Impacts-of-methamphetamine-in-Victoria-Community-Assessment-Penington-Institute

Family violence was not only being identified in the family violence sector, but also with thoseworking in housing, homelessness and youth work. An AOD worker noted:“While we’re not a family violence focused service, we have a large proportion of people affected byfamily violence. People [who use methamphetamine] come in ... reporting violent behaviour in theirrelationships.”While a youth worker noted that they:“…turn up to do an outreach for a young person and they’re just tearing up the house ... in theprocess they will threaten, push or throw an object at their partne.r”Workers in various family violence services noted that they were seeing much more severe injuries,including:“…broken jaws, broken arms, women hit with babies in their arms”; and“…really serious assaults... choking, knife threats, smashing a head into a wall.”However, all but two people interviewed believed that this level of violence and assault tended tohappen amongst people who had a pre-existing propensity to violence, as one explained:“I would tend to think that those people would already be violent or have the potential to be violent...the types of people, who if really drunk would have the propensity to violence.”A few people noted that the violence appeared to occur while the perpetrator was affected bymethamphetamine, and during the come-down. With what one worker described as:“…when they’re coming down they are physically and violently having an outburst and hurting thepeople they love.”Beyond the physically escalating violence, there were increases in reports of “verbal, financial andemotional abuse”. Another person reported that “We’re seeing the destruction of property”.Family violence was also not limited to intimate partners, but also child to parents and elder abuse byan adult child.Services reported seeing “lots of physical altercations with parents”. One worker noted:“Family members that have a user living at home... that’s the biggest trauma... it’s the verbal abuse,some fairly small numbers where the users are getting physically abusive.”Another said: “Parents have had to call police... then to protect other children they have to take outintervention orders.”47