Submission in one sentence
Systems can collect every incident and still lose the pattern.
The submission argues that risk can remain invisible when repeated contact, changing methods of access and the cumulative effect on women and children are recorded across different people and systems without being connected into one trajectory.
Read the complete PDF submissionWhat process it addressed
The submission was prepared by The Pete Bates Project Pty Ltd for the Australian Government’s Second Action Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children. It addressed five priority areas: victim-survivors; prevention and early intervention; children and young people; people who use violence; and system integration and workforce.
Publishing a submission does not imply acceptance, endorsement or adoption by the Australian Government.
Six recommendations
- 01
Language and translation support
Fund plain-language resources that help victim-survivors translate cumulative coercive control into terms police, courts and services are structured to act on.
- 02
Technology-facilitated abuse guidance
Train family-law professionals to assess the pattern, timing and volume of post-separation contact, not only the content of an individual message.
- 03
Protection-order service as a risk point
Treat service or notification as a distinct heightened-risk period requiring active follow-up rather than the end of the response.
- 04
Cross-agency case continuity
Connect repeated contacts about the same alleged perpetrator into one continuously updated risk picture across police, courts and family services.
- 05
Child testimony credibility
Use trauma-informed frameworks that treat children’s accounts and observed behavioural responses as credible evidence of their environment.
- 06
Public pattern literacy at scale
Support continuous public education that helps people recognise a developing pattern before it is reduced to disconnected incidents.
How the submission connects to PBP’s public work
The submission places PBP’s central proposition into a policy context: coercive control is experienced as cumulative and relational, while many reporting and intake processes are built around discrete, dateable events. Its recommendations connect recognition language, post-separation digital contact, child credibility, intervention risk and cross-agency information continuity.