1 INQUIRY INTO THE AUSTRALIAN FAMILY LAW SYSTEM 2019 2020 SUBMISSION RESPONDING TO THE TERMS OF REFERENCE OF THE INQUIRY DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND FAMILY LAW Domestic violence has become a prominent issue both in Australian society and Family Law and it is important to understand why this has occurred and what are the real reasons and statistics behind it. The debate and controversy has clearly become polarized along gender lines and highly politicized in the media and family law. Women’s groups and Women’s political lobby organizations have been claiming that there is an epidemic of domestic violence and that the victims are almost exclusively women and that the perpetrators are almost exclusively male. Consequently they have lobbied media organizations and governments to such a level over an extended period that any alternative viewpoints are deemed objectionable and police procedures and laws, including Family Laws, have as a result reflected these polarized views and now become highly questionable. Many researchers, social commentators and political observers are now questioning domestic violence research and statistics as well as media campaigns and laws that have been demanded by women’s organizations and aren’t solving the claimed problems. Swedish politician and leading Swedish feminist, Eva Solberg, believes that domestic violence is not a gender issue and disagrees with the Swedish government’s policies on domestic violence which are very similar to those in Australia. Eva expresses her serious concerns in the following report, first published on Nyheter 24 website, July 2015, reproduced in full below :- “Intimate partner violence (IPV) is not a gender issue – its time for family peace. In the last few days the results of the government investigation of IPV have been presented to me by the responsible minister. After reading them I am compelled by reality to present a disapproving note to both the investigators and the government who still seem to be of the view that sexism is the solution to the problem of domestic violence. The tone and the division was already defined right from the title – “The National Strategy to Combat Men’s Violence Against Women” – inferring that we have a guilty sex and an innocent sex. But thanks to extensive research in the field, both at the national and international level, we now know with great certainty that this breakdown 2 by sex is simply not true. We also know through extensive practice and experience that the attempts to solve the issue through this kind of analysis have failed. And they failed precisely because violence is not, and never has been a gender issue. In Sweden, however, even the slightest questioning of the current model has been regarded as swearing in an otherwise quiet and echoing church. Few are those who have dared to openly question the current model, but it is about time to start doing so. Sweden is, or in any case should strive to be, a knowledgeable society. This society is characterized above all by its willingness to be guided by free and politically independent research when it comes to making decisions affecting all of us. As such, careful analysis and lessons of accumulated experience ought to be an important criterion in decision making. The efforts conducted so far aiming to end IPV have not been working. This is acknowledged by the government . The reason for this should obviously be analyzed carefully. And, whatever the reasons for analyzing, we can be sure of one thing. The road for a solution for this problem is hardly to stubbornly continue to feed the patient with more of the same medicine that has already been tried unsuccessfully for decades. It is time to raise the bar. The available knowledge out there is not lacking in substance. In what has become to be known as the Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project (PASK), which is the world’s largest research database on IPV. No less than 1700 scientific papers on the topic are summarized. Virtually all differ in their conclusions from the tired gender analysis that the government has once again introduced. When such a considerable amount of research is evaluated, some clear and interesting patterns emerge. One such pattern is that violence in the family, rather than being gender-bound, appears to rather be an inherited generational problem. To know this and then continue to ignore the damage done to the children who are today subjected to violence is a huge social betrayal. We condemn these children thus to repeat the patterns they have learned from their parents and by doing so we ultimately condemn our society to continue to perpetuate the problem with enormous costs in both money and personal suffering. Enskede Arsta Moderates, where I am the chairwoman of the opposition alliance in the district, has taken a clear and continuing responsibility to prioritize the work on domestic violence in the direction of prevention. In our efforts, we prioritize the efforts to be more legally secure. We are also the first district of Stockholm to have introduced the anti-DV program FRISDAM combined with treating both men and women. By doing so, we have demonstrated the importance of seeing the big picture when violence occurs in families without prejudices and preconceptions. We had hoped that our unique approach would be spread to more locations but unfortunately this has not yet been the case. Another aim of ours was to provide better care for children and increase the quality of the social services. This, however, never got fully implemented. Very often I, as a politician, talk with parents who don’t get to meet their children. I have also heard many children talking about how they witnessed major vulnerabilities in the processes that are intended to protect them. This is, of course, completely unacceptable. I am also deeply concerned with the one-sided focus on men being 3 seen only as perpetrators in cases involving domestic abuse. I have met and spoken with many fathers and children who have witnessed and experienced very different reality. The research also provides evidence to their stories that, yes, women also use violence within families. Both the partners and the children can be victims. If we view women only as victims, doesn’t this set up these men and their children to be in a disadvantaged position? If we as women do not stand up for these men, who then will do it? Any form of violence is illegal and must be combated. Therefore as the chairwoman of the Women of the moderate party in Stockholm, I intend to initiate a process where we meet with and listen to all of those who in any way have experience with domestic violence. I also welcome the representatives of the authorities, such as social workers, police officers and others to contact us and bring their experiences into the discussion as well. And above all I want to see those exposed to or subjected to unjust legal sanctions that hit the children due to misuse of authority, prejudice, ideological tunnel vision or whatever the cause might be. This of course applies to both men and women. Without more transparency and openness regarding the vulnerability of those who are otherwise entitled to a protective family life which has been threatened or destroyed, we will never manage to create a better society. We now learn from the National Public Health Institute that the risk of suffering from mental illness, substance abuse and other conditions that lead to social vulnerability is twice as high for children who are deprived of one or both of their parents. We also know that every day children are being taken away by one of their parents, both within Sweden and from Sweden to abroad, and the distrust of the parents towards the responsible authorities is growing at an alarming rate. We have started daring to see and talk about this difficult and complicated problem. And we must begin to recognize the fact that domestic violence, in at least half of its occurrence is carried out by female perpetrators. Otherwise, our efforts to protect the most vulnerable among us, the children, will never become more than just an aspiration. We will continue to fail in the attempt to help families break the destructive pattern. Let us now stand together, not divided by sex, once and for all, commence to break the destructive patterns wherever they occur. Do you want to help us with that? “ DOMESTIC VIOLENCE STATISTICS - PASK STUDY The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project (PASK) is the most comprehensive in the world, detailing and examining results of 1700 research studies on inter personal violence (IPV) from a range of countries around the world. A summary of some of the findings of this project are detailed below :- (https://domesticviolenceresearch.org/domestic-violence-facts-and-stastics-at-a- glance) Victimization Overall 22% of individuals assaulted by a partner at least once in their lifetime (23% females, 19.3% males) 4 Perpetration * Overall 25.3% of individuals perpetrated IPV * Rates of female perpetrated violence higher than male perpetrated violence (28.3% vs 21.6%) * Wide range in perpetration rates : 1.0% to 61.6% for males, 2.4% to 68.9% for females Emotional Abuse and Control * 80% of individuals have perpetrated emotional abuse * Across studies 40% of women and 32% of men reported excessive abuse, while 41% of women and 43% of men reported coercive abuse Context – Bidirectional vs Unidirectional * Among large population samples 57.9% of IPV reported was bidirectional, 42% unidirectional : 13.8% of the unidirectional violence was male to female (MFPV), 28.3% was female to male (FMPV) Effects of Partner Violence and Conflict on Children * Significant correlation between witnessing mutual PV and both internalizing (eg anxiety, depression) and externalizing outcomes (eg school problems, aggression) * Children and teens exposed to female perpetrated PV significantly more likely to aggression against peers, family members and dating partners Results of the PASK study clearly show that violence in domestic relationships is definitely not gendered but perpetrated by both males and females approximately equally.