A father reveals his despair over domestic violence

My reader says men must stand up to other men. Picture: iStock

The email was titled, simply, “A Dad and Domestic Violence”. My reader is an articulate, deeply thoughtful man, thinking about solutions in a sphere where men aren’t heard enough. “My daughter’s ex-partner has committed multiple acts of horrendous violence against her, an A to Z of violence. Assaults, bashings, chokings/strangulation, often in front of their sons. He openly calls their boys c**ts and f**kwits and d**kheads and has done so from an early age. He organises fights for them. Verbally abuses my daughter’s family members. He’s very happy for the boys to miss school, encourages them to racially abuse neighbours, send abusive texts to my daughter (purportedly from my grandsons) and tells the boys incredibly damaging lies about my daughter.”

This is the story of two men. My reader is the father of a daughter with young sons, and what he’s witnessing from his son-in-law is tearing his family apart. He’s deperately worried not only for his daughter’s life but for the generational conditioning reverberating throughout his grandson’s lives. “To write something like this is an exercise fraught with danger for my daughter and her sons, not to mention other family members. That it has come to this is an abomination.”

This violent and dangerous son-in-law “has had multiple Apprehended Violence Orders placed on him; he’s had multiple breaches of those AVOs, most recently failing to appear in court several times in relation to those breaches.” The daughter has “left and returned, left and returned. She’s done so to protect her sons… we’ve never asked the question ‘why doesn’t she just leave?’ She couldn’t, until she realised that to stay would mean, at best, debilitating injuries; at worst placing her own life in peril.”

My reader despairs at his state’s Department of Communities and Justice, which has been looking at this case for many years now. “[The ­ex-partner] has never been held accountable by the DCJ for his lack of engagement and participation. He lifts his middle finger to the system and the system acquiesces.”

I ask my reader if he had any sense of a solution. “More men need to be active in the preventative space,” he responds. He says the police need to further change their approach to domestic violence. “It’s not just a ‘marital dispute’, it’s a crime.” As for barristers, “I know it’s a cliché, but the ‘(old) male, pale and stale’ culture that informs the practices of so many legals also needs an overhaul. Barristers et al have an obligation to do their best for their clients, I get that. However, this should never come with treating the victims of DV (and sexual assault) with atrocious disrespect and contempt.”

My reader says men must stand up to other men. Challenge views. Wants the thinking among men to change. “No woman ever drives a man to commit violence upon her. Why do you say ‘gave her a touch-up’ rather than ‘beat the shit out of her?’ Don’t sugarcoat it. The action and language are appalling.” He wants more effective advertising “on television, when men and boys are watching. Imagine if we could substitute anti-violence advertising instead of betting advertising in sport?”

He’d like to see separate courts for domestic violence, in line with drug courts, significantly more research on why people commit DV and mentoring programs with older, more mature men attached to government services and police, “to work intensely with perpetrators under very strict conditions, and their sons (separately) to prevent ongoing, generational violence.” He concludes: “While DV cuts across all society, economic disadvantage is a significant factor. I read a quote once that ‘Violence is the theatre of the dispossessed’.” As wallets tighten across our nation, my thoughtful, despairing reader asks, “What will the impact of that be upon our domestic violence rates?”