An intimate relationship refers to people who are (or have been) in an intimate partnership whether or not the relationship involves or has involved a sexual relationship, i.e. married or engaged to be married, separated, divorced, de facto partners (whether of the same or different sex), couples promised to each other under cultural or religious tradition, or who are dating.

A family relationship has a broader definition and includes people who are related to one another through blood, marriage or de facto partnerships, adoption and fostering relationships, sibling and extended family relationships. It includes Kinship connections in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities (see – Family Violence), extended family relationships, and family of choice within Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer and Asexual + (LGBTIQA+) families and communities.

People living in the same house, people living in the same residential or institutional facility and people reliant on care may also be considered to be experiencing DFV when one or both people in the relationship try to create an imbalance of power to establish coercive control and commit violence.

Women and children are overwhelmingly the victims of dfv and those who use violence are overwhelmingly male.

DFV can be perpetrated by a partner, family member, carer, house mate, boyfriend or girlfriend. Women also commit DFV against men, as do same-sex partners (DVNSW, 2018).  DFV is also committed by and committed against people who identify as transgender, non-binary, intersex and gender-diverse.

What is Family Violence?

First Nations people’s have advocated for the term ‘family violence’ to be used in conjunction with ‘domestic violence’ in recognition of the violence and abuse that can be used within partnerships, families, extended families, Kinship networks and communities. “Focusing on the term ‘domestic violence’ will not lead to full consideration of, and response to, the destructive effects of colonisation on Indigenous culture and social systems. The intersection of race, gender, age and power, and the disruption of the relationship between spiritual, cultural and environmental dimensions, must be considered in order to understand violence in Indigenous communities” (The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence, 2000, p.115).

The term ‘family violence’ describes physical, emotional, sexual, social, spiritual, cultural, psychological and economic abuses that may be perpetrated within a family and community. The term also recognises the broader impacts of colonial violence and racism on First Nations families, intergenerationally, through extended families and Kinship connections and community relationships. It has also been used in the past decade to include lateral violence, self-harm and suicide, and has become widely adopted as part of the shift towards addressing familial violence in all its forms. (Gordon, 2002).