Features
Why focus on people who use domestic, family and sexual violence?
Estimated read time: 7 minutes
“Violence is a problem for victims, but it is not a victim’s problem.”
Lula Dembele, victim-survivor advocate and co-investigator on the Australian National Research Agenda to End Violence against Women and Children, 2023–2028
Why should a research organisation working to improve women’s and children’s safety focus on the people who make them unsafe?
Violence harms victim-survivors but ending it requires us to look at the source of that harm: the people who choose to use violence.
Research on people who use domestic, family and sexual violence is not a shift away from victim-survivors. It’s part of the work required to improve their safety.
To prevent violence, we need to understand how patterns of violence develop, where opportunities to intervene are being missed and what supports people to stop using violence.
“If we are going to eliminate violence against women in this country, we need to understand why people use violence. These are deep-seated problems, and it takes time to understand them fully so we can address them effectively.”
Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine, ANROWS CEO
With the right knowledge, frameworks and investment, Australia can move beyond crisis response towards earlier intervention, meaningful accountability and long-term prevention.
Research helps identify where to intervene
Australia still has significant gaps in its knowledge about the perpetration of domestic, family and sexual violence. Much of what we know comes from service and justice-system data. This leaves us with limited evidence about people who use violence but never come into contact with police, courts or specialist services.
The ANROWS People who use domestic, family and sexual violence research program is helping to address these gaps. The projects we commissioned examine different patterns and contexts of violence and opportunities for intervention across health services, schools, communities and specialist domestic, family and sexual violence services.
Effective prevention and early intervention depend on knowing where harm is developing, not only where it has already escalated.
Our recent guide to the manosphere, written by Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Hub researchers in partnership with ANROWS, is one example of how research can identify an emerging point of intervention and translate evidence into practical support.
The guide explains how online misogynistic narratives can move into classrooms and normalise sexism, harassment, controlling behaviour and victim-blaming. An Introductory Guide to the Manosphere helps educators understand the appeal of this content, recognise pathways into it and respond consistently.
The guide’s strong uptake showed how urgently this evidence was needed. Teachers told us it gave them language for what they were experiencing and helped them recognise that responding to these behaviours was not something they should have to navigate alone.
“Thank you so much for this guide. I thought it was me. I thought I just wasn’t good enough. That I wasn’t clever enough to find the right answers or to stay calm and positive while being harassed and baited.”
Senior secondary school teacher, Queensland
This is what identifying a point of intervention can look like in practice. Research identified schools as a critical setting, and the guide translated that evidence into practical support for educators.
It also reinforced that individual teachers cannot carry the response alone. Addressing manosphere harms requires consistent action across the whole school community, supported by families, services and wider systems.
Different patterns of violence require different responses
Domestic, family and sexual violence is not a simple problem. While most recorded family and domestic violence offenders and alleged sexual offenders are male,1 there is no single reason people use violence. If there were, there might also be a single pathway to stopping it. The evidence tells us otherwise.
Gender-based violence can take different forms and follow different patterns. Our evidence brief on men’s behaviour change programs (MBCPs) notes that programs vary in whether they include types of violence, including technology-facilitated abuse, substance use coercion and sexual violence.
People who use violence are not a homogeneous group. Gendered drivers remain central to understanding men’s violence against women, but patterns of harm, motivations, readiness for change, service barriers and co-occurring factors vary.
As the evidence brief makes clear, “one-size-fits-all” approaches are ineffective. The diversity and complexity of domestic, family and sexual violence mean meaningful behaviour change requires a range of tailored and context-specific responses, with men’s behaviour change programs forming one part of a broader system response.
Tailoring a response does not mean excusing violence or lowering expectations. It means designing responses that can recognise different risks, engage different people and support sustained pathways away from violence.
Accountability must be grounded in context
Some programs specifically work with men who have used violence, providing ongoing support to help them put behaviour-change tools into practice. These responses sit within a broader whole-of-family and community approach that keeps the safety and wellbeing of women and children in view.
Recent ANROWS-commissioned research involving migrant and refugee men and women also demonstrates why standardised responses can fall short.
In-language delivery, bicultural practitioners and complementary case management were perceived as helping men overcome barriers to engagement. Yet engagement did not necessarily produce accountability. Many of the men interviewed denied or minimised their use of violence and family safety contact systems were inconsistent. Men were also reported to use program attendance as “proof” they had changed and to pressure their partners to reconcile.
These findings point to an important distinction. Getting someone into a program is not the same as achieving accountability. Participation must be assessed against victim-survivor safety, reduced harm and meaningful behaviour change.
Interventions to stop violence may differ, but their purpose remains constant: improving victim-survivor safety, preventing further harm and supporting meaningful accountability.
Children and young people need a distinct response
Research also shows that children and young people who use violence require distinct, developmentally appropriate responses.
ANROWS-commissioned research has found that many young people who had used violence in the home had experienced trauma, family violence or other adverse childhood experiences. A national study involving more than 5,000 young people found a strong relationship between young people’s use of family violence and their own histories of childhood victimisation.
This relationship is important, but it is not inevitable. Most children and young people who experience violence do not go on to use violence themselves.
The research points towards developmentally appropriate, trauma-informed and whole-of-family responses, rather than relying on adult models of perpetrator intervention.
Emerging evidence from the IVY Study indicates that young people’s use of intimate partner violence is distinct from adult-perpetrated violence and requires responses grounded in accountability, safety, trauma awareness and behaviour change.
Recognising this distinction does not minimise the harm caused. It enables services and systems to intervene earlier and more effectively, with victim-survivor safety at the centre.
Accountability remains important when a young person causes harm, but it must be developmentally appropriate. Responses can help young people understand the impact of their behaviour, take responsibility and develop the skills needed for safe and respectful relationships.
Safety is the measure of change
Research will not reveal a single program capable of ending domestic, family and sexual violence. What it can do is help establish which approaches contribute to safety, accountability and behaviour change, for whom and under what conditions.
It can also identify responses that are ineffective or inaccessible or that cause unintended harm.
Research on people who use violence is not a competing agenda compared to research with victim-survivors. We can hold two truths at once: people are responsible for their choices to use violence, and governments, services and communities have a responsibility to create stronger opportunities for intervention, accountability and sustained change.
Turning attention towards the source of harm is not a shift away from victim-survivor safety. It is part of how that safety is achieved.
If Australia is serious about ending violence against women and children, we must be willing to look directly at the people who choose to use violence. Not to excuse them, but to stop the harm.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (2026),
Recorded Crime – Offenders, 2024–25:
78% of family and domestic violence offenders proceeded against by police were male.
Sullivan, T. (2026),
Sexual offending in Australia 2023–24,
Statistical Report no. 60, Australian Institute of Criminology:
93% of alleged sexual offenders proceeded against by police were male.
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Media contact:
Emmagness Ruzvidzo,
Media and Communications Manager, ANROWS
E: Emmagness.Ruzvidzo@anrows.org.au
M: 0468 322 800
About ANROWS
Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) was established by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments under Australia’s first National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children (2010–2022). As an ongoing partner to the National Plan, ANROWS continues to build, strengthen and translate the evidence base that informs the current National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children (2022–2032).
With more than 150 research projects led, commissioned or contributed to, ANROWS delivers targeted evidence to inform practice, policy, and systems reform. We engage closely with victim-survivors, communities, service providers, governments and researchers to ensure our work reflects lived experience and supports collective action.
ANROWS is a not-for-profit company jointly funded by the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments. We are a registered harm prevention charity and deductible gift recipient, governed by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC).