Family and Domestic Violence – dispelling myths

Alexis works with the highest risk, most complex families. Image: Supplied

The realities of Family and Domestic Violence (FDV) are often obscured by myths. Here, Lani Kahn, Practice Leader of the Alexis Family Violence Response Program, dispels some of the most common ones.

Across the board, there’s a perception that people don’t have the capacity to change. I think that’s a huge myth because obviously we wouldn’t be doing the work that we do with people who use violence if we didn’t believe that that could happen. It’s about people seeing behaviours and actions – but they don’t see necessarily see the history.

Nobody wakes up when they’re born saying, ‘You know, I’m going to grow up to aspire to be a family violence perpetrator’. It comes based on experiences and exposures, and all of these sorts of contributing factors.  

If you don’t view the person as a human before seeing their behaviour, then you’re setting yourself up to assume that the person who’s perpetrating the violence doesn’t deserve a better life, and the person experiencing doesn’t deserve a better life.  

I also think that, still, whilst it is changing a lot in terms of how we view family violence, we do have a greater acknowledgement around how aspects of family violence, like coercive control and all of those complicating factors, can be just as harmful.

I think that the traditional notion of family violence is that it’s worst when it’s physical and sexual in nature – those are the injuries you could see. Those are the ones that are actually easier to prosecute. Those are the ones that are easier to quantify with evidence.

But it’s not the ones that necessarily have their lasting scars, or the ones that have that overall insidious impact on every aspect of their life. So, I think shifting that focus from feeling as though family violence is defined primarily through physical risk and physical harm is key in that aspect.