The Australian Cross Disability Alliance (ACDA) provided the following brief submission and relevant background materials to the Victorian Government’s Royal Commission into Family Violence in regard to the context of family violence for people with disability. The submission particularly focused on highlighting the disproportionate experience of family and other forms of violence for people with disability generally, and women with disability more specifically.
The submission noted that violence perpetrated against people with disability, particularly women and girls with disability, currently falls through a number of legislative, policy and service delivery ‘gaps’ as a result of the failure to understand the intersectional nature of the violence that they experience, the vast circumstances and spaces in which such violence occurs, and the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination which make them more likely to experience, and be at risk of, violence.
ACDA called on the commission to include inclusive, consistent, and comprehensive definitions and conceptual understandings of ‘family violence’ and/or ‘domestic violence’ – which include the full variety of violent acts experienced by people with disability, in the full range of domestic settings and relationships experienced by people with disability.