Ten Commitments for Prevention and Response to Domestic and Family Violence in the Anglican Church of Australia.
Violence in our communities is unacceptable, whether that violence occurs in the street, in our home, in our workplaces or in our church communities, and whether it is perpetrated by men or women. Our Christian scriptures proclaim the equality of every human being and demand that our behaviour towards others is characterised by the behaviour of God towards us – of justice, love and mercy, compassion, patience and a mission to heal the sick and mend the broken hearted. The Anglican Church of Australia (ACA) wants to prevent and to help address the terrible injustice of domestic and family violence, responding with care and compassion towards those affected. These Commitments for the prevention of and response to domestic and family violence in the ACA are a tool to help resource and empower our Anglican provinces, dioceses and parish churches to bring about change and to continuously improve our preventative work.
These Ten Commitments for Australian Anglicans recognize the policy context of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children 2010-2022 (Canberra, Australian Government, 2010) which is being implemented in four stages through the development of rolling three-year action plans. A key outcome has been the national Primary Prevention framework – Change the story: a shared framework for the primary prevention of violence against women and their children in Australia (Our Watch, Melbourne, Australia, 2015). It identifies faith-based contexts as one of eleven priority settings where social norms, attitudes and practices are formed and reinforced and so is a key context for primary prevention work.
Abuse of power is at the heart of many relationship problems in the community and the church. In essence, abuse is one person’s misuse of power over another. This can occur as a one-off event or be a chronic pattern of behaviour. Research has found that women are far more often the victims of abuse than men. Abuse is not just about being physically violent. Abuse can include emotional abuse, threatening, coercive or controlling behaviour, physical or sexual abuse, and also spiritual abuse. Research by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (Personal Safety Survey, 2016) found
- 1 in 2 women (53% or 5 million) and 1 in 4 men (25% or 2.2 million) had experienced sexual harassment during their lifetime.
- 1 in 4 women (23% or 2.2 million) and 1 in 6 men (16% or 1.4 million) experienced emotional abuse by a partner since the age of 15.
- 17% of women (1.6 million) and 6% of men (547,000) had experienced violence including physical and/or sexual violence by a partner since the age of 15
- 2 in 5 people (39% or 7.2 million) aged 18 years and over had experienced violence, including physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 15.
Domestic and Family Violence doesn’t just happen in other communities – it happens within the families and relationships of people of our churches. In the 2019 National Anglican Family Violence Research Project conducted by NCLS Research, when asked the direct question “Have you ever been in a violent relationship with any partner?” approximately 23% of Anglicans who had ever been in an adult intimate relationship said “yes”. (This compared to 15% for the equivalent group of the general Australian public in the same study.)
The Ten Commitments outlined here provide us with a foundation to guide our work in making the church a place where women, men and children are safe; where violence is prevented, where the wounded are healed and justice prevails, so that God’s grace can flow into the lives of all, insofar as we can achieve such outcomes.
The commitments focus on preventative actions in addition to training our ministers and improving care for those who have experienced abuse. In the long term, preventing abuse is better than only reacting once abuse has happened and people are suffering.
The commitments are drawn from research into best -practice models and discussion, having had input from our Dioceses, clergy, lay people and victim/survivors. They also draw on the findings of the National Anglican Family Violence Research Project conducted by NCLS Research.
The Commitments outline our approach at a national, diocesan and local level. This document provides:
- Statements and explanations of each commitment.
- Strategies to enable each commitment.
- Ideas and ways in which we can build on our strengths as a church and work together to achieve positive outcomes.
Note: A number of different terms are used to describe domestic and family violence. By domestic and family violence we mean any violent, threatening, coercive or controlling behaviour that occurs in current or past family, domestic or intimate relationships. This includes not only physical injury, but direct or indirect threats, sexual assault, emotional and psychological torment, spiritual abuse, economic control, damage to property, social isolation, and any behaviour which causes a person to live in fear. Some practitioners prefer the word ‘abuse’, however we have chosen to use the term ‘violence’ to highlight the harm associated with each of these behaviours.