Domestic Violence Law Reform and Women's Experience in Court: The Implementation of Feminist Reforms in Civil Proceedings

Domestic Violence Law Reform and Women's Experience in Court The fact that domestic violence is a serious and ongoing social problem has been well recognized since the women's movement made the hitherto private experience of violence against women in the home into a political issue in the 1960s and 1970s. In Australia, a major national prevalence study of violence against women conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1996 found that 23% of women who had ever been married or in a de facto relationship-1.1 million women-had experienced violence from their partner at some stage during the relationship. Feminist legal scholarship, however, has highlighted the many failures of criminal law to respond adequately...