Thursday, 6 March 2025

 Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (18:04): (1495) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, and the action I seek is a briefing on how key indicators of misidentification of victim-survivors are being monitored. Family and sexual violence is a crisis in Victoria. It disproportionately affects Aboriginal women, migrant and refugee women, women with disabilities, gender-diverse women and criminalised women. What is less discussed is the systemic failure that occurs when these victims, already facing immense barriers, are misidentified as perpetrators. It is important to acknowledge that the same group of women who are criminalised are also more likely to be victims of abuse, violence and trauma. Victoria Police estimate that misidentification occurs in 12 per cent of family violence reports. Among Aboriginal women the rate is even higher – 20 per cent have been wrongly identified as the aggressor. These figures are likely under identified and the true figures are likely to be higher. This is not a mere procedural error; it is a devastating miscarriage of justice. Victim-survivors who are misidentified may have intervention orders placed against them, lose custody of their children, be removed from their homes and struggle to access support services. The real perpetrator, meanwhile, remains free to continue the cycle of violence. We must ask: why does this happen?

The same systemic biases that criminalise these women also enable their misidentification. Police responding to a scene may misinterpret self-defence as aggression, particularly when the victim is distressed, unable to articulate the experience due to language barriers or reacting to trauma. A common tactic used by non-Aboriginal men in relationships with Aboriginal women is weaponising state institutions. Knowing that their partner fears police and child protection involvement, perpetrators manipulate these systems to exert coercive control. This results in Aboriginal women being disproportionately removed from their homes, incarcerated and separated from their children.

Misidentification leads to children being placed in out-of-home care, severing cultural ties and deepening intergenerational trauma, echoing the stolen generations. For migrant and refugee women, it isolates them from community networks, increasing their risk of homelessness, financial instability and further violence. We need urgent reforms, training for police that works, accountability in the justice system and culturally responsive community-led interventions that centre lived experience. Women experiencing violence should not be retraumatised by the institutions meant to protect them. When we fail these women, we fail their children. Minister, I welcome your briefing.