Silence and Inaction:

Children and young people’s experience of violence and systemic failure in South Australia

Silence and Inaction draws on interviews conducted by Dr Kate Fitz-Gibbon with 53 South Australian children and young people aged 13 to 18 years old who have experienced domestic, family and sexual violence. 

All participants had lived experience of domestic, family and/ or sexual violence, and were residing in South Australia at the time of participation. Interviews were conducted online, via phone and in person in different South Australian locations. Participants were recruited through specialist family violence, youth and family services, as well as through South Australian Commissioners and Guardians. 

Silence and Inaction presents the insights from these interviews, exploring what helped, what harmed, and what must change in the systems designed to support young victim-survivors of domestic, family and sexual violence. Participants shared their views on how to improve early intervention; service access; responses from police, courts, schools and housing systems; and the long-term supports required to facilitate recovery and healing.

The findings from this study offer an opportunity for South Australia to lead the way in building a system that genuinely protects, supports, and empowers children and young people who experience domestic, family, and sexual violence in their own right. While the young victim-survivors interviewed often demonstrated extraordinary resilience, our current systems do not consistently support them in ways that recognise their rights, safety, and unique experiences as victim-survivors.

A key finding from this study is the profound absence of dedicated, youth-specific domestic, family, and sexual violence services in South Australia. Young people interviewed described feeling invisible within adult-centric systems that treated children as extensions of their caregivers rather than as individuals with rights and experiences of harm in their own right. Without tailored, accessible support pathways, many young people – particularly unaccompanied minors – experience extended periods of homelessness, housing instability, or mental health crisis without effective intervention.

Whole-of-system reform is needed to:

• Embed trauma-informed, developmentally appropriate responses across all service settings;

• Ensure youth-specific, culturally safe pathways to safety, recovery, and healing;

• Build proactive, consistent early intervention systems that identify and respond to violence long before crisis occurs; and

• Centre the voices of children and young people not only in service delivery but in all levels of system design, policy-making, and reform efforts.

The report also examines the need to better support young victim-survivors disclosures, and the role of schools both as a site of risk and as a place of stability and critical support. Throughout the interviews, young victim-survivors shared experiences of:

• Missed opportunities for intervention, where visible signs of harm (e.g., bruises, crying, withdrawal) went unacknowledged;
• Trauma being misread as behavioural problems rather than signs of abuse; and
• Schools lacking the flexibility or capability to offer timely, trauma-informed support.

Young people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, and those from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, spoke about the compounded barriers they faced. Participants stressed the importance of culturally safe services, accessible information in multiple languages, and support workers who understood the intersection of culture, trauma, and systemic racism.