PurcellRosemaryPathéMicheleMullenPaul, ‘Stalking: Defining and Prosecuting a New Category of Offending’ (2004) 27(2) International Journal of Law and Psychiatry157, 159.
2.
AlexanderRenata, ‘Women and Domestic Violence’ in EastealPatricia (ed), Women and the Law in Australia (LexisNexis, 2010) 152, 163.
3.
See, eg, s 6(1)(d) of the Restraining Orders Act 1997 (WA), which defines an act of family and domestic violence to include ‘behaving in an ongoing manner that is intimidating, offensive or emotionally abusive towards the person’.
4.
See, eg, Family Violence Protection Act 2008 (Vic) ss 37–37A, 123–123A and 125A.
5.
See Department of Justice and Industrial Relations, Safe at Home: A Criminal Justice Framework for Responding to Family Violence in Tasmania (August 2003).
See BettinsonVanessa, ‘Is the Creation of a Discrete Offence of Coercive Control Necessary to Combat Domestic Violence?’ (2015) 66(2) Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly179, 190–196.
Alison Saunders, Director of Public Prosecutions (UK), quoted in Crown Prosecution Service, ‘DPP: Controlling and Coercive Behaviour Can “Limit Victims' Basic Human Rights” as New Domestic Abuse Law Introduced’, 29 December 2015 <http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/latest_news/new_domestic_abuse_law_introduced/>.
Sentencing Advisory Council (Tasmania), Sentencing of Adult Family Violence Offenders, Report No 5 (2015) Table 2 [2.5.3]. However, it should be noted the offences, as originally formulated, required a complaint had to be lodged within 6 months of the last action that made up the course of conduct to which the complaint related – a requirement that proved to be very restrictive. In 2015 the limitation period was extended to 12 months: Family Violence Amendment Act (Tas) s 5.
25.
College of Policing (United Kingdom), Digest, January 2016, 12.
26.
Prosecuting offences where the injury was the product of an abusive ‘course of conduct’ was identified as a difficulty in R v Curtis [2010] All ER 849 [6]-[13] and R v Widdows [2011] EWCA Crim 1500.
27.
ALRC, Family Violence: A National Legal Response, Report No 114 (2010) [13.59]-[13.62].
28.
Statutory Guidance Framework, above n 20.
29.
Ibid3.
30.
See GarfieldLeslie, ‘The Case for a Criminal Law Theory of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress’ (2009) 5(1) Criminal Law Brief33.
31.
EisenbergAvlana, ‘Criminal Infliction of Emotional Distress’ (2015) 113Michigan Law Review607.
32.
Garfield, above n 30, 40.
33.
‘Not only is coercive control the most common context in which women are abused, it is also the most dangerous’: Stark, above n 14, 497.
34.
‘85% of respondents felt that the current law does not provide adequate protection for victims [of domestic abuse].’ Home Office, above n 15, 6.
35.
See, eg, Special Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence in Queensland, Tell the Taskforce: Domestic and Family Violence Survey Report (2015) 18. (Participants frequently ‘identified a need to increase the scope of laws around [domestic and family violence] and for general law reform’.)
OgilvieEmma, ‘Stalking: Criminal Justice Responses in Australia’ (Paper presented at the Stalking: Criminal Justice Responses Conference, Sydney, 7–8 December 2000) 8.
42.
In 2011, for example, the stalking provision in the Victorian Crimes Act 1958 (s 21A) was amended to include conduct normally described as ‘bullying’: ie, abusive or offensive behaviour by a person towards another, or in the presence of another: Crimes Amendment (Bullying) Act 2011 (Vic).
43.
Note that s 4A was inserted into the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (UK) in 2012 and extends the ambit of stalking to include conduct by a perpetrator which causes serious alarm or distress to the victim.
44.
SchelongKatherine M, 'Domestic Violence and the State: Responses to and Rationales for Spousal Battering, Marital Rape and Stalking (1994) 78(1) Marquette Law Review79, 113–114; SiegelReva B, “The Rule of Love”: Wife-Beating as Prerogative and Privacy' (1996) 105Yale Law Journal2117–2207.
45.
R v Curtis [2010] All ER 849 and R v Widdows [2011] EWCA Crim 1500. See especially R v Hills [2001] Crim LR 318, [31], Otton LJ holding ‘it is unrealistic to [classify behaviour between husband and wife as stalking,] which either postulates a stranger or an estranged spouse’. A similar argument is made in Alexander, above n 2: ‘Domestic violence can include stalking but, in general, stalking is not between family members and is dealt with separately’, 163–4.
