How Victoria's family violence system fails some victims – by assuming they're perpetrators: "Participants suggested there was a strong link between police misidentifying women as primary aggressors and male perpetrators manipulating the intervention order system. "

Gentlemanlyness · 2017-11-14T02:11:15+00:00

While the royal commission, in accordance with the gendered nature of family violence, mainly focused on men as perpetrators, and women and children as victims, it raised important questions about female perpetrators and the effectiveness of family violence intervention orders.

Just what were the important questions that were asked? Well...

An issue raised in the report was Victoria Police misidentifying women as primary aggressors in family violence incidents.

That's right, the big problem with female perpetrators of IPV is that there really aren't female perpetrators of IPV, only innocent women wrongly arrested instead of their truly violent male partner manipulating the system.

FWIW, if you read the actual report referenced in the article, it is one of the most blatantly biased pieces I've seen published by a governmental body in my lifetime. It never actually cites a single specific statistic or data point anywhere. It just makes sweeping claims about how males are the only real perpetrators of violence in families. I'm not from Australia, but I'm curious how much the general public over there actually trusts any claims made in these sorts of garbage reports

Juan_Golt · 2017-11-14T02:40:12+00:00

Self justifying social advocacy.

Push gendered programs similar to the duluth model. Where men are primary aggressors by default. Expand the scope of DV to the point that they will be certain create some sort of violation.
Treat any women aggressors as "misidentifications" because clearly any women caught in this system were probably trying to defend themselves. Push for diversion programs that keep them from being prosecuted.
When challenged, point to how the statistics show how much more often men are convicted of DV. Thereby justifying programs that ensure more men get convicted of DV.

RobDog101 · 2017-11-14T04:56:29+00:00

This is insane. I expected it would be about the exact opposite judging from the title but it seems Australia's truly beyond hope. Do people really believe we live in a world where women are likely to be improperly identified as the primary aggressor?

EDIT: "My recently completed research explores the experiences of female respondents to family violence intervention orders through the perceptions of eight Melbourne-based family violence lawyers. "

Yeah that's sure to yield objective and impartial results.

ThirdTurnip · 2017-11-14T11:30:05+00:00

For anyone who's interested, here's the methodological flaw which underpins this "research".

My recently completed research explores the experiences of female respondents to family violence intervention orders through the perceptions of eight Melbourne-based family violence lawyers.

So all they've done is talk to 8 lawyers. And not collect any hard data from them. Just ask them about their perceptions.

How were those lawyers selected? Are they perhaps all feminists or lawyers who only / primarily represent female clients?

It's all very dodgy.

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