Priya* hoped a short getaway to south-east Asia would repair her marriage.
It was planned after months of abuse and coercion at the hands of her husband – which began almost immediately after arriving in Australia – that became so bad she feared leaving their Melbourne home, she says.
“I had no one to turn to. I felt so isolated. He would question ‘what are you doing?’ and say ‘if you dare go out, I’ll get you killed’,” she tells Guardian Australia of the months before the trip.
That trip would also allow her to re-enter Australia on a new tourist visa, before the one she held expired and while she waited for her partner visa application to be assessed.
But the day before they were due to fly out, her husband – an Australian citizen – left their home and didn’t return. After hours of waiting, she says she received a break-up text from him – and a warning to leave the country.
Priya says that with her visa about to expire, she believed she had no option but to depart Australia. So after reaching Thailand, she flew back to her home country in south Asia.
Amid a spate of horrific domestic violence killings in Australia, migration and trafficking experts say there is a hidden crisis where women, typically those already subject to domestic violence, are tricked, threatened or forced into leaving Australia. Technically called exit trafficking, the practice is illegal and is treated as a form of people trafficking under commonwealth law.
Last financial year alone, the Australian federal police received 30 reports of exit trafficking. But research has estimated only 20% of human trafficking and slavery cases in Australia are detected.
In April, the first Victorian to be charged with exit trafficking was found guilty by a jury of leaving his wife stranded in South Sudan without her passport. He flew back with the couple’s children and it took his wife two years to return to Australia. He faces 12 years behind bars.
‘Nothing I could do’
Speaking via an interpreter, Lee* says she was trafficked out of Australia by her then husband last year.
She says the man, an Australian citizen, told her they needed to return to her home country for a few months because her mother-in-law’s visa was about to expire.
But he had only booked a one-way ticket for Lee.
“I was suspicious but there was nothing I could do,” she says. “I didn’t know anyone here.”
A few months after returning to south Asia, Lee contacted a health service that she had used in Australia and was eventually connected to inTouch, a family violence service for migrant and refugee women. inTouch helped her return to Australia and get permanent residency.
Lina Garcia Daza, who leads the Australian Red Cross’s federally funded Support for Trafficked People program, says it received 16 referrals for exit trafficking last year. Almost 90% of clients referred to the program after experiencing exit trafficking are women.
The program provides a range of support including financial assistance, accommodation, medical treatment, counselling and referrals to legal and migration assistance.
“Safety is a big issue. Usually they are escaping a situation of violence. They may arrive in Australia fearful of authorities and of reprisal, especially if they have dependent children,” she says.
“They arrive to the country again, knowing they may not be able to go to the same neighbourhood where they used to live or for their children to attend the same school. It’s usually a big challenge.”
An AFP spokesperson said over the past five years, Australia has seen an overall annual increase in the number of exit trafficking reports. In the 2018-19 financial year there were just 13 reported cases.
The spokesperson said prosecuting exit trafficking cases presents a “significant challenge” to the AFP due to the under-reporting of crimes, which is exacerbated by victims’ lack of awareness of their rights under Australian law, fear of retribution, and language barriers.
“Additionally the prosecution process is hindered by legal and evidentiary hurdles including issues such as evidence collection from other nations and the reliance on victim testimony, which can be challenging to obtain,” the spokesperson said.
Visa abuse
Once abroad some victim-survivors contact Australian authorities, including the Department of Home Affairs, the AFP or a consulate, in search of help.
Others may never make it back to Australia.
Priya spent months researching her legal rights before flying back to Australia on a tourist visa – determined to stay in the country she had begun to think of as home. She returned with only the suitcase she had left with and her identity documents.
A chance encounter with a family violence worker in a Melbourne park led her to be connected to accommodation and legal support.
Stephanie Vejar, a senior migration lawyer at Women’s Legal Service Victoria who represented Priya, says her client had experienced visa abuse – with threats made to cancel her visa when she was in Australia and overseas – alongside sexual, financial, physical, emotional abuse and coercive control.
“Her case, unfortunately, is not unique,” she says. “I think what’s unique about her circumstances is how she stumbled across the family violence worker and was able to connect her to the right resources.”
She says all her migration clients are dealing with some element of visa abuse. In recent years the legal centre has seen more sophisticated techniques of visa abuse, including the perpetrators controlling a person’s online immigration portal, allowing them to manipulate their dependent’s visa outcome without the victim knowing.
“It’s not uncommon to hear the perpetrator provide misinformation such as ‘to get your visa, you have to stay with me’,” she says.
“So there’s a lot of misinformation. It sounds very convincing. And they say it in such a way that they’re consistently providing this information so that they believe all of that.”
Protection for temporary visa holders
Only select visas in Australia, including the partner visa, have family violence provisions for applicants, meaning there is a pathway to permanent residency if a person can demonstrate their sponsor perpetrated violence against them during their relationship.
“[Priya] is actually one of the more fortunate clients that we have been able to assist, in terms of legal options available to her,” Vejar says.
She says the legal centre has advocated for a temporary family violence visa and for family violence provisions to be extended to all visa categories as well as for the Department of Home Affairs to communicate with all visa applicants over the age of 18, to ensure they know what is happening with their application.
Anti-Slavery Australia, a human rights centre at the University of Technology Sydney that runs a legal practice, identified the first case of exit trafficking that resulted in prosecution in 2017, after a referral from a community agency..
It resulted in the AFP laying charges that led to the first conviction of exit trafficking in Australia in 2021.
Prof Jennifer Burn, director of Anti-Slavery Australia, says exit trafficking is particularly invisible when it occurs within domestic relationships.
“This might be in the circumstances of a foreign national sponsored to Australia on a partner visa, who is then trafficked overseas at a later point.” she says.
“The widespread lack of awareness around exit trafficking means that this cohort is unlikely to know that what they have experienced is a crime and that they have rights and entitlements under Australian law,” she says.
Burn, a law professor at UTS, says the most common form of exit trafficking the organisation has seen is cases of young female Australian citizens and residents trafficked overseas for a forced marriage.
“We have also seen a rise in women being trafficked overseas by their intimate partners. Generally these women are on temporary visas or partner visas,” she says.
Priya was recently granted permanent residency and is now focused on rebuilding her life in Australia with hopes of studying migration law one day.
“I want to help people who are trapped in this complex system. They should be able to seek justice.”
*Names have been changed
• In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org.
