The best way to avoid violence is to stay away from drugs and crims — unless you’re a woman | David Penberthy

It’s relatively easy for men to avoid becoming the victims of violence but the sad reality for women couldn’t be more different, writes David Penberthy.

The human brain has a strange way of processing alarming information.

In our daily chats with SA Police on the radio, there is always something reassuring when you hear that a home invasion or assault involves “persons who are known to each other”.

It might sound callous but this additional morsel of information is offered to and taken by the public as a reassurance.

It is as if to say don’t worry, there isn’t some maniac on the loose randomly bashing people or breaking into their homes.

It’s a reminder that with a few statistically aberrant exceptions, the best way to avoid being punched, stabbed or having your bedroom door kicked in at 4am is to not get involved with drug dealers and bikie gangs.

Sadly – and sickeningly – this reassurance falls down when it comes to most female victims of crime.

When a woman finds herself thrust into the above criminal scenario, as a victim of a crime committed by someone she knows, that person is almost always her partner, estranged or otherwise.

Almost all criminal violence against women is domestic violence. That fact demonstrates a grim truth which is hard to comprehend – statistically, women are at more risk of being injured at home than anywhere else.

Jodie Jewell was murdered in Modbury North on November 21. Picture: 7NEWS

When you think about your own wife and mum, your daughter or your sister, it is genuinely hard to comprehend how any of this happens at all. Ever.

Who are the blokes who do this?

The statistics tell us that they are numerous and that their numbers transcend class, race and religion.

You would suspect too that they all share a common and misplaced sense of victimhood and use that baseless persecution to excuse conduct which most men regard as completely unfathomable.

South Australia has just seen miserable confirmation of these truths with the deaths of four women in the space of just seven days in the least populous mainland state.

Police say in each case victim and alleged perpetrator were known to each other.

Speaking to domestic violence campaigners this week, none has been able to find a greater number in any one week recorded anywhere in the history of Australia.

It is a grim record for SA to hold, and beyond unacceptable.

There is a tendency when bad stuff happens to blame the government even in situations where the tragedy stems from choices made by private individuals.

You see it a lot in child protection, where the derelict conduct of deadbeat parents is shunted aside in a campaign to sack or sideline a minister or chief executive.

But while clearly the scourge of domestic violence starts with male behaviour, there is still a major role for all arms of government to play in combating the problem.

To that end, I am mystified that the state government did not announce on Friday of last week that a royal commission would be held into the domestic violence crisis in SA.

Other jurisdictions here and overseas have held similar top-level investigations, most notably Victoria, meaning that whatever RC is held can learn from their findings without duplicating the same work.

It need not be an overly costly process.

But there must be specific questions relating to our local performance which will improve things for women.

Such as whether we have adequate support facilities for women who have been abused and are trying to escape an abuser. Or whether we have enough police dedicated specifically to focusing on DV.

One other feature that should definitely be part of this is a judicial review.

That review should look at two things – the adequacy of the existing laws covering domestic violence and the application of sentences by the courts against convicted offenders.

The same can be said of the other scourge gripping our state, the road toll, rocketing as it is towards double the number of deaths in 2022.

I was amazed to read this week about the hopeless driver who performed an illegal U-turn back in June outside St Aloysius College on Angas St in the Adelaide CBD, seriously injuring a mother and her daughter after he pinned them under his car during school drop-off. The grand penalty for his incompetence – a $500, 18-month good behaviour bond.

In the DV space I wonder how many men have committed what are regarded as (or can be billed by defence lawyers as) “lesser offences” against their partners and effectively got away with it? It is an important question for two reasons.

First, none of us know the answer because these so-called “lesser” cases never get covered. And second, all the data shows that the men who end up committing the ultimate offence against women have spent years honing their miserable craft through a string of “lesser” offences.

As I have said – and I am sure almost every man would agree – I am stuffed if I can think of any scenario which can justify or excuse a single DV offence.

The best way to fight this is to stop it at its inception, surely, by showing men they will be taken out of circulation for a considerable time the moment they choose this path.

I am not sure what point there is in holding too many more of those White Ribbon Day get-togethers which always felt a bit like a forum for blokes to stand around feeling good about themselves.

We should use targeted force against the men who aren’t going to be strolling around at one of those breakfasts with a white ribbon on their lapel.

In the same way that you can identify rotten drivers from the start of their misconduct on the roads, surely we can do a better job protecting women from these blokes the very moment their behaviour starts.

If you’ve done it once you will do it twice, and so on it goes.

Throwing everything at this problem would seem a no-brainer for our state government.