It is alarming to know that domestic violence is an ongoing issue around the country. In fact, one in three Australian women have experienced physical violence and one in four Australian women have experienced emotional abuse by a current or former partner.
Domestic violence doesn’t discriminate, one in three victims of domestic violence are men. Domestic violence can creep up on victims and sometimes the warning signs are subtle but it can come in varying forms including verbal, physical, emotional, financial and sexual.
Listen to Mia Freedman interview Rosie Batty on No Filter. (Post continues…)
With Domestic Violence Prevention Month coming up in May, there are ways you can find and get help if you are experiencing domestic violence.
Rachael Scharrer had thought domestic violence was limited to physical and verbal abuse and excused or justified each incident. When she researched domestic violence years after her marriage ended, it was then she realised she was at greater risk than first thought. She founded online resource, DivorceAnswered.com.au and shares her advice for leaving a relationship involving domestic violence.
Set up the emergency or panic function on your mobile phone.
Each mobile phone is different, so research the specific functions for your phone within the settings. Enable and personalise your emergency settings so that your location and an audio clipping will be alerted to selected family or friends. When the alert has been received, your family or friends can contact the police on your behalf.
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MM I was dismayed in this article to see the reference to the erroneous stat that men are 1 in 3 of DV victims; which is used as the basis for MRAs to campaign against efforts to address men's violence against women.
The cold hard reality is that women and children are overwhelmingly the victims, and men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators. And even when men are the victims, males overwhelmingly remain the perpetrators, and if women are actually perpetrators it is often in the context of self-defence or both parties are engaged in reciprocal violence.
Male perpetuated violence on others is much more common, serious and harmful than violence committed by females on males. By relying on the 1 in 3 statistic it does not take into account the impact, history and context of the violence: women are three times more likely to be injured, five more times likely to be hospitalised and five times more likely to report fearing for their lives as a result of this type of violence.
The female experience of DV is significantly different to the male experience. This “1 in 3” stat is self-reported and includes such instances as males categorized themselves as victims for such atrocities as “not having a hot dinner on the table when I got home from work” or “not having the children bathed and fed”, or women spending money on shopping and gambling. On the other end, women who have had loaded guns held at their heads or been pushed down the stairs do not regard that as assault. A man being threatened with a potato being thrown at his head is categorized as a victim the same way a woman who has received multiple vicious beatings requiring repeated hospitalization in the same time period.
The levels of fear, harm and terror experienced by women – raped at knifepoint, drugged, run over, children dangled over balconies until they acquiesce to his demands – are simply not there in the male experience, and it is usually reflective of a long term pattern of control and abuse.
Men and women underreport DV equally, however men over-estimate their partner’s violence and women do the opposite. Once a man has extricated himself from a violent partner, the data show he very rarely experiences ongoing fear or control, whereas the vast majority of women continue to be afraid of violent ex-partners. Which is why men’s shelters in VIC were shut down – as there was simply no demand, yet 40000 women are in need of emergency shelter throughout Australia at this moment.
The “1 in 3” statistic needs to be challenged at every opportunity, I am not denying there are men who experience DV, but by perpetuating this statistical myth it detracts from the true lived experience of women and children suffering DV, and sends a dangerous and erroneous message to the decision-makers for policy and allocation of resources. It remains that the majority of support resources should continue to be directed towards women and children, and the majority of DV preventative resources should be directed towards changing male behaviours and attitudes.
This is really interesting. Would you be able to provide some stats/ links to back up this info? I'm not challenging the truth of what you're saying at all; I'm anticipating the need to share this info with other people and would like to have some evidence when I do so!
Agree completely.You should see the mad men that come out of the woodwork to muddy the waters when the rare article about DV is printed in the Australian
Obviously this is a very complicated issue and my answer is drawn from interpreting a number of different sources.
The 1 in 3 stat that originates in the Personal Safety Survey by the ABS, regularly referred to by the MRAs, is statistically unreliable (as openly admitted by the ABS), limited in its scope of DV and fails to address the complexity of the lived DV experience as all it does is count the number of people who have been willing to self-identify as experiencing a DV incident without taking into consideration the nature, severity, frequency and diversity of DV. The only action it discusses is whether someone was a perceived victim of "any incident of physical or sexual assault or threat"– not considering stalking, economic/verbal/emotional abuse, acts done to intimidate, humiliate or control, damage inflicted on property or on animals, displays of weaponry. Additionally it does not address the effect of the violence – injuries, hospitalisations, done in self-defence, done as an act of control or intimidation, if the victim felt trapped, helpless, controlled, had an inability to leave and whether help was available if they needed it.
The Australian Law Reform Commission has a recent report “Family Violence – A National Legal Response” (freely available online) from 2010.
Links don't often get approved on MM, but if you look up these academics
Professor Michael Flood and at University of Wollongong (sociology) and Dr Elspeth McInnes at University of Adelaide you will find links to good articles.
The Domestic Violence Victoria website has a page About Family Violence where all the statistics are referenced to their sources. Alison MacDonald, the director, has been quoted in a number of articles online.
I have done a significant amount of research under my own volition and in capacity of legal researcher. Viscerally I felt the 1 in 3 MRA stat was simply not reflective of the lived DV experience (myself, my family history, friends, in professional capacity, husband being a frontline police officer for 10 years), so I went and looked into it, the data is there if you follow the trail. Another myth the MRAs like to perpetuate is being disadvantaged in the Family Law system - I also looked into that, and was quite surprised by the results as the reality simply does not support their narrative.
Thank you for that info! That is really interesting.