THE otherwise excellent SBS program See What You Made Me Do takes an unusual turn towards the end of its second episode.

The documentary explores the crisis in domestic violence in Australia, and as its title suggests, it explores how violent men try to excuse their actions, and even blame the victims of their abuse for their indefensible behaviour.

How can there be any excuse when a man threatens, abuses or physically assaults a woman, it ponders?

Yet a program that otherwise ridicules such excuses, begins with one when it comes to the shocking case of Mervyn Bell.

“Indigenous people live with a legacy of violence and control inflicted on their families and culture over the past 230 years,” the journalist says in her introduction.

“The intergenerational trauma runs so far and so deep that in some communities, family violence in almost the norm.”

Bell was an Indigenous man who violently assaulted his partner in Broome in 2013, before kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering her baby.

In this case, the program seemed to place the blame solely on the Western Australian police, who had arrested Bell’s partner for spitting at officers on the night of the incident and failed to promptly respond to her father’s pleas that Bell had kidnapped the baby.

There were undoubtedly serious failures by the police.

Yet there is ultimately one person responsible for the unspeakable horrors committed against that child – Mervyn Bell.

The police didn’t make him do it.

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Aboriginal women are 35 times more likely to end up in hospital from domestic violence than non-Indigenous women. In most cases the perpetrator is an Aboriginal male.

In modern society we’re told we should speak up at the first hint of gendered violence.

But there remains a deafening silence when Aboriginal women are involved, and worse still, a tendency to protect their abusers.

Our Watch is running a campaign warning people that “doing nothing does harm” when it comes to violence against women.

One of its advertisements says: “Next time your friend makes a sexist joke about women, speak up.”

This is good advice. But we might be getting a bit ahead of ourselves when many of the same people advocating this approach were silent when a powerful, high-profile man was accused of calling an Aboriginal woman a “slut” and threatening to “knock her f**king lights out”.

That’s what happened in the members’ bar at Darwin’s TIO Stadium after a football match in January.

The alleged perpetrator was former Australian of the Year and NT Treaty Commissioner Mick Dodson.

In the era of #metoo, the reaction to this incident might be considered unusual.

The national media that’s been obsessed with gendered abuse by powerful men was all but silent.

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There were no earnest discussions on Q & A or The Drum.

The ABC’s nightly national current affairs program 730 – which earlier this month dedicated 21 minutes to an interview with disgruntled former Liberal MP Julia Banks repeating allegations of her mistreatment by male colleagues ahead of her book launch – didn’t touch the issue.

Worse still, some even pushed bizarre conspiracy theories about the incident.

Chief Minister Michael Gunner was even asked if his office had deliberately leaked the story about Professor Dodson in an attempt to derail his government’s own Treaty process.

The truth is the woman at the centre of these allegations had made every attempt to have this matter resolved privately.

It was only after those attempts failed, that she reluctantly agreed in May for the issue to be made public.

Until that point, she’d received no apology from Professor Dodson, and he remained in his taxpayer-funded job, despite a formal complaint being made to Treaty Minister Selena Uibo in March.

Prof Dodson had neither confirmed nor denied the allegations but said he had no recollection of the incident.

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His lawyers said he suffered from post traumatic stress disorder and his disassociation may have been due to his medical condition.

The public revelation of this alleged abuse prompted other women to come forward and complain they had been subjected to similar treatment.

Their stories had a common theme. Despite making complaints, people in positions of power did nothing.

To his credit, once this issue was made public, Mr Gunner told Professor Dodson he had lost the government’s confidence.

Then, despite intense lobbying from powerful people, the Chief Minister stuck to his commitment that Professor Dodson needed to resign or he would be sacked.

But it’s hard to imagine another set of circumstances where a senior public servant accused of such behaviour could have hung on to their highly-paid job for so long. Or that anyone would be willing to lobby for his protection.

There’s no excuse for violence or threats against women. Ever. And there’s no excuse for silence when women are subjected to this abuse.

If doing nothing does harm, you can guarantee that in this case, harm was done.