Page 786 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 18 March 2015
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They are the two main categories we tend to think of when we talk about abuse and domestic violence, but there is also emotional abuse, which can be very powerful and have a significant impact on the victim; verbal abuse, which is equally so; social abuse, which can include isolation from family and friends and other controlling relocations; economic abuse, where the powerful partner can control all the money, forbid access to bank accounts or provide some sort of inadequate allowance; psychological abuse of making threats regarding children or abusing pets or driving dangerously; and spiritual abuse, which is about the denial or misuse of religious beliefs. These are all areas that play out as part of a power relationship. The scope of this definition challenges us to think widely about the beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviour that underlie domestic violence.
One would hope that with growing education and understanding of these issues we would not need to be having this debate today. But according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there has been no decline in violence against women over the last decade. Indeed, we have perhaps seen a heightened public awareness in recent months as high profile cases have been discussed in the media. Sadly, the heightened awareness we are seeing is because two women every week have died at the hands of their partners over the first two months of this year. It is because of the horrific stories that we have seen, not in someone else’s community but right here in our community in the ACT.
Domestic violence is a crime, and sexual violence against women is a crime. The people who perpetrate this violence are committing crimes and, as such, must take responsibility for those crimes. Like other crimes, though, these crimes occur in a social context. They occur against a backdrop of values and beliefs that need to be challenged—values and beliefs about men’s role in society and our relationship with women. I want to quote from the 2013 survey on national community attitudes towards violence against women:
Our attitudes are often shaped by the world around us, for instance, through how we see gender roles and relationships in families and organisations, and how women and men are portrayed in the media and popular culture … As a result, preventing violence against women is not simply a matter of changing attitudes, but will also involve challenging the social factors that shape those beliefs.
Unfortunately, it seems that attitudes in the community are not changing quickly enough. There is almost daily evidence of social factors that need challenging in regard to the roles and relationships of men and women.
In regard to community attitudes, a report put together in November last year by the Guardian indicated that the nation’s police commissioners had reached a similar conclusion. When the Guardian spoke with Australia’s police commissioners from right around the country they universally expressed the view that domestic violence would only stop when attitudes to women changed. One commissioner, Ken Lay from Victoria, said:
I place family violence in a wider culture where vulgar and violent attitudes to women are common.
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