Northern Territory Consolidated Acts

DOMESTIC AND FAMILY VIOLENCE ACT 2007 - SECT 5A

    (1)     Emotional or psychological abuse is conduct that would torment, coerce, intimidate, harass or be offensive to a reasonable person and result in a reasonable person suffering emotional distress or mental harm.

    (2)     Without limiting subsection (1), emotional or psychological abuse of a person may include any of the following conduct:

        (a)     making repeated derogatory taunts of the person;

        (b)     threatening to disclose sensitive information about the person to the person's friends, family or workplace;

        (c)     threatening to withhold the person's medication;

        (d)     preventing the person from maintaining social, familial or cultural connections;

        (e)     preventing the person from expressing the person's cultural identity;

        (f)     threatening to self-harm with the intention of tormenting the person;

        (g)     threatening to harm another person with the intention of tormenting the person;

        (h)     following the person in public or in the person's residence or remaining outside the person's residence or work with the intention of tormenting the person;

            (i)     repeatedly contacting the person by any means of communication without the person's consent;

        (j)     sending offensive material or communications to the person or leaving offensive material where it is likely to be found by the person;

        (k)     taking an intimate image of the person without consent;

        (l)     threatening to distribute or publish an intimate image of the person;

        (m)     publishing offensive material or communications about the person without consent;

        (n)     driving a motor vehicle in a reckless or dangerous manner or acting in a reckless or dangerous manner while driving a motor vehicle when the person is a passenger in the vehicle;

        (o)     threatening to request that the person be assessed to determine whether the person is in need of treatment under the Mental Health and Related Services Act 1998 ;

        (p)     threatening to withdraw care on which the person is dependent;

        (q)     preventing the person from entering the person's place of residence.

    (3)     In deciding whether a person's conduct amounts to emotional or psychological abuse, consideration may be given to a pattern of conduct.