Note: this story discusses sexual assault and suicide.
“My son has been a perpetrator and bashed my daughter-in-law and thrown his young daughter at the couch several times.”
One sentence, from a mother, in an unsolicited email. One note, among hundreds. All from stakeholders, desperate for a solution to the domestic violence epidemic Australia is suffering.
Police. Prosecutors. Victims. Perpetrators. Researchers. And families. Fathers worried about daughters falling victim to domestic brutality. Grandmothers worried about what their grandchildren are seeing, and wondering whether it runs in families. My email and social media streams are full of them. And a mother, worried her son might kill his wife before his next court date.
“He has kept my daughter-in-law a prisoner,” she said. “He is still calling the shots through friends and has threatened to kill his wife, myself and two others and also take my granddaughter…”
She says police have removed her son from the family home, but he is out on bail for another two weeks. That’s particularly scary given another father who was out on bail faces murder charges after allegedly burning alive his 27-year-old partner in front of their three small children.
The ratcheting up in horror, in how women and children are dying, is beyond what we might have imagined a few years ago. In South Australia, Henry David Shepherdson showed a particular brand of evil by jumping to death with his baby daughter strapped to him. On the Gold Coast this week, another woman was found dead, stuffed in a furniture chest, in an apparent murder-suicide. Three of the last half dozen domestic violence victims in Queensland have been burnt alive.
“Enough is enough,” one woman wrote to me this week. “We need to scream it from the rooftops, [have it] plastered on the front page of every newspaper, mass rallies and bombardment of our politicians on the issue. How many more have to be brutally murdered before solid change will occur?”
It’s a question that demands an answer.
Another had this question: “Do we need to see a woman burnt alive, or strangled, or bludgeoned to death to invoke the level of mass outrage that moves us beyond platitudes and finally leads to action?”
“Australia doesn’t care,” another said. “And it’s devastating. Easier to turn away and watch the footy.”
A US law attorney reminded me that this happens everywhere, and to all sorts of women. “A prosecutor in Illinois where I got my first job prosecuting was shot and killed by her ex-husband while exchanging their child for visitation at his parents’ house about a year or so ago,” she wrote. “She’d just graduated law school and had her whole life ahead of her.”
An Australian nurse living in the United States believes domestic violence is the Australian version of gun violence in the US: “deep-rooted and systemic. For all the faults of the US justice system, they take domestic violence and child abuse seriously. Until the people of Australia demand better and act, the situation will not change. Children at risk will still get returned to abusive parents in the name of ‘keeping the family together’ and women will continue to die horrific, preventable deaths.”
Her analysis from afar is that Australians can be “too polite, nice and obedient”: “We must demand action and reform. The way Australian governments have managed COVID-19 and gun violence is a shining example of political strength when needed.”
One senior woman who works with families suffering domestic violence said: “I am genuinely losing hope.” Another said: “I saw a guy abusing a woman verbally and at length in a bar last night. Nobody noticed but me! I told the staff — they did nothing! Is that the way it is now because it’s so common?”
And this: “I had a nightmare about Kelly [the 27-year-old mother burnt to death] last night. I can only imagine the trauma her children are experiencing. I believe the community at large wants this to end. Where is the political will?”
That’s a bloody good question, and she’s not the only one asking. The mother fearful of her son’s next move now he’s out on bail says they are just waiting and wondering what might happen: “Why can’t our politicians do something before she becomes another statistic?”
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault or violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au.
For anyone seeking help, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is 1300 22 4636.
Instead of shelters for women who are threatened, maybe we could have lock-ups for men who threaten.
Agree. They need to removed from society and not allowed to participate fully again. Does anyone know someone who has reformed? No. Until that problem is solved, they shouldn’t be allowed in our society.
Subject to due process, I have no in-principle disagreement.
You would have to run that policy by the BLM crew, given that (statistically at least) 32 times more Indy than Whitey blokes could potentially end up preemptively jailed under it – without actually having committed a commensurate crime. Which would be catastrophic for black deaths in custody numbers, and a regression to the worst depths of racial profiling and legal system ‘verballing’.
Unless it could just be applied to white politically conservative men, say.
Irrespective of incarnation rates, Jack, allowing for an appeal for the jury that gets it wrong, those incarnated have committed a crime warranting imprisonment.
Ever flown cops into or out of indigenous communities in the north Jack? It is actually a weekly (sometimes daily) event.
Detailed reporting regarding the complainent and perpetrator, including recommended action for each complaint, might go some way to identifying trends and solutions. Expect to see two or three (statistical) modes from the data.
“Incarnation“? Flowers in cells or parthenogenesis?
Yeah, I spent a good wodge of time in the army flying the Qld cops around the Cape York Peninsula (and Customs around the tip top islands, gorgeous culture, that Islander vibe). But much more time in the centre and north west, when I was based out of Sydney, ops/exercising constantly up in the Pilbara, Kimberleys, Hammersleys, Kakadu…did a lot of work with Norforce patrols, usually based out of settlements like Kolumboru, Fitzroy Crossing, around Groot, etc. Twenty five years ago, so no doubt lots has changed, but back then the best communities were smart enough to keep outsiders very closely limited (and especially of the metro activist and nasty gouging merchant kind, blackfellah or whitey or mixed heritage alike). Bring army was such a privileged, learnt more about this amazing country than any book (whether by keith Windschuttle or Pascoe. Or Tara June Winch, or Kate Grenville, or Stan Grant.)
There was dysfunction – like everywhere – but nothing like the ruinous alcohol, drug and porn fuelled violent dystopias you (at times) read about now. Sometimes hard to know how much is truth and how much is the usual culture war/racial baiting but the stats at least are pretty hard to ignore and very sobering. (I have some cautious regard for tribal justice systems, having had a tiny bit of oblique exposure, but again decades ago, and the necessary hermeneutic purity it needs is likely now impossible. Not to mention the ‘summary’ aspects…different times now, but the hybrid mix you sometimes see is probably the worst of both systems.)
i do take daily-embedded senior community leaders like Jacinta Price more seriously than just about any other Indy ‘voices’, traditional or self-appointed. They have to live with the catastrophic outcome of poorly thought-out and/exdd ed cited policies, well meaning or not.
After quite an absence, I was around there three years ago. A lot of strips have been upgraded (many to RFDS specs.) but, I’d say, the governance has declined and, thus, frequency of incident. Costs of doing business are out of control.
JP is NOT a well respected community leader. She is a tool of the IPA. She offers no solutions other than more extreme right wing punishment of Aboriginal Australia. I know. I also spent most of my life up north. Its amazing what CLP/LNP blinkers to to a person’s intelligence.
Denigrating other Aboriginal Australians for living in cities when she went to an elite boarding school & lives in SUBURBAN Alice Springs. There are plenty of other more nuanced voices out there. Expand your reading or confess your IPA ideology addiction.
As in another thread about Scummo’s creepy religious certitude,
here is the secular version
“I KNOW“!
Ergo, no discussion or, as the old radio competitions’ hanging pariciples used to say “…no further correspondence will be entered into!”
That’s a strange thing to say because as Erasmus has pointed out several times, there are those that come here to discuss and there are those that come with nothing more than slogans and vitriol. Guess which ‘side’ is which.
Reply stuck in moderation Raz, shorter version is yeah, lot of time in 80/90’s up the cape flying cops, druggies and customs about. and a lot more in the centre and north west our of settlements, with Norforce etc. Eye opening and life changing.
Impressive Jack. I’m looking forward to the embargoed version.
So racist – they are all saints, QED.
Source?
2018 Institute of Health and Welfare statistical summary citing figures from 2014-15 (the ABS longitudinal health collation always necessarily lag).
https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/domestic-violence/family-domestic-sexual-violence-in-australia-2018/summary
The ‘statistical’ note I flagged was intended to acknowledge that crude numbers don’t always translate to neat material world/behaviour correlations.
‘In 2014–15, Indigenous women were 32 times as likely to be hospitalised due to family violence as non-Indigenous women, while Indigenous men were 23 times as likely to be hospitalised as non-Indigenous men (SCRGSP 2016).’
We could doubtless quibble a fair bit over the proportional translation of that hospitalisation number into probable preventative incarceration numbers. I think though it’s generally recognised (by those who actually care, at least, as opposed to those with a taste for online conspicuous moral self-aggrandisation) that however bad the DV situation for non-Indy women, it is much worse for their Indy gender peers. And thus that any proposal to use incarceration to prevent/reduce future DV numbers would almost certainly add to black deaths in custody, at a time when keeping black men out of jail is or ought to be a key aim.
I do think that the general soft pap prog willingness to discuss and try to understand the causal factors underlying Indy domestic violence is an approach that should be taken to all DV. Rather than just shrieking ‘men shouldn’t be violent against women’, and ‘don’t blame women when their menfolk hit – or kill – them’ when perpetrators are white.
The odiously counter-productive article on MRA ‘bullsh*t’ by Tory Shepherd in this current issue is a good example of the usual thudding double standards in play. If you substitute the initials ‘BLM’ for ‘MRA’ in her piece – the more dominant, politicised Indy Australia advocates, including women, tend to default mostly to being (effectively) Indy Men’s Rights Activists – you can see a bit more starkly what is actually the rather shockingly bigoted, even profoundly reactionary toxicity of her attitude/thesis. It would be an illuminating exercise to invite Ms Shepherd to address a BLM/deaths in custody rally, to see if she had the strength of conviction to try on her ‘I call bullsh*t’ shtick on the BLM’s argument that there are profound causal factors not of Indy men’s making underlying those disproportionate DV numbers. If (as I think) it’s true that black men hospitalise their intimate partners and kids for a whole range of explicable (and thus, policy/therapeutically reducible) reasons, and of its a progressive ambition to want to try to do so, with compassion and intelligence (while maintaining uncompromising abhorrence of the DV crimes)…then it’s true for white men, indeed all men, who commit those crimes.
Interestingly last sentence Jack. However, it has become kinda difficult to distinguish between the fact finding and the barrow pushing.
To that end, there is a disposition in government to just “giv’m da money” and then remark, a year hence, (audit time) how much they have been given.
The object or group is immaterial and the action is dismissive.
Yes, at its worst it’s just another form of ghettoising colonisation. There is sadly no shortage of whitefellah-middle class professional advocates, and urban-Indigenous Dreamtime fantasists (the mixed heritage equivalents of Crocodile Dundee outback fetishisists, basically) who are content to reduce complexity to trite, but infinitely more manageable, certitudes.
Australia is a racist country. Watching two old white men discussing issues that affect MY people is distressing. You fail on every level to comprehend anything.
Oh deride dear. The Thought and Actions Police have turned up. Even in North Korea discussion is ok. Cky, possibly its single virtue, is set up for it.
You and YOUR people, are no more blessed with infallibly or intellectual omnipresence than any other creed; based upon the characteristics of Homo sapiens alone.
A survey of Cicero to Voltaire will confirm the point and you may acquire an appreciation of Classical methods.
I said it was distressing. It is. You have little REAL knowledge, yet you assume your mantle as dominant white old man without a single thought. I said it is distressing because it is. Apparently I cant say that. So just who are the thought police?
And thats exactly why Amber has been trying to create an alliance between the womens movement and the Indy movement in her culture war.
Interesting link you provided. Would be great to see this used to come up with evidence based solutions.
There are numerous small islands around our vast coastline where they could be warehoused until domesticated.
Many are tidal, for extra incentive.
CRIKEY REMOVE THIS COMMENT.
Sez “I KNOW“!
Free speech Penny. Any number of comments posted are less than constructive and then there is parliamentary question time.
Perhaps a more authoratian regime might suit you. I can live in such regimes quite comfortably. Russia is one of my favorite countries.
Pass the rope? Really??? FFS you are a very very sick man if you think this example of vile speech is free speech worth defending. Flippant comments about deaths in custody are the lowest of the low comments.
replied to myself inadvertently.
Im not trying to throw Drastic under the bus, just point out dual standards of so many commentershere. You have gone ballistic on various ‘opposing’ commenters for the slightest transgressions of expression, why arent you screaming abuse at Drastic at this point?
Your idea of free speech is speech without consequences. Making jokes about deaths in custody is simply not defendable. Nothing to do with Russia at all. ITS ABOUT HUMAN DECENCY NOT CENSORSHIP.
As explained in the previous post; freedoms and consequences are two sides of the same coin. Yet failings in regard to constructive remarks invites the question : Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.
To about 1650 (give or take) ‘human decently’ was rather clearly prescribed. There was the odd text a hundred years prior (e.g. “The Prince” that shook the tree somewhat. Extending your perspective there would not have been an Enlightenment movement and hence no concept of individuality.
We have to take the rough with the smooth Penny.
ooohh wow .. Permit me to remind you that the topic is free speech Penny. My remarks to date, in the Cky archives, make it clear
that in an ideal world all freedoms entail responsibility. The fellow who shouts “fire” has a right to do so but is also responsible for the consequences for shouting “fire”.
Free speech is not contingent upon the topic Penny; free speech is binary; it either exists or it does not exist. Such is the case for unconstructive remarks as per this example.
Speech that is vile ought to be recognised as such. It is a very “sick” society that presumes to arbitrate in some fashion because the clear implication is that the community as a whole seeks to avoid responsibility for their statements.
Similarly, there is a very great difference between making a statement and proceeding with an action.
Another nice, neat, simple ‘solution’ that has no chance of succeeding. Can you suggest things that might actually be achievable? Specific steps or legislation that other countries have demonstratably lead to variable results?
There are 27 countries above us on the UN ranking of gender equality. It cant be that hard to learn from their worlds best practice can it? Im sure they would be more than happy to discuss what they have every right to be proud of.
Enough with the ‘victim blaming’ blaming nonsense.
Specific steps or legislation that other countries enacted that have demonstratably lead to *verifiable* esults
Thanks, crikey, for reducing complex issues (that definitely deserve reflection and action) to Herald Sun level rhetorical shock tactics, braindead headlines and one-word sentences. Thinking of cancelling my subscription after reading this. (Still concerned about domestic violence, but don’t AT ALL think the way forward is surrounding the issue with cheap emotion or breathless outrage, or patently ignoring the complex social/psychological causation or tediously insisting that pollies must fix the whole thing RIGHT NOW.)
Analysis seldom attracts points here Cameron but it has a tendency to attract down-votes.
The subject is complex and this offering by King does nothing to shed light on what strategies the US have apparently implemented which illustrate that ‘it does take domestic violence seriously’. Some, any, discussion of that may have been useful…..
But instead, readers get a series of personal anecdotes received by the writer – how very Crikey!
Quite so; rendered to a single dimension, namely, that of the author of the article.
Don’t dispair : the topic will be reheated next month and likely with some low end newspaper (semi-woke) solution.
Couldn’t agree more. A few anecdotes no analysis Crikey lift your game!
This IS their game – forgo facts, fondle feelings.
Like a warm bath, it makes one sooo sleeepy…
Im fascinated to see how Crikey will change its critsism and demands if we get a federal labour gov.
I fear that were you Methuselah you’ll be dead before that occurs.
Is the incidence of domestic violence very different from in the USA? Some statistics, rather then one person’s impression, would be useful.
Or Scandinavia or France. All easily searchable.
Agreed. While the substance of the article is great, making weak claims about this being “our” gun violence without any evidence is a waste of all our time. Not to mention the incomparably greater toll that gun violence takes on US society – including within the family/domestic context – compared to Oz.
Not sure if you’re missing the point.
This comparison is around the lack of political will to implement stronger laws to reduce these issues in their respective countries.
The reality is that women rather recently have been burned to death by their partners, I think that’s worthy of taking a more indepth look at.
You might not be sure if I’m missing the point.
I’m sure you are.
Of course you are sure, you’re a commentator on a news article.
Maybe http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/gender-inequality-index-gii
But i recall their HDI stats dashboard only had general public violence and intimate partner SEXUAL assault but not DV as such.
The overall murder rate in the USA is much higher. So I would suggest that the article is not based on fact, but is based on opinion.
Given how widespread DV appears to be, isn’t it time for a good look at how boys are socialised? Why are so many ending up unable to treat women equally and with respect?
Socialisation may assist, up to a point, but primates are inherently violent.
Almost everything in this article is false, or bad analysis. There were 1,946 murders of women by men in single victim/single offender incidents in the US in 2018. The Australian rate for all women murdered, has been about about 75 annually. US population is 15 times our. Multiplying 75 x 15 gives you 1,075. We have less than half the rate of murder of women in the US (when you allow for US multiple victim etc figures).
The statistics on non-lethal domestic violence in the US are in line with our own.
These different disparities between lethal and non-lethal violence are exactly what you would expect between a gun society and a non-gun society. A woman’s chance of getting killed by a man is far higher in the US than here.
There’s no epidemic of lethal violence against women – if by ‘epidemic’ we mean occurrence of a pathology out of the ordinary. The murder rate has in fact fallen slowly over the last 20 years (due largely to better emergency medicine procedures turning killings into attempted murders). That matters, because treating it as an ‘epidemic’ that can be reduced by a special push will simply lead to bad policy.
The horrific recent murders that King mentioned aren’t evidence of a ratcheting up of such violence. They’re absoutely standard evemts, occurring in a predictable frequnecy year on year. It was a similar, particularly bloody weekend several years ago in Queensland that persuaded the government to introduce all of the recommendations of the Bryce report immediately. They have clearly had no effect.
Calling domestic violence, ‘our gun violence’ is simply misleading. The cause of the extra lethality in the US is gun violence. Nothing in Australia’s statistics suggests there is anything special here, or specifically cultural. We have one of the lowest rates of femicide in the world. Trying to lower it further is best done by seeing what western non-US societies have in common, not looking for some unique Australian pathology.
Well said Guy, though I have reservations about the last sentence. Are you suggesting such societies have a high rate of femicide? Higher than say PNG or India?
I pointed out to Keane only a few days ago that Cky is going to have to think about its membership.
Sensational garbage will always be lapped up by the untutored. Currently, facts and analysis typically merit down-votes. I’m sorry to say that the publication is turning into woke beneith one’s nose with the dogmatism equating with news Corp. A few interesting exchanges occur but, probably, insufficient to warrant a renewal.
Same here. Crikey hasnt lived up to my expectations for quality journalism. Maybe quality journalism doesn’t pay the bills like sensational journalism does.
TRUE. A well known China watcher had a blog that was excellent but he was slipping down the vine. About six or seven years ago he (or his advisors) changed tactics and preempted Trump. Now, scrawling crap, he is making a fortune.
Few paragraphs contain more than two sentences. For those who didn’t get it the first time about the following headline advises “why it matters” sometimes with an estimated reading time.