Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697640352713.pdf (Australia)
Your submission Please provide a brief summary of your experience and any relevant issues.

Your submission should respond to one or more of the terms of reference.

You may also wish to include any solutions, suggestions, or recommendations you have corresponding to the terms of reference.

Please note that content from this page onwards may be published.

Summary I am a solicitor currently practicing family law in Australia and provide this submission in my professional capacity.
My proposed solutions are to paragraphs (a), (e) and (g) of the committee’s Terms of Reference.
By way of background, I believe that: • perpetrators of family, domestic and sexual violence often have a malignant personality disorder, specifically anti-social personality disorder (“ASPD”) or narcissistic personality disorder (“NPD”), as described in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (“DSM-5”); and • targets of family, domestic and sexual violence often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”) as defined in the DSM-5.
I understand that this definition essentially encompasses the as-yet officially unrecognised condition of complex trauma, which is trauma caused by repetitive interpersonal abuse.

Perpetrators ASPD sufferers are deceitful, lack empathy and may repeatedly commit acts of physical assault including spouse or child beating.

ASPD is estimated at between 0.2 and 3.3 per cent of the population with more than 70 per cent.

of sufferers believed to be male.


(DSM-5) NPD involves a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy, which may result in the exploitation or neglect of others.

NPD is prevalent in 0 to 6.2 per cent of the community, with 50 to 75 per cent.

being male.

(DSM-5) Survivors PTSD symptoms include an inability to remember an important aspect of the traumatic event due to dissociative amnesia and distorted cognitions that lead the individual to blame themselves.
(DSM-5) The prevalence of PTSD varies geographically, from about 3.5 per cent in the US to around 0.5 to 1 per cent in other countries.

Women are more likely to suffer from PTSD than men.

(DSM-5) Articles Support for the theory that intimate partner violence is perpetrated by ASPD sufferers and their targets develop PTSD as a result is provided by Spencer et al in “Mental Health Factors and Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration and Victimization: A Meta-Analysis” Psychology of Violence (2019).
A forensic psychiatrist from Brisbane and a Melbourne barrister posited that the husband of Allison Baden-Clay (who murdered her in 2012 following many years of violence towards her) suffered from NPD.

See Scott R and Freckleton, I, “Narcissistic Rage and the Murder of Allison Baden-Clay”, Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (2018).

Recommendations Overall, my recommendations are to educate and raise awareness about ASPD, NPD and complex trauma.
Ensure the police have expert support in diagnosing ASPD or NPD where family, domestic or sexual violence has been alleged.

Be watchful of the signs of domestic violence and understand how it feels.

My detailed response to each applicable Term of Reference is set out below.

3 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 111 (a) Immediate and long-term measures to prevent violence against women and their children, and improve gender equality.
Short-term In the short-term, a measure to help prevent violence against women and their children is to ensure that the police have access to a panel of psychologists with experience in diagnosing ASPD, NPD and/or complex trauma.

One of the major difficulties with identifying intimate partner violence is that the abuse will have occurred over a long period of time, with no witnesses other than the perpetrator and their target.
It is acknowledged, even in domestic violence legislation, that a couple may accuse each other of domestic violence.

(See section 4(2)(e) of the Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012 (Qld).)

In order to understand who is being truthful about what happened, the police’s efforts would be assisted by a panel psychologist assessing whether either person involved shows symptoms of ASPD.

An essential feature of ASPD is deceitfulness.


Sufferers are frequently manipulative and may repeatedly lie, use an alias, con others or malinger.

According to the DSM-5, deceitfulness is not a specific feature of NPD.

However, NPD sufferers are very sensitive to “injury” from criticism and may react to perceived slights with disdain, rage or defiant counterattack.
If the police can identify a potential perpetrator as an NPD sufferer, it may help them appropriately identify the risk of a rage attack before it occurs.

There is some debate in family law circles about “high conflict couples”.

That is, couples where both parties are responsible for violence against the other.

My view is that relationships like this are more likely to involve an abuser and a target who still has the strength to stand up to the perpetrator.
This view is supported by domestic violence legislation in Queensland which provides that “where there are indications that both persons in a relationship are committing acts of violence, including for their self-protection, the person who is most in need of protection should be identified”.

(See section 4(2)(e) of the Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012 (Qld).)
Having access to a psychologist with experience in diagnosing complex trauma will assist police in understanding how to identify, protect and avoid re-traumatising survivors of family and domestic violence.

It is particularly important for victims of sexual violence where the perpetrator may be unknown and cannot be assessed for ASPD or NPD.
Long-term In the long term, I believe that education about the interaction between ASPD, NPD and complex trauma is the key to reducing family, domestic and sexual violence and its impact on those who experience it.

There are a number of programs freely available on the internet about the red flags of toxic partners and how to recognise them.

Unfortunately the recognition of ASPD and NPD has not been accepted by mainstream government organisations, such as the police.
There is general confusion over and fear of the terms “sociopath” or “psychopath” which are sometimes used to describe ASPD.

Psychopathy sits outside the DSM-5 and is diagnosed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) developed by Robert Hare.

In my view, all sectors of government, non-government and community organisations confronting violence of any kind should be trained to understand ASP and NPD.

However, identification and diagnosis should be undertaken only by trained psychologists.
These organisations should also undertake training on complex trauma, through centres such as the Blue Knot Foundation.

4 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 111 Blue Knot is the Australian National Centre of Excellence for Complex Trauma.
In my view, their updated Practice Guidelines for Treatment of Complex Trauma and Trauma Informed Care and Service Delivery, published in 2019, should be followed by all bodies working with survivors of family, domestic or sexual violence, including police, court officers and community workers.

In the much longer term, I believe that education about ASPD and NPD should be provided in secondary school.
I understand there have been government educational initiatives about mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.

Although ASPD and NPD are behavioural (rather than mental health) disorders, early education will help us recognise warning signs and avoid being targeted.
Improve gender equality In my view, violence against women and their children is severe, physical and recurrent for a number of reasons, including: • • the historic treatment of women as male possessions (for example, Queensland only criminalised marital rape in 1989); a widespread culture of victim-blaming (asking “why didn’t she leave?” instead of “why did he do it?”); • men are (generally speaking) physically stronger than women and more prone to physical aggression; and • society tends to disbelieve women (evidenced by the women who drove the “Me Too” movement).
Improving gender equality, to my mind involves a two-step process.

The first step is to somehow correct the factors above, in order to rebalance the power differential between men and women.

The second step involves acknowledging and understanding that women can also be perpetrators of interpersonal abuse.

Part of the first step should involve men acknowledging and respecting a women’s individual bodily automony and her right to consent to every act of sex, whether married or not.
We need to believe women when they disclose relationship abuse, instead of suggesting things would improve if she could change (ie blaming the target for how they were treated).

Outside relationships, we need to stop blaming abuse on a woman’s clothes or behaviour and accept that she was targeted by a man who wanted to hurt her.
We, as a society, need to be alert to displays of physical aggression and call the police when we hear it in our neighbourhood or see it occurring in public (for example, the public choking of Nigella Lawson by her husband in 2013).

The second step is difficult to reconcile with the first, as it acknowledges that women are not always the target of interpersonal abuse, but may be the perpetrator.

The DSM-5 confirms that ASPD is much more common in males than in females.
However it notes that there has been concern that ASPD may be underdiagnosed in females “particularly because of the emphasis on aggressive items in the definition of conduct disorder”.

According to the 2016 Personal Safety Survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 17% of women and 6% of men had experienced physical or sexual violence by a partner since the age of 15.

23% of women and 16% of men had experienced emotional abuse.

See https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/4906.0 .
Clearly women are more likely to be subject to intimate partner abuse, whether physical or emotional.

However, we need to accept that violence is not only by men against women.

I believe that nearly all intimate partner violence is perpetrated by ASPD or NPD sufferers.

In my view, understanding and working from this paradigm will ultimately improve gender equality and reduce violence.
5 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 111 (e) All forms of violence against women, including, but not limited to, coercive control and technology-facilitated abuse.

The difficulty with reducing the incidence of coercive control is that it is very difficult to recognise, whether externally or from within a relationship.

In my view, recognition of coercive and controlling behaviours is the key to managing them.
We need to understand what coercive control looks like from outside a relationship and what it feels like within it.

Coercive control in relationships takes many forms, including isolation, monitoring activity (eg through technology), gaslighting, financial control and sexual coercion.

As a third party, signs of abuse may include a friend or family member withdrawing, appearing fearful, unable to spend money freely or mentioning unusual or inappropriate sexual behaviour by their partner.
From within the relationship, a target of coercive control often feels confused.

A common question asked by abused wives is: “Is this what marriage is supposed to be like?” This is because the perpetrator masks the abuse as love.

They will manipulate, lie and gaslight their partner into believing that any problems with the relationship are the target’s fault, not the perpetrator’s.
The difficulty with resolving this problem is that even if a third party highlights the abuse to a target, they will not recognise it as such.

According to coercive-control expert, Dr Evan Stark, “the victim becomes captive in an unreal world created by the abuser, entrapped in a world of confusion, contradiction and fear.” In my view, the key to recognising, surviving and escaping an abusive relationship is to maintain supportive external relationships.
For those of us on the outside, we need to stay emotionally connected with the target to provide that external support.

This can be challenging when the target stays with her abuser and feelings of helplessness are common, for the target and her support network.

From a community perspective, COVID-19 has provided some unlikely insights into ways to reduce intimate partner abuse.

Evidence suggests that mandatory self-isolation has increased the frequency of violence against women.
Logically, doing the opposite should have the opposite effect.

After lockdown restrictions have eased, it may be worth considering programs designed to reconnect communities, for example, offering street closures on request so neighbours can gather informally.

From a government perspective, criminalising coercive control may also help reduce its impact.

I understand that England, Wales and Scotland have all introduced the offence, which has not been used to further victimise women (as was feared).
The Scottish law seems to be the more successful as it focuses on perpetrators, rather than victims, and imposes a serious penalty.

See https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-19/coercive-control-domestic-abuse-australia-criminalise/11703442 (g) The efficacy of perpetrator intervention programs and support services for men to help them change their behaviour.
In my view, the efficacy of perpetrator intervention programs will depend on which behavioural diagnosis a family, domestic or sexual violence perpetrator receives.

Sufferers of both ASPD and NPD lack empathy, meaning they have an impaired ability to recognise or identify with the feelings and needs of others.

According to the alternative DSM-5 model for personality disorders, people with ASPD have no concern for the suffering of others, nor do they feel remorse after hurting or mistreating another.
NPD sufferers are excessively attuned to reactions of others but only if perceived as relevant to themselves.

They tend to over or underestimate their own effect on others.

ASPD may be difficult to treat, particularly if the sufferer has severe symptoms and is unwilling to participate in treatment.

However, apparently there is a better likelihood of success in treating NPD.

While not curable, it is treatable.


Therapy can assist an NPD sufferer to grow to accept responsibility for their actions and learn how to develop realistic goals.

6 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 111 If there is insufficient room above to summarise your experience and relevant issues, please attach additional pages to this submission as required.

7 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 111