DVOs: the two-edged sword that can create family breakdown

Good legislation can be rendered bad law in the wrong hands. Many practitioners believe this has happened with the Domestic Violence Act.

I well recall the frustration, as a Member of Parliament, of having police constantly refusing to help in 'domestics' even where my constituents disclosed extreme circumstances. Police believed they lacked the protection of the law.

This had to change. Weaker spouses, and children, were at risk but feared to act against their abuser. The law failed them.

When the amendments finally came however, no one anticipated the two-edged sword that was forged. Legislation was designed to ensure abused spouses had the full protection of the law. Police were given the power to take out Domestic Violence Orders (DVOs) on their own judgement without implicating the abused party. That sounds good in theory. But while this law has been used for the protection of the innocent, it has also been misused. Today there is a cynicism abroad that the DVO has been devalued. Abuses of legislative intent have emerged to the detriment of both spouses, their children and therefore the community at large.

There are two factors to consider. Firstly many who value their self-respect and dignity cannot live in a domestic situation governed by a court order. I certainly couldn't. Further, many who try, report that the DVO itself becomes a divisive factor constantly causing contention. To ignore the reality of that fact is to court increasing unnecessary family breakdown at an alarming rate.

The second is that after decades of seeing the worst of domestic violence against women in particular, many who have fought for reform are so imbued with the injustice of the past that they don’t recognise when the pendulum has swung too far. But the aim was to get the scales of justice 'even' not to allow women, as a political force, to 'get even'.

It is not justice for the law to discriminate against this generation of men, and the next, to pay for the sins of a past generation.

The risks are manifold. Take the information that police and magistrates receive in in-service training and/or seminars on the subject. Groups seeking to inject a male point of view are absent. Conferences lack balanced debate. Further, there are extremists who will not believe that women abuse men. That is foolish. It is also dangerous to balanced society.

There are extremists who openly believe it is better that one innocent family breaks up than that one guilty male goes unpunished (as one ardent advocate of women's rights told me).

A natural corollary of unbalanced training is that men become the automatic suspect in any incident. Once called in, so my contacts in the force tell me, most police will act whether they perceive a need or not because, once called to a scene, if they do not take action and abuse occurs later, it will be their necks on the block. The best bet, regardless of who made the call, is to apply for a DVO against the male.

This may be the safest approach for the police but it is not necessarily in the best interests of the relationship or that of the children. It may be the worst possible outcome for the family.

There is anecdotal evidence of police, solicitors and even courts advising men not to take it so strongly because a DVO is 'only an order that they behave well'. It is not as if it’s a criminal charge. (sic).

A perception of unjust treatment rankles in any circumstance. Even without that overtone, many cannot cope with the stigma of a DVO. It can and does create a whole new problem for all parties, which becomes the catalyst for otherwise avoidable marital break down.

Domestic violence does not require physical violence. It includes raised voices. Only the blind who will not see would ignore the reality that there are situations where counselling is more likely to engender the attitudes necessary for restoring domestic harmony than the menace and stigma of a DVO. Statistics suggest that police rarely recommend counselling.

Let's be fair and acknowledge that many police really are trying to make the right decision. But if the DVO is to family harmony what the President's finger on the red button is to world peace, then you want a pretty specialised person making the judgement.

I would feel abused if a destructive and crucial decision on my parental and marital relationship were made by one whose intelligence, education, training, compassion and track record had seen him rise in a period of thirty years service to the dizzy heights of constable. But it is likely to be a constable who will be called to a domestic problem and take out an order.

To add to a sense of injustice there is the allegation that it's part of the police culture that it's OK to tighten up the evidence a bit, just to clinch the case. It's not really perjury. How rife it is no one knows but reality demands an acknowledgement that is does happen. Then, if enough magistrates believe they must rely on police evidence against that of other witnesses, and many, it is alleged, do, you have a real recipe for injustice.

There's a further serious allegation that there are lawyers whose first question to a woman seeking divorce is, 'Do you have a domestic violence order". If the answer is no, some allegedly will tell her to get one and then come back. The belief that some lawyers give advice on how to manipulate men into a DVO situation to secure custody and a more sympathetic hearing for maintenance is not confined to accused men. Feminists and possibly the Law Society will cry this does not happen but what then of the women who come forward and tell the story. Further, there exists one instance where an aggressive lawyer was asked to leave a firm because the partners disapproved of the tactics.

As a small 'l' liberal I contend it is better that a guilty person goes free than that an innocent person is punished. In the domestic area therefore, despite having campaigned for more effective Domestic Violence laws, it appals me that the pendulum has swung so far that children could lose a father because a constable decided to cover his back, or that a magistrate failed to believe an honest witness just because evidence was at variance with police evidence. The easy way out is seldom the best.

Anyone who would deny there is bias against men's rights needs only to look at agendas of government-sponsored conferences on this subject, examine the list of guest speakers, or for that matter consider that the 'Male Help" line in Queensland has closed because the Queensland Premier refused to provide the paltry amount needed to keep it open. What price the outcry if it was a women's or children's help line?

As to the myth that only men commit domestic violence, there is ample evidence from lawyers and counsellors, of men who tell of being abused physically and verbally by wives but cannot leave home for love of their children. They will not call for help because they fear they will not be believed or, worse, have sought help and have had the system turned upon them.

Not only do men tell of leaving home because of a DVO, women tell stories of losing a loved husband and father from the home because the solution was taken out of their hands. There are some obvious answers and some that will require more hard thinking. In the final analysis the mind-set of reformers has to change.

As reported recently by the one or two voices in the wilderness of the anti-male media campaign, there is respectable research that shows that women are as likely to commit domestic violence as men, that the reason for statistics showing most complaints come from women is that most men feel it is 'unmanly' to seek help in working out domestic difficulties and that when women do commit violence they are more likely to use a deadly instrument than are men.

Happily there are still journalists who bear the scorn of the politically correct and do write these things. They are few.

Until the voice for male rights can be heard without being intimidated by the politically correct pro-feminists, we should all fear the law; especially those of us with sons about to enter the mating game.

In the words of John Stuart Mill, "only when we are forced to read both sides of the issue can we shed tyranny and find real liberty".

On the one extreme it is a benefit if the law allows police to act for a spouse too intimidated to act alone. But on the other extreme it is a tragedy if the law permits a situation where a family breaks up and children lose a parent because a neighbour reports raised voices and police decide on arrival they cannot afford to walk away without taking action that was neither warranted nor sought by either spouse.