The extensive and hard-hitting It’s Up to Us campaign lasted five months last year and brought to the fore the damaging effect family violence has on not only the victims and their families, but the entire community.

So figures released on Wednesday showing a quarter of all crime could be attributed to family violence and drug use and possession were nothing short of staggering.

One wonders what else needs to be done to experience a significant drop in family violence rates, with Chief Commissioner Ken Lay predicting the rise would continue until the problem was tackled through prevention.

There were 65,000 family violence incidents, up from 60,500 the previous year, with domestic violence accounting for almost half of all reported assaults and a third of rapes, according to the latest Victoria Police statistics.

Family violence also leeched into other classes of crimes through breaches of court-imposed intervention orders and bail conditions.

While the rise in the family violence rate in the past financial year looks shocking, it could also mean more people are feeling comfortable about reporting it, one of the aims of The Courier’s It’s Up to Us campaign.

Even the Chief Commissioner agreed, adding a hike in report rates also pushed the statistics up.

However, he said there was still a huge amount of unreported crimes slipping through the cracks and he expected the statistics to continue rising over the next few years.

“We need to get very good at the very start, the primary prevention end,” Mr Lay said.

“Once we get to the court end, once we get the bail breaches, once we get intervention order breaches, it’s gone too far, we’ve lost.”

This publication will continue in earnest with its efforts to highlight family violence issues, the wonderful support agencies and groups available to victims and the perpetrators and encourage members of the community – particularly the males – to say no to violence against women.