“You can get failed by systems”: We say we care about victim-survivors of violence and yet we jail them as kids
Along with Matt Tyler, Executive Director of The Men’s Project at Jesuit Social Services, Principal Consultant Dr Kate Fitz-Gibbon co-authored an op-ed for ABC.
There is a contradiction at the heart of Australian government policy that is directly harming our most vulnerable children and young people.
Federal and state governments across the country are committed to ending domestic, family and sexual violence. This is vital work with a range of actions underway and many more needed. At the same time, these same governments are undermining this work by pursuing some of the most punitive and draconian youth justice policies in recent decades. The children they are locking up are — more often than not — victims of family violence or other forms of child abuse, first, and have engaged in criminal activity, second.
According to data from the Victorian Youth Parole Board, over 60 per cent of children in custody in 2023–2024 had experienced abuse, trauma or neglect. Jesuit Social Services’ own data shows that 74 per cent of participants in our adult justice programs reported being a victim of family violence — more often than not, the violence occurred in childhood.
If only the response to children’s victimisation was as swift and well-resourced as the subsequent justice response to their offending. All too often these young people will be asked to answer for their own use of violence — in police interview rooms and in children’s court processes — well before anyone seeks to ask about their risks and needs as victim-survivors of violence. On that, our system response remains distinctly silent. It’s perhaps unsurprising then that a 16-year-old told the South Australian Royal Commission in a report launched recently, “you can get failed by systems … we need the government and people just to realise … most kids don’t get heard and listened to”.
This excerpt has been republished from ABC. Click here to read the original article in full.
