Updated
So far today police in Australia would have dealt with on average 215 domestic violence matters
Indigenous women are losing their children to child
protection because of housing shortages that force them to stay in
abusive relationships, new research has found.
Key points:
- A lack of housing is sending children of women in abusive relationships into care because they have nowhere safe to take them
- Indigenous women are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised for domestic violence than their non-Indigenous counterparts
- One survivor wants authorities to have more power to make perpetrators leave the family home, rather than mothers with children
Palawa researcher Dr Kyllie Cripps from the University of New South Wales spoke to Aboriginal women in the Northern Territory and New South Wales for her study.
"Their stories were scary," Dr Cripps said.
All of the women were in violent relationships and in several cases had their children taken off them for safety reasons.
One woman was trying to get her kids back, but first she needed to prove that she could offer them a safe home environment.
"She had been on a public wait list at that time for two years — her last interaction with child protection about getting her kids back broke her heart," Dr Cripps said.
"She said 'they told me, 'your children are settled now. Perhaps you should just move and start a new life somewhere else'.'
"She said 'they're my kids, I'm their mother, I want to be there for them, I just need a house'."
Women trapped by violence
Indigenous women are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised for domestic violence than their non-Indigenous counterparts.Remote communities like those in Arnhem Land have some of the highest homelessness rates in the nation due to housing shortages.
The repercussions for women have long been anecdotally discussed, but Dr Cripps said the area is under-researched.
Dr Cripps said many women do temporarily escape abusive relationships by going with their kids to women's shelters — if there is one they can access — or by staying with family and friends, but that was usually only a temporary solution.
The third option — finding their own home — could take years in some communities.
"Those waiting lists to get a house of your own can go out to a year, two years if you're lucky — or eight years," Dr Cripps said.
She said women ended up feeling like they had no choice but to go back to the violent home.
Family violence support services:
- 1800 Respect national helpline 1800 737 732
- Women's Crisis Line 1800 811 811
- Men's Referral Service 1300 766 491
- Lifeline (24 hour crisis line) 131 114
- Relationships Australia 1300 364 277
"If you don't have housing and you're in that environment, the reality of keeping your children is very problematic," she said.
"Mums will lose [their children] and can potentially lose them permanently from their custody as a result of family violence.
"The bar set for them to get those kids back is outside of their reach, through no fault of their own.
"The general Australian population believes that when women want to leave domestic violence, they can. The reality for Indigenous women is they can't."
'There was nowhere for me to go'
Lani Brennan is an Indigenous woman from near Sydney who endured an abusive relationship in the early 2000s.She said once she overcame the emotional barriers to leaving — like feeling guilty and blaming herself — the physical realities of forging a new life were overwhelming.
She initially found safety at a women's shelter, but then needed to find somewhere more permanent.
"Later there was nowhere for me to go," she said.
"Everywhere was either full, or you had to move off country to somewhere else. I didn't want to do that because I was so scared."The Department of Housing didn't help with any accommodation."
Ms Brennan has since become an advocate for others experiencing family violence, and recently tried to help an Indigenous woman in a remote community with limited housing, who was being told the only refuge for her was thousands of kilometres away in Sydney.
"By the time we'd organised how to get her there, a safe time to get there with her children, it became too much for the lady — she just stayed where she was," Ms Brennan said.
She said she heard many stories of women going on to lose their kids to child protection, and "it's the saddest to hear".
Ms Brennan wanted authorities to have more power to make perpetrators leave the family home, rather than mothers with children.
"Why not house that man in rehab somewhere and then the child and the kids are still supported with community around them in their own homes?" she said."Let's keep a couple of houses aside and not house people in them for emergency cases.
"I don't think the Government is looking outside the box."
Service providers failing victims
A spokesperson for Territory Families told the ABC reducing domestic violence remained a challenge in the NT, and that the Government has invested "an additional $6.5 million in 2019-20 for domestic, family, and sexual violence reduction, and to change attitudes and intervene earlier".The spokesperson said the Department operated 13 safehouses and funded 16 refuges or shelters run by NGOs.
Dr Cripps said laws had improved in recent years to give women more powers to be listed on leases ahead of their abusers, or to have debts waived.
Yet she said some Indigenous women did not have the financial literacy or knowledge to enact their rights, and that some service providers were failing in their duty to help them enact their legal rights.
"There's some really good service providers out there doing a wonderful job in a tough market; there are others that have normalised the violence, potentially suffering from burnout," Dr Cripps said.
At one point during her research, she said a service provider told her, "we're just going to let these people keep killing themselves".
"Yes, that was said to us — it's a significant problem," she said.
"If this was you in this situation, how would you want to be treated?"
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