Beyond property: domestic violence, animal cruelty, and the law

The joy that pets bring into our lives is a feeling familiar to many. At the end of that difficult day at work, when nothing seems to go right, returning to our families, our kids and our pets, can be a shining light.

For Monique Dam, chief executive of Lucy’s Project, that shining light is a dog named Putty. “If I’ve had an especially hard day at work, I’ll go to my dog Putty, play with him, cuddle him, and it really grounds me in the reason why we do this work,” she says. Her colleague Rishika Pai, a family lawyer and a board director of the charity, has two foster rabbits named Passion Fruit and Troubadour. For many people experiencing domestic and family violence, that same bond is precisely why they cannot leave – because the service that might help them won’t take their animal too.

Closing the gap between those two facts is the work of Lucy’s Project, a small national charity founded 13 years ago by Anna Ludvik. “Our organisation is focused on creating systems change,” Dam says. “We seek to improve the safety and wellbeing of people and animals experiencing domestic and family violence through collaboration, advocacy, research and education.” Today, the charity is a nationally recognised voice at the intersection of domestic and family violence, law reform, animal welfare and victim-survivor safety.

Dam came to that work from law and policy herself. “I studied law and I enjoyed being a member of the NSW Young Lawyers’ human rights committee while I was a student,” she says. “My journey of working in family violence policy and advocacy started at the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department a decade ago.”

Pai’s route ran a parallel course. A family lawyer of more than a decade, she has practised in private firms, at Women’s Legal Service NSW and at Legal Aid, and chaired animal law work through the Law Society’s animal law subcommittee before joining the board of Lucy’s Project. “A theme across all the work I’ve done is that I’ve always had a passion for animals and animal welfare,” she says, “and I thought, why not use my law degree to contribute in that space?” It is a niche intersection, but she notes, a very important one.

The Link and the evidence gap

At the centre of the charity’s advocacy is what researchers call “the Link”: the documented connection between cruelty to animals and violence against people. “There is a really significant body of international research demonstrating that harm and violence against animals indicates a risk of more severe and more frequent violence against humans as well, including women and children,” Dam says.

Pai points to a related dynamic that lawyers often see directly in their files. Perpetrators, she says, “use animals as a tool to control victim-survivors by threatening, harming or killing family animals, which causes emotional distress to the human survivors as well” – a pattern that maps closely onto coercive control.

Both say the Australian evidence base is thinner than it should be. The clearest illustration is also the most practical: people turned away from crisis support because they will not abandon an animal. “There’s a huge opportunity to collect more data and better understand the barriers to safety,” Dam says. “Victim-survivors approach a service and are turned away because they won’t be accepted there together with their animals.” Better data, the charity argues, is the foundation for services and laws that respond to families as they actually are.

The vet in the waiting room

One of the more striking gaps Dam identifies sits outside the legal system altogether: in the veterinary clinic. People living with violence still bring their animals in, whether for routine check-ups or for treatment after an animal has been harmed, which makes the vet a rare and early point of contact. Yet Australia gives vets little to work with, leaving veterinarians without a clear framework to intervene, missing a vital window to connect victim-survivors with safety resources. “In the United States they have mandatory reporting requirements for veterinarians … they also have permissive reporting schemes where it’s not mandatory but vets are protected if they report suspected cruelty,” Dam says. “It’s an interesting distinction that in Australia that doesn’t exist anywhere.” She is careful not to present mandatory reporting as a settled answer. There are real risks to weigh, but the comparison underlines an early support mechanism that the system currently does little to capture.

What the 2024 reform changed – and didn’t

The most recent concrete shift came in family law. The Family Law Amendment Act 2024 reframed pets as “companion animals” for the purposes of property settlement. Lucy’s Project made a submission to the Senate committee examining the bill and gave evidence at the hearing, arguing that the safety of victim-survivors should be the central consideration in deciding who keeps an animal.

For Pai, seeing the legislation amended at all was significant. “Pets are considered property, they’re considered chattels, personal property, it comes in the balance sheet,” she says, “but the new factors now include family violence, not necessarily related to the animal, and actual or threatened cruelty toward the animal. That’s a really positive step.” The advocacy also shaped the remedies available: courts can now make interim orders in urgent cases and transfer an animal to a safe third party or a rescue, “whereas the initial bill just said it could be sold,” Pai notes.

However, Dam notes that the reform did not go as far as the charity wanted. “At least now the courts have to consider a number of factors, among them, whether there’s been a history of family violence or animal cruelty,” she says. “But our preferred position would have been to go further: safety really should be the main consideration in determining ownership of companion animals.” The scope, limited to companion animals, also excludes farmed, working, and wild animals, as well as assistance animals – exclusions that fall hardest on people in rural and regional areas and on people with disability.

Why it belongs in every practice

If animal welfare can sound like a niche corner of practice, the numbers tell a different story. Dam cites research finding that 73 per cent of Australian households live with animals, a figure that is higher still for families with children. And the pet is seldom a side issue: Lucy’s Project points to a 2020 Domestic Violence NSW report in which 86 per cent of frontline domestic violence and community workers reported clients raising concerns about their animals or disclosing that they had been harmed, and 48 per cent said a client had delayed leaving a perpetrator by more than a year for fear the animal would be hurt. “It’s very likely the clients people are working with will have animals as members of their family,” Dam says.

That breadth is the premise of the upcoming CPD session, Legal considerations for human and animal victim-survivors, to be presented by Pai on 7 July as a live webinar. Pitched as a practical, legally focused examination of domestic and family violence where animals are involved, it traces the implications across family law, criminal law and animal welfare law – material aimed squarely at practitioners working in high-risk, high-complexity areas. “DV lawyers, family lawyers, people in tenancy, AVOs, criminal – the crossover comes up so much,” Pai says. The session spans the Link, risk screening, the family law amendments, tenancy law and pets in rental homes, and the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, and draws throughout on the work of Lucy’s Project.

Dam notes that the intersection is inherently complicated. “[T]here are so many complex intersecting legal issues that can arise in relation to people with animals experiencing domestic and family violence, and I think it will be really valuable for legal professionals to have a deeper understanding of how it might impact their clients,” Dam adds.

The road ahead

The session lands at a moment of momentum. Later this year, Lucy’s Project will launch a national roadmap to prevent and end family violence against people and animals, carrying recommendations for further legislative reform. The launch will take place in August at Parliament House in Canberra, followed by NSW Parliament House in Sydney. “We’d love legal professionals to reach out and connect if they’re interested in learning more about that, or supporting our work, because we think it’s so important that we’re creating this change together,” Dam says. For practitioners, the CPD session is one accessible way in: not the whole conversation, but a place to start turning their minds to a part of their clients’ lives that the law is only beginning to see.

To book, visit this link at lawinform.com.au.