The Malinauskas Labor Government has launched its important public awareness campaign targeting young people to ‘see the signs’ of coercive control.

The ‘See The Signs’ campaign is rolling out across social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat and can also be seen on bus shelters around the metropolitan area.

Developed by award-winning advertising agency Showpony, the campaign encourages young women and men to be aware of the ‘red flags’ associated with controlling behaviours.

Coercive control is a pattern of behaviour that can include threats, humiliation, stalking and manipulation, and is used to erode a victim’s confidence or ability to escape an abusive relationship.

The campaign was previewed last week at the ‘See the Signs’ of Coercive Control Public Forum arranged by Minister for Women and the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Katrine Hildyard.

The forum was attended by hundreds of South Australians who heard from Sue and Lloyd Clarke, parents and grandparents of Gold Coast woman Hannah Clarke and her three children who were brutally murdered by her ex-partner in 2020.

Hannah had been subjected to coercive and controlling behaviour prior to this horrific crime.

The campaign comes as the government is preparing to criminalise coercive control in South Australia.

The State Government has been consulting widely as a crucial first step in creating its coercive control legislation.

Consultations sessions have been held with women with lived experience of violence, young people, Aboriginal women, women from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, LGBTQIA+ women and regional women with further sessions planned ahead of introducing legislation.

The wider community will have the opportunity to provide feedback on the draft legislation in the coming months, before a Bill is introduced into State Parliament in the second half of the year.

To view the ‘See The Signs’ campaign, go to: seethesigns.sa.gov.au

Quotes

Attributable to Katrine Hildyard

Education is powerful.  It is crucial to assist young people to recognise the ‘red flags’ of coercive control as featured in this campaign.  This educative campaign is a powerful tool in doing so.

Coercive control is displayed through things like obsessive jealousy, monitoring of a person’s movements, who they speak to, name-calling, humiliation, belittling, and preventing someone from sleeping, seeing their relatives or having fun with friends.

These are all behaviours that are designed to wear a person down and leave them feeling isolated, powerless, small, or like they are ‘going crazy’.

99% of domestic violence homicides are preceded by coercive control.  It is absolutely time for this invisible form of violence to be criminalised. And it will be.

Alongside the legislation that we will introduce this year, it is also critical that we shift attitudes about what is appropriate behaviour, grow understanding, help people see the signs and move beyond only contemplating incidents of physical violence to recognising patterns of behaviour and dealing with them.

Criminalising coercive control will do this and it will improve the policing and legal system’s response to all forms of domestic violence, accurately reflect victim-survivors’ experiences and send a very clear message to the community that this type of violence will not be tolerated.