101 East - Battered and Bruised

Family violence has reached epidemic levels in Papua New Guinea, the South Pacific’s largest nation.

Two out of three women experience domestic violence and 50 per cent of women have experienced forced sex or gang rape in the South Pacific’s biggest country.

In PNG’s Western Highlands Provinces, 97 per cent of women surveyed by an NGO said they had been attacked by male family members. From middle-class households in the capital Port Moresby to villages where tribal law rules an estimated one million children live in volatile family environments.