Family Violence Resistance and Agency Project - When do I Get to Tell My Story?

Westjustice, Fitzroy Legal Service and Latrobe University have launched, 'When do I Get to Tell My Story: Agency and Resistance in Family Violence Intervention Order Narratives', a report aimed at enhancing knowledge about the relationship between language and gendered power dynamics in the legal system. 

The report investigated respresentations of the agency and resistance of women as 'Affected Family Members' in Applications for Family Violence Intervention Orders (FVIOs) to: 

• Understand the role and significance of language in recognising women’s agency and resistance to family violence in the FVIO process;
• Identify whether there is a relationship between the representation of women’s agency and the FVIO applicant (i.e., police or the AFM);
• Explore how police frame harm in FVIOs to enhance scrutiny of and frameworks for accountability in police FVIO processes;
• Generate knowledge that can be used to/improve women’s experiences of family violence legal processes; and
• Build capacity for the community legal and social services sectors to respond to, advocate for and provide support to women who are seeking FVIOs

The research involved the collection of a sample of 20 anonymised FVIO applications with the consent of AFMs. Half of the applications were authored by police; the other half were written by AFMs or their advocate. The narrative components of the applications were subject to quantitative analysis by a linguistics scholar and qualitative analysis by socio-legal scholars.

The process of analysing the narratives in FVIO applications highlighted important questions about how these narratives are crafted; when and to what degree they might be altered during the application process; and for what purpose. For instance, anecdotal evidence suggests that court registrars play a significant role in editing, rewriting, and restructuring the narratives in AFM applications. However, registrars are largely invisible in this process since there is no record of their contributions or changes to AFM’s narratives.

This leads to our overarching finding:

There is no clear, transparent, or easily accessible map of the process of applying for an FVIO for anyone involved, from AFMs through to Magistrates.

The lack of a clear map makes the process of applying for an FVIO opaque. It is difficult to understand what information is important at each stage of the process, and why, and the various roles of the different actors involved. The absence of a map also prevents practitioners and researchers from understanding the level of consistency in the application process for AFMs. Improving transparency and access to information about the FVIO application process would improve AFMs access to justice.

In the video below, the teams from Westjustice, Fitzroy Legal Service and Latrobe University discuss the project and what they've learned by participating. 

With thanks to the report authors: 

Kirsty Duncanson

Tonya Stebbins

Emma Henderson

Emma Russell

Cleona Feuerring

Shamila Liyanage

Priyanka Shetty

Hui Zhou