Victorian Law Reform Commission: Improving the Response of the Justice System to Sexual Offences

Sexual offending perpetrated against women by a cohabiting partner is significantly under-reported, and barriers to help-seeking are compounded by systemic and socio-economic disadvantage. 

With this in mind, and given Women’s Legal areas of legal practice and client cohort, we considered that our lawyers may have observations on the experiences of women we work with that would be a valuable contribution to the review.

Our submission presents practice-based evidence, informed largely by a qualitative group interview with lawyers at Women’s Legal.

We invited lawyers to share their insights and observations about clients’ experiences of reporting sexual assault and accessing supports – in the justice system as well as non-legal services. The group interview was semi-structured, with the questions based on aspects of the Issues Papers that are relevant to our areas of legal practice and expertise.

The observations of our lawyers may provide a unique perspective and valuable insights into the lived experiences of women accessing family violence, family law and child protection legal help, and some of the systemic, cultural and professional practice barriers to their needs being met in the existing justice system response to sexual assault.