Hello everyone,
This blog is about domestic violence in Victoria State. It is written by Priyanka Pathak and Radhika Tammireddy as a analysis project in Victoria University. We would like to thank our mentor and lecturer Paul Hawkings for inspiring us to write this blog.
We prepared this dashboard using SAP Lumira. The data sources referenced for the analysis are from Australian bureau of statistics, Department of Justice, Magistrates' court of Victoria and Victorian police.
“Australia Says No to Domestic Violence” is a popular campaign in Australia as the domestic violence is growing day by day. Domestic violence has different forms and also known as family violence, intimate violence or child abuse.
Domestic violence can be termed as any act that denies ones human rights. Domestic violence is an ongoing abusive act through which a person wants to control and dominate another person. It can cause physical and mental harm to the victim.
Domestic violence has many forms
- Physical: Threatening to hurt or hurting someone
- Sexual abuse: sexually harassing or abusing someone.
- Emotional: Harming once self-esteem which is mostly unrecognised.
- Controlling your Finance: Controlling access to money and make a person dependent.
- Harm to property: Destroying the property to create fear in a person.
- Restricting social/cultural participation: Not allowing the victim to meet family and friends.
- Restricting spiritual participation: Preventing victim from practising their religion.
Domestic violence not only affects the victim but also the depend children and loved ones.
According to Word Health Organization, about 35% of the women worldwide are being affected by domestic violence. Our attempt here is to understand the DV behaviour in Victoria state of Australia.
Visualization1
Talking about the DV, the question arise is " What behaviours can be considered as Domestic Violence". Any behaviour of the family member/ relative/ partner/ parent that is harmful physically or emotionally towards their fellow family member can be considered as the Domestic Violence. There are various factors/ behaviours contributing to the domestic violence. Our analysis suggest that the behaviour "Forcing partner to have ***" has the highest contribution towards the DV followed by trying to scare/control by threatening to hurt others or denying partner for money. Some other behaviours that can be considered as the act of domestic violence are slapping, pushing, yelling and so on.
Visualization 2
Furthermore, analysing the data from 1999- 2010 shows that majority of the victims from the domestic violence are females. The ratio of the male to female victims are 1:4 i.e. every year about 80% of the victims of DV are females. Hence, it can be said that the domestic violence is an offence committed predominately against the females.
Visualization 3
The incidents of domestic violence have increase over years from year 2009-2007. This visualization provided shows that majority of the incidence of domestic violence recorded are the first incidents.
Visualization 4
Moreover, our analysis demonstrate that the majority of the DV offenses are carried out by Current/former and intimate partners. In which, age group 25-44 is considered to be highly victimized.
Hence, it is necessary to understand your partner's before getting in to the relationship.
Visualization 5
Furthermore, the comparison of the Aboriginal and the other clients is done which shows that both with aboriginal and other clients the number of incidents recorded are almost similar. However, there were no incidents recorded among the Aboriginals after the age of 44.
The conclusion of our analysis, suggest that the domestic violence incidents were more on females and were more in South Metro region of Victoria.
Also we found that more incidents where in the age group of 25-44 and then number of incidents have been increasing by year 2000-2010.
The domestic violence is an act that has increased over years and need to be addressed. If anyone is suffering from or notices someone suffering from domestic violence, the immediate report should be recorded and help should be provided to the victim.
To ensure once safety
- Leave to the safe environment if you feel immediate danger.
- Talk to someone whom you trust like a family member or a friend.
- Inform police regarding the domestic violence.
- It is always better to know your legal rights against domestic violence.
There are many helpful organisations that are available to help domestic violence victims.