About the event

This seminar is also being delivered as a webinar.

In 2022, Professor Heather Douglas and Hannah Ehler produced their report: Coercive Control and Judicial Education: a Consultation Report.  It was based on interviews with a number of judicial officers and research experts about how best to present information about coercive control in the National Domestic and Family Violence Bench Book and the information needed by judicial officers to better understand coercive control.

As a result, a judicial resource was developed.  However, it is also important that lawyers understand the concept of coercive control, how to recognise it and in some cases, how to prevent it.   Aspects of coercive control are already part of the legislative framework of family violence in relation to restraining orders and criminal trials in which family violence is an issue.  Further, in 2022 the WA Commissioner for Victims of Crime ran a community consultation process relating to coercive control, with a view to considering whether to make coercive control a criminal offence.

This presentation provides information from the point of view of the surveyed judicial officers, information as to coercive control and how to recognise it, and how it might be addressed in a court environment.