Australian Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Network Data Report: Intimate partner violence homicides 2010–2018 - ANROWS

In Australia in 2018–19, intimate partner violence (IPV) homicides accounted for 21 per cent of all homicides and for 62 per cent of all domestic homicides, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology. A significant proportion of domestic homicides occur in a context of domestic and family violence, meaning there is an identifiable history of abuse between the parties that precedes the fatal episode.

The Australian Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Network - Second Edition 2022 (the Network) was established to analyse and improve knowledge about deaths that occur in a context of domestic and family violence.  It was set up to share findings and recommendations across jurisdictions in order to improve the response system and thereby prevent future deaths. Under this mandate, the Network developed a first-stage National Minimum Dataset (NMDS) to examine national trends and patterns with respect to intimate partner homicides preceded by a reported or anecdotal history of domestic and family violence (IPV homicides).

In 2018, the Network published the inaugural Australian Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Network data report which presented NMDS data for IPV homicides occurring between July 2010 and June 2014. In 2020, ANROWS was funded to work in partnership with the Network to produce a second report, which updates and builds on the data presented in the 2018 report, providing data findings from the NMDS on IPV homicides from July 2010 to June 2018. The data presented in this report provides a national picture of the characteristics present in IPV homicides in Australia.

Key findings include:

• IPV homicide is highly gendered: in the majority of cases, domestic violence is used by the man against his female partner.

• IPV homicide occurs across a broad age range (16–80) with the majority of offenders and victims born in Australia.

• IPV homicide can occur at any stage during a relationship with homicides occurring during or after short relationships, as well as after many years of protracted violence by abusers.

• There is a heightened vulnerability for women who separate or intend to separate from their partners prior to the homicide, with actual or intended separation being a feature in over half of the male-perpetrated IPV homicides.

• The diverse range of abusive tactics identified in this dataset, including physical, emotional, social, financial and sexual violence and stalking, suggests that any relationship that exhibits domestic violence, whether physical or non-physical, is embedded with a risk of lethality.

Publication details

This work is part of the ANROWS Research reports series. ANROWS Research reports are in-depth reports on empirical research produced under ANROWS’s research program.

• Between 1 July 2010 and 30 June 2018, there were 311 intimate partner violence (IPV) homicides across Australia.

• More than three quarters of all cases involved a male Intimate Partner Violence homicide offender killing a current or former female partner (n=240, 77.2%). The vast majority of those male offenders had been the primary user of domestic violence behaviours against the woman they killed (n=227, 94.6%).

• Less than one quarter of all cases involved a female IPV homicide offender killing a current or former male partner (n=65, 20.9%). Even though the female partner was the homicide offender, in the majority of these cases she was also the primary domestic violence victim, who killed her male abuser (n=46, 70.8%).

Authors

Australian Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Network  anrows@dss.gov.au

Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety Limited  anrows@dss.gov.au

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