Category: Domestic Violence

This Melbourne Cup, alcohol and sport collide. Forget the horses. It’s domestic violence we should be watching for

Police-recorded assaults and emergency department presentations for assault increase on or around the major sporting events in Victoria – the AFL grand final, Melbourne Cup and Formula 1.

In particular, domestic violence assaults rise significantly on the day of the Melbourne Cup.

In New South Wales, police data across six years shows domestic violence assaults increased by more than 40% following State of Origin rugby league games compared with non-State of Origin nights.

Our review also shows domestic violence increases on days of, and around, major sporting events around the world. This includes major National Football League games in the United States and Canada, and soccer matches in Scotland.

Alcohol is certainly a risk factor for increased frequency and severity of domestic violence. The use of alcohol during major sports events and over holidays is well documented.

Similarly, gambling and stress over income loss is also linked to the increased use and escalation of domestic violence. These too can occur around the time of events, such as the Melbourne Cup.

A sport’s culture can also be a contributing factor to domestic violence. Sport, violence, and what it means to be a man have long been recognised as connected. For instance, coaches promote aggression for performance.

When taken together, we can conclude it’s the culture of a particular sport in a particular country, exaggerated by keen rivalry, how emotionally charged a game might be, and when the game is played, that can predict a rise in domestic violence. That’s in addition to increased gambling or alcohol use linked to these events.

Source: This Melbourne Cup, alcohol and sport collide. Forget the horses. It’s domestic violence we should be watching for

Domestic violence: ‘Me and my husband had separate rooms.’

I did what they do in the movies. I did what I had only ever seen in the movies, took those two beautiful boys and moved to a refuge. Bags hidden at the neighbours’ house. Police on standby. And me, walking with two children and what would be our only future possessions, up the street to hail a cab. Only when I got moving would the address be released to me and I would truly be on my way to start a new life. Those bags, few toys and the children’s two bikes strapped to my back were heavy, but I felt a lightness as I weaved the pram through the tiny streets to get a cab.

But what I want you to know is this.

The courts won’t save you.

The police can’t save you.

The justice system is flawed, drawn out, and will rob you of courage, strength and the pennies you have left.

I fought for the children. I got them.

I fought for our home and lost.

The courts decided I was the fit parent, but that their father was too unfit to move out, so he kept the house.

Instead, a single mother, on unpaid leave from her job, in fear of her husband, was made homeless by the courts.

Source: Domestic violence: ‘Me and my husband had separate rooms.’

NSW domestic violence shelters to get security upgrades, new lighting

The NSW government has promised to upgrade security and lighting across the state’s 86 women’s refuges, as perpetrators hiding tracking devices in teddy bears and strollers make it more difficult to keep the locations secret.

Source: NSW domestic violence shelters to get security upgrades, new lighting

Micaela Cronin a former social worker named the new domestic violence commissioner – ABC News

Micaela Cronin will begin at the newly established commission next week and will be responsible for tracking the implementation of the new national plan to end violence against women and children within “one generation”.

Source: Micaela Cronin a former social worker named the new domestic violence commissioner – ABC News

Four Corners’ ‘How many more?’ reveals the nation’s crisis of Indigenous women missing and murdered

This week’s Four Corners special How Many More? provided a much-needed investigation into the rates of First Nations women missing and murdered in this country. ABC Indigenous affairs editor Bridget Brennan and her team must be commended for their work.

The nation is in the midst of a national crisis of violence against Indigenous women. As Associate Professor Hannah McGlade puts it, this is “Indigenous femicide”.

The program highlighted a vital issue: the indifferent, uncaring nature and lack of urgency of many first responders. People requiring protection continue to be misidentified, with First Nations women punished for not conforming to the “worthy victim” stereotype.

Four Corners showed this in Roberta’s story, who was told by the attending police officer to “stop calling us”. No one helped her when she was being beaten in public. This all occurred in the lead-up to her death.

Given the widespread racism of police and their freqently apathetic responses and disregard to First Nations women’s safety, there is a reluctance to come forward and report violence. When women do report, they are criminalised, further marginalised, dismissed and dehumanised, as highlighted on Four Corners.

Given that new laws are being implemented around the criminalising of coercive control, we need to ensure both community and police understand what this actually is, and how it can present in a relationship.

Source: Four Corners’ ‘How many more?’ reveals the nation’s crisis of Indigenous women missing and murdered

Landmark coercive control passes lower house | Mirage News

The NSW Government’s bill to criminalise coercive control in intimate partner relationships has passed the Lower House today with support across the Chamber.

Attorney General Mark Speakman said the NSW Government’s landmark Crimes Legislation Amendment (Coercive Control) Bill 2022 creates a stand-alone offence of coercive control, which will carry a maximum sentence of seven years in jail.

Source: Landmark coercive control passes lower house | Mirage News

Media Release: Collective Shout welcomes new National Plan to end Violence Against Women and Children – urges specific action to address pornography as a driver – Collective Shout

Media Release: Collective Shout welcomes new National Plan to end Violence Against Women and Children – urges specific action to address pornography as a driver.

The National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-32 was released today. We are pleased to see it included a strong statement on pornography as a driver of violence against women in contributing to sexist, misogynistic and degrading views about women – which we have documented for a decade.

However there is no detailed strategy for how to do this. Girls in schools tell us of daily experiences of sexual harassment, groping, demands for nudes and being subjected to sexual moaning noises by boys. Boys are pressuring girls to engage in the sex acts they have seen in porn. This will only worsen if we fail to put the wellbeing of young people before sex industry profits. Nor does it contain explicit plans to address violence against women in the sex industry.

#maleviolence #violenceagainstwomenandgirls #endVAWG #VAWC #endVAWC #pornharms #NationalPlanToEndViolenceAgainstWomenAndChildren #nationalplan #NordicModel #abolition

Source: Media Release: Collective Shout welcomes new National Plan to end Violence Against Women and Children – urges specific action to address pornography as a driver – Collective Shout

Domestic violence: Plan to end violence against women within a generation

Sweeping government programs to end the “epidemic” of violence against women and their children in Australia, where one woman is killed every 10 days by a current or former partner, will have their effectiveness measured for the first time.

The new 10-year plan to end violence against women and children “within one generation” acknowledges the previous national plan, which ran from 2010 to 2022, failed to reduce the prevalence of violence against women, nor make a dent in sexual assault statistics.

The new National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032, which advocates say has been strengthened significantly since its January draft, includes provisions to track and monitor the prevalence of family, domestic and sexual violence to gauge its effectiveness.

A stand-alone plan to address violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, for which advocates argued strongly in the 2021 Women’s Safety Summit, has also been included.

All states and territories have signed off on the plan, to be launched by the Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth, on Monday.

Source: Domestic violence: Plan to end violence against women within a generation

Secretly recording your spouse, is it legal? — Voice Lawyers

When altercations arise between spouses it can be difficult to convey your own side of the story properly. One might be tempted to record these altercations to avoid your spouse manipulating the story in their favour. You might think it is reasonable, right? The legality of using such recording devices depends on which state you live in.

In NSW, the use of listening devices to record private conversations is governed by the Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NSW) (“NSW Surveillance Act”). Subject to some exceptions – such as those afforded to police – a person must not knowingly install, use or maintain a listening device to record a private conversation whether they are a party to the conversation or not – section 7(1).

If found guilty of such offences, penalties include fines up to $11,000.00 and five-years imprisonment.

In other states, the legislation differs. In Queensland, the Invasion of Privacy Act 1971 (Qld) applies, where it is lawful for a party to a private conversation to record that conversation without the consent of other parties.

Regarding telephone conversations, the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (Cth) (“the TIA Act”) regulates access to telecommunications content and data across Australia. The TIA Act makes it an offence for a person to intercept or access private telecommunications without the knowledge of those involved in that communication.

The courts have considered the admissibility of such evidence depending on the circumstances of each case. They have been guided by whether the secret recording was reasonably necessary to protect someone’s lawful interests.

Whilst the law in NSW clearly states that no recording devices can be installed or used in secret to monitor any private conversation – including that with a spouse – the Family Court has discretion to admit such a recording into evidence, as it is governed by Federal Law (except WA) and the Evidence Act 1995 (Cth) (“the Evidence Act”).

Under section 138 of the Evidence Act, evidence that was obtained improperly or in contravention of an Australian law should not be admitted. However, there is an exception. The evidence may be admitted if the desirability of admitting the evidence outweighs the undesirability of admitting evidence that has been obtained in an illegal manner. The desirability of the evidence depends on its probative value and the importance of the evidence in the proceedings.

Not only is recording your partner secretly illegal in NSW and subject to serious penalties, but it might also not be admissible in court, including in family law proceedings. A safer option would be to make detailed notes after a conversation or incident and then send it to your own email as a contemporaneous record of the incident.

Source: Secretly recording your spouse, is it legal? — Voice Lawyers

Jennifer Robinson: Human rights lawyer for Julian Assange, Amber Heard, and West Papuan freedom fighters

The surfer, Bomaderry High grad and London-based human rights barrister on the trials of defending Julian Assange, Amber Heard and the world’s disenfranchised.

Robinson turned 40 during the pandemic; lockdown gave her time to write a book, How Many More Women?, which is out next week. Over a year, she and her co-author, fellow human rights lawyer and former Doughty Street Chambers colleague Keina Yoshida, listened via Zoom to stories from survivors of sexual assault, the journalists who wrote about them and feminist activists around the world. They heard story after shocking story about how defamation and privacy law is wielded by “rich and powerful men” to silence women who speak out – and about how those women, even when their claims are vindicated, are further abused by vicious online trolling.

Robinson says the idea for the book had been brewing for some time. “I’d observed defamation cases being filed,” she says, “watched the backlash to #MeToo – you’d be amazed how much goes on that never breaks the surface, that is resolved confidentially and never makes it to court. The result is often that the women are prevented from ever telling their story.

Johnny Depp lost his 2020 defamation case against The Sun because the judge believed his ex-wife’s account of the abuse she suffered at his hands. That didn’t stop Depp’s supporters attacking Heard and the lawyer standing beside her. “I had never faced anything like it before,” writes Robinson, “the trolling was relentless. Everything from my ethics and professionalism to my appearance and my personal relationship history was attacked. Trolls vowed to ‘ruin’ me and make sure I never worked again because … I had proven Depp was a wife-beater.” (In a separate trial in the US this year, a jury found that Heard had defamed Depp in describing herself as a victim of domestic abuse in an 2018 opinion essay for The Washington Post.)

The book was in part inspired by her maternal grandmother, Philipa Cracknell, now 85, who ran women’s refuges in Sydney in the 1980s.

Celebrating Assange’s 40th birthday in 2011, she got talking to a man who turned out to be a philanthropist with deep pockets. “He said, ‘There should be more lawyers like you in the world,’ and I said, ‘Let me tell you why there aren’t.’ And I went on a rant about uni debt, educational privilege, access to networks and mentors. At the end he said, ‘I need a global legal champion and I think you’re going to be it. Come and see me next week.’ ”

In 2011, Robinson became director of legal advocacy at the Bertha Foundation, a South Africa-based social justice organisation founded by the philanthropist she’d met that night, Tony Tabatznik.

Robinson is on the board of the Grata Fund in Australia, a not-for-profit doing similar work to the Bertha Foundation. Its founding director, Isabelle Reinecke, says, “We needed an A-team of heavy-hitters and, with her
international profile, Jen was an obvious choice.”

Robinson seems to be getting her feet into the sand in Australia pretty thoroughly. She does not practise as a barrister in Australia but takes on international cases through her London chambers: “I am committing part of my practice to climate change issues and part to First Nations justice.”

Source: Jennifer Robinson: Human rights lawyer for Julian Assange, Amber Heard, and West Papuan freedom fighters