Caro appeared on a Newcastle Writers Festival panel dubbed 'More than a statistic' on Saturday, April 2, alongside Melbourne writer Laura Elizabeth Woollett, in a discussion about the domestic violence endemic in Australia, and the complexity of female victims of crime in her new novel, The Mother.

Caro, who is also making a tilt at politics in this year's federal election, campaigning for the Senate as a candidate for Reason Australia, took aim at the Family Law system during the conversation for failing victims, and particularly children, of domestic violence.

"It is very strange but it is as if [the Family Law system] separates the abuse that, in most cases but not exclusively, a man inflicts on a woman as being a completely separate issue from how that affects the man's ability to parent his children," Caro said during the panel discussion moderated by Australian book reviewer Nicole Abadee. "Surely a man who is threatening the life of the mother of their children is not a good father."

Caro's most recent novel - a work of fiction - deals with the breakdown of a toxic and violent relationship set in rural NSW, and specifically with what she described as "coercive control"; an abuse tactic in which the victim's sense of reality is undermined by their abuser.

"They begin to make the victim feel as if they must be crazy," Caro said, "There is this terrible undermining of all the things that we take for granted - what we see and hear and feel as true and valid - that becomes fatally compromised and the victim begins to believe the perpetrator's view of them."

In researching her book, Caro said she spoke with police and consulted a family lawyer to ground her work in the reality of many domestic violence cases around the country.

"If I just made this up in a fiction book, you might think it's ridiculous - that she's pushing her political agenda," she said, "But this has happened ... I got in touch with my old friend who is one of the top family lawyers in Australia and summarised what I was writing and asked if I was being completely unrealistic. He came back to me very quickly and said ... you've just described half the files on my desk. That was an extremely sobering moment."

The panel discussion and Caro's comments coincidentally came in the shadow of the alleged murder of 21-year-old Mackenzie Anderson in Newcastle on Friday, March 25. Police found Ms Anderson lying outside her home, having suffered significant injuries. Paramedics made efforts to treat her for "significant" stab wounds, but she died at the scene.

A 22-year-old man has been charged with Ms Anderson's murder and aggravated entering of a dwelling with intent.

Ms Anderson's death was followed by an outpouring of community grief on March 29, as protesters took to the streets. An estimated crowd of up to 1000 people marched from Newcastle Museum to Nobbys Beach to remember women who have been killed through acts of violence in Australia this year.

Following the panel, Caro said that it was heartening to see communities were slowly turning to face the issue of violence against women, but said more needed to be done to prevent acts of violence and provide avenues for victims to escape.

"We are turning towards it," she said, "Women are talking up about their experiences in a way they never have before, so we are hearing a lot more about what leads to (violence). But we still don't give women safe places to go. We still don't give them the economic resources they need to be able to get away from perpetrators. And we still don't take the threats of perpetrators seriously.

"I believe in 'innocent until proven guilty' but when it comes to he-said, she-said it's not working.

"We really have to look at how we deal with crimes where there are just two people involved and there are claims in two directions.

"We cannot - particularly when children are involved, and someone's life may hang on it - prioritise the presumed innocence of a perpetrator over the terror of a possible victim."