Marilyn Mcmahon

• PhD(La Trobe) MPsych GDLS(Monash) BA(Hons) LLB(Mel
• Professor (Full) at Deakin University

Digital technologies are increasingly being used within the context of domestic and family violence (DFV) to facilitate coercive and controlling behaviours – also known as digital coercive control (DCC). Drawing on the perspectives of a small sample of nine DFV practitioners and scholarly experts, this article examines the barriers victim/survivors...

This article compares protections relating to the non-disclosure of the identity of juveniles involved in the criminal justice systems of Viet Nam and Victoria (Australia). Both jurisdictions are committed to the principle of having an open court for the trials of juveniles. Nevertheless, being mindful of recommendations made by human rights bodies...

The Istanbul Convention addresses the issues of violence against women and domestic violence in manifold ways, seeking to have women protected, offenders prosecuted, and future violence prevented. A landmark development at the intersection of human rights and domestic violence, the Convention also mandated an unprecedented protection for women: the...

Novel criminal offences introduced in England and Wales in 2015, and in Scotland and Ireland in 2018, criminalise non-physical abuse in the context of family relationships in distinctive ways: they criminalise conduct that causes, or is intended to cause, psychological or economic harm without necessarily requiring that a victim sustain physical in...

More than a decade before the offences of controlling or coercive behaviour and domestic abuse were introduced in England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland, the parliament of Tasmania in Australia enacted the offences of economic abuse and emotional abuse of a person’s spouse or partner. The introduction of these novel provisions constituted a signif...

The criminal law traditionally has focused exclusively on physical violence and some forms of financial wrongdoing. The recent interest in non-physical abuse has led to consideration of how this harm also might be addressed. Currently, much domestic abuse—including economic and psychological abuse—is indirectly criminalised via breaches of civil or...

This book considers whether coercive control (particularly non-physical forms of family violence) should be prohibited by the criminal law. Based on the premise that traditional understandings of family violence are severely limited, it considers whether the core of family violence is power-based controlling or coercive behavior: attempts by men to...

The offence of controlling or coercive behaviour came into effect in England and Wales in December 2015, and related offences have since been enacted in Scotland and Ireland. To date, there has been almost no empirical evaluation of the operationalisation of the new English and Welsh offence. This article fills that gap by analysing media reports r...

In 2015 a new offence came into effect in England and Wales: controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship. Three years later, similar offences were introduced in Scotland and Ireland. And it is perhaps less well known that France introduced a comparable offence in 2010 and the Australian State of Tasmania had introduced r...

The prevention of family violence — including economic and psychological abuse — is currently a major priority for governments in Australia and New Zealand. Traditionally, the criminal law in those jurisdictions has focused exclusively on physical violence. However, there is increasing interest in also targeting non-physical forms of abuse. Many of...

For more than half a century, Australian states and territories have criminalised the distinct offence of inciting another person to commit suicide. The maximum penalties for these offences vary and require the accused to have intended that the victim would commit suicide. In contrast, the offence of involuntary manslaughter does not require such a...

Banks and financial institutions have been excoriated in recent years for having bad firm cultures. However, when faced with the prospect of regulation of the culture of their organisation, banks and financial institutions frequently claim that their internal organisation should be free from outside interference – that they should be autonomous. Go...

The prevalence and complexity of mental disorder amongst children and young people is increasing, with a younger age of onset. Additionally, in recent decades there has been an international shift in approach to the issue of mental disorder, from that based on a medical model towards a human-rights-based approach. This shift is embodied in the Conv...

Voice identification evidence, identifying an offender by the sound of their voice, is sometimes the only means of identifying someone who has committed a crime. Auditory memory is, however, associated with poorer performance than visual memory, and is subject to distinctive sources of unreliability. Consequently, it is important for investigating...

In 2004 the parliament of Tasmania enacted two new offences in the context of family violence; the first was intended to prohibit economic abuse, and the second sought to prohibit emotional abuse or intimidation. The introduction of these novel provisions constituted a movement away from conceptions of family violence that rely solely upon physical...

Unethical behaviour and misconduct in the financial services industry is asignificant problem. Laws aimed at misconduct or incentives to misbehave can be rendered ineffective by poor culture within financial institutions. Various regulatory and industry initiatives to tackle the problem have been proposed or put in place in Australia. This article...

Until relatively recently, the common law offence of misconduct in public office has been regarded as anachronistic. The offence was perceived to have been supplanted by specific statutory offences that could more appropriately deal with criminal conduct by public officials. However, there has been a revival of the offence with successful prosecuti...

The rule against double jeopardy comprises a core rule of criminal procedure, and was significantly expanded in the mid-20th century. However, by the beginning of the 21st century legislatures in many common law jurisdictions had enacted reforms that significantly limit the operation of the rule. In England and several States in Australia, the refo...

Law reform is increasingly underpinned by empirical research. This is clearly evident in contemporary reform of the laws of self-defence and homicide. These reforms have been motivated largely by concern for battered women who kill their abusive partners. An extensive body of empirical criminological research has been utilised to identify bias in t...

Concern for the possible legal liabilities of psychologists involved in the provision of services to the dangerous outpatient client has increased recently. The competing interests of the obligation of confidentiality towards the client and public interest in disclosure raise substantive ethical and legal issues that have not yet been explored in A...

Interrogative suggestibility refers to the tendency of individuals to accept suggestive information in an interrogative context. Within the criminal justice system, this factor has substantial implications in relation to the obtaining of written statements, admissions from suspects, and, most importantly, false confessions. Gudjonsson and Clark (19...

This paper reports a study investigating the experiences of people who perceived that they had suffered a health or medical care injury in Victoria, Australia. A particular focus was their experience with the process of seeking compensation. The research strategy involved a preliminary questionnaire and in-depth interviewing of the participants and...

A major feature of the Australian criminal justice system is that jurors assess witness credibility and are the ultimate finders of fact. Recognising the occasional fallibility of humans in detecting truth and deception, the jury's function may be assisted by highly regulated expert evidence about a variety of scientific techniques. A recent scient...

The cognitive interview utilizes mnemonic instructions and social facilitative techniques to increase correct recall from eyewitnesses without concomitant increases in errors. Recent studies however have suggested that police may neglect this technique in time-critical situations. The present study investigated mnemonic components to determine whet...

The cognitive interview utilises mnemonics and other techniques to facilitate obtaining information from victims and witnesses. Research has indicated superior recall to standard police interviews. However, there has been minimal research regarding the role of individual differences. One area that has generated spirited theoretical debate is imager...

Polygraph testing--or the monitoring and analysing of selected physiological measures of an individual who is being interviewed, for the purpose of detecting deception--is controversial in Australia. Considerable mythology surrounds this method of detecting deception. Embedded in popular perceptions of crime fighting and utilised in high-profile cr...

Using the decision of Barr J in Attorney-General (NSW) v John Fairfax Publications [1999] NSWSC 318, the authors analyse the need for external validity and relevance in social science evidence adduced in the courts. They argue in favour of the rigour employed within Barr J's judgment and contend that a constructive legacy of the decision should be...

This article discusses a survey of Victorian general practitioners which investigated doctors' legal knowledge, the impact of law on clinical practice, doctors' current medico-legal information sources and their legal education needs and preferences. Knowledge of legal standards was investigated in relation to three areas: disclosure of risk; owner...

Early research with the cognitive interview suggested that it is a useful investigative technique to obtain information from eyewitnesses to crime. The cognitive interview appeared to increase the recall of correct information without a concomitant increase in the recall of incorrect details or confabulation. More recent research has failed to repl...

In 1991 the Supreme Court of South Australia held that evidence of battered woman syndrome had been erroneously excluded from the trial of two female defendants. The Chief Justice commented that battered woman syndrome appeared to be a ‘recognised facet of clinical psychology’ and that ‘methodical studies by trained psychologists’ had revealed typi...

The move to criminalise sexual misconduct by psychotherapists is neither new nor driven solely by consumer groups. More than 20 years ago Masters and Johnson (1976) argued that sexual relationships between patients and therapists should make the therapist criminally liable for rape, irrespective of whether the patient had consented. A recent trend...

Attributions of responsibility and causality, and other beliefs about behaviours and affective states of individuals in domestic violence situations, were investigated in interviews with 188 men and women (aged 18 to 65 years) in six suburban locations in Melbourne, Australia. Participants were selected using a stratified random sampling procedure...

This study aimed to identify factors that influence psychologists and psychiatrists to perceive a client as dangerous, to establish the incidence of such clients and to identify actions taken in relation to their treatment The dangerous client was identified as one who posed a risk of physical harm to another. Two hundred and sixty‐two psychologist...

Two hundred and fifty-six members of the Australian public were surveyed regarding situations in which a psychologist might breach confidentiality and third parties to whom information might be disclosed. There was strong agreement between respondents' expectations about the way in which psychologists would act, and their preferences regarding how...

Although the principle of confidentiality in the relationship between psychologists and client has been vaunted, and is emphasised in the Australian Psychological Society's Code of Professional Conduct (the APS code; 1994), the confidentiality of this relationship is circumscribed by the absence of legal protections, the ethical beliefs of psycholo...