Refuge is Homicide Prevention

Every May, during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Australians gather to remember women and children killed by people who were supposed to love them.  

We say their names.  

We light a candle.  

We hold the grief of lives stolen by gendered violence.  

Beneath that grief is a shared hope – that next year there will be no new names to add. That no more lives will be lost to a problem that is entirely preventable.

At Kara Family Violence Service (Kara), remembrance is not symbolic. It informs every decision we make, every bed we fill, and every risk we assess. Preventing family violence deaths is not abstract work. It is what we do, every day.  

For 48 years, Kara has operated as a crisis response service for women and children escaping family violence, including through the provision of refuge. In that entire time, demand for our service has never slowed. We operate under relentless demand because, despite modest progress, gendered violence remains deeply embedded in our society.  

This is why refuge must be named accurately.

Refuge is homicide prevention.

When a woman decides to leave a violent partner, the risk of being killed escalates. This is the most dangerous moment in an abusive relationship – when control is challenged and perpetrators respond with heightened violence. Refuge intervenes at this precise point. It creates distance. It removes access. It provides protective hiding. It provides time and begins to restore freedom and agency.

Refuge is not simply accommodation. It is a deliberate, life‑saving intervention that interrupts violence before it becomes fatal. At Kara, we walk alongside women and children as they navigate immediate danger, we hold not just their risk but also their hopes for a life beyond violence.

Our crisis response work includes safety planning, court support, coordination with police and child protection, and secure accommodation for women and children at the highest risk. In the last year our small team of 20 supported over 600 women and children to escape violence and begin rebuilding their lives.

And yet, despite decades of evidence, crisis response and refuge services remain chronically underfunded. We are expected to manage lethal risk with finite beds, stretched staff, and precarious funding arrangements.

After 48 years, what does it mean that demand has never slowed?

It means gendered violence has been tolerated by our community.

It means systems have been designed to manage harm rather than stop it.

It means women and children continue to pay the highest price for male violence.

Each death we commemorate in May is not an unpredictable tragedy. It is a systemic and community failure – and it is preventable.

If we are serious about preventing family violence, refuge must be treated as essential infrastructure, not a discretionary service.

The women who come to Kara are courageous. Leaving violence requires extraordinary resolve, often in the face of fear, financial insecurity, and enormous systemic barriers. Our responsibility is to meet that courage with protection – not scarcity.

This Domestic Violence Awareness Month, remembrance must be matched with action.

We need community support through donations, advocacy, and an unwavering public insistence that violence against women is unacceptable.

And we need a collective commitment to meet survivors with the same courage they show when they choose safety.

We know how to prevent these deaths. We always have.

If we are serious about ending family violence, government must fund refuge adequately, guarantee crisis response services, and stand publicly and unapologetically against violence against women and children.

The courage is already there — in the women who leave, and in the services that meet them at their most dangerous moment. What is required is a collective responsibility to match it.

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