Child Abuse and Neglect: a socio-legal Study of Mandatory Reporting in Australia

New duty to report exposure to family violence (commencing 30 March 2005)

Schedule 2 of the Family Violence Act 2004 (No 67) inserted the new duty to report a belief or suspicion on reasonable grounds, or knowledge, that a child ‘is an affected child within the meaning of the FVA. This duty was added to s 14(2)(a). The FVA s 4 defined an ‘affected child’ very broadly to mean:

‘a child whose safety, psychological wellbeing or interests are affected or likely to be affected by family violence’.

The term ‘family violence’ was then also defined very broadly in the FVA s 7 as –

1. 
   any of the following types of conduct committed by a person, directly or indirectly, against that person's spouse or partner:
   

1. 
   assault, including sexual assault;
   
2. 
   threats, coercion, intimidation or verbal abuse;
   
3. 
   abduction;
   
4. 
   stalking within the meaning of section 192 of the Criminal Code;
   
5. 
   attempting or threatening to commit conduct referred to in subparagraph (i), (ii), (iii) or (iv); or
   

1. 
   any of the following:
   

1. 
   economic abuse;
   
2. 
   emotional abuse or intimidation;
   
3. 
   contravening an external family violence order, an interim FVO, an FVO or a PFVO.
   

This new duty, and the very wide definitions of ‘affected child’ and ‘family violence’ may reasonably be expected to have caused a substantial increase in reports in this category from 2005 onwards.