Changing the Laws

In Australia, one woman was killed by an intimate partner on average every 8 days in 2023–24, and domestic homicides rarely occur without warning; they often follow repeated abuse with identifiable risk factors. That means the goal is not only to make court less distressing, but to identify high-risk perpetrators early and contain them before and after separation. 

1. Move from incident-based judging to pattern-based judging.
Courts should assess domestic violence as a pattern of coercive control, fear, stalking, intimidation, economic abuse, and systems abuse, not just “what happened on one date.” The family law courts’ own best-practice principles define family violence as behaviour that coerces, controls, or causes fear, and NSW now criminalises coercive control as a course of abusive conduct in current or former intimate partner relationships. 

2. Stop treating trauma presentation as a credibility test.
A trauma-informed court should assume that fear, fragmentation, shutdown, hypervigilance, numbness, or confusion may be trauma-consistent responses, not signs of dishonesty. The Judicial Commission of NSW expressly recognises trauma as arising from violence and experiences that induce powerlessness, fear, recurrent hopelessness, and constant alertness. 

3. Make specialist DV pathways the default, not the exception.
In NSW, the Local Court already has a Specialist Family Violence List in selected locations, and the Federal Circuit and Family Court uses Lighthouse risk screening with specialist pathways such as the Evatt List for serious high-risk matters. Expanding those specialist pathways is one of the clearest practical routes to a more trauma-informed system. 

4. Require ongoing training for everyone in the system.
The family law courts’ principles already say professionals working in or appearing before the courts are expected to undertake ongoing family-violence training, and the FCFCOA has publicly stated it uses a trauma-informed Safe & Together training model across judges, registrars and court child experts. That should become standard across all DV-facing courts and professions. 

5. Build safety into how women participate in court.
Trauma-informed practice is not just language; it is logistics. The family law courts already provide for video/audio participation, support people, screens and protections against harassing cross-examination, and section 102NA bars personal cross-examination in defined family-violence situations. NSW has also invested in safe rooms and remote witness rooms so vulnerable witnesses do not have to face the alleged perpetrator in open court. 

6. Reduce misidentification and systems abuse.
A trauma-informed system must get much better at identifying the true person in need of protection. ANROWS found women, especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, are being misidentified as perpetrators, including in cases with mutual allegations and cross-orders. The family law courts also explicitly recognise “systems abuse” as part of the family violence landscape. 

7. Put advocates beside women at every point of contact.
WDVCAS services are available across NSW, can assist women with safety planning, court support, housing and legal referrals, and a woman does not need to speak to police or even go to court to get help. In family law, FASS operates in all registries and provides free legal and non-legal support for people affected by family violence. A safer court is one where a woman is never navigating alone. 

The safest system is a layered homicide-prevention system, not a single court order.

1. Treat separation as a red-alert period.
Separation is one of the clearest lethality markers. AIHW identifies intended or actual separation as an intimate partner homicide risk factor, and ANROWS notes women are most at risk of being killed or seriously harmed during and immediately after separation. In the NSW risk principles, 65% of female victims killed by a former intimate partner had ended the relationship within 3 months of the homicide. 

2. Treat certain behaviours as emergency lethality indicators.
The system should respond urgently to non-fatal strangulation, stalking, threats to kill, sexual violence, weapons access, escalation, and coercive control. ANROWS identifies these as high-risk or lethality factors; for example, prior strangulation is associated with a more than sevenfold increase in risk of being killed, and women threatened with murder are far more likely to be killed than other abused women. 

3. Contain the perpetrator fast.
That means interim ADVOs, exclusion orders, strict breach enforcement, and orders tailored to stalking, contact, locating the woman, proximity, drugs/alcohol, and weapons. In NSW, ADVO conditions can prohibit stalking, intimidation, living at the address, trying to find the protected person, approaching schools or childcare, and possessing firearms or prohibited weapons; when an AVO is made, police take firearms in the defendant’s possession or control and a firearms licence is automatically revoked for 10 years. 

4. Share risk information across systems in real time.
Women are safer when police, courts, child protection and firearms agencies are not operating in silos. In 2025, the Australian Government said National Cabinet had agreed to extend two-way information sharing between family law courts, state and territory courts, child protection, policing and firearms agencies until 30 June 2028, alongside work on a model national risk framework. 

5. Use co-responder and co-location models from first contact, not after a woman is already in crisis.
NSW has expanded the WDVCAS–Police co-location pilot, and the 2025 Michelle Michell inquest recommended considering a PACER-style co-responder model involving WDVCAS officers attending domestic violence call-outs, as well as better trauma-informed delivery of risk assessment questions and better information transfer between police and advocacy services. 

6. Build housing and money into the safety response.
A woman cannot stay alive on a court order alone if she has nowhere safe to go and no money to survive. AIHW says family and domestic violence is the main reason women and children leave their homes in Australia, and housing is now a priority response area. The Leaving Violence Program, which started on 1 July 2025, offers eligible victim-survivors up to $5,000 plus risk assessment, safety planning and referrals. 

7. Keep monitoring after court, especially in the first 12 weeks after separation.
A court date should not be treated as the end of the risk period. Post-separation stalking is a major warning sign: the NSW DV Death Review Team found that in almost three-quarters of cases where the relationship had ended, the male abuser had stalked the female victim before the homicide. That is why the safest model includes active follow-up, tech safety, enforcement of breaches, and rapid escalation pathways after orders are made. 

The system becomes safer when it stops asking, “Why didn’t she leave earlier?” and starts asking, “What is this perpetrator doing, what are the lethality markers, and what do we need to do today to contain him?” That is the shift from a compliance model to a homicide-prevention model. The evidence shows the warning signs are often there. 

• universal trauma-informed and coercive-control training for magistrates, registrars, lawyers, police and court staff
• specialist family violence lists in every Local Court, with risk triage at filing
• fear, coercive control and lethality markers treated as core evidence, not “background”
• no demeanour-based credibility assessments in DV matters
• automatic survivor safety planning at filing, adjournment, order-making and breach stages
• mandatory consideration of strangulation, stalking, threats to kill, separation and weapons in every risk decision
• stronger anti-misidentification safeguards
• WDVCAS or equivalent advocacy embedded at police stations and courts statewide
• active post-separation monitoring for the first 3 months in high-risk cases
• housing, income and legal support linked automatically to court protection pathways.
   

 EXPLAINED FURTHER

First, courts need to treat domestic violence as a pattern of coercive control, not just a series of isolated assaults. ANROWS has explicitly recommended moving away from an incident-based, retrospective response toward a specialist family-violence response that understands pattern-based abuse, including in cases with cross-applications and misidentification risks. AIFS’ coercive control review likewise notes that coercive control requires evidence beyond physical violence alone. 

Second, judicial officers, registrars, lawyers, and court staff need mandatory trauma-informed training. The Judicial Commission of NSW’s bench materials emphasise the importance of trauma-informed practice in courts, and the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia has said it rolled out comprehensive family-violence and trauma-informed training for judges, registrars, and court child experts as part of the Lighthouse model expansion. 

Third, courts should stop over-relying on how a woman presents in court. Trauma can affect memory, speech, affect, concentration, and chronology, so a woman who is flat, confused, inconsistent on peripheral detail, or emotionally numb should not automatically be seen as unreliable. The Judicial Commission of NSW’s trauma-informed guidance is built around exactly that point: trauma affects how people process and communicate their experiences. 

Fourth, courts need early identification, triage, and safe case management. The FCFCOA’s Family Violence Best Practice Principles say parenting matters involving family violence should be identified early and appropriately managed, and the Courts’ Family Violence Plan covers risk assessment, safety planning, building layout, security, and staff/judicial education. The Lighthouse model expansion also added mandatory risk notices, early triage, and case pathways focused on safe early resolution where appropriate. 

Fifth, courts need better practical safety measures so women are not retraumatised by the process itself. NSW has recently invested in courtroom audio-visual upgrades and a remote witness hub intended to let victim-survivors give evidence remotely and reduce the risk of encountering perpetrators in court settings. Those kinds of measures are not cosmetic; they are part of trauma-informed access to justice. 

Sixth, courts and connected agencies must get much better at identifying the true person in need of protection. ANROWS research has highlighted the misidentification of women victim-survivors as perpetrators and called for police and court practice to improve, especially where there are cross-applications or cross-orders. A trauma-informed court cannot be truly trauma-informed if it still misreads self-protection, fear responses, or fragmented disclosure as offending. 

Seventh, reform has to include information sharing and integrated responses, not just what happens inside the courtroom. The Commonwealth’s 2025 response on family violence orders says National Cabinet agreed to expand two-way information sharing between family law courts, state and territory courts, child protection, policing, and firearms agencies through 2028. NSW’s domestic and family violence planning and annual report card also point to client-centred, trauma-informed legal assistance and broader justice-system reform.