Domestic and Family Violence Refuge or Confidential Address

Detects records that disclose where a person at risk of domestic and family violence (DFV) is living or sheltering: refuge, shelter, safe house and crisis accommodation addresses, addresses flagged as confidential, suppressed or not to be disclosed, and silent elector entries. This is the highest-harm DFV disclosure, because it tells a person using violence where to find the victim-survivor. Sector-neutral: it applies to housing, human services, health, education, court, police, electoral and payroll records.

Type: regex
Engine: boost_regex
Confidence: medium
Confidence justification: Medium: the primary phrases are strongly associated with concealed locations, but policy text that mentions a refuge address alongside an office address can reach the 75 tier. The 85 tier requires a person or case field, which policy text rarely carries. 85/75 are heuristic evidence tiers, not measured accuracy.
Jurisdictions: au
Regulations: Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), Information Privacy Act 2009 (Qld), Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012 (Qld), Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (Cth)
Frameworks: QGISCF
Data categories: pii, government
Scope: narrow
Risk rating: 10
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Unsupported, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?i)\b(?:(?:women'?s|DFV|domestic\s+(?:and\s+family\s+)?violence|family\s+violence|crisis)\s+(?:refuges?|shelters?|safe\s+houses?|crisis\s+accommodation)|(?:refuge|shelter|safe\s+house)\s+(?:address|location|placement)|confidential\s+(?:residential\s+|home\s+|postal\s+)?address|(?:address|location|whereabouts)\s+(?:is\s+)?(?:suppressed|withheld|confidential|protected|not\s+to\s+be\s+(?:disclosed|released|shared))|do\s+not\s+(?:disclose|release|share)\s+(?:the\s+)?(?:(?:client|tenant|aggrieved|applicant|customer|patient)'?s?\s+)?(?:address|location|whereabouts)|silent\s+elector|confidential\s+contact\s+details|does\s+the\s+respondent\s+know\s+this\s+address|is\s+the\s+respondent\s+aware\s+of\s+your\s+(?:home\s+)?address|personal\s+safety\s+of\s+myself\s+or\s+members\s+of\s+my\s+family\s+at\s+risk|deny\s+access\s+facility)\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

refuge, safe house, crisis accommodation, confidential address, silent elector, protection order, victim-survivor, aggrieved, domestic violence, family violence, domestic and family violence, family and domestic violence, intimate partner violence, [object Object], [object Object], coercive control, financial abuse, technology-facilitated abuse, non-fatal strangulation, strangulation (+56 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

Client name: Avery Teston Current address (CONFIDENTIAL - DFV refuge): 14 Wattlebird Street, Stafford QLD 4053 Do not disclose client's address to any party, including the respondent. — Client record with refuge address and a non-disclosure instruction
Address not to be disclosed. Aggrieved: Jordan Teston resides at Unit 3/27 Carrington Avenue, Toowong QLD 4066 under protection order conditions. — Protected address of an aggrieved person
Silent elector Elector: Morgan Teston Enrolled address: 8 Sandpiper Court, Mackay QLD 4740 — Silent elector enrolment detail
Registration as a silent elector I declare that having my residential address shown on any electoral roll places the personal safety of myself or members of my family at risk. Family name: Teston Residential address: 22 Kookaburra Close, Emerald QLD 4720 — Completed AEC silent elector registration (declaration wording from ER022)
File number: HF-2026-00817. Household moved to a women's shelter on 02/09/2026. Safe house address: 51 Harlow Road, Logan Central QLD 4114 — Safe house address in a case file

Should not match

The department allocated $12 million to DFV refuges and crisis accommodation across Queensland in 2025-26, including 40 new beds in regional areas. — Funding announcement naming refuges generally, no address
Staff must never record a refuge address on a shared file. If a client's address is confidential, record it only in the restricted-access field. — Practice guidance about confidential addresses, no address present
Refuge Cove on Wilsons Promontory, 12 Telegraph Track, Wilsons Promontory VIC 3960, is a wildlife refuge and campsite. — Non-DFV use of the word refuge with an address
Client name: __________ Confidential address: __________ Silent elector? [ ] Yes [ ] No — Blank form with confidential address field

Known false positives

Policy or procedure text that mentions a refuge or confidential address alongside an office or postal address (for example a return-mail address). Mitigation: Such text can reach the 75 tier. The 85 tier requires a populated person or case field. Where policy libraries are noisy, deploy at 85 and keep 75 for audit-only rules.
Directories of DFV services that publish a service's public office address. Mitigation: Refuge locations are not published, so public directories normally list office or outreach addresses only; consider an exception for the specific service directory site.
Business uses of "confidential address" (for example a restricted return address for tenders). Mitigation: Rare; 85 tier requires a person or case field.
Overlap with au-qld-silent-elector-record, which also anchors on "silent elector" and the ER022 declaration wording. Mitigation: The two are complementary. A silent elector record with a street address fires both at PROTECTED (this one PROTECTED Personal-Privacy, the electoral one PROTECTED Electoral Roll); an organisation deploying both should let the electoral policy take precedence for roll-derived records. The electoral classifier also covers name-plus-district and name-plus-DOB silent elector records without an address, which this classifier does not detect. Use this one for cross-sector confidential-address policies and the electoral one for electoral-roll policies; do not stack both in one rule if match counts matter.

References

Collections

Australian Domestic and Family Violence Records