Australian study of prevalence, history of childhood victimisation and impacts

This report, the first to emerge from a larger project examining adolescent family violence (AFV) in Australia, centres the voices of young people who have used AFV, providing insight that has until now been lacking into how these young people make sense of their use, and in some cases their experiences, of violence in the home. 

The research engaged directly with more than 5,000 young people aged 16 to 20 via a survey yielding both quantitative and qualitative data. The report contains findings about the AFV experiences of particular groups of young people, for example, gender-diverse young people and young people with disability, as well as young people’s rationales for using AFV and the impacts of this kind of violence.

One in five (20%) survey respondents reported using any form of AFV, with verbal abuse the most common form, and siblings and mothers were most at risk of being subjected to AFV. Eighty-nine per cent of young people who had used AFV reported previous experiences of child abuse: this significant overlap suggests a critical need for primary prevention strategies to respond to the risk of both child abuse and AFV occurring. It also further underscores the need to support children and young people as victims and survivors of domestic and family violence in their own right.

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