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Partner Violence: A Counter-Balancing Review of International Studies
and New Zealand Reports on Intimate Partner Family Violence |
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Empowering Men:
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The Other Side of Partner Violence:
A Counter-Balancing Review of International Studies and New Zealand
Reports on Intimate Partner Family Violence
© 2014 Craig Jackson (Educational Consultant),
Hans Laven (Registered Clinical Psychologist) & Dr Viv Roberts (Registered
General Practitioner) |
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About the contributors
Craig Jackson is a former child and educational psychologist now retired
who joined the New Zealand branch of ‘Families Need Fathers’ in
the late 1970s prior to the establishment of the Family Court in 1981. He
also helped to establish the Wellington-based ‘Equal Parental Rights
Society’ and trained fellow psychologists to complete psychological
reports to help guide the Family Court in issues affecting the custody of,
and access to, children. He has maintained this interest over the entire 33
year history of the Court, also making submissions to the Ministry of Justice’s
Review on the Family Court. He made separate submissions on domestic violence
and the repeal of the Bristol clause to the Electoral and Justice Select Committee
hearing submissions on the Family Bill subsequently enacted in October 2013.
He has also acted as a support person for men in contested care of children
issues before the Family Court.
Hans Laven is a clinical psychologist with a professional interest in domestic
and wider violence. He presented submissions on this topic to the Justice
and Electoral Select Committee on Family Law Reform.
Dr Viv Roberts is a General Practitioner with thirty years experience.
He has dealt with many families in crisis, some involved in Family Court proceedings.
He has taken a special interest in fatal male suicides and the motivations
involved and in attempted suicides by women. He has appeared before a Parliamentary
Select Committee to make submissions on this topic.
“This is the problem with fanaticism in public life: obsessively held
beliefs blind people…to the evidence before them.”
Attributed to Mark Latham
Former Australian Labour Party Leader
“Activists who really want to diminish the incidence of domestic violence
have to abandon outmoded ways of thinking about the problem. To remain closed-minded
at this juncture may make one a faithful ideologue but it does no service
to victims of intimate partner violence.”
From Donald Dutton’s ‘Rethinking Domestic Violence’,
Page 348
“Complexity and ambiguity can never be eliminated with the result
that responding to family violence is not amenable to simplistic thinking
or simple solutions. As described in this report, the purpose of the family
violence death review process is to consider how we can strengthen the resilience
of the multi-agency family violence system so it can respond more effectively
in the face of this complexity.”
From the Chair’s introduction to the Family Violence Death Review
Committee’s Fourth Annual Report, page 5
“…Violence is not a valid solution to problem solving no matter
who is perpetrating the act and that there is plenty of evidence that both
men and women perpetrate violence, then our model of domestic violence must
acknowledge this fact and find solutions for both partners.”
Donald Dutton
Author of ‘Rethinking Domestic Violence’, Canada: UBC Press (2006),
Page 38
“Men are physically stronger, cause more damage and fear, but women
are abusers too and domestic violence can be mutual. We need to focus on where
it happens, not politicise it by blaming all men.”
Deborah Coddington
Viewpoint
Sunday Star Times
13 July 2014
Bedrock beliefs by feminist authors about their understanding of the dynamics
of family violence
• Domestic violence is used by men against women, and men are violent
whenever they can get away with it.
• Women are never violent except in self-defence.
• Male violence will escalate if unchecked by criminal justice intervention.
• Males choose to be violent and have a gender-based need for power.
• The victims of intimate violence are overwhelmingly women.
• When a man is injured by a woman, she is acting in self-defence.
Taken from Donald Dutton’s "Re-thinking Domestic Violence",
Page 98
Current Government moves to address the ‘epidemic’ of family
violence
Government is pledging 9.4 million dollars to strengthen community responses
to the problem of family violence and is being lobbied to put in place the
following new initiatives:
• Establishing a Chief Victims Advisor to the Minister of Justice
to advise on the needs and views of victims of crime, including domestic violence
victims.
• Testing an intensive case management service to provide specialist
support for domestic violence victims at high risk of serious harm or death.
• Establishing a nationwide home safety service to help victims who
want to leave a violent relationship. The service will offer practical support
such as safety planning, strengthening doors and windows and installing alarms.
• Reviewing the Domestic Violence Act 1995 to ensure it keeps victims
safe and holds offenders to account.
• Exploring the possibility of a conviction disclosure scheme, which
may allow a person to be told whether their partner has a history of violence.
• Trialling mobile safety alarms with GPS technology for victims, so
they can notify Police of an emergency, and their location.
• Introduce legislation to change the Sentencing Act, which will allow
courts to stipulate GPS monitoring of high-risk domestic violence offenders
who can’t currently have this condition imposed upon them. (Section
attributed to a Domestic Violence Clearing House Information Sheet)
• Provide free advocates counselling.
• Making non-fatal strangulation or choking a separate crime.
• Introducing a defence of provocation for women subjected to repeated
physical violence should they kill their partner.
• Reinstating the Bristol clause placing the burden of proof of innocence
on any accused (in practice, only male accused) and ensuring that children’s
relationships with an accused parent (in practice, only males) are damaged
even when the children have never been present or involved during any alleged
offending.
• There is a substantial literature on family violence including well
respected studies from the Christchurch and Dunedin Multidisciplinary Longitudinal
Child Development Project as well as numerous international studies that provide
data on one aspect, that of intimate partner violence (I.P.V.), the subject
of this paper.
• Manifestations of intimate partner violence that cover a wide spectrum
of behaviours ranging from inadvertent, isolated, often provoked, and uncharacteristic
acts through to deliberate, sadistic, ongoing and severe violence leading
to the death of the partner, are the subject of a wide range of recently issued
reports, principally the Glenn Inquiry ‘Peoples Report’ (herein
referred to as the Glenn report); the Family Violence Death Review Committee
Report (herein referred to either as the Tolmie report or the Tolmie Family
Deaths report), and Ruth Herbert’s Impact Collective Report (herein
referred to as the Herbert report), among other various reviews and governmental
reports most recently from the Ministry of Social Development and a second
report from the Glenn Inquiry called ‘Measuring the Economic Costs of
Child Abuse and Intimate Partner Violence to New Zealand’ . There are
also reports and literature reviews from the Department of Corrections which
runs anger management / violence prevention programmes within the prison system
as well as community based interventions.
• Recommendations to strengthen New Zealand’s governmental and
community responses to family violence are almost entirely based on the so-called
Duluth, ‘male power and control’ model for understanding family
violence. The Duluth model disregards what are actually varied, complex and
multi-faceted causes of family violence and instead asserts that males, due
to their wish to control others, are the only true perpetrators and females
the adult victims. ‘Violence Is Not OK’ groups claim there is
an epidemic of family violence and that therefore stronger more punitive measures
need to be taken by Government. Those groups all push the Duluth model and
either clearly or by implication intend their recommended measures to be directed
against males and in protection of women and children.
• One basic premise of the Duluth model is that if a female partner/wife
assaults the male it is only in self-defence, leading to calls that a legal
defence of provocation be reinstated only on the basis of claimed family violence.
As true self-defence is already a legal defence for any homicide, this proposed
reinstatement would see ‘slow burn’ provocation treated as an
excuse for attacking or murdering males even when they are helpless or pose
no immediate threat. Groups believing in the Duluth model have also called
for the recent repeal of the Bristol clause to be reversed as well, on the
claimed grounds that recent Family Court reforms are ‘unsafe’
for women and children.
• Actual statistics on I.P.V. show that while intimate partner violence
is the most frequently studied manifestation of family violence, it is one
of the least common with data collected by government and non-government agencies
steered to more serious incidents. These data are vulnerable to variations
in recording practices over time and variations according to which Government
agency is collecting the data.
• Manipulation of the statistical data on the number of family murders
per annum in the Tolmie Family Deaths report is revealed for example by the
‘fudging’ of data in various ways.
• This report will demonstrate that the recent New Zealand reports considering
domestic violence have been highly selective in quoting from only those articles
and reports that add weight and veracity to the viewpoints of women’s
lobby groups, primarily their belief in the Duluth model, and ignore those
findings which do not. Technically, this is described as ‘advocacy’
research or ‘cherry picking’ as seen in the Tolmie, Glenn and
Herbert reports, thus giving added weight and apparent veracity to each other
but all in fact, relying on each others manipulation of their questionable
statistical databases. Arguably, they are all ‘femicentric’ reports
that have spread disinformation and half truths about the dynamics of family
violence.
• The irony should not escape legal academics that their advocacy of
the Duluth model places ‘power and control’ over the domestic
violence industry in their hands. A further irony is that, because under the
Duluth model women are only violent because they have been subjected to ‘power
and control’ violence from males in their lives, the rehabilitation
programmes they are directed to are geared towards ‘empowering’
those women, i.e. encouraging women to increase their own ‘power and
control’ over partners and families.
• There is probably no reliable estimate of the true extent or nature
of family violence in New Zealand or elsewhere since many incidents are never
notified and the police do not keep their own statistics on I.P.V. call-outs.
It cannot be assumed that cases not notified to police are similar in nature
to those that are notified; instead it seems likely that a greater proportion
of those who don’t call police see the I.P.V. as minor and/or of equal
blame between the parties.
• Truly effective solutions to the problem of family violence in New
Zealand should be derived from a balanced and gender proportionate review
of the available literature from New Zealand based academics as well as international
authorities.
• A response to ‘strengthen’ our domestic violence legislation
has not worked in the past and will not work for the future if solely based
on the findings of femicentric reports and the radical punitive solutions
they propose.
So large and extensive is the international literature on domestic violence
that it is possible to quote selectively from studies that support the ‘frame
of reference’ of both the women’s lobby groups and the men’s
lobby groups.
The aim of this paper is to review recent New Zealand reports concerning
family violence, and to consider the extent to which selecting reporting and
manipulation of the statistics have both exaggerated and misrepresented the
problem of intimate partner violence.
Internationally respected findings from articles on domestic violence originating
from the Christchurch and Dunedin longitudinal studies have not been quoted
in the most recently issued reports by women’s lobby groups who have
dominated the debate so far with extensive press publicity given to their
findings. By contrast the men’s lobby, less well organised and less
cohesive, have experienced great difficulty in getting their side of the story
heard in the media.
In a democratic society such as New Zealand’s when dissenting views
on other social problems are encouraged, the lack of balanced debate on the
problem of I.P.V. is far from healthy.
This report aims to redress this lack of balance and to highlight the pressing
need for a more ‘gender-proportionate’ understanding that all
forms of I.P.V. cut both ways and that it is not exclusively a gender-specific
male as perpetrator, female as victim problem as it is too often made out
to be by the women’s lobby groups.
There is now a general consensus from both the New Zealand and international
literature that women inflict physical violence on their male partners as
often as men do, although the injuries they inflict are not as severe as men’s
assaults on average. These studies together describe intimate partner violence
including psychological violence as mutual, bi-directional and intergenerational.
Only the intergenerational dynamic is discussed in the Tolmie and Herbert
reports.
In spite of their apparent academic rigour and their authors’ academic
credentials, it is submitted that these studies are more in the nature of
ideological polemics than scholarly undertakings that would impartially review
the family violence literature in a balanced way.
Any group of people holding bedrock but sincere beliefs about any issue
have been described as ‘faith communities’ of like-minded people
whose beliefs are not universally shared by the public at large. Their beliefs
are unshakeable, firmly held and not amenable to rational counter-criticism
or dissenting points of view no matter how compelling or objectively based.
Despite the often vituperative ideological debates slanted to the feminist
perspective, there are New Zealand and international researchers who, using
reliable data, have found considerable gender symmetry in physical, psychological
and economic I.P.V. situations. Over 200 articles attest to this fact.
3 Domestic violence ‘panics’
The plethora of recent reports on domestic violence followed by legislative
changes to strengthen domestic violence legislation is not a new phenomenon
but a cyclic one which has precedence in the legislative changes following
the Bristol murders in 1994. While not minimising this tragedy which followed
from the father murdering his three daughters, the subsequent changes to strengthen
domestic violence legislation in 1995 were arguably ‘knee jerk’
changes, an over-reaction in ‘panic’ resulting in outcomes that
were repugnant to justice and that badly impacted on men and children. A more
recent example was the introduction of police safety orders that usually result
in the male partner being removed from the home but rarely if ever the female
partner.
The commonly named ‘Bristol clause’ enshrined in the Care of
Children Act 2004 (Section 60(6) – now repealed), described by lawyers
as the ‘no-evidence’ rule, put pressure on the Courts to treat
any allegation of violence as if it were true. The Family Court is allowed
to decide that allegations are proved ‘on the balance of probability’,
and given that the Court’s beliefs about family violence were based
almost exclusively on unbalanced feminist research, this meant that women’s
allegations in Court were mostly accepted as ‘proved’ (because
family violence was believed to be committed mainly by men seeking to impose
power and control), while men’s allegations about women’s violence
were treated with scepticism. Under the Bristol clause any male accused was
likely to be treated as guilty unless and until he could prove himself either
innocent or safe.
The Bristol clause also required the Court to disallow an accused party
(who had not yet convinced the Court of his innocence or safety) from either
day-to-day care or unsupervised contact with his children, even when no accusation
or insinuation had arisen to suggest that parent had ever behaved abusively
towards the children or that the children were even present during any alleged
partner conflict. Given the drawn-out nature of many Court proceedings, this
meant that relationships between the accused parent and children were often
severely damaged without good reason.
The extension of domestic violence to encompass ‘psychological’
abuse (Section 3(2)(c) of the Domestic Violence Act 1995) which also resulted,
was problematic and difficult to define as a single act could amount to abuse
(Section 3(4)(a)) or ‘a number of acts that form a pattern of behaviour
may amount to abuse even though some or all of those acts, when viewed in
isolation, might appear minor or trivial’ (Section 3(4)(b).
Similarly, current reports now call for another round of punitive legislative
changes which may well exacerbate rather than ameliorate domestic violence
since previous changes have not served to reduce the problem.
4 The Duluth perspective on intimate partner violence by legal academics
The principal authors of the Tolmie report are respected feminist academics
from the University of Auckland who reveal where their femicentric sympathies
lie by listing at the foot of their report summary statement, phone numbers
for Women’s Refuge and the Shine Organisation without also listing support
services available to men. In fact there are few established services for
men in New Zealand and those that exist receive little or no financial or
moral support from government departments, in contrast to services for women.
Another example of slanted, selective reporting is from the Law School
of the University of Waikato whose analysis of the Bristol Murders is not
fully representative of the facts of this tragedy and again, little more than
a feminist polemic, given that on the recommendation of the Judge, Counsel
for the Child and a report from a child psychologist, the father was given
primary care and all efforts were made to encourage his female partner to
work amicably towards a shared parenting arrangement.
5 The fallacy of ‘the dynamics of intimate partner violence’.
The independently presented report by Ruth Herbert, former CEO of the Glenn
Inquiry, claims that all concerned with improving and more effectively co-ordinating
responses to the problems of family violence at a grass-roots community level
should share a common collective understanding of the true dynamics of intimate
partner violence as well as other manifestations of violence in general, not
only physical but psychological and economic violence. Similarly, the Tolmie
report makes statements such as (pg 74) “Determining who the predominant
aggressor is necessitates understanding the dynamics of IPV…”,
while the other reports follow a similar line. ‘The dynamics of I.P.V’
is a fallacious concept because different sets of dynamics will apply across
the range of I.P.V. situations. ‘Male power and control’ dynamics
may apply in a small proportion of I.P.V. but even then the Duluth model is
far from being scientifically validated as being causal or even relevant at
all. Through manipulatively implying that there is a single set of dynamics
of I.P.V. that involves male power and control, these femicentric reports
are conducting an exercise of suggestion that distorts the way most of the
population has come to view I.P.V. generally and in individual cases.
According to Denis Dutton, whose text-book ‘Re-thinking Domestic Violence’
is a landmark and seminal contribution to the field, the Duluth ‘male
power and control’ model was devised by a small group of female activists
in Canada and the United States and is one of the most common models shaping
Court sanctioned interventions both internationally and within New Zealand.
The basis for these beliefs came from a small sample of battered women and
four men who had completed an I.P.V. programme at Duluth (Dutton, 2006, pg
301).
Dutton (2006) goes on to state:
“The primary difference seems to be in an unyielding adherence to
their explanation of violence, their monolithic model of male domination
and instrumental violence taken as given, and the emphasis on socialisation
and control of women to the exclusion of other factors contribution to abuse…”
(Ibid, pg 302)
According to Dutton, in reality only about 4% of males fit the stereotype
of male initiated violence. In most cases both males and females come from
families within which violence is reciprocal, minor, or female perpetrated
(ibid, pg 304).
Dutton adds that feminist advocates seem unable to recognise that the Duluth
hypotheses have been disproved and he has not been able to find confirmation
in any empirical data whatever for this model (ibid, pg 314).
The Department of Corrections literature review omits any mention whatsoever
of Dutton’s important text even though it is locally available from
the Department of Corrections library and the library of Victoria University
of Wellington. The Herbert report does mention the Duluth model, describing
it as one of the founding models of a co-ordinated community response, but
says nothing of the serious criticisms levelled against it, thus providing
a good example of selective reporting, lack of balance and lack of an impartial
objective account drawing on available sources. In section 4:4 (pg 59) the
Duluth model is uncritically described as follows:
“The Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) model, developed
in the 1990s in Minnesota, USA, is one of the founding models of a ‘coordinated
community response’ on which many international models are based. This
model comes mid-way on the continuum of joined-up approaches discussed in
Chapter 3. Again common elements including shared understanding, training
and protocols are foundations of the approach – although not as formalised
as would be the case in a fully integrated system.
The Duluth model has victim/survivor safety as its central goal and incorporates
perpetrator programmes to provide an integrated response. Resources have been
developed for agencies working in the domestic violence sector including best
practice policies and protocols. Emphasis is placed on providing support and
safety planning for women who experience abuse, prompt and appropriate referral
to other agencies, and collaborative approaches between different agencies
such as child protection services, alcohol/drug and mental health treatment.
Monitoring and tracking of cases has been built into the system and the response
is evaluated from the standpoint of victim safety.
The development of the criminal justice response is well documented and
includes an emphasis on offender accountability through the use of case tracking,
arrest policies and sanctions against non-compliance to court orders. 148,149
“
A number of studies quoted by Dutton (2001) found it was the personality
type or structure of the perpetrator rather than his/her gender that was the
best predictor of I.P.V., mostly mutual partner violence involving both partners
presenting with abusive personality patterns. Anxious attachments to primary
caregivers in childhood mediated the inter-generational transmission of family
violence, this process occurring for both genders. The authors also found
this model predicted abusive personality traits in both genders.
Female initiated partner abuse could not be explained away exclusively as
self-defence against male partner abuse (as claimed by the Duluth model) because
a women’s pre-relationship history of aggressive behaviour actually
predicts her abuse towards her male partner over and above his abuse towards
her.
6 The use of misleading, emotive language
The New Zealand femicentric reports on family violence use misleading language
designed for propaganda purposes. For example, some refer to an ‘epidemic’
of family violence to create panic and to justify draconian law changes. Figures
on death events as given by Lievore and Mayhew in their 2007 report commissioned
by the Ministry of Social Development averaged eleven over the eighteen year
period between 1978 and 1996 leading them to describe I.P.V. homicides as
rare events (pg 8). The term ‘epidemic’ applies to a rapidly spreading
and increasing incidence of an infectious disease to a large number of persons
in a given population within a short period of time. There is no good evidence
that family violence is like an infectious disease or indeed that it is increasing
fast or at all. Yet the most recent Glenn Inquiry report estimating the economic
cost of family violence and I.P.V. makes exaggerated estimates of future costs
on the assumption that such violence is increasing fast and will continue
to do so.
Another example of misleading language is the use only of female terms for
victims (e.g. ‘women’, ‘she’, ‘her’) and
only male terms for offenders (e.g. ‘men’, ‘he’, ‘him’),
as seen in all of the recent family violence reports implying that women never
offend and that men never suffer violent victimization. Similarly, frequent
references only to the need to keep ‘women and children’ safe
from family violence encourage the population to believe that male victimization
is trivial, whereas in fact men are more frequently the victims of both family
violence and general violence in the community.
Another form of misleading language is referring to accusers as ‘victims’
or ‘survivors’ etc before there is reasonable certainty that any
crime has occurred, and accused as ‘offenders’, ‘perpetrators’,
‘the violent party’ etc before they have been proven to have committed
any violence or crime at all. Also, terms like ‘disclosed’ and
‘disclosures’ for what are actually ‘allegations’
and ‘untested claims’.
Further, women’s lobby groups use terms such as ‘inappropriate’
to judge many male behaviours even though they cannot claim any moral authority
to do so. The word ‘attacked’ is used for minor actions of physical
force or even gentle touching, the term ‘abuse’ is used for actions
that are not necessarily abusive, and the term ‘‘rape culture’
is invented to describe a country that actually punishes rape more harshly
than most other forms of violence.
7 The Australian ‘One in Three Campaign’
The New South Wales Government’s Legislative Council’s Standing
Committee on Social Issues Report released in August 2012, from which the
‘One in Three Campaign’ resulted, states that of all reported
victims of domestic assaults 69.2% were male on female but 30.8% were female
on males and called for a more gender-proportionate response and recognition
of the need for more supports to be given to males as well as the existing
supports usually afforded to female victims of domestic violence.
The Personal Safety Survey 2012 referred to in the One in Three Campaign
fact sheets found that men were half as likely as women to disclose such abuse,
to have sought advice concerning their predicaments, or to have applied for
a domestic protection or restraining order against their female partner. By
contrast, women usually do not usually hesitate to do so against their male
partner.
According to information contained in the One-in-Three Campaign’s
fact sheets:
• At least one in three victims of current partner violence, emotional
abuse and stalking during the last 12 months were male.
• Around one in three victims of physical violence by a boyfriend/girlfriend
or date since the age of 15 were male.
• Almost one in three victims of sexual assault during the last 12 months
was male.
• More than one in three victims of physical and/or sexual abuse before
the age of 15 were male.
The well respected Australian Institute of Family Studies Report (1999)
reached similar conclusions that post-separation, fairly similar proportions
of men (55%) and women (62%) experienced physical violence, including threats
by their former spouse. Emotional (psychological) abuse was reported by 84%
of women and 75% of men (Fact Sheet No. 1).
While the Australian situation may differ somewhat from New Zealand, research
has shown a similar pattern here but the femicentric reports have obfuscated
this. Similarly, of children sexually abused, a New Zealand study found that
one in three victims were male.
8 Serious physical injury in I.P.V. assaults initiated on men by women
partners
The most serious I.P.V. injuries are caused more often by men than women
as are assaults leading to death. However, women seriously injure and kill
men too as women can compensate for weaker upper body strength by the use
of weapons, assaults on male partners while they are asleep, using women’s
greater lower body strength to kick partners or by slow poisoning as in the
Helen Milner case.
Magdol et. al’s study originating from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary
project found that the risk factors for female violence were high scores on
a scale of psychoticism, neuroticism and alcohol abuse.
Pathological mood swings, technically described as bipolar disorder, are
experienced by both men and women, while women suffer more often from borderline
personality disorder which also causes severe mood and behavioural problems.
Both of these disorders carry an elevated risk of violence in various forms.
Studies cited in Fact Sheet No. 3 from the Australian One-in-Three Campaign
found, contrary to the Duluth model, that few women pleaded self-defence and
provocation in female on male assaults and only a low percentage of women
used this justification as primary excuse since women often used violence
against non-violent male partners. Another important finding was that women’s
allegations of male violence were either proven to be false by their own children
or such charges were often withdrawn subsequently once the case got to Court.
Aggressive teenage girls with delinquent/anti-social behaviours mostly
grew up to be aggressive partners as did their male counterparts.
10 The need for ‘power and control’ in I.P.V.
Empirical research on American couples and New Zealand studies by Fergusson
et. al. plus data from the One-in-Three Campaign Fact Sheet No. 4 have found
that power and control struggles are in the minority in intimate relationships
and just as likely to be female-dominant as male-dominant. If both partners
are equally controlling such relationships are more likely to produce injury
in repeated violent incidents initiated by one or the other. Thus the results
from research findings in this area called into question yet another erroneous
Duluth basic assumption held by most prevention and treatment programmes,
most particularly New Zealand based programmes. Both sexes tend to over-report
and exaggerate minor acts of violence, under-report serious acts they commit
and over-report serious acts that they suffer.
11 Without Notice (Ex Parte) Domestic Protection Orders: an abuse of principles
of natural justice
Under the 1982 Domestic Protection Act, the threshold for without notice
orders was whether the delay that would be caused by proceeding on notice
would or might entail risk to the personal safety of the applicant or child
of the family or serious injury or undue hardship. In practice, women’s
allegations against men have been treated as entailing such risk much more
readily than men’s allegations against women. Ex parte orders are almost
routinely granted for women in the absence of any evidence except the woman’s
allegations.
Clause 60 (now repealed) of the Care of Children Act 2004, subsection (1)
and (2), used to place no requirement on the Court to make any inquiry on
its own volition about the veracity of allegations levelled against a (usually
male) partner, repeated in clause 6(a) and (b), that a Domestic Protection
Order could be made if the Court is ‘…unable to determine on the
basis of the evidence presented to it…whether the allegation of violence
is proved; but is satisfied that there is a real risk to the child’s
safety’ (page 48).
Another partisan, explicitly feminist analysis of family violence is to
be found in the New Zealand text, ‘Psychology and Family Law: A New
Zealand Perspective’. This text was probably influential in shaping
the over-reaction to subsequent legislative amendments to New Zealand’s
Domestic Violence legislation and in the Care of Children Act in 2004 and
the earlier amendments of 1995 following the Bristol murders.
Fathers’ Rights Groups have repeatedly claimed that ex parte Domestic
Protection Orders have been one of the biggest causes of anger among separated
fathers and one of the main drivers behind protests about the New Zealand
Family Court. As stated in the Ministry of Justice’s Review of the Family
Court document (2013, para 181, pg 47):
“Without notice applications take parties straight into a court process
without the opportunity to try less adversarial ways of resolving disputes.
This can be damaging to the ongoing parenting relationship and escalate conflict,
especially when later information provided by a respondent suggests that a
without notice application was not necessary. Between 2005/06 to 2009/10,
61 percent or 14,294 without notice applications for temporary protection
orders were granted with 39 percent or 9,247 of these later recorded as either
discontinued, dismissed, lapsed, struck out, or withdrawn. During the same
period 80 percent or 10,485 of 13,150 without notice applications for interim
parenting orders were granted with 32 percent of these later recorded as either
discontinued, dismissed, lapsed, struck out, or withdrawn.”
Henaghan and Atkin (2009, page 162) are of the opinion that section 60 and
61 of the Care of Children Act 2004 (COCA) has an adult rather than child
centred focus and is therefore in breach of section 6 of COCA and section
27 of the 1990 New Zealand Bill of Rights Act since no provision is made to
obtain the child’s perspective in determining whether violence between
the parents has occurred, nor ‘…the child’s views of the
violence and the importance to them of their relationship with the alleged
abuser’. That perspective particularly as expressed by older children,
may well reveal a different set of circumstances and behaviours as claimed
by the parent who usually initiates the application for a Domestic Protection
Order.
12 Lack of community supports for men following the issue of ex parte domestic
protection orders and interim parenting orders
Figures from the One-in-Three Campaign bear out a lack of support for men
subject to domestic protection orders and that men are less likely than women
are to seek advice and support. Men are two to three times more likely never
to have told anybody about violence from their partner, nor to have contacted
the Police. Many are reluctant to apply for a domestic violence order or to
object if their partner has fabricated the grounds upon which she has been
granted an order. They are ashamed and humiliated when they realise that they
are not going to be believed while their partner is. There are no refuges
for men, or counselling and support services to help them to relocate homes.
The situation in New Zealand is little different.
13 Fear of the male perpetrator
One in Three Fact Sheet No. 5 addresses the phenomenon of fear of males
by citing studies which conclude that women are twice as likely to fear death
from a partner than men are. Women may over-react to threatening situations
while men under-react. However, following domestic violence both men and women
may suffer much the same symptoms of chronic or delayed post-traumatic stress
reaction such as psychosomatic symptoms, traumatic flash-backs and loss of
confidence and self-esteem plus irritability and loss of motivation. Men may
become both pre-occupied with and obsessed by their many losses, particularly
loss of a meaningful role with their children, and are often unable to continue
in their pre-separation occupations. This directly contradicts femicentric
claims that only male violence is designed to generate fear thus to enable
coercive behaviour. A study by Fergusson, Horwood and Ridder (2005), found
that the consequences of mild to moderate domestic violence in terms of both
physical injury and psychological trauma was similar for both men and women,
with 97.5% of women reporting that they were not fearful of their partner
as compared to 99.7% of men. Thus the majority of cases studied did not invoke
fear in either partner.
14 Intimate partner violence in lesbian, gay and trans-gender persons and
heterosexual civil unions
The fact that I.P.V. in gay male and lesbian relationships is seldom mentioned
in femicentric reports demonstrates the selective inattention to any studies
that would challenge the exclusive emphasis on heterosexual domestic abusive
situations and an underlying belief in the Duluth model.
There are studies for example that show that I.P.V. is more of a problem
in lesbian unions than in male homosexual unions with a study by McLeod (2001)
finding that almost half of lesbian and bi-sexual women were reporting abuse.
Lesbian relationships are less stable than gay male relationships in the
longer term as applications for the dissolution of lesbian civil unions outnumber
applications by gay male couples and heterosexual couples. This could indicate
that lesbian relationships are more conflictual and this is reflected in the
reported higher violence rates.
Another study by Bolonga et. al. is cross-cited by Dutton (2001 pgs 124
and 125) on the topic of Lesbian Violence. These female to female relationships
were found to be significantly more violent than gay male relationships (56%
vs 25%). Further, the reported rates of verbal, physical and sexual abuse
were all significantly higher in lesbian relationships than in heterosexual
relationships (ibid., pg 125).
A further study discussed in Dutton (pg 125) found that reported rates
of verbal, physical and sexual abuse were all significantly higher in lesbian
relationships than in heterosexual relationships. In one study 78.2% of subjects
had been in a prior relationship with a man. Reports of violence by men were
all lower than reports of violence from their female partner when previously
in a same sex relationship.
Contrast these findings with the claim recorded in the Herbert Report on
page 12, that I.P.V. does not occur in gay and lesbian relationships. This
is one notable example of selective inattention to studies which would challenge
and invalidate the feminist world view of family violence and points to lack
of rigour and scholastic integrity by the authors in arriving at these deliberately
misleading and erroneous findings. To acknowledge that I.P.V. is more frequent
in lesbian than heterosexual relationships would be to contradict that the
Duluth male-power-and-control provides any fundamental or general explanation
for I.P.V.
15 Female manifestations of psychological violence
Psychological abuse was found to be the most common form of I.P.V. with
verbal aggression a feature for which women seem to be more often responsible
(National Survey of Crime Victims, pg 7).
Femicentric reports invariably target the male partner as being psychologically
abusive and make little or no mention of the immense emotional damage women
can cause not only to men as fathers but to their children as well. According
to the Australian One in Three Campaign fact sheets, of every 10 incidents
of partner emotional/psychological abuse, the perpetrator was male to female
in six with four being female to male. Just under half (46.1%) of affected
men experienced anxiety or fear. Adverse emotional responses were basically
common to both genders.
Forms of psychological/emotional violence frequently reported by males from
females include malicious gossip, deliberately damaging a man’s reputation
and/or career through false, exaggerated or unbalanced allegations, deliberately
humiliating a man, for example by flirting publicly with another, complaining
frequently about financial provision, comparing a man unfavourably with others,
frequent criticisms in general, derogatory comment on a man’s hobbies,
failing to treat the home as a shared environment that also needs to reflect
the man’s interests. As men read this very incomplete list, many will
nod in recognition of their own experiences that however are totally ignored
or denied in the recent New Zealand reports.
Stalking behaviour is common to both genders and constitutes psychological
intimidation.
Women make more suicide attempts and gestures than men do while men commit
completed suicide about 4 times more often than women do (New Zealand Ministry
of Health, 2011). Men are also 8 to 9 times more likely to commit suicide
following a marriage or relationship breakdown than at any other time of their
lives. While women’s lobby groups tend to view a men’s suicides
as just another ‘power and control’ behaviour designed to harm
women, they are just as quick to view female suicide gestures as calls for
help and evidence they are being abused. However, it is unreasonable to assume
that completed suicides are ‘power and control’ behaviour, both
because no outcome such as control or revenge can be experienced by someone
who has actually committed suicide and because an act of full suicide will
more often involve an extreme erosion of mental health devoid of sufficient
awareness or self-value to ensure survival or rescue. On the other hand suicidal
threats, gestures and attempts will more often amount to I.P.V. The much higher
rate of completed suicide by men following relationship breakdown is likely
to reflect the losses and mental harm men suffer through that process in the
context of female-favouring, male-blaming and male-exploiting family law and
welfare systems.
A further example is the enormous pressures placed on fathers by relationship
breakdowns since separations are more often initiated by the female partner
and often come without prior warning. Men will almost always be the party
expected to leave the home, often forced to do so quickly through police ‘safety
orders’ (routinely given to men regardless of who may have committed
any violence or whether any violence was committed at all) or conveniently
arranged Family Court protection orders. Men will more often be the party
whose prior assets are plundered by his separating female partner due to female-favouring
legal definitions of ‘relationship property’. Further psychological
trauma is caused to the father if the woman abducts the children internationally
or more frequently by moving with the children to another city. Not uncommonly
a younger mother and children partnered to an older man will shift back with
the children’s grandmother, herself a solo parent, who then assumes
the parenting responsibilities that should belong to the children’s
parents.
The New Zealand justice system even before the establishment of Family
Courts in 1981 described the alienation by the mother of the children’s
affections for the father as ‘schooling’ subsequently to be described
in the literature on this topic as the ‘parental alienation syndrome’,
mostly perpetrated by mothers. The deliberate process of alienating the affections
of the children from the father has not been covered in femicentric reports
as abusive of the parental guardianship rights of a loving father or as one
manifestation of female initiated psychological violence.
False allegations of sexual abuse of the daughter by the biological father
are quite commonly encountered in contested custody and access disputes whereas
father–daughter incest is rarely encountered clinically.
Another psychologically abusive tactic to gain advantage in contested custody
disputes (not confined to one gender), is to ‘bend the truth’
and hide the facts or even to bear false witness without penalty for perjury
which leaves the target of such behaviour with a heightened and lasting sense
of injustice, embitterment and demoralisation. This can occur with the collusion
of Family Court and its lawyers who have been long indoctrinated into believing
feminist ideology such as the Duluth model, for example from the misleading
picture painted by endless femicentric reports. This could be regarded as
systemic psychological abuse of men and of the important part good fathering
plays in the healthy psychological development of children and adolescents.
While there are various penalties for perjury in Family Court legislation
they are seldom invoked. This is another source of bitterness and resentment
from people of both genders who believe that in their case justice has not
been served.
A father whose guardianship entitlements should allow him to continue a
full parental role with his children will often have that role controlled,
limited or prevented by his ex-partner, yet he is still required to pay so-called
‘child support’ that channels his contribution through the mother
and therefore hides it from his children (assuming any of it goes to benefit
the children at all). This is another form of psychological violence that
traumatizes many separated fathers both emotionally and financially.
16 Homicide of children by their parent
There are well known and publicised cases of homicide of children by either
or both parents, particularly where issues as to primary care and contact
time have been contested. The Bristol case in Whanganui (father) and the less
well publicised Livingstone case (mother) in Nelson are representative. The
younger the child the more likely the child has been murdered at the hands
of the mother whereas older children are more likely to have been murdered
by the father following acrimonious disputes in the post-separation phase.
When a male commits such an atrocious crime women’s lobby groups respond
vocally and attribute it to the male’s need to assert power and control,
but when a woman offends similarly this is rarely commented on by the women’s
lobby or in femicentric reports, and any such comment will blame the crime
on the woman’s own victimization, mental health problems, etc. The truth
is that all such crimes whether committed by a male or female will involve
complex factors leading to psychological breakdown. ‘Male power and
control’ as an explanation adds little to one’s understanding
of these tragedies or to preventative solutions.
17 Ethnicity as a factor in Intimate Partner Violence
As stated in the Tolmie Family Deaths report, Maori were 2.8 times more
often deceased and 2.5 times more often offenders of intimate partner violence
deaths than New Zealand citizens of other ethnic groups. The authors state
that over-representation of Maori in intimate partner violence deaths is of
significant concern (pg 81). Although the recent reports present the data
showing high rates of Maori I.P.V., they highlight and discuss only Maori
female victimization. They also fail to point out the extent to which specifically
Maori I.P.V. inflates the overall New Zealand statistics and therefore exaggerates
the true extent of the problem for most of our population.
What is termed ‘over-kill’ in domestic murders is often Maori
gang-related where grossly violent assaults by the male perpetrator against
the female victim are encountered. Extreme violence towards women is a specific
characteristic of gang culture. See also Fergusson’s 2003 article on
‘Ethnicity and Interpersonal Violence in a New Zealand birth cohort’
(pp 138+).
18 Mutual Intimate Partner Violence
Ehrensaft, Moffitt and Caspi’s study published in 2004 found that
in less seriously abusive situations described as ‘common couples abuse’
the female was most usually the perpetrator but in more serious assaults described
as ‘clinical abuse’, both men and women were equally culpable.
Men in non-clinically abusive relationships were similar to men who were not
abusive or personality disordered.
In ‘clinical abuse’ situations the dynamics were entirely different
due to the assertive mating or coupling of both partners who had the same
history of violent and anti-social behaviour. Thus prevention programmes commonly
described as anger management or violence prevention programmes should address
female aggression in the relationship not just male aggression.
A variation of common couple abuse is described as ‘mutual fighting’.
Mutual fighting is where physical violence is used by both partners within
an egalitarian relationship as a means of problem-solving. Neither partner
will have developed much fear of the other. Mutual fighting usually involves
very low-level violence, such as slapping and pushing scuffles rather than
serious assaults unless both parties are highly disinhibited through alcohol
or drug abuse.
Most police call-outs are to domestic violence incidents of this nature
which should result in the issuing of mutual police safety orders or domestic
protection orders to ‘protect’ the couple from each other and
the children from both parents.
19 Adverse effects on children who witness parental violence
Women’s lobby groups maintain that children’s emotional wellbeing
is harmed when they are witness to male on female violence, whereas studies
on this topic show that it is also harmful for children to witness female
on male violent encounters but with different detrimental longer term outcomes,
findings supported by Dutton (pages 176–179) and by the Fergusson et.
al articles.
Fergusson and Horwood (1987), from the Christchurch Health and Development
Study wrote on the effects of children of their exposure to inter-parental
violence and how this affected their adjustment and development into young
adulthood. They found that such exposure predicted later increased risk for
anxiety disorders, behavioural disorders, alcoholism and criminal offending,
the latter modelled off the anti-social behaviour of the father while increased
risk of alcohol abuse and dependence was predicted by the mother’s substance
misuse dependency. These harmful consequences are more likely in family backgrounds
where males and female partners assault each other at similar rates (1998,
pg 341).
However, a clear and compelling finding from this study was that there
were no marked gender differences in either the patterning or the rate of
father initiated violence and mother initiated violence (ibid, pg 345). Inter-parental
violence was frequently embedded in disadvantaged family contexts characterised
by social and economic problems, parental divorce and separation and child
physical and/or sexual abuse (although not usually by the biological father)
(ibid, pg 347). The impact of inter-parental violence was similar for males
and females (ibid, pg 351), although boys were more likely to externalise
their conflicts, with girls likely to internalise their conflicts (ibid.,
pg 353).
A finding from an Australian National Crime Prevention Report found that
witnessing parental domestic violence had a significant effect on young people’s
attitudes and experiences. The best predictor of perpetration was witnessing
certain types of female to male violence, whilst the best predictor of victimisation
in personal relationships was having witnessed male to female violence.
20 The Christchurch Health and Development, and Dunedin Multidisciplinary
studies
The Christchurch Health and Development Study (CHDS) and Dunedin Multidisciplinary
Health and Development Study (DMHDS) as described in the Lievore and Mayhew
review (2004) are important sources of information on the life experiences
of New Zealanders nearing thirty or just turned thirty respectively. They
cover both victimisation and offending histories with regard to various forms
of family violence, including witnessing parental violence, parental use of
physical punishment, child maltreatment and physical, sexual or psychological
violence (or verbal aggression) in intimate relationships. The CHDS has followed
a birth cohort of 1,265 children born in the Christchurch urban region in
mid-1977. The DMHDS has tracked and studied 1,037 children born at Queen Mary
Hospital in Dunedin during 1972–1973.
One of the internationally recognised studies republished by United States
Department of Justice is the July 1999 article by Terri Moffitt and Avshalom
Caspi entitled ‘Findings about partner violence from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary
Health and Development Study’ which found that I.P.V. is strongly linked
to partner co-habitating at a young age; a variety of mental illnesses in
both the male partner and the female partner; a background in their families
of origin of instability and violence; a history on both sides of antisocial
(delinquent) behaviour in adolescence; other types of crime; long term unemployment
and parenting at a young age. 27 percent of women and 34 percent of men reported
that they had been physically abused by their partner, while 37 percent of
women and 22 percent of men said that they had perpetrated the violence. Lack
of parenting skills in young men was a troubling finding since men who had
fathered children by age 21 were more than three times as likely to be perpetrators
of child and partner abuse as men who were not fathers. Further, more men
(88%) than women (66%) met criteria for one or more mental disorders when
the physical abuse was severe. A strong link was found to exist between violence
against a partner and a history of violence against victims outside the family
and in the wider community.
These findings underscored the importance of prevention programmes that
involved both parents.
21 The ‘Peoples Report’ from the Glenn Inquiry
Findings from this report, the first to be issued this year, were derived
from meetings held around New Zealand which gave an opportunity for respondents,
mainly female, to give an account to interviewers, nearly all female, of their
own experiences of the support services for victims subject to family violence.
Few men attended the meetings so it is unsurprising that the report contains
only a few accounts of men who had experience of the domestic violence system
particularly their experiences with the Family Court and how it handles applications
for the primary care of children (custody), and contact time (access), usually
in favour of the mother.
Because of the lack of involvement by men in the Inquiry it would be unfair
to criticize it for not giving a gender proportionate coverage of family violence.
However, it deserves criticism for the extent to which it uses its unbalanced
data to make and imply general statements about family violence. There are
just two male scenarios in the report, one detailing concerns that police
were quick to side with women once application had been made for a Domestic
Protection Order and that many men felt frustrated that the onus was on them
to prove that they were not the perpetrator. This was an accurate observation
at the time since, thanks in part to the Bristol clause, allegations against
men were almost always treated by both police and Family Court as if they
were true.
The report is highly critical of various agencies including the Family Court
although mainly from a femicentric perspective. The welfare of the mother
is usually equated with the welfare of the children, precisely the assumptions
in Herbert’s Impact Collective’s Report.
It is most often the male and not the female however who is traumatised,
particularly if the mother shifts to another town or wilfully denies reasonable
contact time with the children. This can occur without the male partner being
informed in advance.
Some ‘people’ objected to shared parenting arrangements which
did not take into account ‘one parent’s’ abuse and inability
to care for children (pg 86). The shrill use of language here is almost Orwellian
as it is female people that object to shared parenting arrangements on the
grounds that male people will abuse the children or be incapable of caring
for them properly.
The Glenn Report did however point to the lack of support for men. It noted
that effective advocacy may be compromised if volunteer workers advocate solely
for the women (pg 66). A number of voluntary community organisations such
as Women’s Refuges were staffed by female victims of family violence
enabling them to relate sympathetically to their clients but, as the report
notes, this may also affect the objectivity of the volunteer in accurately
assessing the dynamics of the abuse ‘she’ (sic) has endured within
her own unique family situation. Use of the term ‘perpetrator’
and ‘victim’ is gender neutral but overwhelmingly so in this report,
the perpetrator is male and the victim female. The use of the term ‘people’
as in the very title of this report is misleading as the ‘people’
discussed in the report are mostly female.
A number of ‘people’ told the Inquiry about the lack of refuges
and support for men when they are removed from the home on instant Police
Safety Orders or Domestic Protection Orders and have nowhere to go, while
still having to pay the mortgage, their rent, their living expenses and entertainment
for the children on access visits. Far from feeling some measure of sympathy
and compassion for men finding themselves in this unenviable situation, these
female respondents see them as causing chaos and domestic abuse (pg 106).
And even though the Glenn Report recognises that the Ministry of Justice has
recently reviewed the Family Court and made significant reforms to solve more
disputes in mediation, it still maintains that it is anything but a safe environment
for ‘victims’ (pg 116). There is, they state, the need for the
removal of anti-female gender bias which fosters institutional abuse and re-victimisation
(pg 118). Mediation and joint counselling only puts those female people who
have been psychologically abused at further risk (pg 119).
These erroneous, misandrous statements should not remain unchallenged. Similar
comments would also apply to many providers of community based ‘violence
prevention’ programmes with a similar mindset.
This report claims that front line professionals including judges, lawyers,
police, CYFS social workers, teachers and health professionals, all lacked
understanding about the dynamics of child abuse and domestic violence particularly
‘power and control’ behaviour. What they are really saying is
that everyone should conform to their unscientific belief that domestic violence
is due to male power and control.
Comments that many ‘people’ perceive the Family Court to be
biased either against men or against women but overall that it was the women
(victims) who struggle the most, staggers rational belief given that men have
to carry their own Court costs whereas women find it easier to secure legal
aid or have their fees waived altogether if they have applied for, a most
usually granted, Domestic Protection Order.
These statements highlight the fact that the beliefs about family violence
held by the Glenn Inquiry are just that and betray the self-serving closed
minds of its authors to any other dissenting viewpoints on the true, varied
dynamics of family violence. ‘Male Power and control’ dynamics
are also a feature of the Tolmie Family Deaths report. That one femicentric
report seemingly makes the same points as another does not mean that their
findings are valid.
The Glenn Inquiry has had a chequered history with the resignation of its
former CEO Ruth Herbert, its Operations Director and a number of its thirty
strong advisory panel, which compromised the integrity and credibility of
its processes. The key to its earlier disintegration was to be found in Sir
Owen Glenn’s assertion that he would have liked the Inquiry to be founded
on more evidence-based and objective research, and not on the publicity given
to the often emotive and misandrous statements from its many female interviewees.
This was not a ‘peoples’ report. This semantic use of the term
is misleading as it is mainly a female people’s report and not a male
people’s report or even a ‘little people’s’ report.
While the Tolmie Family Deaths report should have had greater academic respectability
and rigour given the standing of its authors, it too uses the generic term
‘people’ to hide the fact that it is a femicentric polemic, manipulating
the language in a way that should serve to call into question the integrity,
credibility and motivations of its authors irrespective of their academic
status. Similar comments apply to the Herbert report.
22 The Tolmie Family Violence Death Review Committee Report
The Tolmie Family Deaths Report made the same fundamental errors the other
recent studies, made. The authors embarked upon their project with an assumption
that the Duluth ‘male power and control’ model explains all or
most family violence, especially I.P.V. This assumption then caused the authors
to look only for information consistent with the Duluth model and to consider
and process data in ways that supported that model.
The report claimed, regarding the abuse causing death (pg 71) that ‘coercive
control—rather than physical force—is a defining feature of the
abuse’, and (pg 72) that ‘strategies are designed to control the
victim even when she is not in the presence of the abusive (ex-) partner’.
The Death Review Committee pushed the Duluth model in this way throughout
its report. This agenda clouded its judgement so much that it sought to define
family homicides as occurring due to something other than physical force.
The Tolmie Family Deaths Report quoted the claims by Ptacek (1999) that
I.P.V. is a form of ‘social entrapment’ that has three dimensions
including ‘the ways that men’s coercive control can be aggravated
by structural inequalities of gender, class and racism’. Use of the
word ‘men’ implied that ‘structural inequalities’
don’t or can’t increase women’s coercive control. What about
heavily biased Family Court decisions in favour of females, including orders
for primary care of children and granting protection orders? The Tolmie Report
frequently used gender terms to stereotype males as offenders and females
as victims, but never the reverse.
The Tolmie Report counted 89 adult family violence deaths of which 57% were
males. However, it failed to mention this ratio at all but instead went on
to focus almost exclusively on the I.P.V.s, reporting them in a processed
form according to which gender the authors decided had been ‘predominant
aggressor’ and ‘primary victim’ in the pre-homicide history
of each case. The report then progressed to consider how more should be done
to keep women and children safe, making recommendations such as providing
a legal defence for women who murder men, and failing totally to consider
specifically how the most frequent victims of family homicide, men, might
be kept safe.
Nearly all the men involved in family homicides, even those killed, were
labelled ‘predominant aggressor’ and nearly all the women, including
the female killers, were labelled ‘primary victim’. The purpose
of this exercise appeared to be to excuse the women’s violence, to redefine
violent females as victims, and ultimately to sweep aside the fact that about
one quarter of I.P.V.s are males killed by female partners, a fact that otherwise
would be inconvenient for the Duluth model.
The basis for labelling ‘predominant aggressor’ and ‘primary
victim’ was almost certainly invalid. The authors claimed to be able
to determine whether there had been ‘…a history of abuse in which
one partner is using coercive and controlling behaviours towards the other…’
(pg 130) and then decided those cases must have involved a predominant aggressor
and primary victim. Where the authors disagreed about this on any case they
discussed it together until a consensus was reached, but it appeared that
the consensus always ended up labelling males predominant aggressors and females
the primary victims.
Criteria for deciding that included allegations (called ‘disclosures’)
by victims’ family members, with no apparent consideration that such
allegations will be unlikely to arise from an objective view. Further, even
if those allegations had a sound objective basis they may not provide a balanced
or accurate picture given the extent to which men maintain silence concerning
their I.P.V. victimization.
Other criteria for deciding that predominant aggressor and primary victim
had existed included any protection order temporary or final, any claimed
fearfulness by either partner, and ‘lethality risk factors’ including
‘separation after living together during the past year’, the ‘abuser
avoided being arrested for domestic violence’, either party ever threatened
or attempted suicide and ‘the abuser…calls when you don’t
want them to’ (pg 132–133). None of these factors singly or in
combination could justify a conclusion that there had been a predominant aggressor
and primary victim. For example, protection orders are often based on absolutely
no evidence apart from the applicant’s allegations (which need be no
more than the applicant’s claim to feel afraid), and applications for
protection orders are often made (and encouraged by lawyers to be made) as
a way of gaining leverage in Family Court disputes over children or assets.
The existence of a protection order is in no way reliable evidence of violence
or ‘coercive and controlling behaviours’ and certainly not evidence
that the couple could be described as consisting of predominant aggressor
and primary victim.
A major source of the case histories used for this categorisation was police
records, but these cannot be relied upon for accuracy because police typically
focus only on I.P.V. offending by male offenders and often ignore any violence
women committed. Even if the police recorded the woman’s violence, the
Death Review Committee subjected such information to their own further distortions,
claiming for example to be able to determine (pg 131) ‘the respective
motivations of each party for their use of violence…’ and which
party ‘had the potential to seriously injure the other’.
To make matters worse, the statistics reported in the Tolmie Report may
not be accurate. It claimed that over the four years from 2009 to 2012 there
were 13 males killed by a female intimate partner. However, Laven (2011) counted
and provided sources for six such cases for just one year within those four
years. Several of those cases appeared to involve drunk, jealous, possessive
and/or historically violent females who killed their partners in a rage and
when the victims were vulnerable and unable to defend themselves, yet the
Tolmie Report claimed that only one female I.P.V. killer during their entire
four years was a predominant aggressor whereas the remaining were all primary
victims! That is almost certainly inaccurate. A request was made to the Death
Review Committee to provide any possible information on its cases so it could
be ascertained whether the six cases identified by Laven (2011) were included
in their tally, but the Death Review Committee refused to provide any information
at all. When a study refuses to allow access to check its data this must seriously
compromise its credibility.
Australian statistics on family death events from the One-in-Three Campaign
indicated that in the three year period between 2008 and 2010 75 men were
killed in domestic female-initiated homicide incidents, 25 men per year. Given
a population base of 20 million citizens, the proportionate yearly total for
New Zealand’s population of just over 4 million citizens would be five
male I.P.V. deaths each year, 50% more than the New Zealand figures reported
in the Tolmie Report. While it’s possible that Australian women are
50% more likely than New Zealand women to kill their partners, this seems
unlikely.
The Tolmie Family Deaths Report, by assuming the validity and applicability
of the Duluth model and by manipulating its data and reporting to ensure all
appeared consistent with the model, showed a seriously compromised scholastic
integrity from authors with standing in the academic community. Its recommendations
(especially that of providing a new legal defence for women who murder male
partners) seemed more likely to increase family violence than to decrease
it.
23 The Impact Collective’s Report on Family Violence—The way
forward
Ruth Herbert, the lead author of this report which followed on from the
Glenn and Tolmie reports, was a former CEO of the Glenn Inquiry. As she herself
states, The Way Forward is the report she would have written had she been
permitted to stay on in that capacity.
Herbert’s ‘Way Forward’ is a well organised, well presented,
clearly stated and comprehensively cross-referenced report but is it a gender-neutral
and gender-balanced account in a way that The Glenn Report and Tolmie Family
Deaths Report are not? Herbert’s report proposes an integrated approach
at the community level of involvement with 32 Regional Hubs rather than a
top-down bureaucratic model which, as she argues, is broken, fragmented and
with no cohesive infrastructure.
The report maintains that as only approximately 20% of I.P.V. cases are
reported to the Police, the problem of family violence is badly underestimated
making it unrealistic to make significant changes if interventions to combat
the problem are not reaching 80% of cases (pg 2). An integrated system would
ensure that not only would various agencies deliver consistent and safe services,
they would all share the same understanding of the complex dynamics, particularly
on the inter-generational nature of I.P.V. If this does not happen and different
individuals hold different understandings then there will be different conflicting
ideas about the most effective interventions (pg 4). This is a critical point
which requires an evaluation of what exactly constitutes a common ‘world-view’
of I.P.V. and exactly what factors ameliorate and on the other hand serve
to exacerbate, the ongoing problems of family violence.
However, the report by following the convention of referring to I.P.V.
‘victims’ in the female gender and ‘abusers/perpetrators’
in the male gender (and to continue this distinction in discussing the effects
of abuse against children) is questionable. Herbert’s report claims
to provide evidence-based information to show that I.P.V. is serious, pervasive
and prevalent and that ‘certain groups’ are more vulnerable than
others. The person (most usually a man), repeatedly uses a range of abusive
strategies to gain ‘power and control’ over another (usually a
woman and child) by the use of domination, fear and coercive control, precisely
the ‘bed-rock’ beliefs by feminist authors about the dynamics
of family violence. Post-separation, the male abuser may use Family Court
processes as another tool of abuse, a criticism shared in common with Glenn
Report. To imply that women never use Family Court processes as a strategy
to gain power and control is clearly ridiculous given the frequency with which
protection orders are used as weapons in cases.
The statement that women do not choose to be with abusive men is highly
questionable given research which suggests to the contrary, that women often
end up in a number of serial relationships with abusive men which is part
of the inter-generational transmission of I.P.V. (pg 11).
Were the Impact Collective Report to have given a gender-balanced account
of the dynamics of I.P.V. and not a slanted and highly selective review, then
its emphasis on the virtues of an integrated approach with all participants
having a shared vision for change ‘…including a common understanding
of the problem and a joint approach to solving it through agreed upon actions’,
would be an admirable aim. However, the Impact Collective Report’s declared
common goal is the safety of women and children (pg 94) and not men. If this
also were the common goal for a proposed multi-disciplinary national training
course framework (pg 132), would this result in a gender-proportionate mechanism
that continually collected, reviewed, assessed and integrated new information
on I.P.V. and identified emerging evidence? (pg 134/135). And should this
not include the collection of empirical data to assess the effectiveness of
‘stopping men’s (sic) violence’ programmes as well as programmes
expressly tailored to violent women as provided already by Department of Corrections
and other providers? (Women’s ‘stopping violence’ programmes
usually emphasize ‘empowerment’ for the female offenders whose
bad behaviour tends to be blamed on their victimization under male power and
control.)
24 Ministry of Women’s Affairs Report, ‘Current Thinking on
Primary Prevention of Violence Against Women’, October 2013
This report builds on the principles invented by feminist and human-rights
based approaches which define violence against women as an abuse of male power
that is facilitated by gender inequality. The report makes various claims
that are plain wrong, such as “Violence is one of the leading preventable
causes of premature death, disability, and morbidity among women”. This
claim has been parroted by numerous feminist groups but it was based on only
a few discredited studies. In fact, violence does not appear on any credible
list of the leading causes of female morbidity in Western countries.
Prevention strategies, particularly primary prevention models need to be
part of a holistic and integrated system that ‘…upholds women’s
rights to live in violence-free societies, communities and families’
(pg 6). The position is taken that men are the primary perpetrators of violence
against women and that male socialisation is a key determinant of violence
and that intervention strategies and programmes must be delivered through
settings particularly relevant to men (pg 9). Sexual violence and I.P.V. are
claimed to be inter-related. The report acknowledges that more research needs
to be done within New Zealand context about the implications of differing
world views, concepts and frameworks of knowledge for effective violence prevention
programmes.
With its exclusive emphasis on male violence against women and on treatment
programmes and interventions that mainly target men, and its neglect of the
New Zealand literature on I.P.V., this can only be described as yet another
femicentric report.
25 Ministry of Justice’s Report on a Stronger Response to Domestic
Violence Incidents
This report was to include a proposed review of the Domestic Violence Act
1995 but will not be progressed to a draft bill at this stage (para 20, pg
3).
Work will be undertaken to develop shared definitions and understandings
of family violence and an agreed set of family violence indicators as also
discussed in the Herbert Report.
26 Ministry of Social Development’s ‘Violence is not OK’
campaign material
Government has also pledged a commitment to national education and social
marketing for its ‘Violence is not OK’ campaigns although whether
its content gives a gender-balanced perspective on the true dynamics of family
violence is seriously open to question as its ‘model’ of domestic
violence is derived from the flawed ‘Duluth male power and control model’.
Throughout the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Social Development Reports
the language used is gender neutral and gender-proportionate but the education
booklets, materials and TV clips are not. This discrepancy needs to be addressed
in the interests of a balanced perspective on I.P.V. otherwise these campaigns
will seem as a social conditioning exercise for male people who contribute
their taxes to derogatory portrayals of all men as violent and abusive.
27 National Domestic Violence Clearing House Fact Sheets
Do the content of the Clearing House fact sheets bear some points in common
with the Australian One-in-Three fact sheets and, if not, would this demonstrate
selective reporting on the part of New Zealand academics?
The Clearing House is now based at the University of Auckland with twenty-two
staff or advisory personnel of whom all but two are female. It is under contract
from the Families Commission which also organised the ‘White Ribbon’
campaign but will not, for the future, continue to do so, so it may then adopt
a more gender-neutral and gender-proportionate response to family violence.
One Clearing House fact sheet states that ‘…research has repeatedly
demonstrated that once attention to the issues of context, meaning, motivation
and consequences of violence are included – it is men’s violence
against women and children that is the most significant problem’, a
statement which is not valid since the studies discussed in this paper clearly
show to the contrary, thus indicating femicentric bias on the part of this
otherwise assumedly reputable, research organisation. Its activities are also
tax payer funded. The content of their fact sheets should be compared with
the Australian One-in-Three fact sheets which do not reach this conclusion.
28 Department of Corrections Prison-based and community-based domestic
violence interventions: The Slabber Review
Their review is somewhat selective in scope and while it correctly reports
that internationally the field is dominated mainly by the Duluth programme,
it does not access available information from its own library on the criticisms
of the Duluth ‘male power and control’ model which otherwise mainly
informs its community-based I.P.V. interventions.
While the authors of the Corrections review claim that the search parameters
for the literature review were deliberately kept as broad as possible, the
authors do not draw on the findings about domestic violence in the published
literature from both the Dunedin and Christchurch longitudinal, multi-disciplinary
child development studies cited in overseas literature reviews, or of the
many community-based intervention models discussed in Donald Dutton’s
seminal text ‘Re-thinking Domestic Violence’, references that
did not apparently meet the authors’ selection criteria for inclusion
in the report (pg 4).
In practical situations, anger management and violence prevention programmes
and interventions blend together aspects of psycho-educational and cognitive-behavioural
approaches but still within a feminist context (page 5). Dutton observed that
Canada, USA, UK and Australia all offer ‘pro-feminist’ programmes
for domestic violence offenders. Outcome studies as to their efficacy are
rare and not usually evidence-based (pg 7). In New Zealand very little information
is available on the content or success of its domestic violence programmes.
Domestic violence strategy in New Zealand is guided by the Violence Ministerial
Team which is advised by the Task Force on Action with Violence Within Families.
A review which was completed in 2010, concluded that there was no conclusive
evidence available to prove that the programmes were successful nor likely
to work as a stand-alone response to family violence, particularly if they
adopt a one size fits all approach without due regard for the needs of the
individual perpetrator and the unique characteristics of ‘his’
partner and family background, particularly where alcohol, drug and mental
health issues were co-presenting (pg 15). Domestic violence interventions
do not usually deal with or target the ‘perpetrator’s’ experience
of trauma, personality disorders or relationship conflict issues, nor, as
they should, an exploration of their volatile family of origin backgrounds
(pg 18).
A recently publicized New Zealand programme run by police that did not
appear to be based on the Duluth model conducted outcome research that showed
it achieved impressive reductions of 70% in I.P.V. in couples with a history
of repeated police callouts and/or violence convictions. The programme is
called the Whakakotahitanga Domestic Violence Rehab Camp and works with the
couples together to improve their relationship, including identifying the
ways both partners contributed to their I.P.V. and how they might overcome
this.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) (e.g. Johnson, 2008), based on attachment
theory, identifies and helps to overcome the vicious cycles of emotional responses
by both partners in conflictual relationships. Although the authors of this
method advise against using it to work with couples where I.P.V. is occurring,
it provides a valid explanatory model and effective intervention for most
couples’ conflict including I.P.V. The New Zealand Whakakotahitanga
Domestic Violence Rehab Camp programme appears to use the principles of EFT
to good effect.
The National Collective of Stopping Violence Services is one of New Zealand’s
main providers. However, this organisation initially boycotted running a pilot
programme to work with offenders using a cognitive-behavioural approach because
programmes based on the Duluth ‘male power and control’ model
had not been shown to be effective (NZ Herald, 04/07/2014). The boycott was
on the grounds that the change ‘…undermined years of research
and development by the network, lacked expert analysis and significantly increased
the potential for harm to already vulnerable women and children’, a
statement as reported in the print media. The gender-specific language used
highlights their attempt to present the problem in a distorted way.
29 Selective reporting and gender bias in the media coverage of I.P.V.
While generous media coverage has been given to the women’s lobby
whether by TV, radio, or newspaper, media releases from the men’s groups
have only rarely been featured at any length and then mainly from Letters
to the Editor. This has stymied wider debate on I.P.V. and further publicised
the ‘world view’ on I.P.V. according to women’s lobby groups
(including the legal academic lobby groups), For example, the well known commentator
on family law issues, Catriona McLennan was given frequent exposure on women’s
experiences of injustice and bias against women in Radio New Zealand’s
programmes but equal air-time was not given to spokespersons from the men’s
lobby to provide any counter-balancing response to her claims.
The New Zealand Herald has provided extensive, highly slanted coverage
to the more vocal women’s lobby while allowing allegations of biased
reporting to be aired in the form of Letters to the Editor only.
Wellington-based Dominion-Post has featured well balanced opinion pieces
from the fathers’ lobby although a one page article by political reporter,
Andrea Vance, featured from a women’s perspective their criticisms of
recent Family Court reforms without input from the fathers’ lobby.
Articles from the Sunday Star-Times have been gender-neutral in tone, well
balanced and informative, comments also applying to Dunedin’s Otago-Times
and the Christchurch Press.
Various fathers’ groups, men’s groups and non-partisan commentators
prepared media releases on the first release of the Glenn Report findings,
but no media release except femicentric ones ever featured in the print, radio
or TV media.
30 Summary and general findings
• Over 200 studies in the international literature on I.P.V. report
approximately equal rates of assault by women on men as by men on women, with
the proviso that men may significantly under-report the nature, frequency
and impact of family violence perpetrated on them by their female partner.
• Men’s assaults on average cause greater injury but women’s
violence nevertheless causes death or serious injury at about 25% the rate
for men’s violence, still a significant level that should not be treated
as non-existent or irrelevant in reports on I.P.V.
• The response of men and women to domestic violence victimisation has
similar detrimental effects on their mental health with adverse stress reactions
largely common to both including depressive and anxiety disorders, and high
rates of attempted suicide (female) and fatal suicides (men), following relationship
breakdown.
• Unlike women, men are less likely to talk about the trauma of family
breakdown with others. There is an almost complete absence of support services
for men as compared to the many services for women leaving abusive partners
and unlike women, men are most reluctant to apply for domestic protection
orders and if they do so, they are rarely believed.
• Given the numerous community supports including legislative and legal
supports offered to women, the lack of nationally co-ordinated community supports
for men in I.P.V. and family breakdown situations should be corrected to better
recognise the degree of gender symmetry existing in I.P.V.
• Statistics on I.P.V. death events vary from study to study, one describing
these as ‘rare’.
• The polarisation of opinion as to the true dynamics of I.P.V. is aided
and abetted by the partisan Glenn, Tolmie and Herbert reports, all of which
(according to the criteria adopted in this counter-balanced report), are femicentric
and politicised with all bearing the hallmarks of well co-ordinated, well-publicised
campaigns solely dedicated to protect the interests of women and children
(as so candidly stated in the Herbert Report) and to blame and reduce the
rights of men. They amount to propaganda campaigns, not what their authors
were commissioned to do. These reports do not meet high standards of scholarship
since they deny any gender-symmetry in I.P.V. by scientifically unacceptable
tactics such as concealing relevant studies in the field, selective citations,
seeking biased data through deliberate study design, distorting and reinterpreting
data to make them conform to prior assumptions, and stating conclusions that
are beyond what can be justified from their own unreliable databases.
• Is it the case therefore, that various legislative changes to New
Zealand’s domestic violence legislation which have been punitive and
based on the Duluth ‘male power and control’ model have all failed
precisely because of the failings of the Duluth model? The search for more
effective and less punitive solutions to domestic violence is to use a different
model and world-view of I.P.V. that is more gender-proportionate and is equally
supportive of men as well as women finding themselves in I.P.V. situations.
• The radicalised feminist perspective on family violence is arguably
a form of social conditioning that should be more widely recognised as such
so that government and societal responses and solutions to family violence
become more gender-proportionate and realistic.
• Standards of good scientific analysis and reporting should not change
because a topic is politically charged, an observation that is highly pertinent
to the evidence of bias and ‘advocacy’ reporting in the Glenn,
Tolmie and Herbert reports. Academic researchers have particular ethical responsibilities
for objective reporting because of the risk that various vested interests
may distort and misrepresent issues of vital importance to the welfare of
both mothers and fathers and particularly, what best serves the interests
and welfare of their children.
• Academic researchers who draw their income from the public purse deserve
particular criticism of their viewpoints if they do not fairly and in a balanced
way, represent the viewpoints of both male and female people, and even our
‘little people’ caught up in our gender wars.
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