Most violence between intimate partners goes unreported and new research from AUT suggests we need to look beyond the norm when tackling this widespread problem.
AUT University Institute of Public Policy graduate Anne Hayden has recently completed her PhD thesis, Why rock the boat? Non-reporting of intimate partner violence (IPV), a study which examined the extent to which restorative justice might improve reporting of IPV without victims and perpetrators having to go through a drawn-out court process.
Restorative justice is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of victims and offenders, rather than the court's process. It involves one or more meetings between the victim and perpetrators.
The use of restorative justice as an alternative intervention for dealing with IPV is minimal says Hayden.
"Although this process has been used for a wide range of crimes, including IPV, its use for these cases has been heavily debated."
The debate has centred on the potential of restorative justice to minimise the significance of the violence and putting the victim at further risk, and for there to be no monitoring of the couple after the meeting. However, many victims do not want their partners arrested.
In Hayden's experience and some overseas models, restorative justice involves one or more co-facilitated meetings by service providers with the key parties and their support people. It is vital that participation is fully informed and voluntary she says.
Through her investigations and research over the past five years she found that there is significant support (79 per cent) for the use of restorative justice enhancing the reporting of IPV.
"Most participants in this study were positive about the prospect of restorative justice," says Hayden. "Many expressed the view that the use of restorative justice would have encouraged them to seek help at an earlier stage in the development of IPV."
"The challenge is to encourage reporting so that IPV can be dealt with more constructively."
The most frequent occurrence in an IPV case involves a police visit after the incident has occurred, at which point it will be decided if the perpetrator will be arrested and then it goes through the courts with the victim appearing as a witness. Occasionally, both parties can be arrested if each appears to be injured after self defense has been involved.
However Hayden says there are several reasons why a case may not even reach this stage, with fear a prime factor.
This is not just fear of the perpetrator reoffending, but can also be the fear for children losing a parent or nuclear family. Other reasons identified in the research were non-awareness by some victims that what they had experienced was IPV and the disapproval of others.
Research, supported by Hayden's thesis, has shown under-reporting of IPV to be a substantial problem. Fanslow and Robinson (2010) found that only 36.1 percent of victims reported it informally to family and friends and 5.6 percent reported it formally only to police. However reporting rose to as high as 77 percent in the form of disclosure to another person, not necessarily someone close to the victim.
"This research has shown that couples need another option for dealing with IPV," says Hayden.
"IPV is already being discussed with a variety of restorative justice models in New Zealand and could be another layer in the criminal justice or societal response to IPV. It appears likely that using this process would increase formal reporting or make informal reporting more effective."
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Fear and shame major factors in unreported violence
Photo: The Aucklander
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