Kate Emery: the gap between domestic violence in Hollywood and reality

Domestic violence is not like it is in the movies.

In It Ends With Us, the big glossy film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s absurdly popular novel, heroine Lily Bloom tells her abusive husband she wants a divorce while he cradles their newborn in the hospital.

Looking improbably luminous after a protracted labour, Bloom calmly explains the need to break the cycle of violence lest their daughter grow up to one day choose a violent partner.

Just as calmly her husband, a man who has hit her, pushed her down the stairs and tried to rape her, accepts her decision.

In the face of cool logic and a woman asking nicely his anger, intimidation and abusive tendencies vanish as quickly as (presumably) Bloom’s pelvic floor strength. Given Hoover’s fanbase skews young, the message is a potentially dangerous one: women who are being abused should just leave and, yes, it’s absolutely that simple.

In the real world, where incidentally most brand-new mothers look like the wreck of the Hesperus, the most dangerous time to be an abused woman is when you try to leave. That tends to be the time when abusive partners turn murderous, as opposed to shedding a manly tear and peacing out stage left to make room for a new love interest.

Court cases also rarely resemble what we see in the movies.

There’s a lot less Gregory Peck, Reese Witherspoon and Matthew McConaughey, for starters. I’m told by colleagues who cover WA’s courts every day that Tom Cruise almost never turns up to badger key witnesses into making a confession.

Movie court cases often give the impression that all the good guys need to win is to get the key bit of evidence, present that evidence to the court and — blammo — justice will obviously be unlocked.

In the real world, where I’m told very few lawyers resemble McConaughey, lawyers and judges are beholden to all kinds of rules that may be decades out of date, bewildering to laypeople and occasionally downright cruel.

The need to reform outdated WA laws currently weighted against domestic violence victims in court is a subject that kept Attorney General John Quigley in Perth over the winter break.

Having already signalled he won’t contest the 2025 election, Mr Quigley has a narrowing window to make a significant addition to his legacy and he seems determined to use it.

The result is new legislation that will replace what’s known as WA’s Evidence Act — essentially the rules of the court under which a trial is run.

The new Act will be about more than just levelling the playing field for domestic violence victims but it will mean some significant changes for them.

That includes the ability for video evidence collected by WA Police from victims at the scene of an assault, or soon after, to be used in court. Body cameras and phone footage could, in some cases, replace the need for a victim to appear in person at trial.

This might seem like a minor point but, when the alternative is forcing a victim to rehash their often-traumatic story again and again, it’s a big deal. It’s also expected that having admissible evidence like this will make it less likely that a victim gets pressured to drop the case and more likely that perpetrators will plead guilty.

Other changes include restrictions on questioning what is deemed harassing, intimidating or humiliating to a victim (yes, it happens) and tearing up the so-called Longman warning, under which judges warn juries in criminal trials to be sceptical of uncorroborated victim testimony if the event happened a while ago.

Juries are not similarly instructed to be sceptical towards the recall of alleged offenders because... I have no idea, honestly, beyond outrageous sexism. (Only women lie? Men would never?)

This planned new Act will build upon other reforms, including making it easier for evidence about historical domestic violence to be presented to the court.

All of these changes should mean good things, relatively speaking, for future victims of domestic violence who find themselves in the court system. But the scope of the reforms WA has gone through can also be read as a sign of how dramatically our society’s attitudes towards domestic violence have changed.

Efforts to reduce our shamefully high rates of domestic violence are hugely important, as is the need to tackle the lack of affordable housing and emergency housing options for those fleeing violence.

Continuing to challenge societal attitudes that allow rape culture and male violence against women to flourish is a much bigger, more unwieldy task and if I knew how to get that done I’d be out there doing that, instead of writing this sentence.

Ensuring that victims of domestic violence don’t get further brutalised by the court system put in place to try to deliver them the closest thing we have to justice is, however, just as important as all of the above.

Even if the painstaking effort of writing legislation and then tabling said legislation in State Parliament doesn’t quite lend itself to a Cruise-helmed mega-blockbuster.