New report on the financial barriers to exiting abusive relationships
Today we released our report on “Barriers to Exit: How financial barriers prevent women from leaving abusive relationships”. This work pulls together information from our client research with academic and cross-sector findings to tell a story about the financial challenges facing women when they try to leave an abusive relationship.
We see that there are many expenses involved with leaving an abusive relationship, and without accessible money it can be hard to start fresh. When including the cost of a bond to secure rental accommodation, the purchase of a car to escape, and all the associated costs of setting up a household, our analysis finds that the up-front cost of leaving an abusive relationship comes to nearly $10,000.
The inability to leave due to not affording these expenses can be a major restriction for women seeking safety. Without financial independence, women become trapped in abusive relationships and are subject to further harm and hardship.
This paper details how abusers can utilise behaviours that weaken their partner’s financial wellbeing and security so that they have less resources available to meet these costs and leave the relationship. This includes creating a culture of financial dependency within the relationship, and leveraging joint finances to exploit and disadvantage victim-survivors. The impacts of this behaviour can put victim-survivors into serious financial hardship. Without access to wages or savings and with debt taking a cut from their weekly budget, many victim-survivors cannot purchase the goods and services needed to escape, and they cannot afford to access legal advice needed to ensure their rights and obligations are met.
We have developed seven recommendations which we believe would help victim-survivors to exit abusive relationships. There is a need for targeted interventions across a range of sectors to ensure victim-survivors do not end up trapped in abusive relationships because of a lack of finances. Not only do businesses need to improve their policies and practices for supporting customers experiencing family violence economic abuse, but cross-government action is needed to provide targeted funding and assess current settings. Joined up efforts are needed to address the complex challenges caused by family violence economic abuse, and help victim-survivors keep themselves safe, recover and thrive.