Why the dark truth of domestic violence is unbelievable

Perth Now

a day ago

When police quizzed forensic psychologist Helen Paterson about the crimes of a serial arsonist, she had a lightbulb moment that illuminated her career.
Now arguably Australia's leading researcher on domestic violence memory, she was then a Canadian exchange student living in a cheap Sydney apartment.
There was a firebug residing in her building who kept setting it alight and during repeated questioning from police, "I gathered that the questions they were asking were not the questions I was learning about in academia that they should be asking".
"I realised there's a disconnect between what's happening in the ivory tower of academia and the real world," she says.
"Is the advice they're getting from academia not practical or are they just not hearing it? So that's what sparked my interest."
After completing a PhD on the risks of witnesses discussing crimes and the impact on their memories, the University of Sydney academic conducted years of research on how to ask questions about single-event crimes before the impact of COVID prompted a focus switch.
"I was seeing the increases in domestic and family violence rates, and it was terrible," she explains.
At first she considered stepping back into the real world to volunteer part-time in a family violence refuge but then realised she could use her position within the university to fight for abused women to be heard and believed.
Her subsequent groundbreaking research has made her a finalist in the country's leading science awards, the Australian Museum Eureka Prizes, in a new category of Excellence in Forensic Science.
Dr Paterson's work addresses a crucial issue at the intersection of psychology and law: how to support victim-survivors of domestic violence in providing credible, accurate and admissible court testimony.
"When people recall a repeated event, it can become less detailed because we stick to the script of what would typically happen," she says.
"But detail is really important because the judge, jury and police officers see detail as being indicative of higher credibility."
Her laboratory studies reached the disturbing conclusion that the more often a domestic violence survivor is victimised, the less likely they are to be believed.
Because many situations involve divorce and child custody, people also believe "there is some potential motivation to tell a lie", she says.
As a result, "people are always judging them within that context".
Repeat victims also make "internal intrusion" errors, she adds, where they can mix up a Tuesday event with a Thursday event.
"And then it's defence 101 for lawyers to say, 'he was out of town on the Thursday, so it couldn't have been him and we think you're making everything up'."
Former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery, KC, believes Dr Paterson's findings have had direct application in policing and criminal prosecution and contributed to improving evidence reliability and credibility.
Her research has been used to train police, provide objective reassurance to victims and improve forensic outcomes, he says.
"Her work (as an expert witness and otherwise) has enabled court practices to evolve in a scientifically supported manner and, ultimately, many victims to be relieved of ongoing abuse," Mr Cowdery says.
"That is no mean achievement."
Australian Bureau of Statistics data estimates one in four women and one in eight men have experienced violence by an intimate partner or family member since age 15.
Even so, exasperated anti-violence advocates launched a national online forum in the lead-up to the May federal election, citing the fact virtually no political attention had been paid to the crisis during the campaign.
"To truly stop domestic, family and sexual violence, to keep families strong and communities safe, we must stop the violence at its source," organiser and No to Violence CEO Phillip Ripper said at the time.
"We are looking forward to hearing from some of our leaders on how they will make that happen."
But more disconcerting still than the raw victim data, the bureau points to domestic violence matters having a 77 per cent conviction rate compared to non-DV cases achieving a rate of 92 per cent.
It's here that the results of Dr Paterson's lab work provide insight into crucial contributing factors.
Participants in her studies either watch one video of domestic violence or four videos of domestic violence that are similar with the same perpetrator but different events.
The four-video participants are asked to describe the last video they viewed and the researchers compare how memory is affected by multiple events.
"What's interesting is if we video these people and show it to mock jurors and get them to rate their credibility, they rate the repeated event participants as less honest, less cognitively competent and less credible," she says.
"That's really problematic because it potentially means the more repeatedly you are victimised, the less likely you are to be believed."
But "it gets worse than that" because in the studies where participants are instructed to lie about having witnessed a domestic violence event, their credibility is rated the same as single-event witnesses.
"So that tells us (repeat-event witnesses) are also less likely to be believed than people who are lying … which is really concerning," Dr Paterson says.
Her research also shows repeat-event witnesses are more likely to use hedge words such as "think", "perhaps" and "maybe", which could contribute to lower credibility ratings.
It's a pattern observed among study participants but could even be more pronounced in the context of domestic violence.
"If we consider the experience of someone who has been repeatedly gaslit and subjected to coercive control, it's highly likely their confidence would be impacted," Dr Paterson says.
Gaslighting, which is a form of coercive control, is another crucial element of the research.
So how does the justice system improve victim outcomes in the face of such challenges?
Dr Paterson says it is crucial to educate judges, juries, lawyers and police officers about memory.
"We need them to hear from experts who can tell them that this is what we expect of repeated event memory," she says.
"We expect it to be less detailed ... that they might use more hedge words but what they're saying is typically quite accurate in that it happened to them, although they may confuse details of one event with another.
"And when you do give that kind of expert testimony, people don't rate victims as being less credible when they have a more thorough understanding."
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