Victim-survivor Chelsea Millicent on responses to family violence

"You feel like your life is never going to change and you want your innocence back," the victim-survivor said.

"It can be really lonely and pretty hopeless. You just want to feel safe."

Ms Millicent was 23 when she received a message on social media from a man who would eventually become her partner - and the person who would push her into filming pornography.

He made money off her work, coercing her into making more content through "extreme violence", which sometimes spilled into sexual violence within the relationship.

On one occasion, he called an ambulance because "he thought he killed me".

"The first responders, when they arrived, I think they just think sometimes ... I've heard the terms, 'they're too far gone, that person is too far gone,' they're just in that [relationship] and they're never going to get out," Ms Millicent said.

She did get out, but would later find herself in a different cycle of violence, suffering traumatising harassment and stalking in her late 20s and early 30s from another partner.

ACM is not implying that any other people in relation to Ms Millicent, other than those charged, are accused of this behaviour.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Personal Safety Survey released last month, across 12,000 people surveyed in 2021 to 2022, about 31 per cent of women and 42 per cent of men have experienced physical violence since age 15.

About 18 per cent of women and 11 per cent of men experienced abuse during childhood.

One in four women, at 27 per cent, had experienced violence by an intimate partner or family member compared to one in eight men.

And about one in five women, at 22 per cent, and one in 16 - 6.1 per cent - of men have experienced sexual violence.

Federation University researcher and Professor of Social Justice, Elisa Zentveld, said there was an added layer of complexity for regional victim-survivors.

"In regional, remote and rural areas, because places can be very small and networked, that can add another complex dimension to the fear where people are afraid of saying what is happening because of those networks," Professor Zentveld said.

"Sadly there are discrimination aspects where people are discriminated against if they're victims of family violence."

For Ms Millicent, when looking back over her contact with potential supports - from first responders to counselling services - she said she had met some prejudice because of her sexual history.

"Knowing someone else on the other side might feel how you feel or that you're not necessarily being judged can be helpful," she said.

"I had a beautiful person that I dealt with at Cafs [Child and Family Services Ballarat] ... and she opened up to me about going through her own stuff, in a very diplomatic way, but I knew I was talking to someone that really got it."

IN OTHER NEWS

For many practitioners, there's a training gap which can mean some forms of abuse - such as intimate partner sexual violence (IPSV) - are missed.

A recent report by Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and No to Violence found one in four practitioners in the domestic and family violence perpetrator intervention space did not having any training about IPSV and 40 per cent of surveyed practitioners said they risk assessed for IPSV perpetration less frequently compared to other forms of family violence, with one in five practitioners 'rarely' or never assessing for this type of abuse at all.

The report noted IPSV was "consistently viewed by the general community as less serious and more justifiable than sexual assault committed by strangers or acquaintances".

Researcher Dr Nicola Helps said it was difficult to quantify if the gap in practitioner assessments could be attributed to such views, although the "socio-cultural sentiment" towards IPSV meant it was less likely perpetrators would consider themselves as such.

"They may have a genuine belief of entitlement to sex with partners that they would not presume to have over others, and so may not identify with common notions of 'rapist'," she said.

IPSV was often observed in relationships where other forms of family violence were already occurring. A "shared language", the report found, was important for practitioners in identifying cases of this abuse while allowing people to frame their own experiences.

"If victim-survivors don't recognise their experience in the language that is used, this will impact disclosures," Dr Helps said. "Practitioners in our study spoke about the erasure of women's voices, autonomy and agency, not only through their experiences of family violence, but through the responses to that violence."

Another Monash study, looking into disclosure of family violence by children and young people to support services, found current practitioner approaches failed to see children as individual victim-survivors.

"Children and young people in our study, regardless of whether they were living in rural, regional or metropolitan areas, were clear that current responses to family violence are failing to meet their safety and support needs," lead researcher Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon said.

"For too long our services have been set up to work primarily with adult victim-survivors and to respond to children only as an extension of their primary-carer parent."

In October 2022, the federal, state and territory governments released the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children with an ambitious goal to end gender-based violence in one generation.

"This includes building the workforce and strengthening data collection systems. It also includes increasing accountability for people who choose to use violence, and providing person-centred and holistic responses to support victim-survivors through their recovery and healing," it stated.

Professor Fitz-Gibbon said while there had been significant changes in the delivery of family violence response services across Victoria since the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence in 2016, there was more to be done to meet the national plan's one-generation goal.

"Children and young people need to be acknowledged as victim-survivors in their own right. Their risks, service and support needs may differ to other family members," she said. "This must be embedded across 'Prevention', 'Early intervention', 'Response', 'Recovery and healing'."

It is these four domains, set out in the national plan, with the first - 'Prevention' - noting action was needed to change societal attitudes at the foundation of the ongoing and widespread problem of violence against women and children.

It may be the nation's biggest challenge on gendered-violence.

"I do find it disappointing for women that are coming forward about sexual assault, violence, domestic violence, what comes into it is, even the police will think in this way, the credibility of the witness," Ms Millicent said.

"Don't wear makeup to court, don't come in [dressed] like that, what's her job, what are her backstories, what's she done in her past. It's these small things that the credibility of someone is based on.

"The cycle of violence doesn't come into play when we're looking at why women go back to these situations, why women reply [to contact from offenders], why women get stuck in these situations. We're not thinking about that enough."

For now, Ms Millicent hopes by sharing her story, other victim-survivors can feel less alone in their experiences.

"Everyone's a worthy victim," she said.

"We need to cut the unconscious bias around who is a victim and who is not.

"Everyone deserves to be heard."