Domestic abuse survivors in PNG have to 'queue in front of the police station' to report their husbands

Fiona (not her real name) still remembers roaming the streets of Port Moresby in the dark, hungry and with nowhere to go after her husband beat her up and kicked her out of the house.

WARNING: This story contains detailed descriptions of violence and sexual assault that may be distressing to some readers.

She was in a desperate situation, too ashamed to reach out to anyone she knew to help her and unable to return home to her partner.

"I was so hungry because I had not eaten all day," she told the ABC.

"I didn't have any money. I wanted to ask someone to buy me food, but I was too ashamed."

It was another torturous night in a years-long cycle of abuse that Fiona could not see a way out of.

Her partner would often get drunk and abuse her. He kept weapons in the house, she said, including a knife, a belt and a rubber hose — which he would use to assault her if she refused to have sex with him.

"He would lock the door so I couldn't get out," she said.

"He would pick me up and throw me down to the floor.

"Sometimes I would get confused because he had kicked and hit my head.

"I just cry because as women, our body isn't strong."

Fiona also experienced violence in her first marriage, when her husband would hit her occasionally.

She said he believed it was a form of discipline for "doing the wrong thing".

But that night marked a turning point for Fiona.

While she was wandering around PNG's capital aimlessly, she met Shirley Kaupa, who runs the Magna Carta safe house in Port Moresby — a shelter for women in need.

PNG's gender-based violence crisis

Domestic violence has been declared a national crisis in PNG.

A recent PNG government study, which was partly sponsored by the United Nations, found there had been a staggering 210 per cent increase in reports of gender-based violence in the country since 1986.

An analysis of the national strategy to prevent and respond to gender-based violence (2016–2025) found that 64 per cent of women in PNG had reported experiencing intimate partner violence in 2025 — more than double the global average.

More than 5,000 Papua New Guineans across multiple provinces were surveyed for the report.

Participants were randomly selected, but stratified to reflect gender, age, rural and urban demographics of PNG, according to the report's author, Vilupti Corlis.

Dr Corlis said results were compared with a PNG government demographic and heath survey from 2016 and a 1986 Law Reform Report that captured reports of gender-based violence.

"The survey and research were both reliable and valid. The results were analysed and validated by an independent statistician through the appropriate statistical means," she said in an email to the ABC.

Ms Kaupa raised concerns about the methodology used in the survey, saying she believed the rates of violence could be even higher.

"It's not about you just collecting data everywhere. You're just collecting data, and you are not providing the process in which you go about collecting the data," she said.

Data collection is extremely challenging in Papua New Guinea due to remoteness, language barriers and stigma around issues like domestic violence.

Dr Corlis said additional research would add value to the collective national efforts to prevent and respond to the issue.

Small organisations are doing what they can

Sitting in the living room of the safe house, Ms Kaupa mops sweat from her brow as an old fan whirrs slowly overhead and a tiny kitten plays at her feet.

The walls are coloured with big blue squiggles, the artistic flourish of a young child with a marker pen.

Ms Kaupa has a double master's degree in international human rights law and international relations and says she could be earning a lot more than she does now.

But she has chosen to dedicate her time to helping women in need.

Her safe house, like most others in PNG, does not receive any permanent funding and relies largely on donations and assistance from the private sector and individuals.

"We don't have money, we don't have a budget, we don't have resources, but at least we can provide … something," Ms Kaupa said.

Every month, dozens of survivors of gender-based violence came to her shelter looking for a safe place to sleep, as well as medical assistance, counselling and legal advice.

"I think it's just broken them into multiple pieces," she said.

"Their human dignity, their freedom, their rights to shelter, their children's rights to education, their rights to work, and most importantly, their rights to life."

Ms Kaupa has done what she can to help those who come to her door, including Fiona.

But she felt like she was working in a broken system. She says domestic violence support services across the country are struggling to keep up with demand.

The stigma of reporting perpetrators

Data from 2024 showed the family and sexual violence unit (FSVU), which sits within PNG's police department, received more than 10,300 reports in a seven-month period.

It made just 330 arrests and granted 391 interim protection orders.

Ms Kaupa said staff in the unit were burnt out.

This year's budget for the FSVU was only $100,000 for the entire country and included wages and operational funding.

"There may be two or three [officers] in the FSVU, and you are looking at almost 100 survivors coming a day," she said.

"You just go and see. [Women will] be lining up in a queue in front of the police station.

"And when a survivor goes there and sees that very long [line] and she's worn out, because the other night she was running around — she's hungry, the baby, the children are hungry — they just give up."

Many women are also deterred from reporting violence because they fear the police will not take the issue seriously. They also risk backlash from partners.

Fiona said she had experienced this after she went to the police about her husband's abuse.

"There was a time [my husband] came home after drinking and hit me with a metal rod," she said.

"My entire back was black with bruises.

"I escaped and went to [a police station]. They assisted me, came and arrested my husband.

"But he had money, so he bailed himself out [of jail]."

The police did not follow up on the case, Fiona said, and the abuse continued.

"He came back and continued to beat me. He got angry at me, continued the assault."

PNG's national police service has not responded to the ABC's questions.

New $65m project to tackle gender-based violence

This month, the PNG government is expected to launch a 10-year strategy to prevent and respond to gender-based violence, with an annual budget of $65 million.

The majority of the funding will come from the PNG government and will be topped up by private sector and donor contributions.

The new strategy pledges to build at least one safe house in every district, as well as expand family and sexual violence units to all provinces and provide specialist training to 500 police officers.

Prime Minister James Marape wrote in a foreword to the plan that gender-based violence was a "crisis of humanity" and pledged "unwavering resolve" towards addressing the problem.

The new strategy includes behavioural change programs for men and mandatory 12-month rehabilitation for first-time offenders, with rehab centres in every province.

But those on the front line say the government must put words into action — after the last strategy failed to gain adequate funding and produce results.

A review of the previous strategy found the National GBV Secretariat — the key oversight body — only became operational six years into the 10-year strategy.

It said shortcomings stemmed largely from "structural disempowerment, chronic under-resourcing, and a failure to address deep-seated cultural drivers".

Powes Parkop, chair of PNG's permanent parliamentary committee on gender equality and women empowerment, blamed the PNG government for the failures.

"[The previous strategy] started late because the government itself did not recognise the significance of it, the importance of it, and did not allocate the resources," Mr Parkop said.

He said one of the key reforms was to coordinate all funding through the national secretariat, which could allocate money and monitor outcomes.

"We need … an all-of-government effort … a very coordinated, structured approach. Then we'll start to make a difference," he said.

Ms Kaupa expressed concern that service providers and frontline workers did not have adequate input into the new strategy.

"We were consulted, but to that very limit that they did not give us more opportunity to talk, and what we provided wasn't taken on board," she said.

"You can't have the plan when you don't have the enablers being part of the plan."

She said a key focus for the next decade should be creating a regulated referral pathway for survivors and improving service coordination across all sectors.

Mr Parkop said the team that designed the strategy consulted widely with stakeholders and communities across the country.