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A young woman seeking to have her partner’s apprehended violence order amended so her five-year-old child can speak to him on the phone. A middle-aged woman with a disability who still loves the man who assaulted her and doesn’t know where she will live now. An older woman whose daughter abused her for years when they lived together, but without her can’t afford the mortgage and doesn’t know what to do.
These are just some of the women who pass through the Women’s Domestic Violence Court Advocacy Service (WDVCAS) safe room at Liverpool Courthouse on a sunny Tuesday.
Within that room, the true scale of Australia’s domestic violence crisis is laid bare.
“Has everyone been spoken to?” Maria, the no-nonsense assistant manager, calls out. The women occupying the chairs lined up along the wall look up and nod. In the middle, a team of five flits between them, kneeling on the carpet in constant conversation. Then they’re out of the door, yelling “going to police”, “going to court” on their way.
Like a restaurant kitchen during the dinner rush, it’s a frenetic but well-oiled machine. The workers know what to do, and have done it before on many days just like this, but one by one more women keep walking through the door.
None of the stories are straightforward, but as the workers make clear, neither is the problem.
Inside the safe room
Every Tuesday is AVO day at Liverpool Local Court in Sydney’s south-west, and by 9am, the safe room is already packed.
All the staff agree, Liverpool is one of the busier locations. Each time police attend a domestic violence incident in the local area, a referral is sent to the service. According to Maria, an assistant manager with the Justice Support Centre South West Sydney, which oversees the WDVCAS in Liverpool and the Western Sydney suburbs of Fairfield and Bankstown, each location receives around 60 to 70 police referrals each week. “That’s just from NSW Police, that’s not from self-referrals or other community organisations,” she says, “there’s a lot of different avenues”.
The process often looks like this: A domestic violence incident occurs, police apply for an AVO, and the case is referred to the WDVCAS. A domestic violence specialist case worker then calls the woman to check-in. During that call, they’ll ask whether they are happy with the AVO conditions and whether there’s any other support they need.
“And we go from there, explaining what each [AVO] condition means, what it will make their life look like,” says Eliza*, a specialist domestic violence case worker. “Especially with children, it can be quite complicated.”
By Tuesday, the organisation will have a list of the women whose matters will be heard and others who are seeking legal advice, Eliza says, “so we have a rough idea of how many will come”.
In the colder months, she says, there are fewer referrals — but the violence tends to be more severe.
Not a day that goes by, Eliza says, that she doesn’t talk to someone with a very serious case, often involving the use of weapons. “Even if we can’t do anything practically, I think them having someone listen means everything,” she says.
“You try not to think too much about what they’re going home to, but some [of their stories] do stay with you.”
The safe room is a hub of female activity. All the WDVCAS workers, the duty lawyer, and the housing service representative are women. All of the clients are women. When men do enter, it’s usually a police officer seeking guidance or passing along information, or an interpreter.
There are so many conversations, each one detailing such private matters, happening within earshot of each other: a woman asking about the AVO conditions is told only she will know if he calls (“I don’t want him to go to jail”), another detailing how her partner pulled a gun on her friend.
Together, they form a sort of intelligible hum, until one cuts through the noise: “I don’t deserve that”, “I wish there was a magical solution”, “you’re still here and you’re still doing all the things”. A DVD of Monsters University plays in the background and children weave in and out of legs, sharing crackers on the carpet.
Just after 11am, there’s trouble — a police officer has arrived to discuss whether it would be possible for a client to leave her family home and move into crisis accommodation so her partner, who is prevented from being within 100 metres of where she lives or works by an AVO, can be bailed to that address.
When it’s suggested that her child would remain in the family home, effectively barring her from seeing them, there’s an uproar. “Nah, nah, nah, not a chance,” a case worker says. “That’s family law.”
The root of the problem is that the alleged perpetrator was the principal tenant, and the woman — who required an interpreter to communicate — is listed as an additional occupant, which was only discovered later.
“This is where it becomes really difficult, because it’s whoever’s name is on the lease and that finds women and children out on the street,” Maria says. After the team intervened, the woman was permitted to remain in the family home with her child.
Much of the work is finding practical solutions to problems that, on the surface, seem pedestrian when compared to the seriousness of abuse. One woman, for example, is trying to have an AVO against her partner lifted because he does tasks around the house that due to her disability, she is unable to do.
Another client, Sara*, first came into contact with the service because she wanted to alter the terms of the AVO against her daughter as she could no longer afford her mortgage repayments without her living in the house. Sara says meeting Maria saved her life: “She’s got the tough side when she needs to be, but you also know that this person is protecting you”.
“Each client that I speak to, it’s like I’m a brand new worker,” Maria says. Watching her in action, within seconds, it’s clear she’s someone you want in your corner in a crisis. She’s straightforward, always rushing, and clearly willing to fight for her clients. “I love helping women, I love advocating for women. There are times that you speak to a woman and it’s so horrific that, as a human, you take things home with you — but you learn to de-stress or leave it at work.”
On this day, Sara’s at the courthouse so Maria can accompany her to the bank in the hopes of securing a temporary pause on her mortgage repayments. They’re successful, allowing her critical breathing room.
“If they can help someone like me, whose pride stops you going, or you’re just too tired, or too sick, so you won’t even make the phone call,” Sara says, “if they know that this is what’s waiting for them, maybe they will”.
The only protection tool police have
Throughout the morning, it becomes clear that underpinning nearly every client’s story is an AVO — which according to Jess, a Safety Action Meeting (SAM) coordinator with the service, often cause more harm than good when it comes to family dynamics.
At the most basic level, an AVO — also called an Apprehended Domestic Violence Order or ADVO in NSW — is a court order designed to protect someone. It orders the defendant not to assault, molest, harass, intimidate or stalk them for a specified period of time. Further conditions can also be imposed, such as preventing contact between the defendant and the protected person.
All states and territories have a similar mechanism, although the name differs. In Victoria, for example, it’s an Intervention Order, in Queensland a Domestic Violence Protection Order, and in the Northern Territory and the ACT a Domestic Violence Order.
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Most AVOs are taken out by police, usually as a matter of course where domestic violence has occurred. Sometimes, this creates an unworkable situation — like when an order prevents contact between people who remain in a relationship.
But as it stands, Jess says, AVOs are really the only tool police have to try and keep women safe immediately following a domestic violence incident.
Yet each week many of those same women come to the courthouse asking to have them dropped or the conditions changed.
“For us as domestic violence specialists and SAM coordinators, that’s our whole job — to support people through the AVO process at court,” she says.
“There are other supports we do provide, however, our main bread and butter is advocating for people to make sure that their protection is suitable for their life in the best way possible.”
Ultimately, the decision about what is included in the AVO falls to police in conjunction with the court. “And then it’s out of our hands,” says Terri, another domestic violence specialist case worker.
The focus then turns to what is possible to increase their safety. Terri explains that she had assisted a woman earlier that day who wanted to remove some “really strict” AVO conditions. After digging into what had happened, it was revealed that the abuse only took place when the alleged perpetrator was consuming alcohol.
One possible condition of an AVO is that the subject cannot be near the protected person for 12 hours after consuming illicit drugs or alcohol, but it wasn’t part of her order. They discussed trying to swap that with some of the more onerous conditions, so “he can be with you, but he can’t be drinking around you”.
The adjustments are necessary because the reality is many women are just not ready to leave abusive relationships. An oft-cited figure says that, on average, it takes seven attempts to leave a domestic violence situation for good.
Maria has been with the service for 13 years, which means she has seen first-hand how long that process can be. “I always get clients coming back and checking in, or they’re here with another defendant, and they’re like ‘I know Maria, I know’, but I’m not here to judge,” she says. “I had a client once tell me, ‘Maria I love him but I hate the behaviour’, and I get it, I don’t get it, but I understand where they’re coming from.”
The WDVCAS team approaches their work from the starting point that the client is the expert in their own lives. It means staff often have to navigate the complicated territory between ensuring someone’s safety and respecting their wishes.
“At the end of the day, we’re not here to judge them, we’re here to advocate for them,” Maria says. “So we might believe that it isn’t the right decision for them, but we have to do what our role is — advocating. And that’s when the negotiation happens with police.”
Into the courtroom
At 2pm, the court restarts after lunch and a smattering of people, and two babies, gather in the wood-panelled walls of Courtroom 2. More than 200 matters are listed at the court across the day.
On each side of the magistrate are flat-screen television screens where defendants appear through video-link from prison. One defendant takes his chance to wave to a young child being held by his mother in the front row.
The WDVCAS workers accompany the women to the courtroom when it’s time for their matter, taking a seat next to them on the benches. “Just breathe,” they whisper in their ear.
While in the courtroom the prosecutor, acting for the police, and the lawyer acting for the client, sit on opposite ends of the table, outside the efforts to combat domestic violence have become increasingly collaborative.
One example is the fortnightly Safety Action Meetings (SAMs), chaired by police but largely facilitated by domestic violence specialist services. The purpose of the meetings — which bring together representatives from health, education, child protection, corrective services and housing — is to unite information on cases where a domestic violence victim is deemed “at serious threat”.
“We go around the room and see what information they all have about this client and see if there are any actions we can assign to increase their safety,” says Jess, who coordinates the meetings for Liverpool. By design, the meetings don’t have an end time and can last all day if required.
At 4pm, the court adjourns for the day. The staff return to the safe room, which has now emptied. They all have different ways of stopping the conversations they had that day coming home with them, but even so they say, it takes a heavy toll. Tomorrow, they won’t be at court, but at their desks, catching up on the police referrals from the previous night.
“I would love to not have to talk to women about what they can do to keep themselves safe, it feels, so …inorganic. ‘Let’s talk about your safety’, it’s a weird thing to even have to say to somebody, but we do it every single day,” Terri says. “You’re just doing what you can, but you know it’s just gonna keep coming.”
At the forefront of their minds is always the grim statistic that 28 women have been killed by violence so far this year, according to the Counting Dead Women project — one about every four days. “Once you hear it on the news, you’re like ‘oh my god, please don’t be one of our clients’,” Maria says. “I think anyone in WDVCAS would always go: far out, what could I have done differently?”
Asked what they wished the public understood about what they see every day, most of the workers say the same thing: that domestic violence doesn’t discriminate. “All spectrums, all socio-economic statuses, it can happen to anyone, it doesn’t matter,” Terri says. “As women, I hate to say, but we’re vulnerable … I think all women need to have a little bit of a plan just in case.”
The identities of the clients and staff ABC News spoke to and observed have not been included in this story for safety and privacy reasons. *Some first names have also been changed.
