Domestic violence kills a child every five weeks in New Zealand

Domestic violence kills a child every five weeks in New Zealand, and this does not include the numerous instances of violence that go unreported every day.

One of the most prevalent types of violent crime in New Zealand, according to certain reports, is domestic violence. The New Zealand Police carried out 118,910 inquiries into family violence in 2016. Of those who were violent toward women, 55% were partners, ex-partners, boyfriends or ex-boyfriends. Since many occurrences go unreported, these data might only represent the very beginning.

Dr Janet Fanslow, an associate professor at the University of Auckland, tells the Front Page podcast that police respond to approximately 130,000 occurrences of domestic violence each year.

“At the population level, we’re looking at a problem that affects about one in three women in their lifetime,” she says.

“There’s a high crossover between violence that happens against women in partnerships and child abuse and neglect.”

Fanslow says that the lack of attention paid to this issue can be attributed to the sense of “despair and inevitability around the problems of family and sexual violence”.

Because domestic violence is so prevalent, the actual number of cases that are reported to the police frequently represents just a small portion of what is actually occurring behind the scenes.

According to estimates, only 20% of incidents that actually occur in the community are reported to the police, said Fanslow.