This consultation is perhaps one of the most important to date. Domestic violence is a highly complex set of behavioural patterns, sometimes misunderstood and worryingly overlooked, often with disastrous consequences and for those of us who work in the family justice system it is a form of abuse we see too often, and in the many forms it can take.
The current definition of domestic violence is: any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between adults who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members”.
The consultation is thinking about widening this definition to include ‘coercive control’, as domestic violence is often characterised by one person exerting control over another and it is that control which experts believe lead to domestic violence-related deaths; far more so, they say, than any other type of physical behaviour within domestic violence cases, prior to the physical act of homicide. (The BBC website has a very good article on this topic).
Now, the Home Office have released this questionnaire, which essentially seeks to examine the current definition of domestic violence and whether or not it should be changed. There are four options offered, which are:
Violent and youth crime prevention unit,
Show me a couple who have been together for 5 years or more who claim they have NEVER had a noisy argument and I’ll show you two liars !
It is ridiculous and cruel to remove children from parents who shout at each other .
If they did that in Italy there would be scarcely any families at all still retaining their children !
“Failing to protect from emotional abuse” an absurd pretext indeed,for happy kids from loving families to go for adoption or foster care.
Meanwhile the baby Ps and Victoria Climbés of this world are callously left to die because the violent parent or lodger is intimidating and the kids are damaged and traumatised if they survive at all.
I ask all those superficially clever people who prattle in earnest fashion that emotional abuse is as bad as ,if not worse than physical abuse;”Would you rather regard a furious parental shouting match or have your arms and back broken?
The Definition of Family Violence in Australian Law – and all very necessary but still not completely definitive nor exhaustive.
4AB Definition of family violence etc.
15 (1) For the purposes of this Act, family violence means violent, threatening or other behaviour by a person that coerces or controls a member of the person’s family (the family member), or causes the family member to be fearful.
19 (2) Examples of behaviour that may constitute family violence include (but are not limited to):
(a) an assault; or
(b) a sexual assault or other sexually abusive behaviour; or
(c) stalking; or
(d) repeated derogatory taunts; or
(e) intentionally damaging or destroying property; or
(f) intentionally causing death or injury to an animal; or
(g) unreasonably denying the family member the financial autonomy that he or she would otherwise have had; or
(h) unreasonably withholding financial support needed to meet the reasonable living expenses of the family member, or his or her child, at a time when the family member is entirely or predominantly dependent on the person for financial support; or
Family Law Legislation Amendment (Family Violence and Other Measures) Bill 2011 No. 2011 5
1 (i) preventing the family member from making or keeping connections with his or her family, friends or culture; or
(j) unlawfully depriving the family member, or any member of the family member’s family, of his or her liberty.
(3) For the purposes of this Act, a child is exposed to family violence if the child sees or hears family violence or otherwise experiences the effects of family violence.
(4) Examples of situations that may constitute a child being exposed to family violence include (but are not limited to) the child:
(a) overhearing threats of death or personal injury by a member of the child’s family towards another member of the child’s family; or
(b) seeing or hearing an assault of a member of the child’s family by another member of the child’s family; or
(c) comforting or providing assistance to a member of the child’s family who has been assaulted by another member of the child’s family; or
(d) cleaning up a site after a member of the child’s family has intentionally damaged property of another member of the child’s family; or
(e) being present when police or ambulance officers attend an incident involving the assault of a member of the child’s family by another member of the child’s family.
Thank you Jarl, that’s very helpful. Has the definition had a negative impact in any way and has it changed the way victims behave in terms of coming forward at all?
This definition has just been enacted into the Family Law Act and will be introduced after 7 June 2012 to any new cases. The new definition arose after widespread concerns regarding the effects of the `Shared Parenting’ laws in 2006 which led to an increase in child killings for revenge against former partners, such as occurred with Darcey Freeman.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/a-decade-of-rage/story-e6freuzr-1226279572475
There are also widespread concerns that children are being placed by Family Courts with violent and dangerous parents, with records of child abuse, paedophilia, drug abuse/alcohol abuse, and psychotic mental conditions, as the law gives such parents an inalienable right to custody and contact with their children under the Shared Parenting provisions. The UK is now moving towards a similar scenario, urged by Father’s RIGHTS groups. UK Children will undoubtedly pay a high price for such backwards thinking to Victorian laws, as thousands of children have in Australia, Canada, and parts of the USA.
Yes, we’re very concerned the same experiences you’ve had will be repeated in the UK. The government has stated that it’s taking all the above on board, but we’re not so sure.
What is occurring has two major elements. Firstly is a backlash by certain male groups against the advances in female equality which have occurred over the last 150 years and secondly, it is a means of evading child support payments. You will see these two elements in much of the rhetoric on Father’s Rights websites.
In the domestic laws of Victorian times, children and their mothers were the property of the husband i.e. his `Goods & Chattels’ to dispose of as he chose. If a mother left the household, the children were the exclusive property of the husband. (This law still applies in the Channel Islands today).
With greater understanding of children’s emotional and psychological needs from psychological research, the Family Laws increasingly began to give mothers the custody of children after separation but unscientific theories such as Parental Aienation Syndrome and Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy began to find their way into the Court rooms, displacing the knowledge of emotional deprivation when children are separated from their mothers. Such theories were widely used by the lawyers representing fathers and of course there was a minority group of unscrupulous Hired Gun psychaitrists willing to sacrifice professional integrity for a handfil of silver. So mothers were increasingly labelled as `Delusional’ or to have `Borderline Personality Disorders’ if they dared to make allegations of violence or abuse against fathers in Family Court proceedings, and the punishment for having done so was for them and their children was to be permanently separated with no contact.
Prior to the mid-70s Child Support payments were set by Courts and very rarely paid and even more rarely enforced in default. However then the CSA took this over and began to make absent fathers pay Child Support and it proved very painful for many fathers, hence they had to find a new way of evading such payments. That is the real agenda behind the push for `substantial and significant contact time’ and even `Equal Shared Care’ because the effects of both are to reduce and even eliminate Child Support payments. The added bonus for fathers is that it also causes immense anguish and pain to the mothers to separate them from their children, a vengeful retort for their rejection of the father. So this whole scenario is about male pride and avarice, and nothing whatsoever to do with the `Best interests of children’.
No Ian, we are not talking about people shouting at each other. We are talking about serious assaults and particularly sexual assaults. We are talking about fathers kicking mothers in the stomach during pregnancy. We are talking about children screaming and crying in distress as they see their mothers beaten to a pulp and dragged through the house by their hair.
Don’t try to minimise the horrors of domestic violence and its impact on children and young people. In the UK two mothers a week are killed as a direct result of domestic violence. Wake up to some realities Ian and stop making excuses for violent, psychopathic fathers.
“Women’s violence to male partners certainly does exist, but it tends to be very different from that of men towards their female partners; it is far less injurious and less likely to be motivated by attempts to dominate and terrorise the partner” The Law Commission has referred to one study which was significant in its account of what women did not do (but which constituted tactics frequently employed by violent men) – “No husband was threatened with a gun, or chased with knives, axes, broken bottles or by a car. Husbands were not kicked or stamped on, with steel-capped boots or heavy work boots. Strangling or choking were not used. No wife attempted suffocation with a pillow. Husbands were not locked out, confined to particular areas of the house, or isolated from friends. No wife has ever killed her husband inside Family Court premises or immediately following a Family Court ordered counselling session. Security is not routinely required to ensure wives do not behave violently inside Family Court premises”. Butterworth’s Family Law Journal Dec.2004.
The fact that you have chosen to omit the words “regardless of gender or sexuality” speaks volumes.
Why don’t we just redefine DV as “being male” and have done with it – for this is the way we are heading.
I don’t think I mentioned gender or sex at all, which clearly leaves room for both sexes to be included. Being over-sensitive and attacking people without just cause doesn’t do your cause any favours. That may be worth remembering.
But Natasha, the official definition of domestic violence is “Any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between adults who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality.”
You misquoted it; you edited it, and removed that vital final clause. Why do that unless you disagree with it or think it inappropriate? You said it was the official definition when it wasn’t. It has nothing to do with me being over-sensitive or having a poor memory.
As for personal attacks, you seem to have no problem with Jarl’s nauseatingly sexist rants which now dominate your once interesting and balanced blog.
Dear Nick, nothing was purposefully edited. Posters are entitled to share their views, whatever they may be. The only objection I have with posting is the tone used by posters and any personal attacks on those who comment. You will note that I do, on occasion, ask posters to be civil.
Please take the time to read through the blog. You will see that I am very pro fathers and support for fathers, whether in relation to domestic violence or anything else which affects dads.
What I do not support and will not tolerate on the blog is overly agressive posting usually although understandably, bought about by personal hurt and upset, in order to lash out for the sake of it.
You are of course free to read or not read the blog as you wish.
Jarl ,you misunderstand me.I thought I was being very clear that I ABHOR PHYSICAL VIOLENCE BETWEEN SPOUSES OR PARTNERS.
My disgust with UK social workers and the family courts is the way they ignore severe physical abuse but clamp down on simple non physical emotional abuse removing children from happy loving homes where there is no physical violence but ignoring parents and children who are battered ,injured,and even killed !
Add:
Threats to deny contact with childre, or to remove them without reason from a parent’s full time care.
Threats to solicit lies, create false allegations and to manufacture renoval of a partner (parent) from the home.
Threats to destroy a partners’ livlihood.
Abuse of a dva strategy designed to support real victims by perpetrators acting as victims.
I see the argument made again here that “shared parenting” leads to children being placed with or forced to make contact with violent and dangerous parents with records of mental health, child abuse or violent convictions.
In my own case as the primary carer my children were left for two years with a schedule one offender solely because she accused me (falsely) of dva.
Those amazing, gorgeous, neglected and abused children are now safely with me.
I object strongly but the one in four argument (dva) is a political lie. Are there really a quarter of your friends being abused by their (male) partners?
And the notion that there is no violent action taken by females against men is also a lie. My ex partner was abused me, is a viscious murderer who utilised a system that is inherently gender biased – and to the detriment of our children.
Perhaps a stint on the phone lines at Mankind would assuade people of such awful prejudices. Perhaps given their own idelogical agendas it wont.
Children suffer due to such blinkered and abusive attitudes. They suffer at the hands of (some) manipulative and viscious women supported by the State professionals and its awful and abusive dva apparatus. Change! For our children’s sake.
Name Withheld – As you have said, your children were placed with a Schedule One offender. That should not have happened if his criminal record had been given primary importance in determining where your children would live. It illustrates perfectly that parental rights are superceding the rights of children to be protected from harm and exploitation. which is normal practice under `Shared Parenting’ arrangements. How would you have protected your children from this convicted child abuser, if it had been a 50/50 arrangement as the preferred option in Shared Parenting?.
“…. the notion that there is no violent action taken by females against men..” – where has anyone said that?. If you read above it states, ““Women’s violence to male partners certainly does exist, but it tends to be very different from that of men towards their female partners; it is far less injurious and less likely to be motivated by attempts to dominate and terrorise the partner”.
Maybe you should spend some time in a Domestic Violence Shelter and see the physically and mentally broken women and their terrified cowering children, to begin to understand what is happening. Perhaps you need to talk to small children describing in detail how they are sexually abused by their fathers, while other men watch and film those events so they can sell such films on the Internet. Perhaps you need to see the horrific genital injuries suffered by those children, but told that that is the way `Daddies’ love their children and its their `secret’ and the child must tell no one, or Mummy will be killed.
Name withheld – you are judging the world through the very narrow prism of your own experience, which is far from being typical. The situation I have described above is happening with far more frequency, but of course the media are prevented from reporting it because of the `Secrecy’ laws of the Family Courts.
If you really care about ALL children, then you will educate yourself in just what is happening because of the `Shared Parenting’ laws.
Dear Posters,
Thank you for taking the time to post and share your thoughts. They are all appreciated, regardless of whether they correspond to our own perceptions – debate is vital, and all points of view are welcome.
Whilst we encourage diverse opinion, we would also like to remind you that civil discussion is our preferred poison and we hope you will bear that in mind when posting.
And finally, you may note some posts have ‘Name Withheld’ on them. This is sometimes necessary to avoid the poster from being identified, usually where he or she mentions their own case. You will appreciate that we are bound by reporting regulations and as we do not know the personal details of each case, order or judgment relevant to each poster, we will, out of caution, always err on the side of less personal disclosure, rather than more on this site. This will also apply to any content in the posts which may lead to identification of children.
Thank you again for taking the time to post and share your thoughts. Your contributions are terribly important and we look forward to hearing more of your views on the news in future (and when we have the time, to join in and spar with you)!
Well, you did edit it, because the version of the definition you quoted was incomplete, but I concede defeat: I’m obviously not going to get a straightforward answer as to why you did that. Sorry to have taken up your time.
Hi Nick, once again, I didn’t edit it. I took that definition from an article the BBC had written (it’s on the blog post). The fact that the last part was omitted by the BBC may have been an oversight or it may have been something else; the definition does tend to fluctuate. Sometimes, we can be wrong about motivation. I myself have done it on numerous occasions, but I do tend to ask people first rather than assume things.
Fair enough! I took my definition from the consultation, which seemed the safest place.
The definition does, as you note, fluctuate, which raises the question of why we need different definitions for different purposes, and further fluctuation which is likely to cause confusion.
Some definitions are gendered, which is why I feel the Government’s caveat of ‘regardless of gender’ is so important. The Council of Europe, for example, employs a definition of DV which specifically excludes men as possible victims.
Personally, I prefer the OED definition of violence, ‘the exercise of physical force so as to inflict injury on, or cause damage to, persons or property’. It’s clear and robust. It seems to me that behaviours which are not actually violent would be better categorised as abuse.