“Often, women have difficulty understanding they have been coercively controlled, they know something is wrong and they want to leave but they feel in some way they are to blame for what’s going on,” she said.

“It’s a brave move by any woman to contact a lawyer for help. We are very careful to make sure we put the safety of the woman first.”

Speaking at the event, Ms Hill said that coercive control was becoming one of the most dangerous forms of emotional and domestic abuse — and that since writing her book, a number of people have come to her with their stories.

VIEW ALL

“One man contacted me about his sister-in-law, and he gave me permission to share this story. She's married with a six-week-old baby. She's not allowed to wear makeup or choose her own clothes; she doesn't have independent access or control over [her] own phone. She's not allowed to message people. And in fact, he will message pretending to be her. She's banned from using social media, she's banned from leaving the house without him or without his permission. She's banned from seeing her family without him being present. The house is wired and CCTV’d (sic) and microphoned,” she said.

“This man said that his sister-in-law is 31 years old. She's a popular, funny, attractive, well-educated, [from] loving family. And her husband has turned her life to ash. So, her brother-in-law is really desperate to help her, he's been documenting every tiny detail that he's observed and been able to pick up on over the past seven years. So at least the records are clear. But police won't help, the church won't help, the Attorney-General in their state won't help. Friends are terrified and walking away, the family just doesn't know what to do. And it's really clear that every system is failing her. And he feels utterly helpless.”

Women in these types of situations, Ms Hill said, are often scared about what will happen to their children if they decide to leave, or feel trapped in some other way.

“There's a line from a 1975 study that, for me, really captured the challenge we're facing. It was written by the authors of the first nationwide survey on the prevalence of violence in America, it was the first time there’s been a nationwide survey anywhere. And it found that 28 per cent of married couples in America had experienced violence during the marriage. And the conclusion of the authors made off the back of that data really stuck. And it was that with the exception of the police and the military, the family is perhaps the most violent social group and the home is the most violent social setting in our society,” she added.

“And today, that assessment stands, because despite everything we've done, the statistics still haven't changed. It doesn't mean that we're not improving people's lives. But the statistics haven't changed. When surveyed, one in four women say since the age of 15, they've been subjected to physical or sexual violence by a partner. We haven’t surveyed coercive control yet — but that alone is 2.3 million women.”

Whilst Australia has come a long way in terms of listening to victim survivors and doing research with them and “finally grasping” that an incident of domestic violence can be just the tip of the iceberg, awareness still needs to be raised.

“Finally, we're really starting to see gendered violence, not as a collection of physical incidents. But as a whole system of abuse. One that happens in private and in public, it extends into every piece of space that a victim-survivor occupies. And it can involve everyone from the person perpetrating violence through to the Prime Minister,” Ms Hill added.

“[But] in the minds of most Australians, domestic violence is still defined predominantly as physical violence. And that there are other forms of abuse, but nothing is as important or as harmful.”

Moving forward, Ms Hill said that workplaces not only need to have policies in place to protect their staff should they become victims of domestic violence, but also offer a safe and open environment. This comes after an inquiry committee agreed to criminalise coercive control in NSW last year.

“The only real reason to consider criminalising it is to revise the way our systems respond entirely to domestic abuse, because it's really a profound shift to move away from incident-based response to one that makes the entire system of abuse visible. And it's also one that needs to be done with great care,” she said.

“So, in Queensland at the moment, they had 81 recommendations made to the government after a task force went all over the state and had over 500 submissions from victim-survivors, how would you best legislate against coercive control? And the response they gave to government was that you would have to do a four-phase plan to criminalise [it]. And the first part of that would be that you need to co-design a strategy with First Nations people to address the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the criminal justice system. So that's the first part of Queensland four-phase plan to criminalise coercive control.

“All of these talks about domestic violence policy, workplace policies are really useful and important. But if we're waiting for victim-survivors to come forward and disclose, we’re doing it wrong, because most people are not going to do that in their workplace and it will have very low take up only for that reason. But what workplaces need to do is model the opposite of abuse. And you need colleagues and leaders who are prepared not just to respond positively to their report and sign off on their lead but to actually ally with them.”