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There is currently a range of promising work taking place across jurisdictions to prevent and address sexual violence. The following section highlights just some key examples. It places a particular emphasis on Victoria given the nation-leading role Victoria has played in family, domestic and sexual violence reform over the past decade following its landmark Royal Commission into Family Violence.
Affirmative consent roll-out
In recent years, a number of Australian jurisdictions have made important progress to actively improve justice responses to sexual violence, with the introduction of an Affirmative Consent Model (45-49). Affirmative consent makes it clear each individual person participating in a sexual act holds responsibility to take steps to actively check that the other person(s) involved are freely consenting to that specific sexual activity (26). Victoria’s legislative reform also strengthened laws relating to image-based sexual abuse and criminalised the act of ‘stealthing’ (which is the intentional non-use, tampering or removal of a condom without permission or knowledge of the other person(s) involved) (26).This reform sent a powerful message to the community about the importance of consent and the seriousness of these forms of offending. The preventative impact of Victoria’s reforms to consent laws were strengthened through dedicated implementation resourcing. Information about affirmative consent was integrated into Victoria’s Respectful Relationships curriculum (27) and through the Supporting Young People to Understand Affirmative Consent Program, which sought to ensure that young people in out-of-school settings would also receive the necessary capacity building to understand and practice affirmative consent in accordance with the new law (28).
Women’s Legal Service Victoria’s Starts With Us Project
Women’s Legal Service Victoria’s Starts with Us Framework provides legal and justice workplaces with resources to ensure all their workers are valued and treated as equal regardless of their gender, contributing to the prevention of gendered violence within these settings (50). To further support workplaces within the justice sector, Women’s Legal Service Victoria has also launched a new initiative, Respect and Equality In The Legal Sector, to support these workplaces to meet their legal obligations to prevent gendered violence (51).
Victoria’s Justice Navigators Pilot Program
On 30 May 2024, the Victorian State Government released a Women’s Safety Package for Victoria, which included a commitment to implement a Justice Navigator pilot to ensure victim-survivors of sexual assault can more easily navigate support, recovery and justice options (52). This follows the Victorian Law Reform Commission making a recommendation in its 2021 Inquiry into improving justice responses to sexual violence that the Victorian Government consult on and co-design an independent advocate model, similar to the model which has been in place in England and Wales since 2007 (1).
Sexual Assault Services Victoria have been advocating for the establishment of Justice Navigators embedded within specialist sexual assault services for a number of years (53). They describe the role of Justice Navigators as being to:
- act as an entry point to the justice system
- support victim survivors to understand and exercise their rights
- help victim survivors to navigate the complex range of support, compensation, recovery and justice options available to them, including by attending court and hearings
- be experts in their jurisdiction’s victims rights charter and advocate to make sure that a victim survivor’s charter rights are upheld
Justice Navigators would ideally have a key role in ‘walking with’ victim-survivors throughout the criminal and civil justice processes, helping to ensure victims’ rights are understood and upheld. Sexual Assault Services Victoria have noted that ‘because prosecutors will expect Justice Navigators to hold them to account around Victims Charter rights, we expect this “soft” or informal accountability will shift practices for the better, among prosecutors and their departments (54). In this way, Justice Navigators have great potential to reinforce education and prevention initiatives within the justice system through supporting messages that people hear in the wider community about consent, the gravity of sexual assault, and that victim-survivors can expect respect and justice are upheld through their contact with the justice system.
Victoria Police’s Centre of Learning
In 2017, the Victorian Government made a range of significant investments to improve Victoria Police’s capability to respond to family violence, sexual offences, and child abuse (55). This included the establishment of the Centre for Learning, which delivers career-long, tailored family violence training to police officers on topics such as the nature and drivers of family violence (55). It is anticipated that the Centre for Learning will continue to expand its focus to more specifically include training on sexual offences (55). The additional training provided through the Centre for Learning should support frontline police officers to provide safe, affirming, and effective responses to sexual violence.
Court Services Victoria’s Sexual Harassment Review
Dr Helen Szoke’s 2021 report on sexual harassment in Victoria’s courts handed down a series of recommendations to ensure that these workplaces are safe and respectful for everyone (39). These recommendations included multiple preventative actions, including structural reforms to prevent sexual harassment, building organisational knowledge about sexual harassment, and providing targeted training on sexual harassment to key staff (39). In response, Court Services Victoria established a Sexual Harassment and Respect team to monitor progress made against these recommendations and has a publicly available ‘report card’ outlining this progress (56). The implementation of the recommendations is intended to help ensure Victoria’s court system is a safe and equal workplace for legal professionals, regardless of gender.
Current training and education for judges and lawyers
The National Judicial College of Australia and the Judicial College of Victoria both have education programs and resources available to support judicial officers to understand sexual harassment and successfully manage sexual offence cases and hearings (57-59). Data in relation to the nature and completion of this training is not readily available and we note the following comments by Women’s Legal Services Australia in their submission to this inquiry (60):
WLSA has not been able to identify any information on the number of judges or magistrates who receive existing training and the jurisdictions or courts they preside over, the length of any particular training and how often judges or magistrates are required to participate in training, whether training is compulsory, regular or one-off and whether judges in regional areas receive adequate training (noting that 53% of all sexual assault cases are in the country lists).
In Victoria, the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) obligations for lawyers are a valuable mechanism for delivering further education to legal professionals relating to sexual violence, with the scope of this recurrent, mandatory learning including ‘ethics and professional responsibility’ (61). Through the Victorian Bar, barristers can access specific CPD sessions to build their understanding of family violence and sexual harassment (62). This range of training and education opportunities enables legal professionals with an interest in sexual offence cases to gain the necessary understanding of the nature of sexual violence. However, at present, there is no requirement for barristers or solicitors to have undertaken any such training before working on sexual violence-related matters.
Specialist Family Violence Courts
Victoria’s Specialist Family Violence Courts were established in response to the Royal Commission into Family Violence and are currently located in 13 locations across Victoria. They are designed to support the safety and wellbeing of people affected by family violence and increase the accountability of people who have used violence against their family members. All magistrates, registry and practitioners, engaged in these courts are trained and specialise in family violence matters and court facilities and processes display a range of tailored, safety features. Specialist Family Violence Courts can hear intervention order cases alongside other matters, including bail applications, please in criminal cases, family law parenting matters, and victims of crime applications related to family violence. While these courts do deal with matters that involve sexual violence, such cases are limited to those where the sexual violence arises in the context of family violence and they do not have jurisdiction to hear criminal trials.
Programs for young people with harmful sexual behaviours
Across Victoria, there are a number of programs available to support children and young people who have engaged in harmful sexual behaviours. Delivered by sexually abusive behaviour treatment services and specialist sexual assault services, these programs provide developmentally appropriate treatment to address the use of harmful sexual behaviour and any underlying harm a young person may have experienced, with the aim of reestablishing age appropriate behaviour (63). Anecdotal reports from practitioners in these programs indicate that a significant number of children or young people who display harmful sexual behaviours have themselves been victims of sexual violence or exploitation or have been exposed to pornography. Harmful Sexual Behaviour programs are critical for providing a holistic response to young people’s use of harmful sexual behaviour, while also disrupting the trajectory of violence and preventing future harm.
Court-mandated Men’s Behaviour Change Programs
In Victoria, Specialist Family Violence Court magistrates can order a respondent to a family violence intervention order to attend court-approved counselling for their violent behaviour (64). This court approved counselling is usually a Men’s Behaviour Change Program (MBCP), which involves group counselling sessions that are completed over several months, with the aim of encouraging men to take responsibility for their behaviour and provide them with the tools to change that behaviour (65). The implementation of court ordered MBCP attendance was a key recommendation of Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence and the Victorian Government has since provided significant investment to ensure that this scheme is adequately funded (66). While the evidence on the effectiveness of MBCPs in preventing the escalation of violence is mixed, it is important to explore how perpetration interventions can be used to prevent both the escalation of harm and perpetration of future harm (67).