Push for young Canberrans to be heard on the issue of domestic and family violence

As a teenager, a tragic instance of violence affected a family close to hers.

"That struck our community kind of to the heart," she said.

It drove her to look for ways to engage other young people affected by domestic and family violence.

Now studying arts and law at the Australian National University, Ms Uthayakumaran is also on the board of Canberra's Domestic Violence Crisis Service, as well as a youth ambassador for Anti-Slavery Australia.

"I wouldn't say that I represent for all young people in this space," Ms Uthayakumaran said.

"Not at all, if anything, I try to advocate the opposite.

"You have very different people within this kind of space who have very different experiences."

She wants advocacy and support networks to take an intersectional approach, ensuring everybody is included in responses to domestic and family violence, including people with a disability or who speak languages other than English.

YWCA Canberra chief executive Frances Crimmins said the exposure of ACT youth to violence was "unacceptably high".

The service provider's most recent survey, which received 1090 responses, found 27 per cent of those aged 16 to 24 had experienced violence in a domestic or other interpersonal relationship in the 12 months prior.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics also reported nearly one in five female respondents had experienced sexual violence before the age of 15, in their Personal Safety Survey for the 2021-22 financial year.

About 11 per cent had witnessed violence against their mother by a parent or a spouse.

"Many young people might not even recognise that their own interpersonal relationships feature violence, because we don't often talk about domestic or family violence as affecting young people," Ms Crimmins said.

"Instead, we talk about violence in terms of adult relationships, but young people can experience violence in any number of ways, either in their own relationships or with family members."

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Ms Uthayakumaran said young people, like herself, were making themselves heard on the issue and its impacts on them.

"There's more of [a drive] now to actually treat children and young people as a specific kind of group, with other forms of violence, like domestic violence or sexualised violence," she said.

"And actually treat them in their own right as a separate issue, which I think is really important because that means more attention paid to it."

Young people should be also be able to contribute meaningfully to conversations about domestic and family violence, Ms Uthayakumaran said, without their involvement feeling tokenistic.

"If young people have the ability to exchange ideas and talk to Members of Parliament, that'd be really good," she said.

"Because I think they have really important ways of looking at things."

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