Canberra: Violence against women and girls is “usually” perpetrated by a partner or spouse and almost always by a family member, new analysis of cases of assault treated in Australian hospitals has found.
New findings from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has shown that nearly 6,500 women and girls were admitted to hospital as a result of assault in 2013-14. In cases where the perpetrator was specified, 59 per cent were caused by the victim’s spouse or domestic partner.
Parents and other family members accounted for nearly half of the remaining cases. In about one-quarter of hospitalised assaults, the perpetrator was not recorded.
Women and girls were hospitalised for assault at a rate that was less than half the equivalent for men, with 56 cases per 100,000 females, compared to 121 cases per 100,000 males.
But “the patterns of injury seen for females are different to that seen for males,” said Prof James Harrison, an injury epidemiologist for the AIHW. The rate was highest for women aged between 20 and 34, at a little over 100 cases per 100,000 women. In the 15 years and older age group, 8 per cent of victims were pregnant at the time of the assault.
In January, the Human Rights Commission called for the commonwealth to improve national data collection on domestic and family violence to identify gaps in services.
Its report found that more than 40 per cent of the 479 homicide events recorded between 2010 and 2012 occurred in a domestic context, with almost 60 per cent of those deaths cases of intimate partner homicide. But gaps in the data meant it was impossible to show with certainty that domestic violence was the cause of death in all such cases. The AIHW is due to publish further findings later in 2017, which it bills as the “first comprehensive statistical picture” of domestic, sexual and family violence in Australia.