Northern Territory police and health staff will soon undertake comprehensive domestic and family violence training in a bid to counter unnecessary trauma for both victims and responders.
The Northern Territory experiences the highest rates of domestic and family violence of any jurisdiction in the country, yet police receive just one week of internal training on the subject in addition to the one hour of specialised training from the sector as new recruits.
The Territory's healthcare workers receive even less, a problem exacerbated by the workforce's transience.
The Australian National University's Chay Brown — who studies domestic, family and sexual violence and works closely with Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs — says this has been a huge problem.
Dr Brown said victim blaming, inexperience responding to trauma and a lack of understanding of coercive control meant women were not receiving help when they asked for it.
To counter this, Tangentyere Council along with Women's Safety Services of Central Australia and NT Legal Aid, have received state government funding to develop up to a week of training for police and healthcare workers.
The initial training will be followed up with 10 educational modules to be completed over five years at a rate of two modules annually.
Dr Brown said these modules would include "competencies" and "assessments" and that training would look "slightly different" for the two disciplines.
"It won't just be workers sitting there and passively listening to content, police and healthcare workers will actually be engaging with the content," she said.
She said the training program would be an Australian first.
Mitigating vicarious trauma
Dr Brown said the modules would also help address the vicarious trauma experienced at times by police and healthcare staff on the frontline.
She said police and healthcare staff have "tough" jobs.
"Responding to the immensity of the Territory's domestic family sexual violence can be hugely traumatic," Dr Brown said.
"We know that one of the most effective ways of mitigating vicarious trauma is to be aware of it.
Recognising the victim
Imagine calling the police because your partner is threatening to kill you, but when the police arrive, they do not arrest them, they arrest you.
Or because you have had this happen to you before, or you have a rap sheet yourself, you simply do not call them at all.
For Rachel Neary at Kunga Stopping Violence, a program that works with incarcerated women in Alice Springs, these are stories she hears all the time from her clients.
She said time and time again, this learned distrust means women do not call police, even when they really need help.
The fear is not baseless. A 2017 study by the Queensland Domestic and Family Violence Death Review and Advisory Board found nearly all First Nations women who were killed by a partner had previously been misidentified as the aggressor by police.
NT Police acting commander Kirsten Engels acknowledged the issues and said patterns of abuse, in particular coercive control, were difficult to identify because officers needed "a bigger-picture view" to do so.
Acting commander Engels said frontline officers have called for more training on the issue.
"We're committed to improving our response and to improving our practice," she said.
Driven by case studies
Dr Brown said the training would put the experiences of women and, in particular First Nations women, front and centre.
"We may not be able to use women's exact stories, because obviously we have to prioritise safety. But we will be drawing upon real life, case studies and real life incidents," she said.
Dr Brown said the training would be "practical" and would "acknowledge the complexity" of coercive control and patterns of abuse, while also letting victim-surivors tell their stories in their own words.
