According to Counting Dead Women Australia researchers of Destroy The Joint—who tally the women killed by intimate, or once intimate, partners https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063733051461 the count is now 41. Last year we reached 49 in November.
I wonder what Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus would say now. In April, the nation’s chief lawmaker asked men to step up to stop women dying every week in a “crisis of male violence”. Mark Dreyfus, Attorney-General, stated at a Melbourne symposium on family violence that even one woman’s death caused by a man is unacceptable, and a weekly death is an epidemic that “must end”.
How about one a day? As occurred from June 27 to June 29?
Now that Coercive Control (CC) is illegal in NSW, I wonder, will the deaths stop?
Looking at the states and countries that introduced CC prior to 1st July, as NSW has, may tell us?
Tasmania implemented the law in 2005 and has since imprisoned two men. However, both incidents were already violent prior to the arrests. This is the dangerous end of CC. CC begins with small reminders of control, but never stops there, even if the victim complies.
In the UK, where coercion has been illegal since 2015, coercive control charges not including violence have been passed—and saved lives in the process:
The CPS Case Information System recorded 1,177 offences of coercive and controlling behaviour in an intimate or family relationship where a prosecution commenced at magistrates’ courts in the year ending March 2019. 97% of defendants prosecuted for coercive and controlling behaviour in the year ending December 2018 were male. (ONS, 2019).
A man who demanded his partner wear loose clothing at all times and kept curtains shut to prevent her seeing anyone outside has been jailed for coercive and controlling behaviour.
First, we must stop calling it Domestic Violence. I often hear friends referring, playfully, to a discussion with their partner as a ‘domestic’, putting a light-hearted spin on the term. This jovial terminology allows others to joke about this serious problem. ‘Domestic’ Violence must be erased and a term truly showing the harm this violence introduced. It is violence. It’s illegal. It affects the whole family. Let’s call it what it is Family Coercive Control (FCC) or Family Violence (FV)—one leads to the other.
Second, laws and the legal system must stop prejudicing women. Laws and those who enforce them do so based on outdated religious beliefs. A law system steeped in religion allows for biases against women based on the fictitious image of ‘Eve’ tempting ‘Adam’. This myth entitles men to blame and exhibit anger toward women.
Earlier this year, I witnessed police carry out a dreadful miscarriage of justice against a 5’2” woman requesting protection from a CC husband. Instead, she was slapped with an AVO.
Regional and rural NSW DV rate surpasses the national average, no guesses why.
‘NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reveals the 2023 domestic violence assault rate was 592.8 incidents per 100,000 people in regional NSW compared with 360 incidents per 100,000 people in Sydney.’
Lisa Feldman Barrett’s book, How Emotions Are Made, examines the dual legal systems the law operates with. Justice, it shows, is based on your sex. Lisa is a psychologist and neuroscientist. When she points a finger at the legal system, she qualifies her words with ‘the human brain is the same for both males and females’ before quoting two cases.
Singh was convicted of manslaughter by reason of provocation and sentenced to a mere 18 months’ probation. The presiding judge told Singh, ‘You have suffered through no fault of your own a terrible existence for a very long time.’ His wife was labelled a ‘nag’ and on the day of her murder had ’nagged’ him for two hours straight.
Stephanie Williams stabbed her boyfriend, John Lamont, to death with a steak knife. Lamont allegedly had been violent to Williams throughout their relationship. That evening, Lamont had become enraged at dinner, and she was afraid that he would attack her again. She appealed the sentence of murder on the grounds of ‘battered woman’s syndrome’ but was rejected by London’s Court of Appeal. She is serving 20 years.
Feldman Barrett L. (2017) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, NY. pp472
Seeking police support is the last thing my 5’2″ friend will ever do.
I commend Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus for calling out the men in this epidemic. And for Albanese, exposing DV for the community problem it is. But more needs to be done. Rephrasing this horror, which occurs in so many homes. And educating front-line workers—the police—in stopping the identifying CC and stopping it before it becomes violent.
Eila Jameson-Avey 