Aboriginal women are being racially targeted by the justice system, the chief executive of a leading Victorian family violence organisation says.

Speaking at a First Nations justice forum in Sydney, Djirra chief executive Antoinette Braybrook said Aboriginal women needed to be "believed for the violence that they experience — not blamed".

"We're seeing all of the time that Aboriginal women are not believed by police when they finally get up the courage to report the violence," she said. "I think that much of that stems from racism."

Ms Braybrook's comments come after the Yoorrook Justice Commission — Australia's first truth-telling body — heard extensive evidence on the intersection of family violence and child protection.

The commission was told unborn child notifications contribute to one in five First Nations children being removed before three months of age. It also heard repeated accounts of domestic violence victims being misidentified as perpetrators.

Victoria Police was accused of treating family violence call-outs as "roll your eyes" matters, while a shortage of refuge accommodation means many women do not report violence because they fear losing their children.

Ms Braybrook said the vast majority of Aboriginal women supported by Djirra are in relationships with non-Indigenous men.

"White men are believed over Aboriginal women, and that's been a consistent issue in feedback that we get," she told the forum. "We don't refer to it as misidentification; we call it racial targeting."

She said frontline organisations were increasingly frustrated by being repeatedly asked how systems could improve.

"How many times do we need to say, 'change the way the system responds,' or 'change the system full stop'," she asked. "Start investing in Aboriginal self-determination and our solutions."

A 2024 study found Aboriginal people are between two and five times more likely than non-Indigenous Australians to experience violence, both as victims and offenders. National data also shows Indigenous women are 35 times more likely to be hospitalised because of family violence-related assaults.

The report found many participants believed police would not take their complaints seriously, discouraging them from reporting offences or pursuing matters through the justice system.

"The other thing you think is 'the cops probably aren't going to believe me,'" one respondent said. "Half of them ... have no training at all and they don't pursue the perpetrator ... or they don't take what you've reported seriously enough."

Ms Braybrook also said the majority of Aboriginal women in prison, many of them on remand, were there because of "poverty and homelessness".

"Family violence is both the cause and consequence of their imprisonment," she said.

"The government needs to stop investing in these punitive and racist systems that just see Aboriginal children being taken, our people criminalised [and] incarcerated."

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