To mark White Ribbon Day, this Thursday, the Otago Daily Times is running a series on Dunedin people's experiences with family violence. Today we look at the numbers. Over the week we will report the real stories from people living in our community. Debbie Porteous investigates.
Fifty incidents of domestic violence are reported in Otago each week, but probably about 300 incidents happen, most going unreported, police say.
Southern police district family violence co-ordinator Senior Sergeant Kelvin Lloyd said police research indicated about 85% of family violence went unreported.
He was fairly confident the figure was less than that, but was sure most of what happened in people's homes in Otago, stayed private.
In the past year, police in Otago alone received 2500 calls reporting domestic violence.
After recognising the extent of the issue, the effect it had on the community, that 50% of those incidents happened when children were present, and that those children were more likely to commit crime in the future, police have in the past few years begun a targeted push against family violence.
A new cold-calling programme, police safety orders and risk assessments done at every police callout, were all assisting with that.
Snr Sgt Lloyd felt as a result police were now getting a better picture of what was going on in their areas.
The cold-calling involved a community constable visiting homes where there had been three callouts within 12 months.
The constable talked to the occupants and either referred them to appropriate agencies, or passed the file on to the police's area family violence co-ordinator for them to contact other agencies.
Since southern police started making cold calls last November, there had been a "double-digit" cut in the number of callouts in some parts of the city, Snr Sgt Lloyd said.
Police in the South had issued more than a dozen of the police safety orders, which gives them the power to order an abuser out of the home for up to five days on the basis of a gut feeling that something could happen to the victim.
That gave the victim time to decide what she would do, without having the abuser around.
Also, front-line police were now required to make a substantial risk assessment each time they attended a domestic incident.
They had specific questions to ask, and filled out the answers in a seven-page report, which was then forwarded to family violence co-ordinators.
There was a good reason for all the questioning and form-filling, he said.
Information was power and could help police target more and appropriate resources to work on turning the behaviour around.
If family violence could be stopped, it would impact on other crime.
He referred to research done in the Bay of Plenty that showed children exposed to family violence were 60 times more likely to engage in delinquent behaviours and that child abuse was 15 times more likely to happen in homes where family violence occurred.
Some families repeatedly popped up on their radars - 33% of the calls were repeat calls - but it happened across all spectrums of society and in some communities, suburbs or families it was more likely than not kept under wraps.
One of the most disappointing things for Snr Sgt Lloyd was that others often knew about violence but did not tell anyone.
"My biggest fear is that if the worst happens, we talk to the neighbours and they say, 'Yes, something's been going on there for ages'," he said.
If people knew or suspected something was going on, they needed to tell someone.
Another thing to be careful about was blaming violence on things like alcohol, family holidays and financial problems.
They were merely triggers. The actual cause was something in the person's background or their make-up.
"In some minds it's seen as normalised behaviour."
Even after 20 years dealing with family violence, it was still extraordinary to hear people talk about it as if it were normal, Snr Sgt Lloyd said.
It was hard for people who had not been subjected to family violence to get their heads around that.
The numbers
- 91,000 family violence incidents reported to police last year.
- 7 - police attended a family violence incident every seven minutes.
- 50% - the number of incidents children were present at
- 82,646 risk assessments made by police at family violence incidents
- 43 people killed in family violence-related homicides last year.
- 696 police safety orders issued since introduction in July
- 25 November - White Ribbon Day
