Court tackles definition of emotional abuse under newly expanded laws in granting woman protection order

The new law also states that abuse may take the form of a single instance of conduct or behaviour, or a course of conduct or behaviour. The definition of abuse also extends to conduct not directly targeted at the family member, provided the person can see, hear or perceive the conduct.

Mr Chong noted that the provision is “harm-focused, not intention-focused”. He cited a parliamentary speech stating that the definition of family violence “looks to the harm caused by the perpetrator, rather than the intention of the perpetrator”.

“The consequence is that proof of the respondent’s subjective intention to cause distress, harassment, intimidation, or torment is not required,” said Mr Chong. “The question is what the conduct did to the complainant or would objectively do to someone in their position.”

Mr Chong said emotional and psychological abuse is a concept whose character is “inherently relational and contextual”.

“It is concerned with the human experience of harm within intimate relationships. These are harm that, as parliament recognised, does not reduce neatly to fixed categories or enumerable features except by way of illustration,” he said.

APPLYING THE APPROACH TO THE CASE

Turning to the case, he asked whether the woman herself was intimidated and distressed, and whether a reasonable person in her position would have experienced what she did.

For the kicking incident on Sep 30, 2025, the man had admitted using his foot to push his wife away. When cross-examined, he did not deny the physical contact but said it was defensive rather than aggressive.

The woman testified that her son had been crying inconsolably for over an hour in a warm room with the air-conditioning switched off.

She felt the baby needed the air-conditioning but her husband felt this would worsen his illness as the baby was wheezing from a flu.

When the woman put on a baby carrier and tried to take her son from her husband, the man dodged her repeatedly before kicking her. The baby carrier absorbed the impact.

The magistrate gave considerable weight to a message the man sent to his wife after the incident, saying “sorry for kicking you and making you feel unsafe and in danger”.

Mr Chong said these were “the words of a man who knew he had crossed a line”. At trial, the man attempted “to explain away the apology as an attempt to salvage the marriage rather than an acknowledgement of wrongdoing”, said Mr Chong.

He found that the man could not rely on the argument of self-defence in kicking his wife.

THE PHONE-SNATCHING INCIDENT

In the phone-snatching incident that occurred in May 2025 when the baby was less than a month old, the woman had felt that warm water should be used when preparing milk while her husband said room temperature water was correct.

On May 6, 2025, the woman reminded her husband to use warm water. Their accounts diverge after this, with the woman claiming that her husband had entered the living room angrily.

She said he kicked the footrest of an armchair aside, snatched her phone from her hand and threw it onto the sofa, before shouting at her.

According to the woman, her husband said: “You enough or not? I already told you warm water is room temperature and even found the definition. You only want to listen to what your friends say.”

The woman claimed the shouting woke the baby, who began crying, and her husband refused to pass the child to her. She said she was so concerned she messaged her mother-in-law for help before leaving and later asked her husband if he could commit to stopping violence within the family. She claimed he replied that he could not guarantee that.

The man’s account was that they had an argument as couples sometimes do, but denied behaving violently at  any point. He denied making the statement about not guaranteeing family violence, and said his wife leaving the apartment was inconsistent with any fear of him harming the boy.

Mr Chong found that the woman had felt fear from this incident, as shown by her immediate act of messaging her mother-in-law for help. He also found that a reasonable person in her position would have been objectively intimidated and distressed.

Mr Chong made no finding of family violence for the third incident in February 2025, where the couple fought about sleeping arrangements, as the woman had not proven her case.

Overall, he found that a personal protection order was necessary, as the incidents revealed “a cumulation of conduct across the first year of the marriage” that justified the court in restraining the man’s conduct to protect his wife.

“In May 2025, within the first month of their infant’s life, the respondent resorted to taking out his anger on an object and directly invaded the applicant’s space to intimidate her. In September 2025, four months later, he progressed to resort to not just direct physical contact but by kicking the applicant who was at the time holding their infant son,” said Mr Chong.

He said the two incidents formed part of a course of conduct showing the man’s “increasing willingness to resort to force”.

Factoring strongly in the magistrate’s decision was his finding that the man had “not even begun to acknowledge the seriousness of his conduct”.

Throughout proceedings, the man had characterised the kick as defensive and the other incident as an ordinary marital argument, attributing the cause of the conflict to his wife’s “emotional manipulation”.

The man had relied on his clinical psychologist’s opinion to argue that no family violence had occurred, even though the expert’s letter identified the kicking incident as “unacceptable behaviour”.

“The respondent’s own records undermine his position,” said Mr Chong. “His inability to acknowledge the impact of his conduct on the applicant confounded me at trial and on reflection remains puzzling to me.”

He said this was a risk factor for future family violence, and that a respondent who does not recognise his conduct as harmful is one who has not confronted the cause of it.

Mr Chong noted that the man’s own mother had urged him to seek professional help because she was worried about his “outbursts”.

He granted a personal protection order restraining the man from committing family violence against his wife. He also ordered the couple to attend counselling.

The man has lodged an appeal to the High Court against the family court’s orders.