By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
THE man in charge of the Casey Family Violence Unit (CFVU) is ecstatic with the region’s small increase in reported family violence cases.
In the past two years to June 2015 family violence reports in Casey have gone up 1.1 per cent according to a recent report by the Crime Statistics Agency.
From July 2014 to June 2015 the City of Casey had reported 3775 family violence cases compared to the previous year’s 3733 – which is something Sergeant Ian Lane from the CFVU is rather happy about.
He’s been in the force for 37 years – patrolling Casey for 15 of them – and has been in charge of the CFVU for two years, and told Star News he was surprised at the increase.
“Only increasing 1.1 per cent in the last financial year is a surprise to me because Casey’s population has grown more than one per cent in that time,” Sgt Lane said.
“I would have thought it would be higher than that but I’m ecstatic it’s not.
“However it’s still an unacceptable number and we have to keep doing everything we can as a community and state to stop it.”
The numbers show a steady rise in reported family violence cases over the past six years, rising 41 per cent since July 2010, but Sgt Lane said it was a good thing.
“We’re actually happy for the number of reports to police to increase,” he said.
“Because it means people are comfortable speaking to us about it so we can help put a stop to it and that’s a really positive thing – but the down side is family violence is happening far more often than we’d like.”
The CFVU averages about 10 family violence reports every day and Sgt Lane said the team dealt with intervention order breaches the most.
“Contrary to popular belief most of our work isn’t offences of physical violence, it’s a substantial part of what we do but most of it is after the charges have been laid and the perpetrator breaches their intervention order,” he said.
The typical family violence offender is male aged 18 to 45 years old. Sgt Lane said the CFVU did not see a lot of female offenders.
“Females assaulting males may not be reported to the same level but I could count on one hand the number of those incidents over the last couple of months,” he said, adding that reports of emotional and psychological abuse is what they see most regularly.
Threats, economical abuse and controlling behaviours are common in Casey and Sgt Lane said “I’m sure a lot is going on that we’re not told about.”
“A male exercising control over their female partner is the real crux of the problem and it can take shape in many different ways,” he said.
But it’s Sgt Lane’s long-term concerns that really worry him.
“If we have such a problem now, in five years what is our problem surrounding family violence going to look like then, it’s not something that’s happened over night, it’s been going on a long time,” he said.
Sgt Lane admitted he thought the court system was good at prosecuting, but fell short in promoting change in the offender.
“We have a very strong network of agencies assisting the victims of family violence but I don’t know if there’s enough help and rehabilitation for the offender to let them think about how they’ve been acting to prevent it from continuing,” he said.
At the moment the CFVU’s main area of response is tackling repeat offenders.
“If a person comes to our attention more than three times in the last year we get involved with the family and even more involved with the offender,” Sgt Lane said.
The CFVU has been operating for five years and Sgt Lane encourages those affected by family violence and even bystanders to “get involved and call police”.
“If family violence reports went down I’d ask myself why, because I don’t know that enough is being done at the moment to stem the flow,” he said.
