Innovative approaches to intimate partner violence interventions and engaging bystanders

• In Event: Bystander Intervention in Gender-Based and Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is widely understood to be a worldwide epidemic, having serious implications on individuals, families, and communities. In Australia one in four women have experienced IPV since the age of 15, and this violence is mostly perpetrated by a current or former male partner. Justice and service responses to stop this violence to save lives have failed to stem these deaths. Creating community culture that calls out attitudes and behaviours that drive violence against women might offer hope to create sustainable change. One approach is educating community members to be bystanders who feel empowered to call out attitudes and behaviours that drive violence as well as reach out to assist victim/survivors and where appropriate intervene to stop violence. Community grass-roots intervention can offer hope to create community norms that model safe and respectful behaviour, while linking victim/survivors to support and directing people using violence to appropriate services. Bystander approaches provide a basis for both prevention and intervention. Reporting the findings from a scoping review, the presentation will outline the concept of bystanders as well as the evidence base within the literature on effectiveness. Exploration will include details of bystander programs that exist within Australia and look to explore how innovative practice that are emerging. Examples of innovative practice with the Indo-Pacific context will be given. This presentation will further discuss the importance of engaging bystanders, not only to empower other men to intervene when exposed to violence or violent attitudes, but also in facilitating early intervention and education. Implications will focus on the value of innovative community bystander approaches and how this may be applied in Australia and other countries in the Indo-Pacific region.

Authors

• Freya McLachlan, Griffith University

• Patrick O'Leary, Griffith University