Written by Priscilla Green,
Survivor, Advocate and Educator on Domestic Violence,
Leader of Educator Development, RMIT University
Separation is often seen as a step toward safety and freedom for survivors of domestic violence. However, for many, it marks the beginning of a new phase of abuse: post-separation abuse. This insidious form of coercion and control continues long after a relationship ends, targeting survivors—most often women—and their children. It’s a phenomenon deeply intertwined with systemic failures and profit-driven industries that unintentionally or otherwise enable the abuser’s power. In this article I explore the types, impacts, and systemic factors perpetuating post-separation abuse in Australia.
The Current State of Post-Separation Abuse in Australia
Domestic and family violence (DFV) remains a pervasive issue in Australia as with the rest of the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner. However this needs to be considered in the context that underreporting remains a significant problem both socially and in understanding the extent to this epidemic. Despite the rise in awareness and reporting, domestic violence continues to be underreported. It is estimated that as many as 50-70% of domestic violence cases still go unreported globally. Factors like fear of retaliation, economic dependency, housing and finance access, cultural taboos, and mistrust of police, law and family court, contribute to the underreporting.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), one in six women (16%) and one in 16 men (6.1%) have experienced physical or sexual violence from a current or former partner.
Worst still emotional abuse and coercive control figures rise to one in four women (23%) and the abuse does not necessarily end with the relationship.
Post-separation abuse is a term describing ongoing coercive and controlling behaviours aimed at maintaining power over a survivor. In recent years this has been identified as a critical issue and has started to gain significant media attention. These behaviors are amplified through avenues such as family court processes, child custody arrangements, and financial control.
Alarmingly, 60-80% of women who leave abusive partners report experiencing post-separation abuse, demonstrating that leaving does not guarantee safety or freedom.
Types of Post-Separation Abuse
Post-separation abuse manifests in several ways, often tailored by the perpetrator to exploit vulnerabilities and maintain dominance:
1. Financial Abuse
Financial abuse is a cornerstone of post-separation control. Tactics include refusing to pay child support, manipulating joint assets, racking up debt in the survivor’s name, or hiding income to minimise legal financial responsibilities. Survivors may face long and expensive legal battles to secure their rights, further draining their resources which are often minimal due to sacrificing their career to raise children or due to financial abuse during the relationship such as assets (they often contributed to) being in the abusers name, tax debts, financial debts due to the abusers drug, alcohol, gambling or other addictions.
2. Legal Abuse
Legal systems can become a weapon in the hands of abusers. Through vexatious litigation such as repeatedly contesting custody or property settlements abusers keep survivors tied to the courts. The emotional toll of constant legal battles is compounded by the financial strain of lawyer fees and court costs.
3. Emotional and Psychological Abuse
Post-separation, emotional abuse often escalates through threats, harassment, or manipulation. Abusers may stalk survivors (often through the children's mobile phone tracking). They may send incessant messages, or conversely stonewall the survivor refusing to communicate about basic co-parenting issues or expenses. They may exploit shared parenting arrangements to maintain contact, control, harass, stress and cause anxiety to the survivor.
4. Coercive Control of Children
A particularly insidious element of post-separation abuse is the manipulation of children to maintain control over survivors. Children frequently become pawns in post-separation abuse. Child custody given to abusers is contributing to a monumental breakdown in mental and physical health of surviving children and mothers. Abusers use a variety of tactics, including:
Alienation: Encouraging children to reject the survivor parent by spreading lies or creating fear. Abusers manipulate children to reject or mistrust the survivor mother, creating parental alienation. This not only serves to hurt the survivor (which is the overall aim of the abuser, usually as a form of punishment towards the survivor) but also impacts the child’s emotional well-being and development and is a form of child abuse.
Inconsistent and Counter Parenting: Undermining the survivor’s discipline by being excessively permissive or indulgent. An age old tactic of abusers is luring and grooming children to view the protective parent (surviving mother) as too strict or controlling. This is achieved by the abuser allowing children access to inappropriate (for their age) freedoms, access to money, gifts, gaming, internet and social media just to name a few. More recently allowing children (especially boys) access to inappropriate social media content that validate and support the abusers manipulation and alienation from surviving mothers. Post separation abusers may start indoctrination into ideologies such as sexism, anti-feminism or toxic masculinity content and influencers on social media, as these are an efficient and low time investment method for abusers for reprogramming children's minds and values. Increasingly we are seeing behaviour problems and indicators of post separation abuse and child neglect playing out in schools and classrooms, with the escalation of antisocial behaviours in children and teens.
Emotional Manipulation: Using guilt, fear, or threats to control children’s behavior and attitudes. Children can be made to feel scared to communicate with their mothers whilst as the fathers. Despite the abuser being the perpetrator, they play the victim, making the children feel sorry for them and want to save them.
Weaponising Parenting Time: Deliberately causing conflict over visitation schedules or using time with children as leverage in disputes. Abusers will claim they desperately want to see their children but often blow off scheduled time, or try to establish timetables that effectively create an ongoing situation where the survivor acts as they baby sitter so they can continue their lives uninterrupted by the inconvenience of children.
These tactics not only harm the survivor but also have long-term psychological consequences for children, including anxiety, depression, PTSD and difficulty forming healthy relationships.
5. Social Abuse
Abusers may spread false narratives within a survivor’s social or professional circles, attempting to discredit them, isolate them from support networks, or sabotage their careers. Many abuse survivors escape FDV situations already feeling extremely isolated due to their abusers making it impossible to maintain friendships, have visitors or family in the home, to go out or often maintain careers. Post separation abusers often escalate the destruction of support networks. In-laws who previously may have been supportive of their daughter-in-laws because enablers and facilitators or continues post separation abuse. Other family members and friends may remain loyal to the abuser due to long histories with them and participate in the post separation abuse.
Impacts on Survivors
Post-separation abuse leaves a profound and multifaceted impact on survivors’ lives, affecting their financial stability, mental and physical health, careers, and time.
1. Financial Instability
Legal battles, unpaid child support, and coerced debts can plunge survivors into poverty. Many surviving mothers, may have assets but a low income, others may have zero assets due to financial abuse but have a career and income. Many services available to support survivors often fail to recognise poverty in survivors. Many survivors will demonstrate grit and determination to build a career and income but remain in poverty due to losing a lifetime of assets, in particular a home. Financial instability limits a survivor’s ability to rebuild their life, access adequate housing, or provide stability for their children. A 2021 report by Good Shepherd Australia found that survivors are disproportionately at risk of long-term financial insecurity due to the cumulative effects of abuse.
2. Mental and Physical Health
The stress of ongoing abuse can lead to issues such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). All DFV is physical abuse as physical health suffers during the abuse and post separation. The profound impact on cognitive function when traumatised and under continued long terms stress has been proven to have physiological impacts on the human body. Often health continues to deteriorate post separation as survivors neglect self-care due to financial constraints, lack of time, or the psychological toll of ongoing abuse, particularly when they escape expecting support, peace and freedom.
3. Career and Time
Post-separation abuse disrupts career progression and daily routines. Court dates, meetings with lawyers, school changes, school wellbeing meetings, DV counsellor, psychologists, doctors appointments, and generally managing the fallout of abuse such as housing, financial struggles, minimal child support, sole parenting, child behaviour and education issues all leave little room for professional growth. Survivors may also lose jobs due to exhaustion, distraction, stress and repulational damage caused by the abuser.
4. Impact on Parenting
Survivors often face significant challenges in co-parenting. Manipulation of children not only damages familial bonds but also places additional emotional strain on survivors trying to provide a stable environment. Relationships with children post escaping can be complex. Children may blame the survivor for leaving, the children may be traumatised, having witnessed horrendous abuse. Mothers can be transitioning from constant fight or flight to a slightly more relaxed state. However when the survivor is often responsible for moving children's school, maintaining normalcy and boundaries, and recreation of a new life, home, school and different people around the children due to the mother reaching out for support it no can cause children to be resentful and long for the home they miss or want things not to change. Even if they saw the abuse and wanted it to stop or for you to leave the abuser.
The ‘Post-Separation Abuse Industry’
A concerning aspect of post-separation abuse is how various industries and services facilitate and profit from ongoing abuse. While many of these systems are designed to support survivors, their structure and execution can sometimes have the opposite effect.
1. Family Courts
Family courts, while intended to protect children’s best interests, can fail to recognise the dynamics of coercive control. Survivors report being retraumatised by court proceedings, where abusers exploit legal loopholes to prolong conflict. The adversarial nature of these proceedings often leaves survivors at a disadvantage, particularly when they lack financial resources.
2. Legal Services
Lawyers, while helpful to navigating legal disputes, contribute to the financial drain experienced by survivors. In some cases, legal professionals may prioritise billable hours over efficient resolutions, perpetuating lengthy battles.
3. Child Protection Services
While child protection agencies are supposed to safeguard children, their interventions exacerbate the situation for survivors they often have systems they retraumatise by having repetitive procedures and often interfere rather than support children and survivors. Survivors may be blamed for “failing to protect” their children from the abuser, leading to further victimisation and staffing and bureaucracy in these government services is process and tick box driven and administered by inexperienced poorly trained staff.
4. Mental Health and Support Services
Counseling and psychological services play a critical role in recovery. However, limited funding and access to these services often leave survivors without adequate support. Mental health plans can leave survivors with $260 per week expenses for 1 child and o
1 mothers weekly visit to a psychologist and DV counsellor. This is simply not affordable. Inadequate training in recognising post-separation abuse may also lead professionals to offer advice that empowers the abuser. Many DV services use counsellors that are unpaid (whilst they accept payment from survivors).
Systemic and Policy Responses
Addressing post-separation abuse requires systemic change across multiple sectors:
1. Family Law Reform:
Family courts must be equipped to recognise and respond to coercive control. This includes mandatory training for judges, lawyers, and family consultants on the dynamics of domestic violence and financial support for all survivors to access lawyers. Survivors are victims of a crime NOT divorcees wanting child custody, they are fighting to protect themselves and their children from further HARM. These a criminal not civil law issues.
2. Financial Support for Survivors:
Governments must strengthen financial assistance programs for survivors, including access to free or subsidised for not only legal aid, but housing, education, career development and long term counseling.
3. Awareness Campaigns:
Public awareness campaigns should educate the community about post-separation abuse, helping friends, family, and professionals identify warning signs, child abuse and neglect inductors and provide support.
4. Regulation of Support Services:
Mental health, legal, and child protection services need stricter regulation and accountability to ensure survivors receive adequate support and are not further victimised and traumatised.
5. Support for Children:
Programs tailored to children experiencing parental manipulation are critical for breaking cycles of abuse and fostering resilience. The generation domestic violence epidemic is showing in society now. Action needs to be taken to ensure every single child of DFV has all the support they need without a price tag.
Post-separation abuse is a pervasive yet often overlooked form of domestic violence. It robs survivors of their finances, health, careers, and relationships, perpetuating cycles of trauma and poverty and it contributes to intergenerational DFV. The role of systems and industries in enabling abuse underscores the urgent need for reform and accountability. By addressing these issues, Australia can take a meaningful step toward ensuring that leaving an abusive relationship truly means freedom—not a continuation of coercion and control.
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