey
(IVAWS) includes chapters on intimate partner and non-partner
violence. This survey found that over one third of women who had
ever had an intimate partner (a current or previous spouse, de
facto or boyfriend) experienced some form of violence by a partner
in their lifetime. However, the level of violence by previous
partners is much greater than that by current partners. The survey
also found that 41 per cent of women had experienced violence by a
non-partner male in their lifetime.
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Injuries to women in cases of sexual assault
In the 2002 ABS
Crime and Safety survey, 28 per cent of female victims of
sexual assault reported that they had been injured in the most
recent incident. The 1996
Women s Safety Survey found a similar proportion (26 per cent)
of women, who had been sexually assaulted by a man since the age of
15, were physically injured in the most recent incident. The most
common reported injury from the
Women s Safety Survey was bruising (24 per cent) and the rate
of recorded injuries varied widely depending on the relationship of
the offender to the victim. Of the women who were sexually
assaulted by a previous partner, 49 per cent were physically
injured while 8 per cent of women sexually assaulted by their
current partner were physically injured.
Women who experienced sexual assault by a man since age
15, proportion who were physically injured in most recent incident,
by relationship to perpetrator, 1996

Reproduced from
Sexual Assault in Australia: a statistical overview, p. 68,
using data from ABS,
Women s Safety Survey.
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State and territory comparisons
The ABS
Personal Safety Survey 2005 includes the number and percentage
of women who have experienced violence during the previous 12
months for 5 states.
Females experience of violence during the last 12
months state of residence of victim, 2005
|
NSW
|
Vic
|
Qld
|
SA
|
WA
|
Aust(d)
|
Physical
violence(a)
|
'000
|
99.8
|
102.6
|
79.9
|
30.5
|
32.0
|
363.0
|
%
|
3.9
|
5.3
|
5.4
|
5.2
|
4.3
|
4.7
|
Sexual
violence(b)
|
'000
|
25.7
|
40.9
|
28.2
|
9.7
|
12.3
|
126.1
|
%
|
1.0
|
2.1
|
1.9
|
1.6
|
1.7
|
1.6
|
Total
violence(c)
|
'000
|
117.3
|
127.1
|
98.9
|
36.0
|
39.2
|
443.8
|
%
|
4.5
|
6.5
|
6.7
|
6.1
|
5.3
|
5.8
|
No experience
of violence
|
'000
|
2465.3
|
1820.5
|
1369.6
|
555.8
|
703.6
|
7249.4
|
%
|
95.5
|
93.5
|
93.3
|
93.9
|
94.7
|
94.2
|
Total
females
|
'000
|
2582.6
|
1947.6
|
1468.5
|
591.8
|
742.7
|
7693.1
|
%
|
100.0
|
100.0
|
100.0
|
100.0
|
100.0
|
100.0
|
(a) Includes physical assault and physical threat.
(b) Includes sexual assault and sexual threat.
(c) Components may not add to total as a person may have
experienced both physical and sexual violence.
(d) Includes Tas, NT and ACT.
Information is also available on sexual assaults for states and
territories from the ABS publication
Recorded Crime Victims 2005, though it is not broken down
by the sex of the victim. The data includes a 10 year time series
for each jurisdiction in Tables 9 to 16. An indexed rate is used in
this state data (rather than a rate per 100 000 population)
which is useful for interpreting change over time within
jurisdictions. The indexed rate should not be used to make direct
comparisons between states and territories though. Furthermore,
care should always be taken in comparing jurisdictions crime data
due to legislative, policing and data recording differences. For
example, during 2003 South Australia experienced an increase in the
number of sexual offences recorded, which is most likely
attributable to the establishment of a Paedophile Task Force,
legislation to remove pre-1983 paedophile immunity and a phone-in
for sex offences committed prior to 1982.
Data is also available at the state and territory level for
female victims of sexual assault from the ABS
Crime and Safety 2002 publication.
Most states and territories publish more detailed information
for their jurisdiction such as:
- New South Wales
- Victoria
- Queensland
- South Australia
- Western Australia
- Tasmania
- Australian Capital Territory
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Do victims access support services?
The ABS survey
Crime and Safety 2002 indicates that 87 per cent of female
victims of sexual assault accessed some form of support services
after the most recent incident of assault. Up to:
- 68 per cent sought the support of a friend
or colleague;
- 41 per cent sought the support of family;
and
- 39 per cent sought the support of a
professional or religious person.
In the 1996
Women s Safety Survey only 18 per cent of women who had
experienced physical or sexual assault in the previous 12 months
sought professional help after the last incident.
In 2005 the AIC published
No longer silent: a study of women's help-seeking decisions and
service responses to sexual assault. The report was
commissioned by the Australian Government Office for Women and is
based on a qualitative study of victim/survivor decision-making,
their interactions with support services and the legal system and
coordinated responses to adult sexual assault. Interviews were held
with 36 female victim/survivors of adult sexual assault as well as
counsellors and staff of sexual assault services across Australia.
The report is very detailed and includes a range of recommendations
focussing largely on improving social response to sexual assault
and promoting organisational change.
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The criminal justice system: what are the
outcomes?
We know that many crimes of violence against women are not
reported to police, but what about those that are reported? Are the
perpetrators identified, charged and successfully prosecuted? These
are difficult questions to answer due to the different focus of the
data collected about crime. For a range of reasons it is not
possible to simply compare data on crimes reported by victims with
criminal court data to arrive at a rate of successful offender
prosecutions.
It does appear however that more women are reporting incidents
of violence to police now than a decade ago. A comparison of the
ABS 1996
Women s Safety Survey and
Personal Safety Survey 2005 reveals that in the 12 months prior
to the two survey periods:
- 36 per cent (70 400) of women who
experienced physical assault by a male perpetrator reported it to
the police in 2005 compared to 19 per cent (54 400) in 1996;
and
- 19 per cent (19 100) of women who
experienced sexual assault by a male perpetrator reported it to the
police in 2005 compared to 15 per cent (14 700) in 1996.
However, we know that in many cases that are reported to police
the alleged offenders are not proceeded against. Data is available
from the ABS on outcomes of investigations by police of reported
crimes at 30, 90 and 180 days after reporting of the offence (most
recently published in ABS
Sexual Assault in Australia: a statistical overview, 2004). For
sexual assault victims recorded in 2002, it can be seen that over
half of the investigations were not finalised after 180 days. For
investigations that were finalised after 180 days, just over half
of them resulted in the offender being proceeded against.
Victims of sexual assault, outcome of investigation
2002

Reproduced from
Sexual Assault in Australia: a statistical overview, p. 74,
using data from ABS, Recorded Crime Victims.
In 2004 the Australian Institute of Criminology, commissioned by
the Office of the Status of Women (OSW), produced Prosecutorial
decisions in adult sexual assault cases: an Australian study.
One hundred and forty one cases between 1999 and 2001 were analysed
and the reasons why cases were prosecuted or withdrawn from
prosecution are discussed in detail. Most of the reasons for
withdrawing or proceeding were found to relate to the likelihood of
securing a conviction and a key conclusion of the report is that
existing prosecution policies and guidelines provide a reasonable
safeguard against biased decision-making in sexual assault
cases.
In cases that do reach the higher criminal court system, the
majority (80 per cent) of defendants charged with sexual assault
and related offences plead or are proven guilty. The following
diagram outlines the process and outcomes of defendants charged
with sexual assault and related offences that were adjudicated by
higher criminal courts in 2002 03, compared with all offences. Of
defendants that were proven guilty, nearly 70 per cent received a
custodial sentence. The remaining 30 per cent were split equally
between suspended sentences and non-custodial orders. It is worth
noting that a number of sexual assault and related offences
defendants (915 in 2002 03, 869 in 2003 04 and 853 in 2004 05) are
adjudicated by Magistrates Criminal Courts. Magistrates Courts data
are available from ABS
Criminal Courts 2004 05.
Adjudicated defendants in higher criminal courts,
sexual assault and related offences,
Australia, 2002 03

(a) All percentages are calculated as a proportion
of Adjudicated Defendants and are subject to rounding.
(b) In this diagram, all references to Sexual
assault refer to the ASOC division, Sexual assault and related
offences and cover the full range of offences in that division.
Reproduced from ABS,
Sexual Assault in Australia: a statistical overview, p. 77,
using data from ABS,
Criminal Courts 2002 03.
In 2001The Attorney General s Department published a very
detailed and useful report,
Ending Domestic Violence? - Programmes for Perpetrators.
Current responses and services in Australia and overseas are
reviewed and evaluated and a range of recommendations are made.
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Women s fear of violence
Even women who have never been victims of violence are aware of
their vulnerability and safety and many women feel unsafe when
walking alone at night or are fearful of becoming the victims of
crime. A parliamentary committee report,
Inquiry into crime in the community: victims, offenders, and fear
of crime, August 2004, found evidence from a variety of sources
and surveys that the factor most consistently and strongly
associated with fear of crime is gender. The committee also found
that there is an additional dimension to fear experienced by some
women which relates to domestic violence. Women are generally more
fearful than men of being alone in their own homes and of walking
in their neighbourhood at night. The committee found recent
research confirming that women report significantly greater
perceived risk and fear of crime than men, regardless of how fear
of crime is measured. The committee also found that there is an
additional dimension to fear experienced by some women which
relates to domestic violence.
There have been various studies of women s perceptions of crime
and safety such as Women s
fear of violence in the community, 1999, from the Australian
Institute of Criminology (AIC) and Women s Experience
of Crime and Safety in Victoria from the Victorian Department
of Justice, 2002. Women s
fear of violence in the community found that more than 70 per
cent of Australian women feel unsafe when walking alone in their
area after dark and the Victorian survey found
that the effects of crime and violence on women should not be
underestimated. Women s differential experiences and perceptions of
crime significantly affect their sense of well-being and the degree
of confidence they have about their safety in their homes, at work
and in the community.
The 1996
Women s Safety Survey also asked women who had experienced
violence about their ongoing fear of violence and other
consequences. Of women who had experienced violence by their
current partner in the last 12 months, 24 per cent were currently
living in fear. In comparison, 12 per cent of women who have
experienced violence by their current partner at some time in the
relationship (but not the last 12 months) and 11 per cent of women
who experienced violence by a previous partner currently live in
fear.
Furthermore, the 1996
Women s Safety Survey found that 30 per cent of women who had
experienced a physical assault by a man reported that they had
changed their day-to-day activities in the following 12 months,
while 40 per cent of women who experienced a sexual assault had.
Women who were physically injured were more likely to have changed
their activities and social activities were most likely to have
been changed.
Women who changed their day-to-day activities during
the 12 months after the last incident of assault by a man, whether
physically injured

Reproduced from ABS,
Women s Safety Australia p. 44.
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The economic, social and health costs of violence
against women
Violence against women directly affects the victims, their
children, their families and friends, employers and co-workers.
There can be far-reaching financial, social, health and
psychological consequences. The impact of violence can also have
indirect costs, including the costs to the community of bringing
perpetrators to justice or the costs of medical treatment for
injured victims. The following studies measure some of the
economic, social and health costs.
While the human impact of domestic violence is incalculable, in
a report published in 2000,
Impacts and Costs of Domestic Violence on the Australian
Business/Corporate Sector, staff absenteeism and replacement
costs alone were estimated to cost employers over $30 million per
annum while the total cost (including direct and indirect costs) to
the corporate/business sector was estimated to be around $1 billion
per annum.
A more recent, and very detailed, study by Access Economics,
commissioned by the Office for the Status of Women (OSW), The
cost of domestic violence to the Australian economy, Part 1 and
Part 2,
2004, estimated that the total cost of domestic violence in 2002 03
was $8.1 billion. This estimate includes the costs of pain and
suffering, health costs and long-term productivity costs.
In another study,
Economic Costs of Domestic Violence, 2002, Lesley Laing and
Natasha Bobic examine the relevant literature, define the
terminology and compare the estimated costs of domestic violence
both nationally and internationally. The value of an economic
perspective, as this report demonstrates, is that it provides a
powerful angle from which to view the consequences of domestic
violence and to argue for social policies to improve services and
support victims.
For a more general discussion of the costs of crime, including
sexual assault, see Counting
the costs of crime in Australia, Australian Institute of
Criminology, 2003.
In 2002, the World Health Organization released a report
World report
on violence and health. This report examines the types of
violence, including intimate partner and sexual violence, that are
present worldwide and the health burden imposed by that
violence.
In Australia, the Australian
Longitudinal Study on Women s Health widely known as Women's
Health Australia is a longitudinal population-based survey, which
is examining the health of over 40 000 Australian women over a 20
year period. The publications site includes online papers or
abstracts on the effects of violence on Australian women, for
example
Violence against young Australian women and association with
reproductive events: a cross sectional analysis of a national
population sample.
An Australian report on the health costs of violence against
women is The
health costs of violence: measuring the burden of disease caused by
intimate partner violence released by VicHealth in June 2004.
The report found that this form of violence is responsible for more
ill-health and premature death among Victorian women under the age
of 45 than any other well-known risk factors including high blood
pressure, obesity and smoking. The study claims to be the first in
the world to estimate the health consequences of intimate partner
violence using the burden of disease methodology developed by the
World Health Organization.
A paper from the Australian Domestic and Family Violence
Clearinghouse website, Domestic violence
and women s physical health, 2003, reviews the
research identifying the short and longer-term impacts of domestic
violence on women s physical health. It includes the findings of a
2000 American study showing 35 per cent of all casualty visits by
women were the result of domestic violence. The
health costs of violence: measuring the burden of disease caused by
intimate partner violence, 2004, includes some Australian
statistics on hospital admissions in Brisbane, but they refer to
the sorts of injuries the women present with, not the number being
admitted due to domestic violence. This report refers to a study by
Gwenneth Roberts (from the Department of Psychiatry, University of
Queensland) conducted at the Royal Brisbane Hospital Emergency
Department from 1990 to 1993 Domestic
violence victims in emergency departments. The study found that
23.3 per cent of females presenting at the Emergency Department
self-reported a history of domestic violence. The results were
similar to those in US studies that found one in five women
presenting in emergency departments have a history of domestic
violence. In a recent New Zealand study,
Prevalence of intimate partner violence among women presenting to
an urban adult and paediatric emergency care department,
published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, 21 per cent of women
screened positive for partner violence and 44 per cent reported
partner violence at some time in their adulthood.
In
Economic Costs of Domestic Violence, 2002, Lesley Laing and
Natasha Bobic also discuss some of the indirect social and health
consequences of domestic violence. For example: social and
psychological consequences described for victims include anxiety,
depression and other emotional distress, physical stress symptoms,
suicide attempts, alcohol and drug abuse, sleep disturbances,
reduced coping and problem solving skills, loss of self esteem and
confidence, social isolation, fear of starting new relationships,
living in fear, and other major impacts on quality of life.
Immediate impacts often described for children of victims include
emotional and behavioural problems, lost school time and poor
school performance, adjustment problems, stress, reduced social
competence, bullying and excessive cruelty to animals, running away
from home, and relationship problems.
Back to top
At risk groups
Some women are more at risk of violence than others, for
example, young women, children, sex workers and the homeless. For a
more detailed discussion of those at risk see the 2003 briefing by
the Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault, What
lies behind the hidden figure of sexual assault, listing
research on several of these at risk groups.
Children
The ABS
Personal Safety Survey 2005 asked respondents of their
experience of violence before the age of 15:
- The proportion of women who experienced
physical abuse before the age of 15 was 10 per cent
(779 500).
- The majority of physical abuse against
these young women was perpetrated by their father/step father (52.8
per cent) or mother/step mother (34.3 per cent).
- Women were more likely to have been
sexually abused than men. Before the age of 15, 12 per cent
(956 600) of women had been sexually abused compared to 4.5
per cent (337 400) of men.
- Only 8.6 per cent of these young women were
sexually abused by strangers. Most of the abuse was perpetrated by
other male relatives (35.1 per cent), father/step father (16.5 per
cent), family friends (16.5 per cent) and acquaintance/neighbours
(15.4 per cent).
ABS
Recorded Crime Victims 2003 data shows that the highest sexual
assault victimisation rates are for 10 14 and 15 19 year old
females (475 and 520 per 100 000 population). For males the
rates were highest for those aged 0 9 and 10 14 (90 and 88 per
100 000).
The Australian International Violence against Women Survey
(IVAWS) was conducted across Australia between December 2002 and
June 2003. In the Australian findings, published by the Australian
Institute of Criminology in 2004, Women's
experiences of male violence: findings from the Australian
Component of the International Violence against Women Survey
(IVAWS), statistics were collected on childhood
victimisation:
- Overall, 29 per cent of women surveyed
reported that they had experienced physical and/or sexual violence
before the age of 16 years.
- Almost one in five experienced this abuse
by parents.
- 16 per cent of women reported sexual abuse
by some other person (relative or some other male).
- Women who experienced abuse during
childhood were one and a half times more likely to experience any
violence in adulthood.
Children are also at risk of witnessing violence. The ABS
Personal Safety Survey 2005 found that 57 per cent of women who
experienced violence by a current partner reported that they had
children in their care at some time during the relationship, and 34
per cent said that these children had witnessed the violence. The
survey also found that 40 per cent of women who experienced
violence by a previous partner said that children in their care had
witnessed the violence. The Australian Institute of Criminology
paper Young
Australians and Domestic Violence, 2001 also gives figures on
children witnessing violence. This study of 5000 Australians aged
between 12 and 20 found that up to one quarter of young people have
witnessed physical violence against their mother or stepmother. The
paper goes on to say that witnessing parental domestic violence has
emerged as the strongest predictor of perpetration of violence in
young people s own intimate relationships.
Another recent Australian Institute of Criminology paper,
Children
present in family violence incidents, 2006, analyses data
collected by the Australian Capital Territory arm of the Australian
Federal Police as part of the Family Violence Intervention Program.
For the year 2003 04, a total of 1625 children were recorded as
being present at 44 percent of family violence incidents.
In April 2000, the Office for the Status of Women as part of the
Partnerships against Domestic Violence program held a conference on
children, young people and domestic violence. The proceedings from
the conference are to be found at The Way
Forward. For other resources, the Domestic Violence
and Incest Resource Centre (DVIRC) Victoria has a page on
children who witness domestic violence.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) publishes
information on child protection each year, with the latest
available being Child
Protection Australia 2004 05. The data is collected from
the community services departments of each state and territory and
Australian totals are provided where that data is comparable across
jurisdictions. The information presented includes notifications,
investigations and substantiations of child abuse, children subject
care and protection orders and children in out-of-home care. Across
the range of information presented in this publication (for both
boys and girls) the incidence has risen over the past 6 years,
though this could be due to a better awareness of child protection
concerns and an increased willingness to report such behaviour.
Looking just at child abuse substantiations by sex, type of abuse
and state or territory, the total number of substantiations is
similar for both males and females across all the jurisdictions
(being slightly higher for females in most). However, in all
jurisdictions there were more substantiations of sexual abuse for
females than males in 2004 05.
Indigenous children are over-represented in all categories of
data presented in Child
Protection Australia 2004 05.
The experiences of children have also been examined recently in
an Australian Institute of Criminology paper, The
Experiences of Child Complainants of Sexual Abuse in the Criminal
Justice System, 2003. When asked if they would ever report
sexual abuse again following their experiences in the criminal
justice system, only 44 per cent of children in Queensland, 33 per
cent in New South Wales and 64 per cent in Western Australia
indicated that they would. The main difficulties identified by the
children were waiting for the committal and trial, seeing the
accused and facing cross-examination. The paper suggests that
legislative and procedural reform and a more child-centred policy
focus are required in order to prevent damage being done to the
child by the justice system.
Pregnant women
The ABS 1996
Women s Safety Survey findings, repeated in the Year Book
Australia
1998 Crime and Justice Special Article
Violence against Women, found that pregnancy is a time when
women may be vulnerable to abuse. The
Personal Safety Survey 2005 collected the same data on violence
experienced by women during pregnancy and found that of those women
who experienced violence by a previous partner:
- 667 900 had been pregnant at some time
during their relationship;
- 35.9 per cent of these women (239 800)
experienced violence during the pregnancy; and
- for 112 000 of them (16.8 per cent)
the violence occurred for the first time during the pregnancy.
A study at the pre-natal clinic of Royal Brisbane Hospital
published in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1994,
found that almost 30 per cent of pregnant women had a history of
abuse and 8.9 per cent suffered abuse during pregnancy (Webster, J.
Domestic violence in pregnancy: a prevalence study , 1994). A 2002
issues paper by A. Taft from the Australian Domestic and Family
Violence Clearinghouse,
Violence against women in pregnancy and after childbirth: current
knowledge and issues in health care responses, outlines the
issues and prevalence of violence in pregnancy in some detail.
Rural women
In 2000, the national peak body for organisations and
individuals working in women s refuges, safe houses and domestic
violence information/ referral services, the Women s Services
Network (WESNET), produced a literature review,
Domestic Violence in Regional Australia, for the Commonwealth
Department of Transport and Regional Services. The report found
that where comparable data exists, they indicate that there is a
higher reported incidence of domestic violence in rural and remote
communities than in metropolitan settings. A briefing paper,
Responding
to sexual assault in rural communities, from the Australian
Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault in June 2004, specifically
focuses on the topic of sexual assault in rural communities and, in
particular, the difficulties in assessing the true extent of rural
violence.
Young women
While rates of violence against young women have fallen in the
past decade, as measured by the ABS
1996 Women s Safety Survey and the
Personal Safety Survey 2005, women aged under 35 still
experience greater levels of violence than older women.

According to the ABS publication,
Recorded Crime Victims 2003, younger people (aged 24 years or
less) had the greatest likelihood of being victims for all offence
categories. For females, while the highest sexual assault
victimisation rates were for the 10 14 and 15 19 year age groups
(475 and 520 per 100 000 population), the rate for women aged
20 24 (214 per 100 000 population) is also very high.
The
health costs of violence: measuring the burden of disease caused by
intimate partner violence released by VicHealth in June 2004,
found that domestic violence was the single biggest contributor to
death, illness and disability among young women. As mentioned
earlier in this brief, intimate partner violence is responsible for
more ill-health and premature death among Victorian women under the
age of 45 than any other well known risk factors including high
blood pressure, obesity and smoking.
A recent study by the Australian Institute of Criminology,
The
effectiveness of legal protection in the prevention of domestic
violence in the lives of young Australian women, 2000, attempts
to fill some gaps in the knowledge of domestic violence against
young women, and their response to it. One of the major findings of
this study was that severity of violence was reduced after legal
protection but the benefit was not as marked unless women sought
help from the court protection orders as well as from police.
Indigenous women
Indigenous Australians are over-represented as both victims and
perpetrators of all forms of violent crime in Australia.
The ABS
National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey,
2002, offers the most up-to-date national statistics on the
prevalence of violence in indigenous communities (and is cited in
many of the reports included in this paper).
- The report shows that in 2002, one quarter
of Indigenous people reported that they had been a victim of
physical or threatened violence in the previous 12 months, nearly
double the rate reported in 1994 (13 per cent).
- The proportion of Indigenous people who had
been a victim of physical or threatened violence was similar for
people living in remote and non- remote areas (23 per cent compared
with 25 per cent) and for men and women (26 per cent compared with
23 per cent).
- After adjusting for age differences between
the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, comparisons from the
ABS General Social Survey indicate that Indigenous people aged 18
years or over experienced double the victimisation rate of
non-Indigenous people.
Family
violence among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,
AIHW 2006, presents information on the extent of violence (in
particular family violence) in the Indigenous population, using
existing surveys and administrative data collections. Information
is presented on the prevalence of violence, associated harm and
services for victims of violence, as well as on those in contact
with the criminal justice system. The following findings are from
the executive summary and more detail can be found in the full
report.
- In 2003 04, 7950 Indigenous females sought
refuge from the Supported Accommodation Assistance program (SAAP)
to escape family violence.
- Indigenous females were 13 times more
likely to seek SAAP assistance as non-Indigenous females.
- In 2003 04, there were 4500
hospitalisations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons
due to assault in Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia
and the Northern Territory combined.
- Indigenous females were 35 times as likely
to be hospitalised due to family violence-related assaults as other
Australian females.
- For Indigenous females, about one in two
hospitalisations for assault (50 per cent) were related to family
violence compared to one in five for males.
- Most hospitalisations for family
violence-related assault for females were a result of spouse or
partner violence (82 per cent) compared to 38 per cent among
males.
- Between 2000 and 2004, there were 150
deaths due to assault among Indigenous Australians in the four
jurisdictions.
- Indigenous females were nearly ten times
more likely to die due to assault as non-Indigenous females.
In July 2007 the Steering Committee for the Review of Government
Service Provision released its
Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage: Key Indicators 2007. They
include data, based on police records, for NSW, Victoria and WA,
and discuss some of the implications of and limitations of this
data and that provided by the earlier ABS 2002 National Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey.
In June 2006 the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
released
Ending family violence and abuse in Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander communities: key issues. The paper provides a summary
of the key challenges in addressing family violence and abuse in
Indigenous communities which have been identified and reported by
the Commission from 2001 to 2006.
In 2004 Monique Keel wrote an Australian Institute of Family
Studies briefing paper, Family
violence and sexual assault in Indigenous communities: Walking the
talk . It provides an overview of the key issues and findings
from recent research and reports into family violence and sexual
assault in indigenous communities. Another useful resource is
Ch. 5 Addressing family violence in Indigenous Communities from
the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), Social
Justice Report, 2003.
A paper from the National Crime Prevention Program,
Violence in Indigenous communities, 2001, outlines the common
forms of Indigenous family violence and estimates that the rates of
death from family violence in Indigenous communities is 10.8 times
higher than for the non-Indigenous population. Some remote
Aboriginal communities are particularly affected by high rates of
family and domestic violence. Another report by the Queensland
Government released in March 2000,
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's Task Force on
Violence Report, defines the forms of Indigenous violence,
discusses the causes and makes recommendations for change.
According to this report Aboriginal women in remote communities are
45 times more likely to be victims of abuse than other women.
The homicide victimisation rate is several times higher for
Indigenous as compared to non-Indigenous peoples according to the
Australian Institute of Criminology report, Indigenous
and Non-Indigenous Homicides in Australia, 2001. From 1990 to
2000, family violence accounted for 63 per cent of all Indigenous
homicides in Australia compared to 33 per cent of non-Indigenous
homicides over the same decade.
The Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault has a
publications
page specifically on Indigenous communities.
Indigenous children are over-represented in all categories of
data presented in Child
Protection Australia 2004 05.
Migrant women
In Double
Jeopardy: Violence Against Immigrant Women in the Home, 1996,
Patricia Easteal looks at the problems experienced by migrant women
within the home which are made all the more difficult by isolation,
cultural values and language barriers.
A recent article by Susan Rees,
Human rights and the significance of psychosocial and cultural
issues in domestic violence policy and intervention for refugee
women , 2004, discusses some of the issues and research into
violence against immigrant and refugee women.
Another article,
Domestic violence and cultural and linguistic diversity, 2004,
shows that women accessing supported accommodation services (SAAP)
have very different requirements depending on cultural and
linguistic background.
ABS data from the
Women s Safety Survey 1996,
Crime and Safety 2002 and
Personal Safety Survey 2005, indicate that Australian-born
women have a 2 3 times higher victimisation prevalence rate than
women born overseas.
Women with disabilities
A literature review conducted in 2000 by Keren Howe, Violence against women with
disabilities: an overview of the literature, discusses the lack
of data available on women with disabilities. Some research has
found, however, that women with intellectual disabilities are more
likely to be abused than other women. An older study by Lesley
Chenowyth, Invisible acts: violence
against women with disabilities, 1993, discusses research
showing that children and adults with disabilities are sexually
abused and assaulted at higher rates than other people.
One US paper, Abuse and
women with disabilities,1998, gives an overview of recent
research, including a survey which found that 40 per cent of women
with disabilities had suffered abuse or violence of some kind.
The ABS publication
Sexual Assault in Australia: a statistical overview has drawn
together data from the NSW Health publication, Initial
Presentations to NSW Sexual Assault Service 1994 1998 and a
National Association of Services Against Sexual Violence (NASASV)
Report on the Snapshot Data Collection by Australian Services
Against Sexual Violence, May June 2000. The data from these
sources indicates that between 20 30 per cent of victims of sexual
assault have some form of disability or special need. The data is
further broken down by the type of disability or special need of
victims.
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International crime victim and violence against women
surveys
Several crime surveys have been conducted internationally in
recent years that include findings on sexual assaults or violence
against women. Links to the most significant of these are included
below. For more detail on these and other surveys there is a good
summary of the findings of several international crime victim and
violence against women surveys in the appendix of Sexual
violence in Australia, 2001, from the Australian Institute of
Criminology.
An International
Violence against Women Survey is currently in process measuring
violence in ten industrialised countries. It will be a comparative
survey specifically designed to target men s violence against
women, especially domestic violence and sexual assault. Australia
is taking part with funding from the Office for the Status of Women
(OSW). In 2004 the Australian findings, published by the Australian
Institute of Criminology, were released in Jenny Mouzos and Toni
Makkai s Women s
experiences of male violence: findings from the Australian
Component of the International Violence against Women Survey
(IVAWS).
The Australian International Violence against Women Survey
(IVAWS) was conducted across Australia between December 2002 and
June 2003. A total of 6677 women aged between 18 and 69 years
participated in the survey, and provided information on their
experiences of physical and sexual violence. In the past 12 months,
10 per cent of the women surveyed reported experiencing at least
one incident of physical and/or sexual violence.
The latest International
Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) released in 2000 by the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) and the United Nations
Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI),
measured crime victimisation across seventeen industrialised
countries, including Australia. Two types of sexual incidents were
measured: offensive sexual behaviour and sexual assault (i.e.
incidents described as rape, attempted rape or indecent assaults).
Regarding sexual crime incidents, the survey found:
- For all countries combined, just over one
per cent of women reported offensive sexual behaviour.
- The level was half that for sexual
assaults.
- Women in Sweden, Finland, Australia and
England and Wales were most at risk of sexual assault.
- Women in Japan, Northern Ireland, Poland
and Portugal were least at risk.
- Many of the differences in sexual assault
risks across country were small.
- Generally, the relative level of sexual
assault in different countries accorded with relative levels of
offensive sexual behaviour - though there were a few
differences.
- Women know the offender(s) in about half of
the all sexual incidents: in a third they were known by name and in
about a sixth by sight. (More assaults involved offenders known by
name than did incidents of offensive sexual behaviour.)
- Most sexual incidents involved only one
offender.
- Weapons were very rarely involved.
The latest US National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS) conducted by the United States
Bureau of Justice in 2005 found that:
- Females were most often violently
victimised by someone they knew (64 per cent by non-strangers)
while males were more likely to be victimized by a stranger (54 per
cent by strangers).
- Interestingly rape/sexual assault rates
were down 69 per cent on 1993 rates.
- The decline in violent victimisation
between 1993 and 2005 was experienced by persons in every
demographic category considered gender, race, Hispanic origin and
household income.
- The rate for rape/sexual assault in 2005
was 0.8 per 1000 aged 12 or older (a third of the 1993
rate).
The New Zealand National
Survey of Crime Victims conducted in 2001 estimated that only
12 per cent of sexual victimisations were reported to the police.
It also found that women, especially young women, were much more
likely than men to say they had experienced sexual interference or
sexual assault. Fourteen percent of women said that they had
experienced sexual victimisation before the age of 17 and for some
of these women, this had occurred at a very young age. A
New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey was conducted in 2006 and
the survey is planned to be run every two years.
New Zealand also conducted a
Women s Safety Survey in 1996 which found that more than a
quarter of the Maori women and a tenth of the non Maori women with
current partners who participated in the Women's Safety Survey
reported experiencing at least one act of physical or sexual abuse
in the past 12 months. Three per cent of the women with current
partners and twenty four per cent of the women with recent partners
reported that they had been afraid that their partner might kill
them; the comparable figures for Maori women were five per cent and
forty four per cent.
A Violence
against Women Survey was also conducted by Statistics Canada in
1993. It found that half of all Canadian women had experienced at
least one incident of violence since the age of 16 and one in four
Canadian women were victims of assault by a spouse or partner. The
Statistics Canada
Crime Statistics in Canada 2005 report (of police-reported
crime data) found that the sexual assault rate in 2005 was 25 per
cent lower than a decade ago.
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References
- Access Economics, The cost of domestic violence to the
Australian economy, Part 1 and
Part 2,
Office for the Status of Women (OSW), 2004.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics,
Crime and Safety 2002.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics,
Criminal Courts 2002 03.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics,
Criminal Courts 2004 05.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics,
National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey,
2002.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics,
Personal Safety Survey 2005 (Reissue).
- Australian Bureau of Statistics,
Recorded Crime Victims 2003.
NOTE: Recorded Crime Victims publications are available for 2004
and 2005, but the ABS has not published national data on assaults
and sexual assaults due to differences in recording practices
across jurisdictions.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics,
Recorded Crime Victims 2005.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics,
Sexual Assault in Australia: A Statistical Overview, 2004.
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Violence against Women , Australian Year Book,
1998.
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Women's Safety Australia, 1996.
- Australian Institute of Criminology, Analysis
of family violence incidents: July 2003 June 2004: final
report, 2006, prepared for ACT Policing, Australian Federal
Police.
- Australian Institute of Criminology, Australian
Crime: Facts and Figures 2005.
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present in family violence incidents, 2006.
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2003 2004 National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP) Annual
Report, 2005.
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and Non-Indigenous Homicides in Australia, 2001.
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No longer silent: a study of women's help-seeking decisions and
service responses to sexual assault, 2005.
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Protection Australia 2004 05.
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violence among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,
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fear of violence in the community, Australian Institute of
Criminology, 1999.
- Chenowyth, L., Invisible acts: violence
against women with disabilities, 1993.
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Development, The
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's Task Force on
Violence Report, Queensland Government report, 2000.
- Drabsch, T.
Domestic Violence in NSW, NSW Parliamentary Library Research
Service, 2007
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Jeopardy: Violence Against Immigrant Women in the Home,
Family Matters, no.45, Spring/Summer 1996.
- Eastwood, C., The
Experiences of Child Complainants of Sexual Abuse in the Criminal
Justice System, Australian Institute of Criminology Trends and
Issues Paper No. 250, 2003.
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Domestic violence and women's physical health,
Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse, 2003.
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Domestic violence and cultural and linguistic diversity,
Parity, vol. 17, no. 6, July 2004.
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Impacts and Costs of Domestic Violence on the Australian
Business/Corporate Sector, a report to Lord Mayor's Women's
Advisory Committee, Queensland, 2000.
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Inquiry into crime in the community: victims, offenders, and fear
of crime, 2004.
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against women with disabilities: an overview of the literature,
2000.
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Ch. 5 Addressing family violence in Indigenous Communities, in
Social Justice Report, 2003.
- The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC),
Ending family violence and abuse in Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander communities: key issues, 2006.
- Indermaur, D., Young
Australians and Domestic Violence, Australian Institute of
Criminology, 2001.
- Keel, M., Family
violence and sexual assault in Indigenous communities: Walking the
talk , 2004.
- Kolzoil-Mclain, j. et al,
Prevalence of intimate partner violence among women presenting to
an urban adult and paediatric emergency care department, New
Zealand Medical Journal, vol. 117, no. 1206, 26 November 2004.
- Laing, L. and N. Bobic,
Economic Costs of Domestic Violence, Literature Review,
Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse, 2002.
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do we need to know? : progress on the Australian Longitudinal Study
on Women's Health, 1995 2000, Women's Health Australia Research
Team, 2001.
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decisions in adult sexual assault cases: an Australian study
published by the Commonwealth Office of the Status of Women (OSW),
2004.
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and hidden recording of sexual assault: an international literature
review published by the Commonwealth Office of the Status of
Women (OSW), 2003.
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the costs of crime in Australia, Australian Institute of
Criminology, 2003.
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Taking back the castle: how Australia is making the home safer for
women and children, Australian Domestic & Family Violence
Clearinghouse, 2007
- Mouzos, J. and Makkai, T., Women's
experiences of male violence: findings from the Australian
Component of the International Violence against Women Survey
(IVAWS), Australian Institute of Criminology, 2004.
- Mouzos, J. and Rushforth, M., Family
Homicide in Australia, Australian Institute of Criminology,
2003.
- National Association of Services Against Sexual Violence
(NASASV), Report on the Snapshot Data Collection by Australian
Services Against Sexual Violence, May June 2000.
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Ending Domestic Violence?: Programs for Perpetrators, Attorney
General's Department, 2001.
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Violence in Indigenous communities, 2001.
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lies behind the hidden figure of sexual assault, Briefing No.1,
Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault, 2003.
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to sexual assault in rural communities, Briefing No.3,
Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault, 2004.
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1994 1998.
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women with disabilities, Violence against Women, US, 2000.
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Survey of Crime Victims 2001 (published 2003).
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Women s Safety Survey 1996.
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against women in Australia: key research and data issues,
Australian Institute of Criminology, 1997.
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Human rights and the significance of psychosocial and cultural
issues in domestic violence policy and intervention for refugee
women , Australian Journal of Human Rights, vol. 10
no. 1, June 2004.
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violence victims in emergency departments, in Chappell and
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against Women Survey, 1993.
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Crime Statistics in Canada, 2005.
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Provision,
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reproductive events: A cross sectional analysis of a national
population sample, ANZJPH, 2004; 28(4): 324 329.
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Violence against women in pregnancy and after childbirth: current
knowledge and issues in health care responses, Australian
Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse Issues Paper no. 6,
2002.
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Resource centres and key websites
For copyright reasons some linked items are only
available to members of Parliament.
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