Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) can interact with mandatory reporting in a variety of ways:

• The requirements for mandatory reporting and IPV are often confusing and change state to state:

  • Most states’ mandatory reporting laws require health care providers to report IPV-related injuries; only four of those states allow survivors to refuse the report (Durborow, Lizdas, O’Flaherty, & Marjavi, 2013). 

  • Some states list domestic violence advocates as mandatory reporters (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2016a).

  • Survivors who are abused with the use of weapons and seek medical help may have their injuries reported based on mandatory reporting laws for crime-related injuries (Jordan & Pritchard, 2018). 

  • In the aforementioned 18 states and Puerto Rico, mandatory reporting laws survivors’ informal networks (i.e., friends, family, acquaintances) into mandated reporters. 

• Most U.S. states have expansive mandatory reporting laws related to child abuse or neglect that include child exposure to domestic violence as a form of harm to children (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2016b). 

  • These requirements can harm survivors; they are based on misunderstanding around domestic violence and can be used to imply that the violence and harm done by abusers is the survivor’s fault.