In a landmark inquest into domestic, family and sexual violence in the Northern Territory, a coroner has found that the horrific deaths of four Indigenous women were all preventable, with urgent action needed to prevent a predicted 73 per cent rise in domestic violence over the next decade.
Coroner Elisabeth Armitage investigated the four killings and many others for more than a year, finding that at least 87 women had been killed by their partners in the NT over the past 24 years, almost all of them Aboriginal.
“The plague of domestic violence homicides that relentlessly courses through our community in the Northern Territory is our horror and our national shame,” Ms Armitage said.
Up to seven or eight of every 10 women in the NT experience domestic, family or sexual violence, Ms Armitage found. In 2021, the rates of domestic and family violence-related assault in the NT were three times the national average, and five times that of most other jurisdictions where data is reported.
The rate of domestic and family violence-related homicide in the NT was seven times the national average, Ms Armitage said.
Aboriginal women in the NT were 40 times more likely to be hospitalised as a result of family violence. More than 63 per cent of prisoners were on remand or in jail for DV-related offences. But even those statistics under-reported the prevalence of DV, Ms Armitage found, with less than 10 per cent of violence against women ever reported to police.https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/plague-of-domestic-violence-takes-lives-...Bbwian, yawn if you don't understand any of it.
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