How Many Interim Family Violence Orders Are Unsubstantiated? The Hidden Cost of Believing Without Checking

Every year, thousands of interim Family Violence Intervention Orders (FVIOs) are made across Victoria — often within hours of a complaint. They are issued “on the papers,” sometimes by police, sometimes by registrars, and almost always without testing evidence in court.

So how many of those orders are later found to be false, exaggerated, or unsubstantiated?

The uncomfortable truth is that no one knows — because the system doesn’t measure it. But what we do know, from multiple government-commissioned reports, is that the vast majority of orders are never tested at all.

The Numbers Behind the Curtain

The Centre for Innovative Justice (CIJ) report More Than Just a Piece of Paper (2021) found that “high into the nineties [per cent]” of FVIO applications result in an order by consent without admission rather than a contested hearing. In plain language:

9 out of 10 orders are finalised without evidence ever being tested in court.

That means almost every interim FVIO automatically transitions into a final order — not because allegations were proved, but because respondents were under pressure to consent, lacked representation, or were told it was the easiest way out.

This alone doesn’t prove falsity. But it does mean that most interim orders are never verified, never cross-examined, and never subjected to scrutiny. In any other branch of law, that would be unacceptable.

Interim Orders: Designed for Safety, Used for Strategy

The Royal Commission into Family Violence (2016) acknowledged that interim and consent orders were being made in “opaque and variable” ways — often reflecting power imbalances, fear, and manipulation. The Commission warned that:

“If there is a history of family violence between the parties… there is no guarantee that the negotiation process will be safe or result in appropriate orders.”

In practice, interim orders are now so easy to obtain that they have become the default. Police issue them pre-emptively under the Family Violence Safety Notice regime. Magistrates, wary of risk headlines, err on the side of over-protection.

As a result, many interim orders are imposed with no evidence beyond one person’s statement.

The Cost of False or Unsupported Allegations

The KPMG report The Cost of Family Violence in Victoria (2017) quantified the economic impact of family-violence responses at $5.3 billion annually, including $1.1 billion in justice costs alone. But it also quietly admitted that:

“A high proportion of family violence is not reported to police or service providers, which presents challenges in estimating the true costs of family violence.”

That same lack of measurement applies to false or unsubstantiated cases. Every interim order that turns out to be baseless still consumes police, court, housing, and counselling resources — and displaces attention from genuine cases of danger.

While no official report estimates the percentage of false or unsupported interim orders, cross-referencing court data and CIJ findings allows a reasonable inference:

• Roughly 90–95 per cent of all applications are resolved without testing;

• Only a small minority ever proceed to hearing; and

• Many orders are withdrawn, allowed to lapse, or quietly discontinued once respondents obtain legal advice or family-law negotiations conclude.

From this, it is fair to infer that a significant proportion of interim orders — perhaps one-third to one-half — never result in any proven or even alleged ongoing risk. In any other system, a false-positive rate that high would trigger urgent reform.

Why the Data Gap Matters

Without data, the presumption of truth becomes policy. Every untested order is treated as a verified incident in official statistics. Every “safety notice” counts as a “family-violence incident.” Over time, that inflates the appearance of risk and justifies expanding the same system that created the distortion in the first place.

False or unsubstantiated orders have real human costs:

• Parents lose contact with their children.

• Employment and firearms licences are suspended automatically.

• Allegations, even withdrawn ones, remain in police databases indefinitely.

None of these outcomes require proof — only paperwork.

Reform: From Automatic to Accountable

Fixing this doesn’t require dismantling the system. It requires bringing it back in line with ordinary legal standards.

Key reforms could include:

1. Mandatory evidence audit: Each year, publish how many interim orders become final without contest, how many are withdrawn, and how many result in proven breaches.

2. Independent review of false or withdrawn cases: Examine why they were initiated and what consequences followed.

3. Guaranteed right to early legal advice: No interim order should proceed without the respondent being informed of their rights.

4. Balanced risk reporting: Distinguish between verified and unverified allegations in official data.

5. Accountability for misuse: Introduce penalties for knowingly false or reckless applications — just as penalties exist for breaching orders.

These changes wouldn’t weaken protection for genuine victims; they would strengthen it by restoring credibility to a system that too often mistakes activity for accuracy.

Conclusion

When more than 90 per cent of protection orders are made without testing, it’s no longer possible to call them all “substantiated.” The absence of proof has become the proof itself.

If Victoria is serious about fairness, it must stop measuring success by the number of orders issued — and start measuring by the number of orders that withstand scrutiny.

Until then, interim Family Violence Orders will remain what they too often are: a presumption of guilt in disguise.

References

• Centre for Innovative Justice (2021). More Than Just a Piece of Paper: Getting Protection Orders Made in a Safe and Supported Way. RMIT University.

• Royal Commission into Family Violence (2016). Report and Recommendations. State of Victoria.

• KPMG (2017). The Cost of Family Violence in Victoria: Summary Report. Department of Premier and Cabinet, Victoria.