Listen, believe and support violence victims

On February 12, 2014 Luke Batty was murdered by his father. In January 2015 Rosie Batty was made Australian of the Year. Seven years later, in January this year Grace Tame was named Australian of the Year.

Despite these honours and well publicised horrific accounts of violence against women and children, Australia continues to have a major problem with domestic violence.

Rosie Batty, Grace Tame, Brittany Higgins, Chanel Cortos, Virginia Tapscott. These are women who have suffered unimaginable pain but who have shown, and are showing, enormous courage to change the culture of violence against women. They are some of the names that we are familiar with who are working at a national and community level to change this culture.

I say unimaginable pain but the reality is that, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology, over 1.2 million adult women in Australia have experienced an incident of sexual violence since they were 15 years old. For these women the pain is not unimaginable – it is real and is experienced every day of their lives.

Sexual violence is one of the many forms of violence against women and children. Such violence can be perpetrated in many ways including sexual, physical (non-sexual), emotional, financial, psychological or verbal.

These forms of violence all relate to control: ownership of women by males, power over women by males and a sense of entitlement by males.
In 99 per cent of domestic violence related homicides in NSW, the men had shown coercive controlling behaviour. The horrific deaths of Hannah Clarke and her children Aaliyah, Laianah and Trey were all preceded by coercive control. This family’s tragedy was national news but the reality is that the control leading up to their deaths is being repeated on a daily basis throughout Australia.

We know that the notion of ‘stranger danger’ is an outmoded concept. The overwhelming majority of sexual violence against women and children is perpetrated by people close to the victims. People who are trusted by the victim and family use this trust to commit appalling acts upon innocent women and children. While not at all diminishing these crimes against women, the crimes against children are heinous and should be treated by society as such.

Despite the overwhelming majority of cases of violence against women not being caused by actions of the victims, there is still in our society questions asked about whether the victim is to blame or whether they are lying. Such questions are almost universally unwarranted.

Many studies have shown that women rarely lie about such crimes and their behavior does not contribute to the violence.

Frequently, questions are asked why a women or child does not report the violence when it occurs. The reluctance of many women to come forward for many years is very complex, however, frequently it is because of a fear of retribution or, especially when the victim is a child, the grooming process that is undertaken by the perpetrator.

As a society we need to stop asking such questions and accept what the victims are saying.

Two things that women want to happen in such circumstances are to be listened to and be believed.

Earlier this year, following Grace Tame’s award and the allegations of rape by Brittany Higgins, over 100,000 women marched in what was known as March4Justice. Out of this march came five basic demands of governments:
– Better leadership
– Better processes to deal with reports of sexual harassment
– Better consent education in schools
– Cultural change
– Overhaul of the criminal justice system when dealing with allegations by victims.

Our federal government has shown an appalling lack of concern regarding violence against women. In March 2020 the Australian Human Rights Commission Report on sexual harassment was given to the government.

One year on the government had not implemented any of the 55 recommendations.

That is unforgiveable.

In my view, our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has repeatedly shown he has no grasp of the issue and seems to treat violence against women as a political problem.

He has shown no leadership on the matter. He refused to attend the March4Justice rally outside Parliament House.

The Prime Minister continues to accept the vote of Queensland MP Andrew Lamming who was alleged to have harassed two women in his electorate. As mentioned, one thing that women who are victims want is to be listened to. Again, Scott Morrison has shown that he cannot do this. When the dossier alleging rape by Christian Porter was presented to him, the Prime Minister simply went to Porter and asked him if he was guilty. Porter answered that he was innocent.

Did the PM read the dossier? This is critical to women. Whether the allegation is true or not isn’t the issue in relation to the Prime Minister’s reaction.

What is critical is that he allegedly could not be bothered to read the dossier.

To move forward so many things need to happen. We need politicians who will fight for real equality for women.

We need real political reform as demanded by the March4Justice rallies.

We need far greater money for women’s refuges and for the prevention of violence against women and children.

We need to stop treating women as ‘someone’s mother’ or ‘someone’s sister’ or ‘someone’s wife’ or ‘someone’s daughter’. We need to start treating women and girls as ‘someone’.

We need to stop making excuses for the perpetrators of violence against women and children and stop protecting these perpetrators and covering up for them.

Most importantly, we need to listen to and believe and support the women and children who are victims of violence.

Ross Gleeson, Narrabri