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Australia Urged to Protect Women and Children from Lockdown Domestic Violence

Phil Mercer

   SYDNEY - Campaigners have said a national women's safety summit
   starting in Australia Monday should urgently look at ways to reduce
   family violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.

   Financial security, policing, sexualviolenceand challenges facing
   diverse members of the Australian community are key topics at
   Australia's National Summit on Women's Safety 2021.

   It'srun by the federal government, which said the conference would help
   form "the next National Plan to end violence against women and their
   children."

   The Minister for Women, Marise Payne, said previously that "everyone
   has a basic right to safety, equality and respect in our society."

   But campaigners have urged the government to do more to curb domestic
   violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.A report publishedin Juneby
   Queensland University of Technology's Centre for Justice found that
   domestic abuse surged during lockdowns.

   One of its authors is Professor Kerry Carrington.

   "We discovered that there was not only an increase in the severity of
   domestic violence as well as its prevalence, but we also discovered,
   much to our surprise and shock, that perpetrators have been using COVID
   lockdowns to actually extend theircoercivecontrol over their
   partners.So, clearly the context of COVID; the financial, the
   psychological, the mental pressures of COVID, being locked down in the
   home with children has really exacerbated the prevalence of domestic
   violence," Carrington said.

   The university report made several key recommendations, including that
   governmentsshould bebetter prepared for increases in family violence
   during and aftersignificant eventssuch as the COVID-19 pandemic.

   Prof. Carrington hopes the women's safety summit can deliver concrete
   results.

   "Everybody is wanting a better national plan.Everybody is wanting one
   that takes violence against women seriously that sees it as a number
   one government priority, that invests in prevention, invests in new
   services,"Carrington said.

   In June, figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics
   showedthe numberof domestic violence-related sexual assaults recorded
   by the police increased by 13%in 2020.

   The charity, Mission Australia, said family violenceis "disturbingly
   common."It said that in 2019 about one in four women, or more than two
   million Australians, "experienced violence by an intimate partner."

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