Category: Domestic Violence

Three women killed in domestic violence in NSW in one week is a crisis

A stabbing, two hammer attacks and a strangling have made it a horror week of domestic violence in NSW.

Three women in their 30s had their lives brutally taken by their partners or former partners in a single state in a single week and the shocking thing is it didn’t make front page news or lead news bulletins.

These three women, whose lives were cut far too short in the most abysmal of circumstances, take the domestic violence death toll to 38 women this year according to the Counting Dead Women Australia researchers of Destroy The Joint. Thirty eight.

How many more women were attacked last week in NSW but not fatally? The answer is roughly 1250 according to data from the year 2014-15. Australian police deal with 5,000 domestic violence matters on average every week which is one every two minutes.

Among women aged between 18 to 44 years family violence poses a bigger health risk than smoking, drinking and obesity.

https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/three-women-killed-in-nsw-in-a-single-week-is-a-crisis/
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/three-dead-in-four-days-of-domestic-violence/news-story/e423c70335f40c472b37eb3917233e63

Melbourne pensioner reveals why he paid jailed WA mum’s fines

In order to pay the fines, initially Mr Clark had to investigate in which prison she was in and tried calling, but was denied because he did not know her name.

“I said [to the attendant] there’s an article in The Guardian today if you pull it up on your computer you’ll see it,” Mr Clark explained.

“How many Noongar women with five children of her own, and six children that she looks after, who’ve been arrested in the last two days do you get?

“And she said, ‘oh we get seven or eight a day’. I said, ‘are they all being locked up because of unpaid fines?’ And she said, ‘yes, and they’re mostly women’,” he recalls in disbelief.

“At that point, I just shook my head.”

But after much determination, he finally got through to someone who could help him, and paid the remainder of the woman’s fines, which after her two days in prison at a rate of $250 per day, meant there was $3376 remaining.

Now he is calling for change to the Western Australian system.

“It’s a national disgrace,” Mr Clark said.

http://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2017/10/02/exclusive-melbourne-pensioner-reveals-why-he-paid-jailed-wa-mums-fines?

NSW not doing enough for women’s refuges

Police stations and even McDonald’s restaurants have become the de facto refuges of choice for a growing number of women in crisis, domestic violence workers say.

Gone are the days when government at least strove to provide adequate funding for specialist services to meet the needs of abused mothers and children, according to DV Safety NSW.

As it promotes Domestic Violence Awareness Week, the group points to the fact that more than three-quarters of dedicated women’s refuges in NSW have been turned into general homelessness services since government reforms in 2014.

Domestic Violence Awareness Week runs from September 23-30.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/nsw-not-doing-enough-for-womens-refuges/news-story/7c54c299230851681de93d36c4e035d8

Aboriginal woman jailed for unpaid fines after call to police

An Indigenous woman in Perth has been jailed for 14 days for unpaid fines, 10 months after a coronial inquiry recommended the Western Australian government abolish the practice.

The 35-year-old Noongar woman was arrested on a warrant of commitment at the home she shares with her five children in Joondalup on Wednesday morning, after a call was made to police about a family member who had visited the house earlier and who was reported to have become violent.

When police arrived they performed a background check on the woman and found an outstanding warrant for $3,900 in unpaid fines, dating back to a dispute over an unregistered dog in 2012.

She was taken to Melaleuca women’s prison and told that unless she could pay the outstanding fine she would have to cut it out at a rate of $250 a day. The electricity at her house, where her children remain under the care of an aunt, has since been cut off.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/29/aboriginal-woman-jailed-for-unpaid-fines-after-she-sought-police-help?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/may/15/soaring-female-indigenous-imprisonment-rate-obstructing-closing-the-gap-targets-report

Why this eight-person panel is all male

That’s what happened this morning at the 2017 International Women & Law Enforcement Conference in Cairns, during its Australian Commissioners’ Panel. The event features 1000 delegates from over 60 countries — and plenty of excellent female speakers. . . . No women were included on the panel at the international women’s event, because we have no female police commissioners.

https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/spotted-male-panel-featuring-eight-men/

What’s So Great About ‘Traditional Marriage’ Anyway?

But how do contemporary women fare in marriage? Well, for a start we know that married women have poorer health, are unhappier and do more unpaid work in the home than their unmarried counterparts.

In 1975 Italian Marxist feminist Silveria Federici argued that housework and childrearing was essentially unwaged labour that the capitalist system very successfully constructed as an act of love, rather than work. Today, differences between men and women’s unpaid labour in the home has barely shifted, with women continuing to do the majority of unpaid work in the home, even when they also work full-time outside of the home.

[T]he institution of marriage should be entirely abolished in favour of all kinds of equal romantic partnerships, including non-heteronormative ones, free of state and religious control. For ultimately, an institution that has been created for the benefit of white cis heterosexual men can never bring liberation to anyone else.

https://newmatilda.com/2017/09/14/whats-so-great-about-traditional-marriage-anyway/

Detective Syndrome: the result of gaslighting

Gaslighting is an abuse tactic. The term comes from a play called Angel Street dating back to 1938. It’s about a husband who manipulates his wife’s at-home environment to psychologically confuse her. Wikipedia defines it as “a form of mental abuse in which information is twisted or spun, selectively omitted to favor the abuser, or false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity.”

When someone has been gaslit for a long time, they sometimes develop what I’ve coined as Detective Syndrome. Detective Syndrome is a phenomenon where one has been on the receiving end of the mental abuse known as gaslighting so much, that they become obsessive about finding the truth.

http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2016/01/detective-syndrome/

Abused mother’s details sent to alleged perpetrator in ‘devastating error’

A battered mother and her children have been forced to flee for a second time after Queensland’s Child Safety Department sent the woman’s allegedly dangerous ex-partner details about their secret new life.

It has emerged that someone in the department accidentally sent the woman’s former partner details about the children’s new school, their counsellor and the local sports they were playing as they tried to rebuild their lives.

The former partner is currently in jail on remand for allegedly attacking the woman, leaving her with broken bones, and going on the run with two of their three sons.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/05/abused-mothers-details-sent-to-alleged-perpetrator-in-devastating-error?

No choice to walk away: When the domestic abuser is your child

In NSW, domestic violence incidents involving juvenile offenders make up about 5 per cent of the total incidents reported, but anecdotal evidence suggests most parents will only engage authorities in desperation and as a last resort.

Last year’s Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence found about two-thirds of juvenile offenders were male, and 80 per cent of victims were their mothers.

Adolescent psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg says he is concerned about a connection between violence against mothers and a broader trend of growing disrespect among young males.

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/news-features/no-choice-to-walk-away-when-the-domestic-abuser-is-your-child-20170826-gy4t23.html

Funding boost to help resolve family law disputes

Mr Brandis said $6.2 million of this funding will be allocated to a new family dispute resolution service being piloted at eight locations around the country.

The trial locations are Tamworth and Bankstown in NSW, Sunshine and Broadmeadows in Victoria, Toowoomba and Upper Mt Gravatt in Queensland, Perth and Darwin.

The services are intended to help couples affected by separation agree on arrangements for their children without going to court.

A statement from the Attorney-General’s Department said the program will offer tailored services to complement mediation with legal and culturally appropriate support. This will include partnerships between family relationship centres and specialists such as legal, migrant and Indigenous-specific service providers, as well as interpreters.

Bond University recently launched its own family dispute resolution clinic through a partnership between its Faculty of Law and its Psychology Clinic.

https://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/wig-chamber/21675-funding-boost-to-help-resolve-family-law-disputes?
https://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/biglaw/21505-university-unveils-family-dispute-resolution-clinic