Tasmania Police partners to deliver holistic approach to family violence victim-survivors

Grubby concrete buildings with harsh architectural lines; grey and dark and soulless.

These are the places where victims of family violence, sexual assault or child exploitation have traditionally been required to front up to and report the horrific and traumatic crimes against them.

The processes of reporting are foreign and scary to both adults and children.

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Victim-survivors must tell and re-tell the assaults against them to multiple strangers.

This can lead to high attrition rates during police investigations, and victim-survivors withdrawing complaints.

As a result, the state government and Tasmania Police are looking at new ways to improve the victim survivor experience when it comes to reporting family violence, sexual assault and child exploitation crimes.

They have closely been watching the Orange Door project in Victoria, on which the government's $15.1 million investment for its multidisciplinary centres (MDCs) will be modelled.

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The MDCs are places where counsellors, child safety staff, health staff and specialist police investigators can be found within the same building.

Set up and furnished like a residential house, the centres are designed to make victim-survivors more comfortable in speaking about their experiences and reporting to police.

Prevention of Family Violence Minister Jacquie Petrusma said victim-survivors would walk through the front door to be initially greeted by a counselling service that would listen and assess what that person wants and needs.

Ms Petrusma said safety plans, government support applications and any other relevant services, such as legal or child safety services, can be managed under the one roof.

She said the police would be upstairs, and would only be engaged and available if the victim-survivor was ready and wanted to report any crimes.

"It is about talking to someone who has experienced family or sexual violence at that time, giving them the counselling, and wrap around support, and finding out what they want to do ... knowing what it is that we need to do for them next," Ms Petrusma said.

"If they feel ready to report, because they have built up a relationship with their counsellor, they can then report to the specialist police officer who is trained in victim-centric investigative techniques."

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Ms Petrusma said police from the relevant specialist units would then be engaged to take down and record a statement.

"That evidence makes a huge difference to the perpetrator pleading guilty," she said.

"If you are confronted with somebody who has been severely injured through family violence, and if that is played to the court, a lot of perpetrators will plead guilty becuase it is hard evidence to argue against."

Ms Petrusma said the less-sterile environment of the MDCs would also be more appropriate for children.

"If we want to have a true focus on child exploitation this is an important set up which will help us in that regard. There is too much child sexual abuse and these centres are going to be set up specifically...to also tackle that," she said.

"It is a place where a mother or a father would feel safe to bring their child ... different from a hospital setting that could be too traumatic."

The Victorian government's Orange Door project came about after the 2016 Royal Commission into family violence, where one of the key findings was inefficient communication between services which increased the risk to victim-survivor safety.

Tasmania Police Deputy Commissioner Donna Adams said the MDCs would enable better information sharing between police, government departments and counselling and support services to improve outcomes for victims.

This includes the sharing of information relating to children within families, and information held across various government departments.

Or it could be as simple as one support person managing an individual case but sharing and having access to information between several government and support services, with the important benefit of the victim survivor only needing to tell their story once.

"It may not lead to a criminal justice outcome but it will ensure we have better co-ordination around support to victims," Deputy Commissioner Adams said.

"It doesn't necessarily have to fall to a support service. We have other support mechanisms in place through this particular model," she said.

"Where there is an opportunity that evidence exists for criminal justice, those packages would be put together and given to police investigators so that they can undertake that criminal investigation as part of the response."

The aim of interstate MDCs has been to reform the criminal justice system's response to family violence and sexual assault, making the system conducive to effectively prosecute against such crimes.

They want to increase the reporting of such crimes to police, assist victim-survivors to come forward and continue on to the prosecution stage, to increase successful prosecution and ultimately reduce offending behaviour in the first place.

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For Tasmania, the MDCs come at a time when the reporting of sexual assault has risen 44 per cent across Northern Tasmania.

Family violence reporting has risen 51 per cent in the North and 36 per cent in the North West.

Child exploitation is also front and centre of the Tasmanian community's conscience, with the Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government's Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings currently underway.

Deputy-Commissioner Adams said the MDCs would be developed alongside the voices of the Tasmanian support sector.

"We have done a lot of research in relation to what is working effectively in other jurisdictions and we have taken those learnings and we are working through how we get a nuanced service that is actually going to support the Tasmanian community," she said.

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Ms Petrusma said the improved responses to family violence in Tasmania, as a result of the MDCs could be immense.

"The difference that it has made to the people in Victoria has been huge, and it is something that will make a huge difference in Tasmania," she said.

"I thinik it is the most monumental change we have done in family and sexual violence since we came to government."

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