Kelly White
30 September 2025: Â鶹´«Ã½ Law School students have produced research to strengthen legal protections for victim-survivors – delivering a high-quality report with immediate benefits to a local Canberra organisation and the vulnerable people it serves.
In 2024, Professor Alison Gerard, from the Canberra Law School, was approached by the (DVCS), who were in need of legal support.
As a critical service for victim-survivors of domestic abuse, the DVCS team are experienced, passionate and committed, but like many domestic violence services, they are overworked and underfunded for the scale of the national crisis.
The team faced particular difficulty navigating the legal complexities of the subpoenas they would receive requesting sensitive, confidential details of victim-survivors.
Professor Gerard saw an opportunity to help. By establishing a research internship for students, DVCS received high quality legal research tailored to their specific needs - while students gained practical legal research and report-writing skills and earned credit towards their Law and Justice degrees. Through their hard work, the students were able to deliver real-world outcomes.
“We saw it as a great opportunity for UC to support our ACT community organisations, and for students to gain research experience,” Professor Gerard said.
Professor Gerard and the University’s Law School established the internship and six students stepped up to the plate: Nurcan Lillywhite, Eliana Brown Ruiz, Sarah Hinton, Bethany Robertson, Robert Hulse and Raven Baker.
The students delved into journal articles, grey literature (material produced by organisations outside a traditional publishing context) and court judgements.
They also took the time to sit down and listen to DVCS staff recount their first-hand experiences of being on the frontlines, and over the course of Semester One of this year, pulled together an 84-page report with 13 practical, evidence-based recommendations for their client.
The report, Protected Confidences and Systems Abuse: Impacts of Disclosure and Options for Law Reform, addresses how legal and justice system processes are used by perpetrators of violence to access information on victim-survivors, perpetuating cycles of intimidation, traumatisation, and psychological abuse.
The report found that the lack of clarity and fragmentation in this area of the law disproportionately impacts essential organisations, like DVCS, which often lack the legal resources to review and successfully object to the subpoenas.
Lead researcher, Ms Lillywhite, outlined the students’ findings, and their hopes for the report’s future use.
“While there are legislative provisions that seek to protect and preserve the relationship between victim-survivors and support services, our review of case law has highlighted gaps between the legislative intentions behind those provisions and their application during proceedings,” she said.
“Ending this form of abuse requires structural shifts within the legal system. In the meantime, we hope that the findings and recommendations of this report will assist DVCS to successfully challenge subpoenas and protect their clients’ privacy and confidentiality.”
In a ceremony to officially hand over the report, Chief Executive Officer at DVCS, Sue Webeck, extended her thanks to the students, staff and the University, for a collaboration that would change lives.
“Like many services, we are all trying to get better outcomes for those who need our services,” Ms Webeck said.
“I want to thank the students for their willingness to learn and engage with the organisation, to understand our work, and the context we operate in. The recommendations are incredibly nuanced, and they will be invaluable to us as an organisation.”
The resounding success of the collaboration highlights the value that university students can bring to the community, even before graduating. Professor Gerard hopes that the project will help pave the way for future internships within the Canberra Law School – with benefits not only for student learning, but the University, and community as a whole.