According to Victoria Legal Aid (VLA), an alarming 80 per cent of all its cases that come before the family courts feature some form of family violence.
Now a new holistic program aims to help people work through violent family situations with targeted legal assistance and social support.
In addition to legal advice, the new Family Advocacy and Support Services (FASS) program offers VLA clients risk screening, safety planning and social support and referrals.
A campaign to bring back a community-based specialist domestic violence refuge, run by women for women, in Taree, is underway.
Leonie McGuire is leading the fight and has called a meeting at Club Taree on Thursday, June 8 with the aim of forming a steering committee of women to champion the cause.
Speakers will include principal of the Feminist Legal Clinic in Sydney Anna Kerr as well as Leonie, who was a founding supporter of the Taree women’s refuge 35 years ago and manager between 1992 and 2004.
She said despite pleas for assistance, the Australian government provided no support and left her to shoulder more than $100,000 for legal fees and support services.
“There’s financial and legal assistance available for people arrested or assaulted abroad,” Merinda said.
“But there’s an artificial boundary for vulnerable women and children on their own in another country.”
Despite multiple compelling and official reports backing Merinda’s claims of abuse at the hand of her former spouse, she said her bid for custody was denied.
After a 22-year struggle in Canada, Merinda returned home alone, “poor” and suffering from trauma-induced PTSD.
Since her homecoming, Merinda has made it her mission to prevent other innocent and vulnerable women and children from experiencing the “family, judicial and systemic abuse” that plagued her for more than two decades.
http://www.dailyadvertiser.com.au/story/4674972/domestic-violence-fight-a-mothers-crusade/
These crimes are not related but they all have the same chilling threads – the victims and the alleged perpetrators were related or known to each other and all of the people charged are male.
Before you say “But women do it too”, let’s have a small recap of the year in murder.
Since January 1, 65 men, women and children have died violently across the nation.
Men have been charged with more than 52 of these killings and women have been charged with eight.
But the thing that can turn around Australia’s shameful male violence problem is so simple that it’s almost embarrassing to have to say it – own your problem.
That’s right. Violent men need to own their problem. They need to look at what makes them angry, controlling and brutal and work out ways to end it.
The Attorney-General George Brandis confirmed this morning the government will increase spending on legal assistance by $56 million over three years; $39 million will go to community legal centres and $17 million to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services.
Brandis says the community legal sector will be asked to prioritise domestic and family violence in the outlay of the increased funds.
https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/funding-restored-community-legal-centres/
New Zealand’s top Family Court judge has hit back at a group after it recently asserted that the Family Court “is a dangerous place for women and children.”
http://www.nzlawyermagazine.co.nz/news/family-court-fight-escalates-235479.aspx
University of Sydney Faculty of Education and Social Work Associate Professor Lesley Laing said although laws were amended in 2011 to put children’s safety above equal parenting rights, it was not being put into practice in the courts.
“The law has changed to say that exposure to domestic violence and child abuse should be the top consideration, but for many women that’s very hard to prove,” Ms Laing said.
“I spoke to women who have had to drag screaming children to meetings with their fathers but are worried if they don’t do that then they’ll lose the children altogether for defying court orders.”
Muslim men are allowed to hit their wives — but only gently, and not with fists, instead using short sticks and pieces of fabric, according to a new video produced by the Australian women’s branch of radical Islamic political movement Hizb ut-Tahrir.
The video, posted to Facebook by the Women of Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia, features a Muslim woman, who identifies herself as Sydney primary-school teacher Reem Allouche, demonstrating the appropriate ways by which Muslim men may discipline their disobedient wives.
The women on the panel agree that “Islam is not gender-biased”. At the same time, they acknowledge that a Muslim wife is not given the option to hit her husband, or refuse sex, only to “ask one of the family members” for assistance in times of strife.
[D]esperate profiling plays to people’s desire to believe we should be able to spot terrorists. But while rent-a-gobs flail around naming and shaming Kent and drunk teenagers, it is telling how rarely one feature common to many “lone wolf” attackers is called out: a history of domestic abuse.
Domestic violence is frequently a way for male abusers to try to impose so-called traditional gender roles on their female partner – beating them when the laundry isn’t done, telling them what to wear – using violence to validate their own feelings of insecurity. So it is almost inevitable that these men would then be attracted to belief systems – whether it’s Isis, evangelical Christianity or the fundamentalist version of pretty much any major religion – that advocate wildly restrictive attitudes towards gender and endorse patriarchal systems which encourage men to punish women for their own failings.
The problem isn’t Islam, or a perverted interpretation of Islam, but rather a perversion of frustrated masculinity. After all, 98% of mass killings are perpetrated by men, and many of the attackers discuss women in proprietorial terms.
And yet this is almost never discussed, because there is no political capital to be gained by suggesting warped masculinity might be more to blame than Muslims. After all, domestic violence is a problem that spans cultures, and if President Trump were to try to ban men accused of domestic violence from entering America instead of Muslims, he would lose some major figures in his own White House.
In the Family Court, alleged perpetrators of domestic violence or sexual assault are allowed to cross examine their alleged victims. The accused can also be cross examined by alleged victims.
It happens all the time.
A federal parliamentary committee is now looking at whether this extremely fraught situation should continue as part of a victim focused look at the workings of the family law system.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/03/22/domestic-violence-inquiry-to-take-on-the-family-law-system_a_21959727/
http://www.smh.com.au/national/hansons-plans-for-the-family-court-please-explain-20160727-gqesgn.html
