Family violence royal commission: the seven lessons learned so far, according to The Guardian with a forward view from the AVP
// July 21st, 2015 // Relationship violence
These seven lessons map easily onto family and intimate partner violence experienced by individuals identifying within LGBTI community. With a few missing links.
LGBT individuals “vote with their feet” and access services that have immediately available and easily accessible quality trained staff, most often LGBT themselves or equally empathetic and non-judgemental individuals who are not themselves LGBT.
Community led LGBTI organisations working in this space are less funded, if at all. The funding of these organisations is both crucial and pivotal to the shifting of appallingly low levels of violence reporting – including family violence reporting – to reveal the true nature and extent of family violence within these communities. Without this new funding acknowledging the important role community-led organisations play in family violence solutions the flow-on health ramifications for primary and secondary victims can never truly be addressed.
This Royal Commission has the potential to recommend the establishment of third party reporting processes for family violence impacting LGBTI community – similar to the much needed third party reporting processes on prejudice motivated violence and homophobic harassment – that has at its core leadership from community-led organisations.
(Most intersex individuals fit within and share life experience of relationship and family violence with the broad community however some intersex individuals identify and are welcomed within the LGBTI communities, experiencing the same issues that limit the way violence of all kinds can be identified, moved out of silence and into the daylight and then adequately addressed.)
