New research has flagged cars and insurance policies as a way for abusers to use coercive control against their partners and families.
The research, conducted by Allianz in partnership with UNSW’s Gendered Violence Research Network (GVRN), found 72 per cent of survey respondents were not aware of the domestic and family violence (DFV) risks associated with a joint car insurance policy.
Professor Jan Breckenridge, head of UNSW School of Social Sciences and co-convenor of the GVRN, spoke with Women’s Agenda about the widely unknown tactics of coercive control through cars and insurance.
“I think people don’t always recognise it,” she said.
“It’s not uncommon for people in a partnership for one person to have the responsibility for the management of business or relationship affairs.
“Where they don’t know or they’re kept away from that, a whole lot of things can happen.”
The report found people were unaware of several coercive control tactics, including removing a victim’s name from a joint car insurance policy – 59 per cent did not know this was a tactic of DFV.
“They will take people’s names off the joint insurance policy, before they crash a car, so the victim not only doesn’t have a car, but they’ve also in debt, their credit rating is absolutely dreadful,” Professor Breckenridge said.
“It leaves the victim survivor in a shocking situation, where it’s very difficult to get out or recover from.”
Other tactics that respondents of the survey did not know about included cancelling a joint policy without consent (57 per cent), refusing to service the car or make necessary repairs (51 per cent) and draining petrol from the car (51 per cent).
Professor Breckenridge explained how these tactics are forms of financial and economic coercive control because of how heavily Australians rely on their car every day; in fact, 79 per cent of Australian car owners said they couldn’t imagine life without their car.
“If you can keep someone dependent, if you can ensure that they have no opportunity to leave financially because of economic insecurity, then you really are stopping them from making a choice to leave a partnership,” she said.
The UNSW Professor also noted how often this sort of abuse affects women in particular.
“We know particularly women will leave and go back because of inherited debt – they can’t pay it back,” Professor Breckenridge said.
“People can be trapped in a web of financial insecurity and ongoing poverty, and it’s very difficult to move away from perpetrators in that situation.”
In Australia, around two in five car owners have joint ownership over a car, with 87 per cent owning a car with their partner of spouse.
Although she noted it should never be the victim-survivor’s responsibility to prevent this abuse from occurring, Professor Breckenridge urged Australians to review their car ownership and insurance policies, especially in the course of separating from a partnership.
“Be very mindful that some of the insurance policies to date may not have taken into account domestic and family violence implications,” she said.
“But the penalties need to rest with the perpetrators, and the burden of prevention needs to rest with them and addressing their behaviour – not so much the victim survivor, who may not have had a clue what was happening.”
Australia has experienced high levels of domestic and family violence this year and many advocates have called on governments, organisations and other stakeholders to do more to prevent violence.
Professor Breckenridge joins these calls for broad, widespread, community-led action.
“The only way we can prevent domestic and family violence is to have a whole of community response,” she said.