Forced marriage as family violence: Potential for change, but more needs to be done

Victoria recognised forced marriage as a form of family violence four years ago. It remains the only state to have done so. However, since coming into effect, there’s been no examination or reporting regarding its impact.

Our new research with 22 stakeholders across Victoria and Australia, ranging from specialist family violence services, multicultural organisations to community support groups, set out to explore what’s changed for service providers following the inclusion of forced marriage as a statutory example of family violence in Victoria, and the opportunities this legislative amendment presents.

Of particular interest to us was also this question:

How are systems designed to respond to family violence prepared for engaging with forced marriage?

It’s important to be clear, first, about the context of this recognition of forced marriage within state legislation.

The amendment to the legislation to include forced marriage was the focus of Recommendation 156 from the recent Royal Commission into Family Violence (RCFV). In its recommendation, no mention was made of the already existing Commonwealth framework, where forced marriage is criminalised under Section 270.7A and 270.7B of the Criminal Code Act (1995), as part of a suite of trafficking and slavery offences.

There was also no recognition that the Commonwealth response, which recognises forced marriage as a form of modern slavery, is out of step with the rest of the world in criminalising forced marriage in this way.

The Commonwealth response to forced marriage has been the subject of limited interrogation in the 10 years it’s been in place. It’s timely, then, to consider whether and how Victoria's approach may be changing the landscape for how we respond to and support those impacted by forced marriage.

Broadening the scope for identification

Following the change in legislation in Victoria, the next step was the need to include forced marriage in the Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework (MARAM), which is used to assess risk in the context of family violence in Victoria.

The inclusion in the MARAM provides a systematic framework through which the occurrence of forced marriage can be identified. This is important, as it can support a more comprehensive identification of risks or presence of forced marriage, especially for practitioners who have no experience or limited understanding of forced marriage.

A significant issue, however, is that the question is primarily being asked of those who are identified as culturally and linguistically diverse – from “CALD” communities.

The specific question on forced marriage in MARAM (“Did you have a choice about being married?”) is under “Questions for people who identify as coming from culturally and linguistically diverse and faith communities”.

The strong association of forced marriage with CALD and newly-arrived migrant communities is also reflected in participants’ narratives on forced marriage, even as it’s acknowledged that forced marriage can and does happen to persons irrespective of their ethnicity, religion, age or nationality.

This has many potential consequences, including not asking people who should be asked.

Increased opportunities for support

Positively, we found that there is support from the service provision sector for the formalised recognition of forced marriage in Victorian legislation, because it enables people affected by it to access the suite of existing family violence service supports.

What is unknown so far is the number of people seeking, or being provided support, in relation to forced marriage, and the extent to which the family violence supports and services in Victoria meets their needs.

We need data on service access, as well as research that centres the voices and experiences of those affected by forced marriage to develop an in-depth understanding of how well services are working, and to identify where and how support needs to be adapted.

Commonwealth response continues to drive interventions

The Commonwealth response remains the primary mechanism for intervention for forced marriage, including reporting and investigation processes. However, key challenges remain regarding the intersection and jurisdiction of Commonwealth and state responses.

These findings highlighted that the Commonwealth response has some traction – that it offered a way to talk to families about the illegality of forced marriage, they can support the raising of airport alerts to prevent young people being sent overseas, and they can intervene and remove the affected persons.

But they also acknowledged that the involvement of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) can make it take much longer to establish trust and good relationships with clients and their families.

The Commonwealth response as the primary mechanism of response further raises concerns around jurisdictional challenges, especially as accessing family violence support and services does not require mandatory reporting or cooperation with law enforcement.

We argue that there’s an urgent need for clear guidelines on reporting and service coordination across Commonwealth, state and territory agencies, in particular between the Commonwealth and Victoria, where there are conflicting agendas regarding the involvement of law enforcement agencies.

To address these issues, our study has six key recommendations:

1. Build a family violence evidence base in Victoria to understand how victim-survivors of forced marriage are moving through the existing suite of support and justice services.
2. Review and enhance family violence support services in Victoria to meet the unique needs of victim-survivors of forced marriage.
3. Design and implement community-led and tailored models for information provision in Victoria.
4. Implement evidence-based training for all specialist family violence practitioners and frontline service providers in Victoria.
5. Review and broaden assessment and identification of forced marriage in the MARAM beyond association with CALD communities to support practitioners in recognising the broad and diverse ways in which forced marriage can occur.
6. Establish a national roundtable to facilitate collaboration across national, state and territories.