FAMILY violence is being increasingly reported to Hobsons Bay police with 58 more offences recorded last year compared with the previous year — a 36 per cent rise from 159 to 217 cases.
Women’s Health West chief, Dr Robyn Gregory, said the police statistics were reflected in a 40 per cent increase in the family violence-related workload for her organisation in the past 12 months.
Inspector Richard Paterson said police had become better at dealing with family violence.
“We’re encouraging more reporting of family violence and I think over the last couple of years we’ve had better systems in place to refer people and take action against family violence.
“It’s something that we do a lot better now.
“We encourage the reporting of it and it’s made us a lot more aware of the impact in our society, I think, because of the greater reporting of it.”
Dr Gregory said higher reporting rates reflected a greater willingness by women to speak out, but she pointed out times of economic and other stress tended to lead to higher rates of violence.
“We have seen as many clients in the last seven months as we dealt with in the entire year before.
“There are a number of family violence orders being breached, which is a bad thing, but the good thing is it means it is coming to the attention of police and women are being referred to our service.”
Dr Gregory noted that many newly arrived people might not have enough trust in police to report violence directly, but WHW also received a number of referrals from GPs and other health professionals. —Goya Dmytryshchak & Ben Millar
